Life is too short to ________ .
I was feeling much better yesterday after the rain stopped. I got a phone call around lunch time. It came from someone that is not necessarily a close friend at the moment, but who is recently closely tied into my life right now. I have no doubt that he'll be a close friend over time. He's an over-achiever and a work horse to say the least at his young age of 37 years. He was calling me from the emergency room complaining that he was about to have to be admitted to the hospital while he walked me through a task he needed help completing for work. He'd had a stroke the day before and was just then getting around to discovering the source of his "mild discomfort" (his words) and didn't see the need to be admitted. I giggled nervously and half sarcastically trying not to show too much concern over the phone.
I visited him in the hospital last night with reading material and watched as he tried hard to focus on the nurse as she coached him through several tests to determine any physical damage that may have been caused by the stroke. Thankfully, he slowly responded and passed all the tests including the ones he had failed earlier in the day. He remarked at how embarrassed he was that I was seeing him that way. I'm told he will recover fine and that the only things that will change are some of his lifestyle habits (diet, workload, etc.).
When you see someone that young (without completely giving my age away, he's only a few years older than me) sitting there from a stroke, it's really hard for me to wrap my head around it. It's the sort of thing that punches you in the gut and makes you reevaluate the course that your own life is taking. I know I don't live the sort of lifestyle that has me in jeopardy of having any sort of health problems like this, but I don't think he does either, at least not for his age.
It really scares the shit out of me. Life is suddenly much shorter than I thought. What goes in your "______"?
posted by My Life N Motion @ 12:52 PM
3 Comments:
Rea, I'm 37 and stories like this scare the crap out of me. That's why I have running shoes on order. And, why I eat more fish and chicken than I did as a kid. And why I do a whole lot of other things differently as I get older, too. I've got just one go 'round as who I am, and a lot to do, so, I've got to make it count.
And, see, to an old guy like me, you're just a sweet, young thing. ;) (There, does that make up for yesterday?)
Sure does, but you forgot to fill in the blank.
Well, I didn't forget, really, but...
Okay, okay, life is too short to be alone. I hate being alone, in the sense of not meaning anything to anyone. I know, intellectually, that I do, in fact mean quite a bit to quite a few people, but, well, I don't feel it deep down in my soul. And, because that sounds so pathetic to me, I didn't want to put it down. See how dedicated a fan I am?
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