I had a very different blog post in mind earlier today.
Something snarky and passive aggressive in response to an awful human being I met and with whom I interacted over the weekend, and it was all superficial and small and, well, funny and light.
Instead, I’m fixated on a story. It’s not mine, but it’s a story that struck me in that inexplicable way things bash you over the head, as if the universe grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me up to a fence to look at a captivating scene off in the distance, to teach me a life lesson, shaking me a bit to ensure I’m paying attention to what’s happening a few hundred yards away. I’m watching. And I can’t turn away.
There’s a woman. She’s kind of famous. She and her husband made the kind of team that restores your broken faith in love and soulmates and being a parent and living a good life with a crazy family.
Not long after she and her husband welcomed a new baby, she got sick. And, as it happens all too often, she was sick with cancer. The good doctors in which she trusted her life and care did all they could to fight the evil , but it won out. Her tiny body stopped responding to treatment. They’re home. To spend the rest of her days surrounded by family, and friends. Living. Hoping for a miracle that will probably never come, but praying anyway.
I’m not a religious person, but if that’s not faith, I’m not sure what is.
I can’t claim to know anything about much, especially when it comes to cancer. Over my lifetime, I’ve known friends who’ve fought against the disease, and emerged triumphant. Others haven’t been so lucky. Some have held the hands of parents, or children, as they underwent chemo and radiation, some still have hands to hold, some had to let go far too soon.
It’s almost hard for me to say, and I feel bad even saying so, but I’m thankful my family and close, inner circle of friends remain untouched by any such tragic loss, even though statistics probably have other plans, and cast a dark shadow that looms ever closer as years pass.
Until then, we have a choice. Live, or wait for bad things to happen.
Duh, you might say, of course you’ll choose life. Well, sure. But what does that mean? Filling days shuffling to a job I hate? Attached to ingenuous people? Annoyed by minutia that won’t matter 5 minutes later? Going through the motions and calling it a life?
Fuck that noise. Nope. Not on my watch.
I don’t believe in coincidence. Life unfurls the way it’s meant to flow. No accidents, no wrong turns. Others may not share my view, and that’s ok, but that’s what gets me through the day. That everything happens for a reason. Success, failure, love, loss…our recipe for life is uniquely our own. I’m meant to be in the place I am right now. Mothering. Loving and supporting my family and friends. Writing. Creating. But that’s just the start.
There’s much unfinished business, more I Love You’s, and I’m Sorry’s to be said, and heard. More spontaneous road trips and meteor showers and 3am kisses and meeting new people and reacquainting with old friends and learning a new language and taking bad pictures and amazing food and burned dinners and risks and huge rewards and disappointments. I want to experience everything. All of it. The good, the bad, the miscalculations and the happy disasters.
Yeah, I was going to write about how I met an asshole over the weekend who briefly made me question my faith in humanity. So what. This may not be the life I imagined, a life in which a douchebag or two must happen. But, that’s living. And I will live the shit out of this crazy life, be in the right now, and make the most of it, simply because I can.
