What Comes to Pass

Not much of anything if anything at all will be known or written about me when I'm gone.  I'm just a simple man.  I lay stone upon which to build homes.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I laid such stones from the stream beds nearby to build my own little cottage deep in the woods here in the Catskill mountains.  Modest, yes but sturdy indeed and impervious to the elements.  It is both cool in the warm months and warm in the cold ones.  It is my home.  And yet I know that one day in the not-so-distant future, perhaps one hundred years from now or maybe one hundred and fifty, this little cottage will lay in ruins.  The roof gone along with the doors and windows. Only the stone will remain.  As naked as the trees in winter.

By then, my grave that lay alongside my wife's, that would have once been graced with a headstone, which surely by then will have been toppled over and trampled underfoot by both beast and man, will be unrecognizable as the final resting place of anyone.   And thereby we will be made void in the memories of people.   Forgotten as if we never existed along with the deep and passionate love that we had for each other.  All of our precious moments together, buried not in memory but completely separated from such entirely.  There will be no one left to have known we had ever lived.

My God, what a paradox!  We live the most splendid work of art conceivable only for it to rot into the earth without leaving so much as a brush stroke behind.  What madness have we fallen into?  Who or what would have created such a masterpiece that is doomed to melt away so quickly?  What purpose could such a thing have?  What kind of folly is this thing we call existence? Oh...well, it matters not what questions I have.  There is nobody here to answer them.  Offer opinions?  Yes.  But to provide indubitable answers?  No.

And yet it is because of this enigma that I simply cannot discount the obvious: if we are here amongst this splendor of the universe, this magnificent work of art...I can only surmise that we somehow embody value to something or someone, perhaps unknowable, for the stars align too perfectly in this realm to entertain the idea that we are excluded from value simply because we melt away into the very source from which we are forged.  Even when our headstones are used as a doorstep for someone's home in the future or perhaps a paving stone for a walkway.  And so, it may be.  Or perhaps not.  It is conceivable that we simply aren't meant to know.  It may be that the allure of the unknown and how it compels us to search for answers with a burning desire...is the fulfillment of purpose already?  Is it not the journey then?  Ah yes, the journey.