One More Round

One More Round

By Bobby Neal Winters

He was born last Thursday.  Eight pounds two ounces with a head of hair and his mother’s eyes.  I got to hold him in my arms when he was only a few hours old.

Little babies are scary. They are small and fragile.  You  are so afraid that you will break them.

But you don’t.

Grandbabies, first grandbabies I think especially, by their very existence, transmit a message to you with crystal clarity that the universe has been trying to convey to you but that you’ve been purposefully not hearing.  My grandson was a mirror in which I saw the face of my own grandfathers and met an eternal truth.

I am going to die.

Don’t worry. This is not news; it’s just the one thing we know for a fact since the day we are born. This is a mathematical truth and not a statistical one.  The reckoning of the date is uncertain and has a margin of error, but the fact that the date will come is as certain as anything there is.  We know this rationally, but that’s not the same as knowing it in truth, knowing in our bones.

He lay there asleep on my arm with a look of peace on his face and the truth seeped into my body like rain on a garden.  It rose to my ear like a whisper.

You are going to die.

They would like us to think that we are a product of our genes, a product of our educations.  They would say that we are bags of mostly water, that we are just combinations of atoms and information.

We are made of dust to be sure, but also from the breath of God who blew into Adam’s nostrils all that long ago.  The breath has blown down to use through our parents, our grandparents, and so forth.  There are currents and eddies within it.  We are a product of our parents genes, yes, but make from their experience and all they ever encountered.  Our foundation is our parents love and all who loved them.

And so, I am going to die, yes. Yes. Okay.

But there is another soul breathing in the world today.  God voted that the world should have another spin.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:

It’s okay.