"When i'm Old All I Want is Love"

I was eighty five before I saw the sun rise alone. I washed my feet in salt water and lay back in the sand. The blue water spread out in front of me and there were sailboats on the horizon. I heard the sound of white capping waves and saw a young couple embracing in the sand. Slowly I let out a smile, then and there. I tilted my head back and slipped into my minds grip, slowing brain tempo, taking the smell of the earth in. The caress of the moving waters made me wonder if I’d see my loved ones in a place called heaven, or if I’d just die and seep back into the soil from which I came. The water wrapped round’ my feet, I felt them sink further into the sand. My angel of a wife slipped into the focus of my brain and I felt her fingers stroke my hand. Her smile warmed me from the inside out and every hair stood on my body. Tingles crept from my toes into the hair on my head and for the first time in three years I felt her love as real as it was then. The remembrance of her body inside my arms, the sound of our children playing in the yard, and the sweet sound of my younger brother’s voice, all of those memories cleansed my mind and re-opened it again. The ocean’s breeze swept over my body and the thought of my childhood innocence crept through the wind softly skimming my smiling face. I pictured myself throwing a baseball from center field or getting aced by my best friend on match point, even the voice of a dear friend who left to soon. I took every inkling of happiness within these thoughts and moved it to the center of my chest. The beat of my weathered heart gripped them all and they pulsated throughout me, the sense of their beings soaked into my skin like the fresh rays of sun peering through the open clouds, lighting the sky, igniting a new day for those of us who have out lived the ones we love. Or showing its beauty to a young child who spins around in the yard wondering if they
will ever be as tall as their daddy’s are?


I open my eyes and watch the ocean touch my feet again. The young lovers splash into the waves, the warm sun rests upon my face. All feelings of anger or sorrow fade from within my being, I feel only love for each and every time and place in which I was fortunate enough to fill empty space. I put my hands into the sand, pulling up grains and releasing them back into their land of endless rotation, their constant life of remand. With the fall of the last bit of future ocean floor, I know what it is the energy before the birth of life wanted us to feel before we go. Total and complete happiness created from the memories within, the faces of friends, the feeling of a mother’s love and how it never ends. All of these thoughts overwhelmed my smiling face and I stood up and screamed from the solid core of my new found faith, “I FEEL YOU ALL!! MY CHILDREN I’M HERE!!! SWEET WIFE I KNOW YOU’RE NEAR.” The echo sped across the water and the parting waves sprayed fragments into the fresh sky. I watched the birds fly through the clouds and wondered if I’d ever truly been alive. I think of pine trees and green leaves, summers spent drinking, back when conversation was always the answer. The clouds spread open and the sun shows it’s face. Slowly, I let out a smile then and there. I say to them all, I am alive, but I will be there soon. I promise.
Love love