Empty

Last week, walking with the dogs, I came upon the carcass of one of our weaned calves.  It had a red chalk mark across its face, indicating that Shawn or the hired man had "doctored" it for some illness, but unsuccessfully.

Today, just a week later, my walk took me to the same part of the meadow, just below the treeline on what is left of an old irrigation dike.  At first, I didn't see the carcass, so assumed that Shawn had drug it off somewhere.  Then, several yards from where I expected to find the calf stood an empty ribcage, a few thigh bones, and some skin . . . the only indicators that there had been a complete animal lying here just seven days ago.

That empty ribcage struck me . . . how quickly life can disappear.  If a calf, grazing the meadow one day, dead the next, can be nearly nonexistent within a week -- can have all physical traces of its presence on earth wiped out -- then what is to prevent that from happening to any of us?

Of course, I hope there won't be coyotes, bald eagles, hawks, owls and other small scavengers picking away at my ribcage. I hope I will be mourned and remembered by the people I love, the people I share my life with.  I hope some traces of the way I've lived these last forty years -- or however many more -- will outlive my physical body.

Death bluntly reminds me, however, that there are no guarantees.  I may work hard to create a legacy, to ensure my survival beyond my death . . . and I may still be forgotten.  There is, after all, only this day that is sure.  Only this day to fill up, to celebrate that I haven't yet become an empty ribcage standing sentinel on the prairie.  Only this day to live . . .