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Slowly, step by step, we depart this continuum of matter and energy we call our bodies. So unobtrusively do our cells age that we do not notice exactly when it is that we leave the ranks of the young. The images of the young, glistening selves once reflected in our mirrors are forever captured behind our retinas. We do not see the slow attrition of age, the graying hair and fine wrinkles about the eyes and mouth. One by one our cells die, leaving our stubbornly youthful spirits stranded high and dry in a body wearing out before our startled gaze. Does this mysterious essence we call spirit dissolve also, or do we perhaps spiral together in clusters of radiant particles, spinning and dancing in a space and time leading we know not where? Depending on the durability of our given bodies, we must, all of us, arrive at this period at different chronological ages. But it doesn’t matter. Sooner or later we must, all of us, come to this parting, this separation from all we know. And now I find myself at this gateway, and I wonder--what next? At this juncture, I remember what our physicists have learned--that matter and energy are never destroyed—only changed. And, like Alice going through the looking glass, I feel "curiouser and curiouser." Leah Leopold Download the printer-friendly Adobe Acrobat
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