How Clean is Your Towel

Are you near the end game in your life? 

Taking stock of all the things you have done that were not of the standard you originally set for yourself? 

You may have been better at fixing things from your past than you thought...

  I like to think we have been given a pristine clean towel at birth. We are tasked with keeping it as clean as possible. but we layer it with stain after stain and perhaps ignoring its cleanliness most of our lives.

 

  Indeed my entrusted towel has stains that are so hard to shift, Perhaps it is dirty enough to get sent back here for someone else to clean, maybe several times. maybe my towel is very old or maybe its very young?

  Parts of my own towel I’ve tried to clean can clearly be seen to have been scrubbed time and time again, It’s often the same areas that keeps getting dirty. Some parts are wearing thin with the effort.

  I think some special good people are sent the dirtiest towels, they have been given the greatest responsibility because they have the strength to get scrubbing and get that towel/soul clean.

 There are indeed people and places, epiphanies and well-meaning intenders that will help to change you to be better at life, there is no shame in asking for help.

As I’ve gotten older I have realised there is no real concern with the cause of the stains of my bad judgement or the dust from my less than perfect life as a father, husband, sibling or friend.

 

 When your time comes to reflect, a few worn out but nearly clean areas on your soul/towel shows where in life you tried to be better. No need for a detailed life report as nobody was ever watching you. Just holding up your towel to the great light it will be seen how hard you tried to right your wrongs and cleans your soul.

 

Note: I have rewritten this so many times, I am sure what I'm trying to say, my message is not to panic as you get older, you tried your best. I will probably give it another go until it flows simply. or maybe I'm scrubbing a bit of my towel even now...

Maud.

Maud is a proud 87. She carries a stick, happy with the posh meal she has just had with her lifelong friend. They talk of emailing Harold when they both get in. Her friend, after aired and blown kisses and the lightest of touches of her arm, is off to his front door being carefully watched by Maud willing him this time not to trip again. On the way to Maud’s home, she tells of fields that used to be at the bottom of her rough crater laden unadopted road she has lived in for all of her life. When we stop at her house and she paid me plus a twenty pence tip, given to me in such a way that it felt an extra special twenty pence piece more than normal, she then told me of and pointed to a tree far in the distance on the ridge…

 On every midsummers night eve she has watched the sun fall onto and swallowed by the tree far away on the ridge and that it has grown big as she has withered and wizened with age. She watched this magical event with her mother as a child and then watched her grow old and remembers the last time her mother saw the tree swallow the sun. Maud tells me this may be the last time she will see it. She invited me to watch it with her. I declined, not wanting to invade this memory, but promised that I will take my grandchildren to see it. I watched her get in safely and knew that a little while later she will be back out sitting on her porch in her small front garden sipping a cup of tea enjoying the final midsummers eve sunset she will ever see. Maybe her mum will be holding her hand as they watch it together.