end of things

I wait for endings. I dread them. I anticipate them. I welcome them. I fear them. There’s always an ending to think about, always something finishing up, coming to a close, going away.

Summer ends. The baseball season ends. Your favorite television show ends. The corner deli has closed. Maybe you finished a project and are now left asking “what’s next” as you tuck away your accomplishment. The song is over, the final chapter read, the workday done. Endings.

Life ends. Unlike sports or tv shows, you just don’t know when that end is going to come. But come it will, and most of us just won’t be prepared for it. The end of things sometimes bring beginnings. Summer brings fall. Something else will open where the deli used to be. Maybe even another deli. There are other television shows to watch, other songs to listen to, other books to read.

The Yankees season is over and I am left wandering, sort of. Having a baseball game on my tv nearly every night is a thing of the past now and I don’t know how to, nor want to, fill that time with something else. It’s an ending that’s hard for me to take. Maybe if there was a championship to keep me warm over the winter, it would be easy but, alas, there’s not and I am left feeling empty, drained, and a little sad.

My winter is filled with hockey, but it’s not the same. The summery feel of the sound of a baseball game is gone. Hockey is the cold, the dark, the personification of winter. Gone now are the warm nights with the windows open, gone are the days on the porch…