I am fortunate.  Throughout my adult life I’ve had little experience with sickness.  There have been several occasions of minor surgical repair, with attendant recovery periods.  I’ve had my share of colds, flu and virus infections, those onslaughts that run their course as the body marshals its defense.  Unpleasant enough, but soon forgotten as the bloom of health returns.

Others close to me have suffered much worse.  There is the diagnosis of cancer which even when caught at an early stage, is the beginning of months long siege of treatment that progressively weakens the body.  A chemotherapy drug cocktail is poison, just more so to the cancer cells than to the adjacent healthy cells.  Radiation works, but leaves an enduring burn, a patch of darkened flesh.  After all of that, one gets to live, if one is lucky.

Luck, the skilled care of practitioners, and a passionate confidence in the treatment  by the medical team all matter, and add up in the patients favor.  Nothing else matters when you are in a life or death contest.  You get to stay around or you have to leave in a matter of months.

What is it that makes us reluctant to leave this world?  There are many answers to the question, all good.  I have been thinking of the root of all of those good and worthy answers.  I propose that it is the touch of this world that we are reluctant to be without,  loosing touch is what we dread, the complete and final absence of all sensation that death represents.

The sensation need not be first hand, but is often second hand, the minds ability to comprehend and imaginatively appreciate the touch of one substance upon another.

In my backyard is a bottle tree.   Empty wine bottle display their colors, their shapes as they transmit the sunlight.  On a bitter cold winter’s day, after a snowfall  a mound of pure white snow flakes is added atop each bottle.  I delight to imagine the tactile contact of the interlocked snow flakes with the curvature of each glass bottle.

A week ago I was invited to a fundraiser event at a local brewery.  The entertainment of the evening was provided by a jazz ensemble.  Some of the musicians were related by family, and all were related by virtue of having played together for many sessions.  The sensation of life, of creativity was divine.  It was sensual, a liquid-like flow of music and lyric.

I often visit a Cafe, Taste of Paris that is in Mundelein.  Chef Claude is passionate about his work, his place of business, his food, his employees.  This place represents the meaning of Claude’s life.  It goes without saying that many other lives are involved as well.  I am thinking in particular of the customers, the “regulars” that value the experience of good food, prepared with care, served with decorum. I often admire this reproduction of a French Perrier advertisement that decorates one of the walls.  Is not life a sensual matter?

Its all about the touch.

But maybe that’s just the delirium talking……