Live Like You Were Dying

There is a moment I think most have in there lives at sometime, towards the end, maybe during a horrific event, an odd diagnosis from a doctor. Fear isn't exactly the word for it. It's turning and facing your own mortality. Seeing that things may go on without you. Reflection on what you didn't do, that's where my mind went. Everything I haven't done. My moment came almost two years ago now. Walking in a daze from the retina specialist office after 3 hours of testing. Next they needed to send me to UCLA in California for a test they couldn't perform in this state. Just heard words like "stroke, blood clot, aneurysm, tumor". Pulling into the McDonald's on Green Valley this song came on the radio, alone, I cried not knowing if there was a time bomb in my head. Looking back now, I clung to that song. Identifying more with it than I ever had before. I lived it.

Remembering the first time I heard it really listened to it, almost brought me to my knees in the kitchen. Cooking dinner, I had the radio on instead of a CD. It couldn't have been more than a week or so after my step mom died of cancer. Her third time around they had only given her a few weeks. She held on 5 months to see her grand baby. Born on Sunday, she let go on Friday morning.

Gave forgiveness I'd been denying, I let my sister in again. Texting her to find out if they were one of the people stuck in the evacuation attempt out of Houston. The anticipated arrival of Hurricane Rita had the freeways gridlocked.

"Don't tell mom, we'll be fine and we're not leaving."
"Mom maybe be pretty unobservant sometimes but I think she may notice a big fkn hurricane heading for your city."

Our first conversation in 3 years. Eventually I let her know that she could blame the song for it.