The Books of Other Things

My Father, Dewey Alberty, age 17?

There is always an endgame

Friendships change and evolve.


Understandings move and shift.

The stories of our lives enter new chapters.

Each chapter has a last sentence, perhaps a summary or a cliffhanger, a pithy apethelion or a rim-shot zinger.

But there will always be a last chapter, last sentence, the book will always end.

And stories must end otherwise new stories would never arise to join them.

The books of other things - things that are not us - all of reality, whether action, career, friend or lover - all those books end, we will see them entire and perfect in their completion, with last sentences done and periods placed.

We close the book’s cover. It can then either go into our bookbag to be taken out and savoured - or at least learned from - or it goes back on the bookshelf to be catalogued, either as reference, mystery, romance, genre - or fantasy.

Another book is taken down and opened and we participate in experiencing - creating - a new story -until we finish the last sentence of our own.

The bitter thing - or perhaps the most glorious - is that we never will see the last sentence of our personal last chapters - we’ll probably have a rough idea what our last sentence will be but, by definition though we may finish the words the period will be placed by another pen (I think in terms of pens even though I’m typing this).


Like any creative thing our lives are influenced by our learning, our experiences - it’s what our imagination calls on to create new, beautiful, effective patterns to amaze and delight us.

This is how I think about my father, seriously ill and in hospital. I don’t think we’re going to see the period on the end of this story yet. He will recover, though he is damaged.

Still it is a reminder that books end, that there are only so many pages left, despite our strongest wish to have it continue. 

And all good books should end, should make their point, should ultimately end with “and  they all (or at least those who had the knack for it) lived happily ever after”.

Even if reading that last sentence is one of the most frightening, saddest things you’ve ever experienced. 

Belfast, Maine