One's outlook is significantly altered when the end of one's life is in view or closer. I speak not of my immediate end but that philosophical contemplation of the end of one's life. Prompted in part by the death of my father in 1999 and my mother in August 2010. Being an orphan is not exactly correct as one dictionary defines it as: a child whose parents are dead. I am not a child. But when parents die one feels as if they are a child in some ways, once again. I remain unsure as to my point at this moment, tired after a day working in the emergency room. But I do know that I miss my mother and father. Life consist of great longing and yet of fulfillment too. It would have been my mother's birthday this last April 9. I miss her.

I'll not be alone tonight.
You'll be in my conscious thinking dreams
as I lay awake and pondering what it could mean to love you.

It is no idle threat of mine,
this possible love carried to you
in a bucket brimming with possibilities
spilling over with ideas of what it could mean to love you

You will be wondering now who the hell is this man?
who does he think he knows
about what it could mean to love me?

It lies in a realm of choices made and unmade,
each decision a rent and tear in quantum fabric of bubbling space,
ricocheting down the corridors of time and doors
each opening to a differing idea of what it might mean to love you.

What I really want
is for you to think about . . .
what it may mean for you to love me.
I know I could love you - selfish man that I am.

So open that door into your heart and open that heart to me.
Change the nature of our reality
where love just is
as it is wont to be.

Updates

Aloha - I am living almost full time in San Francisco now in the Outer Richmond on 43rd Avenue right near the San Francisco VA Hospital, also known as Fort Miley. I can park my car at the VA and then just walk to work and home in about five minutes.

That has always been a goal that I have been able to fulfill - to not commute and risk my life on the freeway on a daily basis. It is a great thing to not pollute so much and live with a sense of place and neighborhood. This said, it still is not my favorite place but it will do as these things go. I have my coffee shop, 'my' local movie theater and best of all my brother and family lives in the city. This has been a gift.

So I turned a half century last year. My mother died and I became an orphan. That is strange, bringing new meaning, an additional layer of complexity to a multilayered life of the same. My search for meaning continues, realizing that the search will never end and the lingering sense of disatisfaction is what drives me and enriches existence. All selfish things but there you are.

I won't be an RN at the VA forever. Nor in the ER. There is so much to do, places to be and people to be with. Still a journey, unending, cautious, free, unknowable and precious beyond knowing and believing at times.

I am blessed and lucky. I know how fast it can and will change.

David