a year, a month, a day to live

How Would you Live Your Life Differently?

When Theo was a young boy he arrived home from school one afternoon to find his mom in her usual afternoon spot, lying underneath the house catching a few moments of cool shade and rest. For some reason, maybe by the heaviness of her body or the expression on her face, Theo filled with a deep fear and for a fraction of a moment he thought his mother was dead.
He shouted, “Mommy mommy mommy!”
Ms. Mado jumped up and flung open her eyes, “So What happen to you!!”
“Mommy I thought you was dead!”
“Well if I dead I dead! Leave me dead. You trying to frighten me back to life?”
This is the story that floats most vividly in my head from the many childhood memories Theo has shared over the years. Ms. Mado’s words struck me like an unexpected slap on the back from behind and within her words I heard the inevitable, we are all going to die eventually, “so if I dead I dead!”

For the past few weeks I have moved in and out of these thoughts of dying, feeling waves of fear wash over me. Thinking daily about two dear friends in Antigonish and Toronto; trying to feel what they must be feeling as they presently experience sudden tragedy in their lives. One friend losing her mom and grandmother in a car accident last month and another friend sitting by her mother’s side in palliative care at the Toronto General Hospital.

I sink eyes wide open into memories of death of friends and family both here in Grenada and Canada; those who died suddenly way too young, others who died slowly of unidentified illnesses, those who took their own lives and others who died natural deaths in their ripe old age. My thoughts weave in and out of recent memories of almost losing Maya in a car crash four years ago when she was pitched from the back of the jeep and pinned down by the weight of a fallen door. I reflect on my own childhood memories when my dad was almost killed twice in two different car accidents and spending my 15th year in the back and neck ward at the Ottawa General Hospital.

It was after the death of my friend Oken, who was also killed instantly in a car crash one early morning while he was hitching a ride to school in St. George’s, that I came across the book “One year to Live” by Stephen Levine. Today the book is a prominent figure on my writing desk, leaning against the window sill, inviting me to its pages, inviting me to breathe in and reflect on my own life, reflect on whether I am living here and now to the fullest as though this year, this month, this day were my last. Most of us go through great lengths to ignore, deny, laugh away the fact that we are going to die, but as Levine shares, “preparing for death is one of the most rational and rewarding acts of a lifetime. It is an exercise that gives us the opportunity to deal with unfinished business and enter into a new and vibrant relationship with life.”

As I write this blog I wonder if I am denying my two friends, myself, and all of us who have lost someone or are losing someone to death; am I denying the inevitable emotions of grief, pain, suffering. Perhaps two separate blogs should be written; one embracing our lives here and now knowing death sits on all our shoulders and another embracing the inevitable feelings of fear, impenetrable sadness, loss of will to live, soul crushing pain that also sits heavy on all our shoulders over the loss of loved ones. Or is the embrace the same embrace; learning to wrap our arms around hope and despair and breathing deep. My friend Natalie who is living presently by her mother’s side began a blog recently called a very un-fun waiting game ( www. nattythinks.blogspot.com ). Nat shares her raw, vulnerable open heart and her writing is a testimony to embracing fear fearlessly.

I recall the wise words of a close friend who told me once that her fear wasn’t so much about dying but about whether she was living her life to the fullest.

If you had one more year, month, or day to live how would You live your life differently?