Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Fifty

My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven.
And all we need of hell.

--Emily Dickinson

In her poem, Emily Dickinson was speaking of two life events that were as painful and devastating as death. The beauty of poetry, and literature in general, is the myriad of meaning that a poem or story can have on different people.

In my case, this poem reminds me of sunsets. I love sunsets—they represent to me the supreme portrait of beauty mixed with pain. Summer sunsets are most beautiful. I can remember as a young man sitting with a particular beloved relative on the front porch of the Burl Warwick house. In our youth, we contemplated the beauty of sunsets and where we might find ourselves in ten or twenty years, never thinking that there might not be that many sunsets left in our lives. It never occurred to us that we were experiencing a rare gift—that of closeness of the soul and mind—that indeed did not allow for us to enjoy sunsets together as adults. The end of youth and its close bonds with those we love can be considered a death of sorts.

When sunset turned into twilight, there were many evenings when my Aunt Lidia and I stood on that same front porch and counted the streetlights as they flickered on for their night’s work. Many years have passed, and Aunt Lidia would be hard pressed to count those lights now, as they are so many. The small town of Maynardville has passed to a larger city, though still comparatively small to its surrounding neighbors.

There were many times that I was to enjoy the sunset alone, particularly when in beautiful but lonely solitude I contemplated the future as I looked through my childhood bedroom window that faced west. There is something almost painfully beautiful in a late fall or early winter sunset. My bedroom faced the west, and in my solitude I could appreciate the beauty of God’s splendor revealed in His beautifully painted sunsets as the days shortened and turned colder.

Last week, I was able to enjoy the sunset through another west facing window, the one in my office. I reflected on the path of life I have chosen, its joys and regrets. I still contemplate the future—retirement, how life will be different without my chosen career, the friends who are gone, wondering who new will come into my life. One thing is for sure—when that office window that looks to the west is no longer loaned to me, another death of sorts will have occurred.

I think of President Ronald Reagan, who wrote a letter to the American people when he discovered he had Alzheimer’s disease. In that letter he spoke of entering the sunset years of his life. Upon his death in 2004, he was buried in a beautiful sunset ceremony.

Someday my final sunset on earth will come. Like the main character in Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”, I may not recognize it when it arrives.
But every sunset is followed by a sunrise, even if it is obscured by clouds. Death always leads to new life—plants that thrive now are sprung from the dead buds of plants that once thrived with life. Scripture promises those of us who believe in the Creator and have accepted His Son’s sacrifice a sunrise into never ending day, where there will never be parting or sunsets.

I am writing this on Christmas Eve, 2018, exactly one week before the eve of the New Year 2019. I leave you with this poem as you focus upon yet another new beginning.

THE NEW YEAR

A Flower unblown: a Book unread:
A Tree with fruit unharvested:
A Path untrod: a House whose rooms
Lack yet the heart’s divine perfumes:
This is the Year that for you waits
Beyond Tomorrow’s mystic gates.

--Horatio Nelson Powers