Cemeteries are cram-packed full with people who had other plans that day. Reservations for dinner, a movie ticket in the pocket. A refrigerator with new groceries. A sink with dirty dishes.

We all know this deep down, but the occasional reminders can nonetheless surprise. “Always wear clean underwear,” a clichéd cartoon version of a mother tells a clichéd cartoon version of us in a clichéd cartoon conversation that never really happens. But the end comes in a moment, and it is always dramatic, even when it is mundane.

(I suppose it is never mundane for the person who experiences it, but I have not been there, not even been near, and no one who has had the end moment has made a verifiable report about it. Where are their priorities?)

I’ve written a couple tributes to departed friends (“Matt Coleman,” “Requiem for a Sponsor“), and I suppose there will be more, which is the sad/happy fact that anyone who continues to insist on breathing must accept: You meet people and like/feel indifferent to/love/hate them, sometimes all at once. It’s confusing … and not.

The first time I set foot in my friend C.B.’s new apartment, a year and two weeks ago, I did his dishes, and we found food in his refrigerator that one friend who was going to stay behind and feed his cats could eat. One load of laundry was still spun-wet in the washer and one was dry in the drier. Cheese was out for guests who were not supposed to be us. He was 90 miles and a universe away in a hospital and was gone a couple days later. Everyone has a friend who is the last one they expect they will bury; C.B. was that one for a lot of people. Standing next to him, I was possibly everyone’s first one they’d expect to …

And we found a piece of paper. My memory is that the sketch at top, squiggles of a figure facing a sunrise or sunset, was in pen, hand-drawn by my secretly artistic friend. I photographed it and I thought I took it with me (there were a couple copies), but today I could not find it to take a better photograph of it. Perhaps he does not mind; perhaps he does. (“Brudda, ya couldn’t hold onta my one poem?”)

And under it he wrote a poem which I know to be his because “To screw up, to be terrific” just sounds like he sounded.

It is a simplified “St. Francis Prayer,” that poem that was not written by St. Francis and is only about a century old, but who cares, because it expresses ideal thoughts that us non-ideal humans ought to aspire towards and even sometimes achieve. (“… Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; To be understood, as to understand; To be loved as to love.”) It is that older prayer in action, enacted. Like my late friend, C.B. Always in action, but now a completed act.

Meditation by Morning Coffee 
Open your eyes,
Be excited about today.
Feel it, smell it, touch it, taste it. It’s
One more day God has given you to sing,
shout, cry, smile, laugh, and get dirty.
 
To screw up, to be terrific, to ask for
help, and to be helpful.
 
To pray, to be the answer to someone’s
prayers.
 
To love and to be loved.

The photo (click for full size):

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The Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge rules require you to post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or simply a short paragraph—it’s entirely up to you. Then each day, nominate another blogger to carry on this challenge.

Accepting the challenge is entirely up to the person nominated, it is not a command. And actually everyone can join in. So feel free to if you like the idea. Thank you, BerryDuchess, for nominating me. I have no idea who to nominate, as most of the bloggers I read seem to be participating in this.

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