Three Bells

The bells at the church tolled as I turned the corner. A group of men stood on the steps next to the statue of the angel. To the side the flower-filled hearse hid. As is usual during a funeral, the chairs at the café were empty, the patrons inside out of respect. The doors inside the church was open. The organ played and I could see the casket being rolled down the aisle.

I thought of the song Trois Cloche sung by Edith Piaf http://youtube.com/watch?v=eOL61uC5Ww4 .

Bells toll when people are born, marry and die. The song was a hit a couple of years ago re-recorded by Tina Arena, http://youtube.com/watch?v=b0xzNRSlgeM which a good friend fell in love with and used as her wake-up music for a long time. The English lyrics have changed the name of the person to Jimmy Brown from Jean-François Nicot but the ideas are the same, the church bells mark the significant parts of our lives.*

I don’t know the name of the deceased and I didn’t recognize anyone outside as I walked by huddled in my coat with my hood pulled tight against the wind John Donne, read long ago in Dr. Burto’s English lit class popped into my mind.

“No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

We are coming up on February 2^nd to Imbolc, the pagan celebration for the banishment of winter and the welcoming of the coming spring. Today’s temperature bore no resemblance to spring. In fact all over the world the temperatures have done strange things, reaffirming the fear of global warming, except for a few nay sayers.

Many pagans tied their lives into the wheel of the year, thinking of life as a circle marked by seasons instead of linear.

In today’s society we tend to not think of our interconnectedness, but on some level I am aware that each of my actions, what I buy, what resources I use, what I say, affect others and will until the final bell tolls for me like the man in the casket being carried from the church.

The hearse took its burden, drove slowly to the cemetery and the mourners walked behind.

The bells tolled.