The Amish of Pennsylvania have accepted and adopted the use of electric bikes. World Athletics has banned transgendered athletes from women’s competitions. Democrats continue to prevail over Republicans and Trump is imploding in slo-mo over several fronts. Even Major League baseball finally sped the game up with a ‘pitch-clock’. It would seem that sane change and reasonable outcomes are not entirely absent from our lives after all.

That is not to say that all is right with our world but sometimes into every hurricane a little sunshine must be found. And, right now, I am looking hard for some light…..

One of our family members passed this weekend. As planned. As scheduled. It was clearly the right thing to do and everything went as well as could be expected. The patient was great, the family and friends were great. The MAID doctor was perfect. The process was painless and quick. In a sense, it was as good a way to go as any.

But….

The process, while logical, acceptable and humane, was not quite as easily processed (for me) as something closer to more ‘natural’ (or maybe familiar) might be. It is hard to accept the end of a person who was, just an hour or so ago, seemingly vital. It makes sense on a logic and fact-driven basis, of course, but it somehow does not compute emotionally or, forgive me, on a spiritual basis. There was something inside that chaffed in an unusual way.

It is mostly just my ‘constructs’, of course. We are all born as mostly empty blobs that get filled with…well, everything. And then, that is what we become and are…..little-blobs-of-our-era. But we also have a natural tendency to go find the fillings. Ambition, curiosity, intelligence and education combine with genetics, circumstance, other people and even the historical timeline to add variation to our very own ‘little blob’s’ mix.

We all have little mental constructs that we, ourselves, build from all that and put that in place as our own personal ‘blob’ foundation. It includes our approach to everything from expectations of Western living to gender interaction, from social institutions to what constitutes rich and poor. We are raised with Judeo-Christian values and morals, Protestant work ethics, Capitalism, fashionable fads, trends and lifestyles and even the languages we speak – it all influences our attitudes and perceptions. We are truly born with a blank slate and an open-learning attitude that society tries to fill-in from the very get-go. And it succeeds.

And the vast bulk of all that building material comes from past generations and even our current living situation which is seen through the older eyes of family, personal history and experience. We kind of look to the future with the constructs of the old. I do, anyway.

And then come the inevitable changes. Large and small. Technology is the latest new force of nature but there have been others from war to plague from religion to migration. We can expect even more from climate change. The only constant is change.

Social media threw a huge wrench into that always churning pool and, in so doing, created a real tempest in the collective perception of reality. Up is now down, down is now up. Lies are promulgated as truth despite facts proving otherwise. Men are becoming women, women are becoming men and many are choosing to be even further otherwise. The ex-president of the United States is a mafia don! Cheerleaders are being shot! The world has gone mad…or, at the very least, a lot of our mutually agreed upon constructs are being challenged.

I rant over much of that kind of stuff in my blogs. I feel the collective, huge, indefinable confusion, too. I feel the earth shifting under my feet. I am even somewhat emotionally unsettled, as well (not as much as many, tho, due to living OTG on a remote island that has a granite foundation).

But I never expected to be shaken and stirred over the concept and reality of death. If anything was a truly given, rock-solid premise it was death and, of course, taxes.

This weekend death showed up in an entirely different way. It was OK. It was right. It was correct in every way but one………..I just never felt it like that before.