On That Day

I consider myself fortunate that peace and light and hope never totally left me in my days of death or darkness or loss. I know it is not that way for some.

But still, I feel the loss sometimes in a smothering way. It's never really fully gone from who I am these days.

And of course, with Mother's Day tomorrow, well, it's another of the "firsts" of the first year and it's hard and I'm sad.

To lose a child and face major surgery for a serious disease all in the same few months--I don't know--it just makes you think.

I've heard people talk about writing their own obituary to help figure out their priorities in life. I work around accomplished and intelligent people. Through my own experiences, I came to wonder "what would they want to be remembered for?" Everybody says nobody wants to say on their deathbed "I wish I'd spent more time at the office" but what is it that we truly want to be said about ourselves when we are gone? And once we figure out the important things, "what daily decisions do I have to make to get there?" (Patti Digh, http://www.37days.com/2012/05/oh-daddy-thirty-two-years-ago-today.html--you have to listen to the audio to hear the quote but it's worth it).

My list of things I'd like to be remembered for has changed over the years. It's far less idealistic than it used to be. It's a simpler list. But here's my problem: I can make the list but I have trouble staying focused on the "daily decisions" implementation. I'm short-sighted (near-sighted, literally and figuratively-that thought popped into my head and it amuses me for some reason).

What I figure is that under the circumstances, it's normal for me to be thinking of the ways I'd want to be remembered, or to have thoughts about what marks I want to leave behind. It's sometimes hard not to feel insignificant when I start thinking of those things but, really, no one is insignificant. We all have our stories. I want to own mine and accept some of the ones I don't particularly like (because they don't show me in a good light!). I want to be more open with them too. But to do that, I have to "get over myself" and be willing to allow my humanity to be seen.

I know I've rambled a bit in this post. In fact, I wrote all of the above and when I thought about being willing to allow my humanity to be seen, I thought of this other problem I have and I left this writing and went off to work on creating this "thang." 

I'm making progress. I am alive. But I am also far more aware of time constraints than I was five months ago. I don't want my dying days to come only for me to realize I did a lot of thinking about how I wanted to live and to be in this life. On that day, I want to know...

(I've written myself into a corner. I don't know where to go from here--I'll have to think...)