Listen, you know who you are when I say, that when you hear the Heavens
rumble with lighting, darkness and wind, remember me.
Your heart is made of crimson stone, your soul of fire. Destiny has set me free. Free to be me. The miles that we traveled on the journey to Hell, meant nothing to you, but pain and sadness for me.
The pain of leaving did not trouble me. True prophecy is that I must say goodbye, you
only have to look at my broken mind, body and soul to know why.
Realize that all is lost, and it is I that paid the cost. My life was a cursed hell…no longer in your shadow;
I can learn to take care of me and to be free…
It is simple; I have to be me.
~
Authors Note: The wisdom of these words did not come quickly, it took years to cultivate a new mindset after years of living a less meaningful life. It came with age, which is unfortunate. We pay a lofty penalty for mistakes and we do not weigh the cost of our assumptions, we willfully pay no heed to the wealth we have in our present moments, after all the threats are gone . Throughout our lifetime, these accumulations of bad thoughts or practices build silently, and we close our minds to it, doing nothing. We are who we are; we may never touch the fullness of our possibilities. We believe that we know where we are going, our mind paints a calm picture, all the while we endure veiled feelings, we mostly think about the past and the future, we think of what we want. Being in touch with only the moment, this day never trying to cultivate mindfulness. Meditation has become a way of life for me; it is simply being yourself and realizes that you are on a path and direction that is always unfolding every minute, every second, and every hour of the day. Don’t rush it let it unfold joyfully, be mindful of the pitfalls.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: We cannot think about the “seasons” without bringing Mother
Earth into the fold. She has served us
well, beware she made not be here forever, be good to her.
In
the world that we know, yet we cannot see, it is floating, suspended in the
dark hole of life. The earth turns in her floating world, and she is tired by
the changing of time, seasons, inhabited by those who bring wraith to her. As humans we look for things that will turn
out in a magnificent way, we dwell on how things will unfold. However, as humans, we keep interfering with
her growth, her peace, her beauty. She
weeps, the tears fall, trickling, sprawling into the depths of
hopelessness.
We,
as humans stand still doing nothing to save her, if we have made the wrong
choices it is the children who must pay, so why do we care? There is no gain for the earth of today,
caring is left in the past, the yesterdays of our own childhood. We show no wisdom, and the great “Sayers”
who actually say nothing, sit and let her be destroyed.
There is no victory, we will not leave her as we found her, slow dank waters will form swamps as the rivers dry up, in the woods the cedars’ will soon be like winter bones. EARTH, she will stand for many eternities, but then she will die and her light will go out.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: We cannot think about the “seasons” without bringing Mother Earth into the fold. She has served us well, beware she made not be here forever, be good to her.
I sit
looking at the deep snow and the trees burdened with ice. My eyes have fallen on this scene for many
winters, some more destructive than others.
I cannot get outside for the fear of falling. I am trapped in this my last home and there
is no place to run, even if I could run.
I walk the halls of the building where my apartment is located to heal
myself, to collect any energy that I can in an effort to, not get to where I
was in my health before, but to get to a place where I can return to being self-sufficient.
For those
who are joining this journey in the “Last Chapter”, welcome! I recently, two weeks ago experienced a shocking
fall. One week in the hospital and one
week at home now. I managed to reach
eighty years of age before obtaining “Life Alert”. I am leery of its use; will it work outside
the home? Is it my badge attributing to
old age?
Therefore,
as I sit here a captive audience with the outside world, I begin to think of
Charlotte, the precious daughter I lost nine years ago. The loss devastated me it broke me inward, and
then within days I lost the second daughter.
I continue my fight to survive as I have three other children.
Do not let anyone
tell you that grief has a timeframe, it cannot be planned, you are stopped lifeless
in your pathway the moment it comes into your life. Your mind is taken over as if in a caged
sleep, a tear shed, the thoughts of others is false, caring is edging upon destruction
as most portray a lie. The words they
are in a better place does not meld into my thoughts, there is no better place
accept with me.
You feel as
if you are the only person in the world to know grief and those with their
caring falseness does not know your grief.
I do not dislike them; they like many other have not experience
grief. Spitefulness in my thoughts is held
captive even the sleeping mind that at times is not allowing me to wake.
There are
those that cannot be trusted, they show concern for their own selves and their
own greed. Forgive them; they cause pain
to the minds of the blameless and some find in it joy, you feel that their tongue
of fire knows not the truth. If grief should
touch your life, it will never be the same; all you want to do is…
Run, Run, Run,
You will
momentarily lose touch with yourself and with others we fall into a robot like
way of seeing and thinking and doing. You allow yourself to be truly in touch
with where we already are no matter what there is we have got to stop the
experience long enough to let the present moment sinking in, long enough to
actually feel the present moment, see it in its fullness to hold it in a
wariness and thereby come to know and understand yourself better.
Sometimes we
accept the truth of others as to be our own we do not learn from it yet we move
on. We are occupied are preoccupied with the past what is already happened, or
with the future has yet to arrive. We look for a place to stand and grieve,
where we hope things will be better, happier, more the way we want them something
gets in the way. We are aware of it all, or partially aware, our lives and
affects that our actions have on others, our thoughts have to be what we see
and do not see, what we do and do not do.
Most of the
time we fall, quite unaware, and to assuming that what we are thinking, the
ideas and opinions that we harbor at any given time, or the truth about what is
out there in the world and in here in our minds most of the time it just isn’t
true. We pay a high price for the mistaken unexamined assumptions for a touring
of the richness of our present moments.
Life
accumulates silently coloring our lives without our knowledge it or being able
to do something about it. We may never quite be where we actually are never
quite touched the fullness of our possibilities. We lack to look at ourselves
and to a personal fiction that we already know whom we are, that we know where
we are and what is going on and that we know what is happening.
All the while, we remain enshrouded in thoughts, fantasies and sudden impulses, mostly about the past and about the future. We have our own ideas of what we want and like, and what we fear and do not like, which out of continuously control others lay our direction and the ground we are standing on changes, but not for those of us clinging to “The Last Chapter”.
I recently spoke to an acquaintance who told of
her husband living in a nursing home, he was unhappy and so was she. Being ten
years his junior placed such a burden on her shoulders.
What can one say about growing old? The loss of
shape, hiding beneath many layers of clothing, sparkle gone from one’s eyes as
the eyes become smaller in their sockets. One is no longer beautiful in the
eyes of others; however, this is not my belief. The function of one’s body
grows weaker, sitting in that doomed place with little human contact. The
sunset-glow in the beginning of each day is gone. Dreams escape the demented
mind, as does the ordinariness of each day.
There is certain knowledge within this fog in the
mind of the aged; at times, they remember of those long ago youthful days.
Visions may flitter across the closed mind like an open window. Nonetheless,
the prison door of the mind never opens; it is walled-in unknown to most what
thoughts lay buried deep within. It is the last stage of life, frozen within
and quite, a phantom of themselves, a hollow ghost.
No longer, a figure of delight, no longer surrounded
by the sweet smell of one’s self. Like the snow-covered winter landscape, life
is stilled, a shadow of one’s self. Life from the womb begins a painful story,
a stormy world like summer winds and rain. Beauty spent and done, despite Hells
rage now silenced by the passing of time. With the eyes looking past what lays
ahead, bondage no longer a threat as the mind realizes it will only end in
death. Whom can we blame? No one! Do the
demented know the world outside the closed mind?
Mindfulness provides a simple but powerful route for
getting our selves unstuck, back into touch with our own wisdom and vitality.
It is a way to take charge of the direction and quality of our own lives,
including our relationships within the family, and to the larger world and
beyond, and most fundamentally, our relationships with our selves as a person.
Begin now, to become aware of what lies in the future our future. The key lies
in the works of Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman and Native American wisdom. Read
and become aware of what your future might be, the words of these great people
will pave the way to your tomorrows.
Do not fall prey to the thoughts of those who would
harm you. Hold on to your opinions, expectations and the many possibilities
that will open to you as you age. Mindfulness is simply an art of conscious
living. Be yourself, keep in touch with your deepest feelings, and let
greatness flow from you. This will go a long way to keeping you young.
Collection of personal artwork in acrylics and watercolorPersonal journey of Charlotte Jean Murphree, the hardship of having multitude of mental and physical handicaps. Charlotte is the daughter of the author.Personal image journey of Mason Murphree, a Teddy Bear.PoetryPoetryPoetryPoetryPoetryPoetryPoetryPoetry
We are day 52 into the New Year, while I was in the
hospital, I tried to recall the past and what have I done, what have I accomplished
during these eighty decades. My
childhood, I more often than not raised myself, along with those wonderful women my Great-grandmother
whom I called “Ma” a solid rock of full-blooded
Native American ancestry and “Aunt Francis” a black woman of wisdom. I raised
five children alone whom have all achieved their life’s dreams to a certain point.
Along the way, I worked in the public
sector for forty years.
During retirement, I begin searching for who I was, and
what I wanted out of the second half of my life; yes, that was 15 years ago. I returned to painting and writing. I have tried to reinvent myself during these
past 15 years and I am still working on myself as I continue to travel down a mysterious
path on my journey into yesterday and tomorrow.
What have I learned?
I believe that the journey we humans lead is down one of
three paths. The first path leads to
success, these are the people that have material riches and yes, sorrow. Then there is the second path, one that leads
to happiness and sorrow, these people live a good life. They are capable of handling life. The third path is one of total
destruction. The important question is
how you are going to live your life, which path does you taken.
When you find yourself at the crossroads of the here and
now, will you put in the effort to be free, will you walk through the doors of
reality, choosing the path wisely. I
believe in meditation, it is simply about being yourself, your life is always
unfolding in front of you, seek the answer to truth. If you are not careful the truth will be ignored,
be fallow and unacknowledged.
Life is at times like a slippery slope, the grave will
hold all of those years your life-unexamined half-truths, fear, you did not
achieve that which was given to you on the path of your life, and you ignored
the wealth, happiness and greatness. If
you wake up and breakout your life it may unfold on a path of success. Get off that slippery slope and follow your
path to importance. No one can do this
job but you. At the end of a long life,
dedicated mindfulness will be acknowledged and you will be remembered as an
individual of understanding and wisdom.
Born in Alabama to a Native American father and an emotionally absent mother; the author raised by her father, her Native American great-grandmother and an African-American woman all who were magnificent storytellers.
The Last Chapter 