Start living to live

Most of us live our life like we are immortal, until something happens that shows us differently that is. The reality is none of us are immortal and we all are born to die. We all hope it’s when we are really really old and we just peacefully after a long great life lay down and don’t wake up. No pain, no worry , no nothing, just maybe the best possible way to leave this earth for everyone involved. I take comfort in hearing the stories where they begin with ” Mary was 100 years old, lived a long heathy happy life and had just went to sleep and never woke up”. I am sad because someone has died but my brain rationalizes that Mary wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, she was happy, she was at peace and she was ready to go. What I can’t handle is the sudden deaths, the unnecessary deaths..the car crashes, the heart attacks, the drop dead while eating lunch on your lunch break, the you have cancer and have 6 months to live deaths. I can’t , no matter how hard I try , no matter how old the person is I just can’t accept it. The person was there one minute talking to me or someone else and the next moment they are just gone. They cease to exist. I have been sheltered by death I think, I have not been to many funerals. And the one or two I have attended I sit there in complete shock that this person is just gone. And that now this person is just a picture, just a memory. That you can’t even breath cause it hurts too much knowing they aren’t breathing too, the moment of their death just replays over and over in your head like a broken record. You didn’t even have to be there to play the moment they took their last breath over and over. Your brain has filled all the missing moments in for you, exactly how it happened or not it’s the moment they died forever etched in your mind. I once knew a lady who was killed in an accident that ended up with her little car ramming right under a semi. I won’t get graphic with what exactly that scenario would do to a body but I am sure you can figure it out. I was not there , I only know the story of what happened and my brain has filled in the rest and it’s all I can think about when I remember this person, I can vividly see it all. It’s sad, this is many years later it’s still sad. It haunts you to the core and there is no getting over the mental image your head has drawn for you. Or my friend who will forever remain in my head as comfortably sitting at a table eating lunch, talking, laughing and then bam dead. I was not there but I vividly remember that entire moment when her life just stopped existing too. The moment when two young teenage girls lost their mom forever. I felt the loss everytime I walked past that restaurant or the store she worked at and still do after all these years when I hear of someone dying the same way.

Why am I still here and these others aren't. They are just as important as me , maybe even more so and yet just like that they are gone. Look at my step dad , several years ago he was sick and went into the hospital with what they said was pneumonia and died the next day of a massive heart attack. Why, if that was the way he was meant to go, why didn’t that happen at home, why did that happen at the hospital just after my mom left to go get him something from home. She spoke to him , he replied. Neither one of them knew at least she didn’t anyway that whatever they discussed at that moment was going to be the last words they ever got to say to each other. I can’t even tell you the last word I said to him or the last time I even spoke to him was. But just like that bam never again, gone, we are left with the memories, I am left with the entire vision of how it happened, what it looked like. I again was not there and I haven’t seen pictures obviously but my brain has pieced what it thinks that moment looked like and it’s stuck on replay in my head. And moments like these go on and on with every single person that I know has died. Sometimes living scares me more then dying. Some days I feel like maybe it’s better to just die now then worry about how it’s going to happen and when. I have never been one that likes surprises and I hate the unknown but I need to stop concentrating so much on death and the why and the how and really start living while I am still breathing. We all need to do this.

People are dying around us all the time, it’s sad, it’s heartbreaking but there isn’t anything we can do about it. We are going to have to say goodbye to alot of loved ones over the course of our life , if we are lucky enough to get to be the one that lives to be old and die happily. We need to remember how short life can be , we need to treat each day, each moment as if it were our last. There is nothing in this world that is guaranteed except for death but we don’t have to live like we are dying, we need to live like we are living. Live for this moment, and then the next. Our loved ones or friends might get sick, we might lose some of them and as hard as that will be when it happens, you need to be able to say we did all we could together, we seen all we could in that amount of time. They took their last breath knowing they were loved and at the life ending moment they were at peace. They lived a happy life , whether they were 25 or 95 they lived a life they could be proud of and they died without any regrets by you or them. I am not saying it is easy or ever will be and the younger they are the harder it will be but if we start living to live when that moment comes maybe it will be a tiny amount easier to handle. In the meantime hug a little more often, forgive and forget when you can and be thankful for every minute , every phone call, and every moment you get.