A Year

The sun rose at 6:29 AM and is due to set at 8:03 PM today.  It has been 365 days, an entire rotation of the earth around the sun, since last year on this day; that’s 584 million miles in our solar system.  Our planet has to move at 67,000 miles per hour for that to happen; that’s a thousand times faster than the average car moves on the highway, but that is peanuts compared to how fast the sun moves within our galaxy; old Sol trundles along at 486,000 miles per hour which means that we have gone almost 11 billion miles in a year.   

The sun rose at 6:29 AM and 11 billion miles away from the day that my mother died.  She was eighty years old.  That means that she traveled almost 880 billion miles in her lifetime, a pretty good distance for someone who wasn’t fond of moving around much.  

Mom was quite a character; she was smart, funny, loving, and creative.  She taught herself to use the computer in her seventies and was thrilled that she could travel the world in the privacy and comfort of her own home.  Have Google Earth, Will Travel was her motto.  She had pen pals from around the planet and when she discovered Facebook she became addicted.   

She painted, drew, doodled, crocheted, and crocheted, and crocheted some more.  I’m pretty sure that half the citizens in Canada have a pair of her homemade slippers.  Mom liked to cook and her kitchen always smelled of baking bread, spicy Hungarian food, and her latest concoction of “health food.”

All her life she loved playing games; I remember when she mastered Dr. Mario after a year of nonstop trying.  My dad used to shake his head when he got up at 4 in the morning to the sound of those pills dropping.  I can only imagine what he would have said had he seen her flinging birds at pigs!   

The sun is due to set at 8:03 PM this evening; the stars will begin to shine through, and we will all be racing headlong amongst them.  I’ll be looking for the smallest twinkling star, mom.  

Don’t Cry For Me, by Alujzia Halasz

My dearest children
Don’t cry when I go.
Finally I have a chance
To solve this mystery
Where other people go.

I don’t wish to go to heaven or hell
I want to discover the Universe.
I’ll love to ride the solar wind
Grab the next comet tail
Have a good free ride to somewhere in.

But I know sometime I will feel
A strong urge to see all of you.
Please my dearest don’t be afraid
Because I come upon a playful wind
Or with a gentle rain.

To kiss your face, leave a few tears
Ruffle your hair, I see everything well.
Then with great pride to leave again
Because I have to discover
What is among the stars in the Universe.
So my dearest, don’t cry when I go
You see how much I want to see and do
But my love for you is always strong
When in the early morning
You look up into the sky
You will see me

I’ll be the smallest twinkling star
Saying goodbye.
So my dearest don’t cry
Mama is having lots of fun
Among the shining sparkling stars.

Image Credit

Photo by Gab Halasz. All rights reserved.

Recent Gab Halasz Articles:

• Ho, Ho, Ho and Merry Friggin' Christmas
• Chicken Train, Sitting All Day
• Two Lone Pine Boys - Part 3
• Two Lone Pine Boys - Part 2
• Two Lone Pine Boys - Part 1