An octogenarian, Dr, Charles Pendopolous celebrates his 84th birthday in the shadow of 9/11/2001.
Midas asked Sebilius what fate is best for man. He answered, "The first is unobtainable-not to be born. The second best is to die early."
Charles Pendopulous now on familiar terms with his current world knew his eighty-fourth year on planet earth would be one of reverie; though he had spent too many mornings drinking coffee with Ann, he could not escape it. It must be the nature of the birth date, he thought, like some requirement of the Gods, perhaps Hermes; obligating man to travel, as best a mortal can, through places that Mnemone, the Muse of memory, would direct and posit.
As he ascended the stairs to meet his wife who was twenty years his junior and whom he had married when he was a ripe sixty-four, Charles knew that escape was a fool's paradise.
Furthermore, man labored his whole life to construct the perfect prison; if he was lucky and industrious, it fit him well, -- had plumbing and running water, comforts to the senses, yet filled with enough challenges to keep his mind off the fact that it was merely a sweet smelling incarceration he enjoyed. As man was, there was no justice in prison. The only thing he should concentrate on is escaping, but he couldn't, not when he's working so hard to lull himself to sleep on a stiff prison mat, all the while imagining it to be a voluptuous bed.
Now he trudged up the stairs, more arduous to scale these days, even though he was in excellent shape for a man his age, mostly due to his daily regimen of exercise and diet as well as being his own best physician, and of course, his innate genetic constitution. He had suffered through a by- pass operation almost eight years ago now, but he was determined to enjoy each step he could muster. It was the only revenge he had in his heart these days, --to pioneer another twenty-four hours and fight righteously against the one that held the scythe in his hands.
He had thought of death far more before the operation than he did now. Then he could almost perceive the dark cloak the grim reaper wore. His terrified soul pondered hard about the possibility of their meeting on one of those interminable hospital nights. The fateful rendezvous never occurred, he surmised, -- and this was a rather recent footnote in the history of his life, -- because he hadn't fully addressed those issues of revenge and humility or injustice, yet. He had been simply too stupid to die.
It had been an amazing adventure for him, nonetheless, through all the fear and soul searching, to see his band of family rally themselves to his bedside, all of them, even Harry, looking at him with those vacuous eyes owned by people that don't see any cloaks or scythes in their lives yet.
He turned for a moment and stared out the window embe dded in the stairwell wall onto a lovely, sun soaked October sky. It was unseasonably warm this year with the thermometer hanging from a tree in his small back yard reading 68 degrees. He slid the window open to let the fresh fall air accumulate around him; he breathed it in deeply.
He wondered what made family gather so pompously when death was near, instead of when life was in great bloom. When simple decay and ageing prevailed in the life of a 'loved one', they ignored, or even worse, shunned them. Hypocrites, refusing to realize that they too would some day feel the same rancor as he did now, over the inconsistency of affection humans displayed.
Midas asked Sebilius what fate is best for man. He answered, "The first is unobtainable-not to be born. The second best is to die early."
