This week started with a funeral for my 25 year old newlywed cousin. He died of cancer after a 2 1/2 year battle. Brave he was. It was a beautiful, agonizing service - his mother spoke, my uncle spoke, the choir that he had been part of in high school sang.
It just so happens that our book group book for April is The Year of Magical Thinking. A memoir about the year after the author's husband dies over dinner (and while their grown daughter is in the ICU because of a serious infection). "you sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends" is a phrase she uses over and over.
Makes me think - do I want to die without knowing, no warning - or would I rather know and have to live with the knowledge that I am dying? Even though I'm not much for suffering, I think I'd rather know so that I can right any wrongs and make sure my family and friends are prepared and know how much I love and cherish them. I also know that my relationship with God needs quite a bit of work. I love the Lord, I try to do my best to live a "good" life but I neglect him and my spiritual life. We didn't even go to church on Easter this year. It's pure laziness. Sunday morning has become coffee and the Sunday paper, not church and God.
I pray, I repent, I believe but I don't live my life for God.
Another phrase from The Year of Magical Thinking is "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness...about marriage and children and memory..about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." That is what I'm learning - each of these experiences that touches death, or when death touches us in some way...I know that the Saner Side of Crazy is like the weather in Ohio - easy come, easy go. I'll take it while I have it because it can change on a dime...
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