The Beat Goes On

Spitting rain dotted the windshield like silver glitter as I drove out of the funeral home parking lot, my wipers rhythmically swishing the flecks with each stroke: schwump-shcwump, schwump-schwump, schwump-schwump.   Soon the drops eased their pace, and the cadence of the wiper-song slowed.  Water specks glittered longer between strokes, sparkling like miniature diamonds.  Thwap – pause – thwap – pause – thwap - pause.   

Each swipe of the blades slowly and rhythmically erased more and more of the glittery gems, somehow reminding me of swinging.  I began daydreaming about my childhood backyard swing, imagining what it felt like to pump my legs and stretch them out toward the sky only to fall backwards toward the ground and back up into the air with lift-off-the-seat-pauses at the apex of each ascent and descent.  I remembered the exhilarating sense of flight in-between the rhythmic ups and downs, the sense of separation from the earth while remaining safely grounded. 

Meanwhile the wipers continued thumping out a tempo, drumming with a pulse that seemed to surge with remembered life.  The memory of an elderly woman named Marie had been honored at her funeral just a few minutes earlier, and I sensed the flowing pulse of time and existence as the miles flew by and the wipers continued their beat.

Marie lived for eighty-nine spirited, inspiring years marked by inevitable challenges and hurdles. A niece said, “When facing the valley of a severe personal crisis, I thought, ‘I can do this because Aunt Marie could do it.’  She held the bar high for the rest of us.”

Pastor Tim commented that Marie’s life mattered because it was about love: God’s love for her, her love of family and friends, and their love for her. “We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us,” he said.  Those carrying Marie’s banner will face sorrow, hardship, and vulnerability common to mankind, while also being upheld by her legacy.

This is the rhythm of life, I thought, the throbbing tempo of love as it passes between us.  It pumps us full with a surging, pounding heartbeat mimicked by the thwap of the wipers and the memory of my creaky old swing chains: a pulse of life and love.