Youth

Has it left you yet?

If today you are 90, sitting on the front porch of a nursing home, gently rocking the chair in your sala, or flipping through some dusty photo album with arthritic fingers, would you have smiled remembering the old days or would you have wept for lost time, love or youth?

Tonight, I watched a rather dragging Maggie Smith movie entitled Capturing Mary.  For those who don't know the veteran actress, she plays Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series. The movie focuses on an old lady confronted by the ghost of her past, a dashing man of whom it isn't clear if she is in-love with, infatuated or simply curious about.  She relates the events to a young man, the caretaker of a once-regal mansion which was at one point in time the gathering place of the rich and famous and those in power.  The movie overall is something very few people would pay to watch in a theater and those who would pay would probably do so to lull themselves to sleep.  I fell asleep for several minutes watching it so I would know.

However, near the end of the movie, Maggie Smith is seen crying on a park bench, crying for what could have been, for the lost potential of her youth, her brilliance as a young writer about the lives of the rich eventually dimming to writing about housekeeping, gardening and things of the mundane.  And her regret she attributed to that man whom she had a one-night conversation with.

They say that before you die, your life will flash before you like a movie in slow motion from your birth to that point in time.  I am asking you now.  Do you think you will smile before closing your eyes for the last time before reaching for that immense white light or will a tear drop from the corner of your eye for all the regret, shame or utter monotony of it all?