What do you do?

What do you do when you see the end coming, nearer and nearer? Is it better to fight to the bitter end, to rile against the reaper and go down clawing and screaming for life’s precious gift or better just to relax and slip peacefully into the dark?

I've lived an uneventful yet peaceful and enjoyable life, having had good friends to grow up with; an education to stimulate my mind, a curiosity to allow me to excel in my chosen profession and at one time an excellent reputation among my peers.

For a time I experienced love for a woman who I trusted above all else with whom I had a child allowing me the ultimate adventure of being a father.

My wife ultimately ended up betraying me, leaving me in ruin financially, undermining my working reputation and destroying my emotional well-being.

My son has grown up, just turning 21, and has turned out to be the best of his mother and me; I am so proud of him and his accomplishments and know that his life will bloom from here on in. His love for me is one of the few remaining fuels that keep my life force turning over.

But the cliff edge approaches, I can now see the ragged rocks at its parameter and understand that the last few miles will not be smooth and easy-going. What do I have to look forward to when all I see in my future is the dark hopelessness of living alone in a world devoid of companionship, of love, of the touch of another human being.

Of imminent homelessness as my money finally runs out and no job in sight, of despair, a fall into an unrelenting depression, spiralling deeper and deeper into the abyss without the medicine I need to pull me out, as my thyroid continues to betray me by slowing my metabolism to point where I spend more time asleep than awake, as my sugar levels spike, no longer kept artificially in check, bringing along with it the expected medical side effects.

That’s my immediate future, those are the rocks that I can see, but what is beyond that, what is hidden in the mist hiding the cliff’s edge, an edge I know is there because I can hear the thunder of the water as it hits the bottom at the end of a long fall, I see the river of my life run pass me, picking up speed, as it rushes towards the edge, I see the water eddying, curling away from from the end, just before the edge as if trying to resist before relenting to the inevitability of the edge, of the current, of gravity.

We all swim against this current, at the beginning the river of life is lazy, meandering between all the possibilities that life has to offer but as we get closer and closer to our edges, the water speed picks up and the bed straightens out until it is an arrow pointing straight and true to your final destiny.

How long do we each fight against the pressure of life’s raging river, how do we swim at the river’s end, is it the Australian crawl, fighting the edges’ drop every step of the way,  do we just float on top of the water and let the end come in its own time, or do we accept the inevitability of it all and swim downstream with all the strength left to us, acknowledging the past peacefulness of the slow float along the plains of possibilities but embracing the rush towards the edge and the inescapable drop.

WHAT DO YOU DO!