The folktale is that a dying swan, though it probably never sang a single note in its lifetime that wasn’t a car-horn-like honk will sing an absolutely beautiful song before succumbing to death. I am nowhere near as beautiful as a swan, but I probably sing better than they do. I have never heard a clear B flat or high C from a Swan. Their actual singing is more like a cow dying. But who knows? Maybe they do achieve a miraculous melodiousness as they step from one world into the next. And I have been feeling the need to compose my own swansong of late. No man lives forever. And I am much closer now to the end than I am to the beginning.
I may not be able to sing a beautiful swansong, but there are other acts I can commit whose commission leads to great beauty. And I am doing my best to make use of those actions and skills before I pass from this reality.
Why am I so fixated on this idea that I am dying? My dog has cancer, a hideous tumor that I do not have the money to undertake to cure. And if I did have the money, she’s an old dog and the surgery would probably kill her rather than cure her. My father died just a few short years after his beloved dog passed away. There’s a symmetry at play in this outcome. I think the messages from Fate are clear.
As my myriad of unfortunate health conditions leave me in more and more pain with each passing day, the weight of years is pressing on my soul. Better to look forward to the next great adventure than to suffer overlong in the last act of this mortal production of a play by the great poet in the sky. The final curtain will close and the concluding overture has its last beautiful notes. Perhaps a celestial swan will sing it.
But I am not depressed and maudlin. I have lived a good life. And not all the good things in it are now only available in memories. Not while I can still draw and tell a story. I am slowing down in every way, but there are still stories in me.
Catch a Falling Star 