Fading Away

It's a wonder to behold the life slipping out of someone. An aged relative laying in a hospital bed being fed ice because that's all he can swallow. Posterity surrounding him through the last days of his probation. A prideful man with many faults, who has offended you on many an occasion, whom you don't know if you will every fully forgive, but still the tears fill your eyes. With all his faults he still had a family, friends, jobs, the love of his life. Positively or negatively he still touched many lives, he prepared the way for lives to come about. Without him, you would not exist. Without his faults you wouldn't have learned to be so forgiving; you wouldn't have learned what it was that you didn't want to be; you wouldn't have understood life through the eyes of another era.You wouldn't know how it was that you wanted to live.
His eyes are laced with hope, hope that he may see her again. The woman he spent so many years with. Hope that the church he gave his life to is true. Hope that there is a God and that he deems him fit to see those he's loved who've gone before him once more. It's a hope that plagues so many, but if that's what they need I will not try to take it from them. To be able to accept death, something none of us can escape, so many come up with these ideas of what will happen. It's heart wrenching to think about how difficult accepting our end can be for people.
It makes it easier to look at what has been accomplished and the lives that have been touched. Knowing there is an end, not ever being able to give credit or completely discredit some kind of altered existence post-mortem. But knowing you did what you wanted to in life, you gave what you could, you helped lift others up in times of need. You gave life to something or someone. You influenced few or many but you did make a difference in the lives you visited. That is what makes not knowing easier to accept.
The eyes seem unseeing and he's growing cold and unconnected to reality. He's fading and he's almost gone. He touched my life, and countless others, but his life was full and long. I hope to live at least as fully though not on the path he chose.