Snowflakes

Yesterday I sat at my window, wondering at the verdant green lushness of my tree. I had been out, downtown, wearing only a long-sleeved shirt and light pants, and of course a cap for the baldness atop my crown. I admired Nose Hill Park in the distance, imagining summer when the grass was green and the sky still as sunny as it was that day.

Today it is snowing. The temperature has plummeted from 13C down to -3C; it feels even colder than that thanks to the wind blowing the snow about, near sideways. My tree is covered once again in the dusting of white which comes with winter weather. The roads are soaked from tires and car heat melting the snow as quickly as it touches down. The verges of the road, however, are retaining this bit of winter returned to us. It is the classic yoyo effect of spring in Canada, unless you live in the Lower Mainland of BC, where winter lasts perhaps only a few weeks, where the rains wash away the snow almost faster than it touches ground.

I look at those snowflakes, wandering their way downward from thousands of feet in the sky, each formed around the smallest of dust flakes, giving surface for crystallisation to occur. That tiniest of speck, that mote of dust, is in itself a container for thousands, perhaps millions, of bacteria, each of them seeking to survive, even thrive, in what are nearly the harshest conditions this planet has to offer.

Life is a tyrant, unending, persistant, insistant, forcing itself into every possible space on Earth. It is unwilling to give way, unwilling to allow barrent space. It fights and fosters itself from the heights of the sky to the deepest of oceans, even unto the bowels of the earth where no light passes and no water flows. It is almost impossible to understand how much life demands to be, to exist, here on this fragile orb drifting its way through unknown space.

Even as life demands its place, so does death. One cannot exist without the other. Just as life insists, so does death, both in a never-ending balance of dance to and fro. For without death, there could be no life. And without life, death would never come. There are seemingly dead objects in our solar system, unending, enduring, unchanging. Yet even on these dark and desolate surfaces, we find bacteria, life.. and death.

So it is outside my window; inside too. While I live, I await death, as do we all. There is nothing unique in my circumstance, other than the methods of its ending. Just as the simplest of life forms, I will live and then die. It's nothing to worry about so much, except for the here and now, this time and place. Just as the snow, I am blown in the currents of life's wind. Just as the snow, I am here today and gone tomorrow. I have no more enduring or intrinsic value than any other life form. The only difference is that I know what is happening to me, unlike the windblown snowflake with its living passengers, unlike my tree, unlike the rocks, the soil, the sea.

I know I have ALS. It doesn't mean I know how I will die, or even how I will live until I die. All it does is gives me a hint, more of a suggestion as to how death will deal with me. But just like the bacteria all around me, I will most certainly come to an end. I too will melt away, as do the snowflakes which fall today.