Once upon a time my little life began. I was born a human, not by choice, it just happened that way. I could easily have been a porcupine, or a cow, or a caterpillar, or even an amoeba.
My Mum and Dad were happy when I arrived. Things got a bit less happy while I was growing up because sometimes we’d argue and then we’d feel quite lonely. But later on we shared some happy years together and ended up close. Then they died.
My own life was short-ish. Many of the trees in my garden lasted longer than I did. Overall, I really enjoyed my life as a human, though there were occasional bumps in the road. My favourite thing was having a beautiful daughter. She had two beautiful children. I loved them and they loved me. Then I died too.
That’s pretty much it.
Actually, no. There’s a couple of other things I’ve just remembered …
When I was alive, I’d sometimes leave footprints where I walked. The ones that stood out were on the white sandy beaches near my home. There was another place by a creek where I once trod in some gluggy black mud. Those footprints really stood out. But in time the waves and wind and rain erased all my footprints, so if you went back to any of those places now, you’d never know I’d been there.
I had quite a lot of friends, mostly humans but also a number of cats and dogs. There were four rabbits too, as well as guinea pigs and a few birds including a very loud cocky named Crackers who was so noisy he ended up being sent to the zoo. I loved all these friends. I let some of them down at times but not often. Most of the time we treasured one another. Some of my close friends kept thinking about me after I’d died but eventually they all died too. After that, no-one ever thought of me again.
There’s one nice thing people did think of about after I’d gone, though nobody knew it had anything to do with me. One day at a picnic, I dropped an apple core. A crimson-coloured bird flew down and ate it. An hour or two later, the bird did a poo containing an undigested apple pip. The pip landed in a soft brown patch of loamy soil. Encased in nutritious bird-poo, the pip germinated the following spring. In a few years it had grown into a full-sized apple tree and when in time it dropped its fruit, more apple trees grew. And so it went on.
Nowadays, there’s a lovely apple grove where the crimson-coloured bird first pooed out that little seed. Lots of people go there and picnic in the shade of the leafy green trees. They eat the crisp red apples and say: ‘Wow! This place is so beautiful.’
So my little life gave the world an enduring blessing. This makes me smile.
