The Reaper

is a sneaky son of a bitch, a coward terrorist who strikes at random and hides where no one can strike back, hides his treason within our own bosom. We come to expect that he’ll at least have some modicum of consideration, that he’ll knock first, ringing bells that chime “You’re old, you’re old” before he walks in. And then comes the scythe, a truck that shouldn’t be crossing the median, but impossibly, it is. Comes the scythe, a swing and a miss, and we are untouched, and the car behind us, the man behind us, is shrapnel. And I seem to hear the reaper’s whisper:
“Tomorrow you, tomorrow yours, tomorrow all that you were and did, tomorrow all you loved and hated, tomorrow all will be gone. Create what you will, love as you can, but I will turn it all into its component atoms, and there will be no one to remember. Comes the reaper, and nothing will have mattered. See you later.”
But until then, I am I, she is she, we are we, and we are here. Let us live while we are alive! Let us not waste our tiny sliver of time in falsehoods and half-assed attempts. Let us love, work, play, create, fuck, fuck up, try again, laugh, weep, dance, mourn, roar with power while we are alive. Let there be LIGHT! Before the darkness takes us, we will flame as bright as we can. Better to have been a brief flash of glory in the darkness, than to never have been. It may mean nothing in the end; for that very reason, it means everything NOW. We’ll show that bony bastard, that biggest of bullies, that he can’t intimidate us even if he does beat us, that though he destroys us he will not defeat us.
And who knows? We may find, in the end, that the grim, grinning general whose orders all must obey, and before whom all must fall, is only a lieutenant lackey after all. Perhaps HIS orders are to gather the harvest to the Planter, that each may rejoice in the other; and to make room for more life. And when the reaper has worked himself out of a job, when the harvest is done and there is no more death, it may be that we remain. And then, too, we shall be triumphant.

© John M. Munzer