Speaking of clocks, I wish I could see the Clocktower in London. I just think it would have to be a goose-bump experience New Year's Eve to listen to the midnight chimes of Big Ben echo throughout the United Kingdom. Let me share a haunting snippet from my childhood. I was probably four or five years old when an old spinster neighbor lady died. This was back in the 1950s when it was still common to have the wake in the home. In my little-girl mind, this old lady scared the hell out of me when she was alive, so you can imagine how petrified I was standing in her kitchen being shuffled into the livingroom to look at her laying there deader than a duck in a box. This was the very first dead person I'd ever seen, and it scarred me for life. To this very day I'm not in favor of the traditional public viewing, and if anybody ever lays me out for people to gawk at after I croak, well, I shall come back and haunt with a vengeance. I promise. Parents of this new century shield their children from the harsh realities such as this, but that's not the way it was when I was a kid. We were treated as adults and forced to face life (and death) as it happened with not even a sprinkle of sugar-coating. Looking back, I honestly feel that someone should have given me a coloring book and colors, sat me at the kitchen table, and let it go at that.
Who among us doesn't ponder our own 'disappearance act.' We wonder what its going to be like, when it will happen, whether we'll go 'somewhere else' when our heart stops beating, where that 'somewhere else' will be, or if we simply close our eyes and go to sleep forever and ever. One thing I know for sure is that when my mother was dying, I sat beside her bed holding her hand. I asked her, "Momma, what's it like to die?" She barely whispered, "It's okay."
During my web surfing, I happened upon a list of 77 reasons to love your life written by a fellow blogger on www.dragosroua.com/77-reasons-to-love-your-life/. It's a list of sweet reminders of ordinary things that oughta spark a grateful prayer within us every day we are alive.
Since we retired, both of us purposely do not wind that godawful alarm clock that rocked our house with earthquake force every morning at 5 a.m. for over 40 years. Now we sleep late, we stay up late, we eat when we're hungry, and on the whole we refuse to obey the rules imposed by the circular device hanging on the kitchen wall with its two hands pointing in all directions.
When we sold our camper, we kept the atomic clock that came with it. The gadget is radio controlled to keep the most accurate time on earth. It never needs setting, because it receives a low-frequency radio signal nightly to keep it in perfect synchronization with the U.S. Atomic Clock in Fort Collins, Colorado. Tonight we won't have to turn this clock back, because it will automatically adjust itself for DST, and it will even adjust itself to leap years and leap seconds. The Fort Collins transmitter has a radius of 1,864 miles, so it's available to most of the United States, except Hawaii and Alaska. Ours is only a 5" square little thing, has amazing capabilities, but in our home it's totally disregarded as it sits all by itself on the mantle of our fireplace.
Don't you just bet that Our Creator gets a real yuck out of us earthlings thinking we can monitor the pulse of the Universe with our wowing inventions? He/She probably has a timepiece out there in the Great Beyond that would make Clocktower and Big Ben look like a pocket watch and our Atomic Clock look like a toy. Whatcha think?
Regardless, don't forget to turn clocks back tonight, and it's a perfect time to also check the smoke alarms in the house.
Ta-ta till next time!