The Music Never Ends

As he lay in his hospice bed with tubes hanging out of his body barely able to keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time he was amazed at how clear his mind was. He sensed there were always people around him but even when he opened his eyes he couldn't focus so he never was able to recognize who was. He heard  low murmurings which he figured were people talking in hushed tones as if they might wake him from a gentle sleep. He wished he could sleep but in his mind he heard his voice speaking his thoughts and it sounded like his voice when he was twenty. It was like he was reviewing his whole life as though he was in a movie.

She had been gone for a long time but now she was there with him as he held her in his arms after she said she would marry him. The film just continued to roll as he saw his first child, and how she was so nervous that she was afraid to breast feed him which made her uptight because she felt she wasn't a good mother. With the each new baby she became less nervous until they just laughed at how young they were when they first started out, children raising children. He was viewing in fast forward, how quickly their babies grew up into young adults, into middle age finally the beginning of old age. Through it all he saw the tears, the laughter, the joy of living with the person he loved more than anything and their physical results of their spiritual love, which were their children. Choices came before him as he viewed this motion picture. They were travelling along a road that was filled with twists and turns, and many forks. The choices made would impact them all and those who were closest to them like their parents, family and close friends. It was made very clear to him that without the very choices they made so many things, so many people would not be here. His children, the ones they had at the time they had them would never existed if they put off the decision to wait just another year to get married. They would have had children but not the ones they did have because the gene pool would have been different.

There was a time that they could have moved to the west coast for a better job but they declined. Their children were young at the time and would have had to move with them. Their children probably would never have met their spouses, some probably would be better off if that were so, but then their grandchildren would never have been. It is true that they would have had grandchildren but not the ones they had and that would have been a great loss. Before he found himself in this condition he never gave thoughts like this much time to germinate in his mind but now they were very important as he reflected on his life while he was in a near coma condition. He was beginning to realize how much love filled his life.

It was if his whole life was one big symphony and the musicians were all that played a part in composing and performing the music. The most important soloist was his wife for through her the music was the most melodious, the sweetest with the best chord changes. But she left him some years ago and there was no one who could fill the gap in the symphony that was there when she left. The harmony, the composition the blending of the performers didn't leave completely but just wasn't the same without her. He started to slip away, toward a long tunnel with a bright light at the end of it but the question was in his mind as to how do you keep the music playing and crazy as it may seem he could hear her voice reciting the lyrics of that song.

How do you keep the music playing?

How do you make it last?

How do you keep the song from fading

too fast?

How do you lose yourself to someone

and never lose your way?

How do you not run out of new things

to say?

And since you know we're always changing

How can it be the same?

And tell me how year after year

You're sure your heart will fall apart

Each time you hear his name?

I know the way I feel for you is now or never

The more I love, the more that I'm afraid

That in your eyes I may not see forever, forever

If we can be the best of lovers

Yet be the best of friends

If we can try with every day to make it better as it goes

With any luck than I suppose

The music never ends

I know, the way I feel for you is now or never

The more I love, the more that I'm afraid

That in your eyes I may not see forever, forever

If we can be the best of lovers

yet be the best of friends

If we can try with every day to make it better as it goes

With any luck than I suppose

The music never ends

And as he slipped into eternity he heard the symphony of their lives being loudly played.