Life Goes On

Whether We Are Ready or Not

I’ll admit it, I’ve been struggling. It’s interesting to face mortality and not be sure whether you’re ready for it or not. No, I’m not dying. To the best of my knowledge, I’m not seriously ill, and I’m not going to die any time in the near future. But other people are. And have. And life as I know it has changed. But it hasn’t. I mean. It’s still here. I still wake up every morning and the sun still comes up in the same sky and the same news stories still appear on the same news sites. But how, why?

Where do I even start explaining what I’m talking about? I guess I’ll start with Mike Rinder. He’s a name most people reading this are familiar with. As most people reading this know, Mike (as he himself put it), shuffled off this mortal coil. I was one of the people who got the email when he died. And it floored me. When he started chemo, I jokingly told him “I’m older than you, and because of that, you have to obey me. You don’t have my permission to die.” He laughed. He was upbeat and really thought that he would beat it. We all did. When he didn’t, a lot of us were floored.

But the next morning, the sun came up. People got in their cars. They went to work. They took their kids to school. Life went on. There have been children born, including my great grandson, who weren’t even alive when Mike was. That’s the way life works.

But other people recently have died, or had life altering changes. We have lived in the same location for decades, as have the majority of our neighbors. Now there have been a lot of recent changes in the structure of our neighborhood. And by recent, I mean in the last few months.

• One of the twin sisters who lived just down the street died. Her twin sold the house and moved away.
• The couple that lives across from us got divorced.
• My optometrist was killed when a truck driver rammed into he and his assistant on their way home from a satellite office after working all day. He was 6 months older than my daughter. I have grandchildren older than his assistant.
• Our next door neighbor, the single father of four children, was in a motorcycle accident, he now only has one leg. He is learning to navigate life with this new reality – as soon as he can get fitted with a prosthetic.

And yes, we knew them well. We live in a small town. This hurt. The people are close to us. All of theses things are life changing. But if you look out your window, you see children catching the school bus. If you look on the internet, you see people arguing about politics.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that everyone leaves some kind of a footprint when they walk this planet. Some are larger than others. I have started reviewing what people will remember of me when I go. I hope I still have quite some time to make a difference, but I also have a new clarity of vision. Some things are really just not worth raising a stink over.