Tuesday, October 30, 2007

More Perspective


Perspective!

I work with an elderly independent population. These are folks who average in age of 85. They are not in a nursing home and maintain a good degree of independence. They are wonderful folks with stories that history is made of. It is such a privilege to know and hear their stories. It is a privilege to know, love and be with them on a daily basis.

Then there are people like my mom, like my best friends mom and another dear friends mom who died earlier than expected due to illness. My mom was 64. What would 21 more years meant to her and to us her family? What would it have meant to her grandchildren? We were fortunate in that while she suffered an awful disease we had at least had time to talk and prepare (if you ever really can do that). Things were not left undone or unsaid.

Finally, there are people who are taken in an instant. People like Chris who died this last Sunday of a gunshot wound while trying to break up a fight. People like my friend and boss D. whose husband fell in an accident at work and died a few weeks later. He never woke up. There was no goodbye.

The last two scenarios happen to people of all ages. They happen to infants, to children, teens and adults. How strange it felt to talk to some of the residents where I work who would be certain they would never outlive those of us on staff, only to be talking Monday about this incredible tragedy and loss of one of our employees. He was just 18!

Time isn't promised to anyone. It isn't just for the good or perfect people. Pain and death happen to everyone young and old alike.

So why am I still stuck on this? Because there is a verse in the Bible that says, "Lord show me the number of my days". Another words, let me not take for granted this day.

I have thought a lot about this verse since I first learned I was at risk for Huntington's Disease in 1995. Tomorrow isn't promised to any of us. One day I am standing side by side with a boy that would be hours from death.

What would he have done different with his day? What would I have done if I knew it was my last day? I don't think we are to live in fear like today we might die but at the same time I think it really brings to mind how important it is to live with the knowledge of how fragile life is.

I want my loved ones to know how precious they are to me. That right this moment there is no one I am angry at or harboring unforgiveness towards. I love so many with all of my imperfect heart and I hope and pray that before I die, way before I die, they know of that love.

We can't take life for granted. We can't think because we are young that we have years ahead.
We can't live in fear for the day but we can conduct ourselves in a manner that says I have this sense of the frailty of life and I am not going to miss this chance to love another or to forgive or to reach out and touch a life.

I don't know...maybe it's just me. I thought about this on my way to receiving my test results for HD. That day I was to learn if I would live or die of HD. I saw so many people on the road rushing to work. I wondered if things would be different if they knew their very life was on the line. What would change for them that day? Would they be so worried about traffic and schedules? Would they see how valuable life is?

Every time someone survives cancer or something like Huntington's Disease I know we all know what it feels like to face death. We don't think we have life in our palm. We know that at any time something else could take us. We just know that for right now it isn't the cancer or disease.

We learn what matters and what doesn't. Things that used to irritate us no longer do so to the same degree. We wouldn't want to be in this place again yet it gave us a perspective we would not have had otherwise.

We take soooo much for granted. This next Sunday I will accompany a number of our residents where I work to a funeral for a boy that was just becoming a man. A boy who lived 18 years. Someone who thought he would perhaps have a lifetime ahead of him just like these folks we worked amongst.

It wasn't to be.

It makes me think. How would we live differently?

How would you live? When will you start?

TODAY! Because tomorrow isn't promised.

TODAY! This moment, this breath, this is what we have now. What will we do with it?

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