From dust to dust.

Facing my mortality while I clean the kitchen.

One of my favourite musicals is Les Misérables. I am sure I could gush for hours as to why, but that isn’t important for today’s story.

I was cleaning the kitchen earlier this morning. Deep cleaning. I mean getting up on a chair and dusting the top of the cabinets, taking all of the crockery off of the shelves to clean the surfaces, the works. I spent about two hours scrubbing and sorting; I still have the oven and fridge waiting for me once I finish writing. While I toiled, I listened to easy, soft indie music. I love the genre and I could listen to it for hours (please send me any recommendations). But when I finally decided to take a break from cleaning the kitchen, I was hungry. This obviously entailed remaining in the space where I had previously been working in order to make my lunch, so, in an attempt to change the tone of the room and break away from a chore-focused atmosphere, I changed the music.

The first song I turned to in search of comfort was, “Bring Him Home,” from Les Mis. It’s an extraordinarily emotional song in which Jean Valjean, whose life we follow in the play, holds the unconscious body of his daughter’s beloved. The young man has been shot while fighting for the French revolution, and Valjean sings this song, a prayer, that his daughter’s love might survive. He pleads with God, begging for the survival of his possible future son-in-law, even bargaining at one point, “If I die, Let me die, Let him live, Bring him home, Bring him home.” Though I was cutting an onion in preparation for my meal, it was not the source of any tears I shed.

One line in the song resonated with me, “I am old, And will be gone.” I stood there, alone in my small kitchen, slicing my onion, listening to this beautiful, knot-in-my-stomach inducing prayer of a song. I really enjoyed cleaning the kitchen, surprisingly. It felt good to get my hands dirty, it was very validating to get the grime off of the coffee machine and see it sparkle again. And I almost always enjoy cooking. I experimented with quinoa for lunch; my reward was tasty and satisfying.

My life feels so big and beautiful and rewarding to me (on good days, at least). But those fragile words struck me. I am old and will be gone. I am twenty three, not especially old. But my vision blurred and in my mind’s eye I could picture myself at seventy-something, cleaning the kitchen and listening to music. I was the same man. And then my picture vanished. One day I will be gone. The dust will settle on my kitchen cabinets, with no one to clean them. Silence will echo against the tiles. I will be home.