Absent

My blogging absence has been due to a sudden and ferocious iphone scrabble addiction. Being of addictive proclivity I do all new things to the extreme with total absorption at the expense of all other activities.
So I have been absent not just from blogging but have had to edge out time from elsewhere as well.
Thankfully my obsessive scrabble playing is easing into hobby phase so I am able to raise my head and notice the world from which I have been absent.
And to consider what absence means to me and others –

Obama has effectively killed Osama – the coincidence of the one letter difference their names struck me as being positively Nostradamus, I have never been much of a fan (of Nostradamus) all to bleak and with a complete absence of hope.
Osama’s son of course has been amusing to say the very least – I extend compassion to anyone who looses a parent – however questioning the legality of the assassination of his father left me dumb founded. In a perfect world (my perfect world) all the rules apply to all the people except of course me. I can do what I like, how I like and when I like but the rest of the universe must comply with the rules, it would seem that Osama’s son thinks the same thing! Demonstrating a complete absence of logic, lets hope his career path is not politics or terrorism.
My maternal grandmother who was about as uplifting as Nostradamus, was fond of saying absence makes the heart grow fonder, chased very quickly with absence makes the faint heart wonder, we all knew of course that she believed the hearts of men where faint coupled with wondering eyes add a dash of absence and nothing good was coming your way.
Absence of hope I rather think is a blessing – of all the cruel motivators hope must be the very worst, hope keeps you from facing the truth, of seeing that which is real. Hope is the thing that can stand against your rational mind and say but it might change, maybe tomorrow it will be better. Hope is the thing that keeps you where you are instead of walking towards where real happiness might be. The flip side is the very same hope keeps you alive when you think you may just die, the hoping for a better day enables you to live through your very worst ones. For me the jury is still out on hope and whether or not it is a blessing or a curse.
And lastly a toast to absent friends – which is in fact my favorite wedding toast, gives me a moment to think of the dead with whom I shared life wile they were part of the living, in my minds eye I run through the faces of my friends, in this mental rolodex of pictures they are laughing or smiling – I remember the living and the shared laughs not the dying and in some small way feel I have taken a moment to honor them and for a moment acknowledge their absence but have real gratitude for having known them. Which brings me almost full circle to quote my grandmother yet again better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.
So I raise my glass this week to absent hearts and friends lost fathers, mothers the bitter wisdom of grandmothers and hope….

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. “– John Donne