Time Takes A Toll

As the years pass, from some point in our childhood, we realize that we all share a common fate that will take life from us. That fate befalls some far too early, but it will befall all of us. When we are 20, it all seems far off and generally incomprehensible. But then the decades tick by almost like they are singular years and our appearance changes more and more as we journey toward our end. It scares most of us, probably all of us. Some seek refuge in religion, but that can't save us from our inevitable destiny. We ache, we hobble, we're unsteady, we get dizzy, we tremble, we see spots before our eyes, we have to listen more closely to hear things, and there are any number of other things. 

 

If we're lucky, as time ticks onward, no matter how much we wish it were not the case, the people close to us in our lives pass on in predictable order; that is, great grandparents (also great-great aunts and uncles), grandparents (also great aunts and uncles), parents (also aunts and uncles). Of course, this is idealistic in many ways, as I'd guess few people experience such an orderly passing of their family members, let alone the passing of neighbors or the people they grew up with or those they came to know closely or perhaps just as basic acquaintances. Deaths of people in our lives hurt, even if they are "expected," but they both stun and hurt a lot more when they come at us out of nowhere. As we lose people in our lives, we hear the footsteps of life's worst bogeyman, "Death," as the footsteps tail us from some distance, but they always keep gaining on us, as the footsteps grow ever louder and they draw closer and closer. When will death catch us?

Like other people, I've had the ugly shock of unexpected deaths of people in my lifetime, but two of those deaths hit me especially hard and made me face something that I'd tried to ignore ... the footsteps were getting closer. When I was 50, one of those deaths was of a former boss named Al who was about 4 years older than me. He dropped dead in the shower at his home as he got ready to go to work one morning. I saw the death notice for him in the newspaper, and while I'm sure I knew the truth, I later called his secretary to have her confirm it to me. That's was how I learned what had happened to him. A few years later, I saw an even more terrifying obituary, an obituary for Joe, one of my best friends from childhood. Al's death really hurt, but Joe's death was a full scale wallop that shook me to the core. When we were in our early 30s, Joe was tremendously stressed over the possible permanent loss of his job, due to steel plant closings during the 1980s. I still recall him telling me back then, "Remember when we were kids? We didn't have to worry about earning a living, because that worry was with our parents. Our biggest worry was to have enough money to buy a new wiffle ball and our next bottle of pop."* Learning of Joe's death was almost too painful to deal with, and there are no medicines for such pain.  

 

We wish we had one more time with so many of those who have passed from our lives; one more time to tell them something special, one more time to give them the hug we wished we had given them before they were gone and the footsteps behind us grew louder.  

 

* A wiffle ball was/is a baseball type ball of plastic, with holes in its surface. Because it was made of plastic, it wasn't much of a threat to do damage to property, like vehicles or windows, so it could be used just about anywhere, which was naturally not the same with a regular baseball. Of course, as kids, we were innovative. A wiffle ball didn't always hold up very well, so we wrapped them in various types of tape to make them last longer, but that also made them somewhat heavier, which made them travel further, and it also could make them more likely to put at least a mark on a car or "perhaps" even crack a window. Wiffle ball was VERY popular in our neighborhood and we played in the schoolyard, a churchyard, alleys, streets and playgrounds. It was also pretty thrifty, as you only needed the plastic bat, the ball (with tape, although you could get by without it) and whatever you could scrounge up to use for bases, and they didn't have to be pretty. And pop, or soda pop to some, was typically sold in bottles back then, not cans.   

 

 

WORD HISTORY:

Destiny (Destine)-The main body of this word is related to a large number of words like: "station," "statue," the verb "stay" (meaning "remain in place, stop"), all words of Latin derivation borrowed by English from Latin-based French, to "status," a Latin word borrowed from that language, to "stand" (both the verb and the noun) and to "stead," with these words coming from the Germanic roots of English. The "de-" is a common prefix in Latin and its offspring languages, related through Indo European to English "to" and "too," which go back to the Germanic roots of English. "De-" goes back to Indo European "de," with a wide range of meanings like, "stemming or coming from, because of/by reason of (both closely connected to "stemming/coming from"), from, down from," and this gave Latin "de," generally meaning "from, down from, about, concerning." The main body of "destiny" goes back to Indo European "sta/steh," which meant, "to stand, to be in place, to be firm (that is, "in place")," with the extended form "steno." This gave Latin "stinare," meaning, "to fix in place," and with the prefix this gave Latin "destinare," meaning "to establish, to set securely in place, to make firm." This passed to Latin-based Old French as "destiner," meaning "to set in place or occur (by fate or deities)," and its past participle (feminine), "destinée," was used as a noun for "fate" ("that which is intended to happen"). English borrowed the word in the 1300s from French as "destine," before "destiny," and with the same meaning, generally more concisely as, "predetermined outcome. "English also borrowed the verb from French "destiner" as "destinen," meaning "to predetermine by way of some intention by fate or deities," and "to predetermine," as in, "The starlet is destined for tremendous fame" (that is, she is so good, fame is already determined; it is inevitable, her destination is fame), and further in meaning, "an intended purpose or goal," as in, "The terrible storm forced the closing of roads and we had been destined for the beach."