There’s Time To Be Sad Later…

Last week, Patti and I received the call that we all dread as children of aging parents. Patti’s father has been diagnosed with kidney cancer. With that one phone call, we were snapped back into the real perspective of life. That is, that the fragile nature of our lives, we once again were taking for granted. One day, things are smooth and the next day they are choppy and potentially spinning out of our control. And we are so not alone in this. Here we sit in the middle years of our lives with the expectations that tomorrow will be just like yesterday. Nothing will change, right? It can go on forever like this can’t it? Duh. Why is it that we allow this fragility to sneak up on us? It seems that each and every time we get to this point we stand a this place with regrets and “ifs”. How do we in our human nature wake up ourselves earlier in life when we are invited to make the most of every moment, instead of waiting for the situation to snap us into the reality? Are we not just built this way? I wonder. Last week, I got dragged into another of Patti’s Oprah programs. On the program was the couple who created, “99 Baloons" on YouTube. ( I guarantee you will cry like a baby if you watch this so be forewarned - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th6Njr-qkq0). On the show, after Oprah collected herself, she asked the couple how they made it through. The mother of Eliot said something that was so profound that I don’t think it will ever leave me. She said, “we just knew that we had time to be sad later”. Right then, she and her husband were in the moment with Elliot and each other. They were celebrating life every day and making the very best of it. While they were also snapped into a reality that they hadn’t bargained for, their attitude was the right one. So, as I write this, Patti’s father is a few days from surgery and then we will know what comes next after that. In the meantime, there is time to pray now and to be sad later and today we celebrate a life and what has been given to us through him and we live in the moment, savoring each as we pass through each of them.