Vultures at Dusk

Did you see them? Did you see the vultures rising from behind the building? Ten or twelve vultures pumping their wings to get up above the tree line.

Often, I see them drifting on the upward thermals that rise along the hill. Sometimes I see them in the top of a pine tree, looking down at me while I walk with my dog. What do they see? Some roadkill on the side of the road? They float down then on their giant wings and hop over to the body. Are they like the priests who come to give the last rites? I don't think so, they are more like the mortician who is coming to do the embalming.

They are walking over in a calm state of mind. The body in question is not going anywhere. The soul is already gone. The vulture walks over and eyes it calmly. A quick ruffle of the tail feathers and the vulture's head bows in prayer.

Nature believes all that comes must go. Eventually the vulture will be the one on the ground being prayed over.

Eventually I will be the one on the ground being prayed over. What will I be like then? Will I be OK with that? Will I have lived a life worth living? Will my kids remember me fondly? I like to think that they will. But eventually my memory will fade. My memories of my father fade further back every year. My son only knew him for a few months. That doesn't really count. My daughter only knows him from pictures.

Sometimes I walk in the cemetery and see the names and the dates on the gravestones. Did this one who died in 1897 worry about the grades they got on their math test? Or the dispute with their neighbor over the apple tree? I don't think any of that matters now.

When the vulture comes hopping over to your body to bow its head and pray, you will not be worrying about math tests or apple trees. All of that will fade away and eventually you will fade away. How many generations until we are forgotten?

My mother still speaks of her great-grandfather. She tells stories of Coatesville and how he would come to dinner in his T-shirt and use his fork to scratch his back. But what about his father? Does she remember him? Does anyone still remember him? I don't. I don't know that I ever heard his name. Somewhere he is remembered in a cemetery or on an old tax roll that is hidden in the basement of the Coatesville Town Hall. Did the vulture bow his head and pray to him? Did the vulture swoop up on the thermals over Coatesville and raise him up? Or did he disappear from the ether and now eventually disappear from everyone's memory...including my mom's.

I think it is four generations before we are forgotten. That means that I will be forgotten by the time the 22nd century is barely a decade old. That is OK. That is what keeps me grounded now. All of this doesn't mean a whole lot in the end. When the vulture comes to bow his head with me, I will be long gone.