Random Musings

 
I’m one of the clumsiest, most accident prone people you’ll ever meet. 

I’ve had my head cracked open when someone was swinging for a piñata. I’ve stepped off a cliff I didn’t see. I’ve nearly drowned several times. I trip over air, and I’ve had more concussions than I can count. I was in a truck hit by lightning. 

You probably don’t want to stand too close. 

So death and I have always had a kind of prankster relationship. A kind of ‘just-kidding-not-today’ kind of interaction. 

But recently my mom had a health scare, and it got me thinking about mortality. Not my own, but that of those close to me. 

Aging is a strange thing, isn’t it? When you’re twenty, fifty seems ancient. When you’re forty, fifty seems like it’s around the corner. We had dinner with a couple in their seventies last night, who are more active than I am. But they said they’re at the point when they’re seriously realising there isn’t enough time left to travel to the places they still want to see, or to read all the books on the shelves. They’ve lost more family than they have left.

This human business of being aware of the passing years is really something, isn’t it? 

I’ve already lost two of my closest family members. One day, I’ll lose more. That’s the nature of existence. I don’t know that it changes my relationship with them, except to make certain that when it comes to them, I don’t have any regrets. I’ve got enough of those already. 

And it makes me want, in an almost obsessive, frenetic way, to see and do all the things on my bucket list. There’s so much world and so little time to play with it. 

When Nic bought me a copy of the movie Up, she wrote inside; No glass jar of pennies. Let’s do everything whenever possible. 

Read, travel, explore, laugh, play, wonder, love.  That’s what I want to do with the rest of my life. What are you going to do with yours?