Last Meal

I remember one time
years ago, when I was a little over counter-top height:

My Dad telling me that in some countries, people have nothing and so when they move somewhere else and come to a store for the first time - a grocery store like we're used to - they fill the shopping cart with more than they need because they don't know that the store will always have pineapples. They are used to having nothing, and to taking what they can get when they get it. It is a strange idea then, that the food won't be all taken away; that they don't have to bring home as much as they can carry from the grocery store. Because there will still be food tomorrow (We're lucky like that).

I remember
Hearing anecdotes about older couples -
one or both of whom had survived the Holocaust who,
- having lived in a time when they had nothing, and when anything could be taken from them at a moment's notice -
numbers tattooed on their arms, stocked up jars and boxes and filled their cupboards with anything, everything, because you never know.

Even as I watch, every moment shatters brilliantly, beautifully as
the forced march of change compels me forward through it. I try to go slowly enough to collect some pieces to tuck away in memory, their edges sharp and fresh with the deep, imperative understanding that I shall never pass this way again. I try to keep my head up, eyes wide open, listening to admire the constant fireworks of new moments shattering even as I stoop to scoop the jagged edges and huddle them like baby rabbits in my arms.

Some days I dance through the shattering like falling petals.

Some days I scramble to tuck them away,
feeling the pain of change on every side,

half-certain that I'm being given these things now -
because later I will be led to a place where my hands are numb and cold, where I cannot lift my head, where I will sink -
and I must survive on what I have collected.

I am preparing my own last meal.