Amygdalin

Five years ago tonight, a self-described Christian missionary ran my sister off the road, and a few hours later she was dead.

A couple of months ago I finally tore up the letter in which he explained that God's will can be incomprehensible.

I get angry when people try to explain the incomprehensible.

So I am going to sit here and eat an apple that came from the same place she now rests, and will rest.

The apple's existence is inexplicable, as is that of the bee that fertilized it. The stuff of apples, an impossible blend of what we breathe out every few seconds, water and carbon dioxide joined by the energy of the sun, cannot be explained.

Don't try. Especially when I am eating one.

She was close enough to the orchard that it is possible still that some of the molecules of her last few breaths were captured by the same tree that bore this apple I am eating. Her last breath might rest in the amygdalin I taste when I chew on the seeds, a bitter sweet dance with traces of cyanide.

No, I don't understand why apples happen, nor do I think anyone else understands, either. So don't bother me when I sit there munching away on the core.

This whole business of living is, like apples, incomprehensible.

I know I like apples, though. And life. And Mary Beth did, too. No sense wasting time pondering what you cannot know.

That time's better spent enjoying the apple for what it is, whatever that "what" is. It won't be here forever. And neither will you.