Zero Hour

Life is long and complex and uneven and superb. Along the way, as we or I, look back the ninety year path behind me, I see all the beauty of life, the wonder of love, the joy and warmth of family, the stack of tiny but pleasant accomplishments and I feel no regret. When one begins to add up the value of these, it comes to a huge number that is almost impossible to conceive of. On the other hand, the profit that one might bear or brag on it, sums to a large zero. Can't take one iota of it into death.  It is likely in some eyes negative behaviour to see it that way, but in this world that awards dollar signs as pleasures, it does add up to a simple zero. Everything one does, sees, feels, spends, labours over, gives, prays about, builds, and or destroys totals zero at the moment of our last breath. Pessimists snarl that is wasn't worth it, while optimists laud each and every step down the twisted road of life. Then again, if we didn't travel this road, we didn't live. If we look as we travel the road, we find something called memories. They are us, what we are and what we were and who we were. Every single life has meaning and value. We are all part of this world that turns and we don't feel the movement, that wears away and we don't like it, that provides for us and we forget it, that we  abuse and go on,  that offers everything a human creature could possibly want but we don't really see it until it's too late. The mountain high pile of memories both bad and good collapse when we die, but not before we sort through it and in our regret to leave it, find the treasures we most loved. Some dwell on the bad and hard parts, and that's sad because in every life, there has been  good and beautiful and true. The other day, an elder friend said after her life recollections, "it will be a relief to die". Was her life about carrying a burden she forgot to drop? Or?