In this life, things change rapidly. I was listening today to a song by Don Henley called "New York Minute". What a sad song. It is, however, a true song. It only takes a minute for all your life to change. In the minutes of the last month, my best friend Rosie has had her life turned inside out. After overcoming breast cancer at the age of 36, her husband decided to move on to other women. So in just a few minutes time...she has found herself alone, bankrupt, physically scarred by surgery to remove her breast, and scrambling to figure out what the hell just happened.
In the town I live in this week there was a family leaving Wednesday night church. The wife went to get the truck while the husband waited on the sidewalk with their four year old son. He was conversing with friends and in the few minutes that followed, their four year old slipped away without notice and ran after his mother's truck. His mother didn't see him and ran over him. In a split second, the lives of everyone there changed forever. One minute all the world was right and the next minute it sent them into hell. I couldn't imagine what that poor mother felt. How is she coping? Will she ever get to a point where she doesn't blame herself? In the minutes that are coming, will she and her husband tear each other apart in an effort to deal with the pain and guilt that they don't deserve?
Tornadoes can remove entire towns in minutes. My grandmother's roommate at the nursing home she lives in passed away the other morning while everyone was taking a few minutes to eat breakfast. In less than a second, this little old lady who spent her last few days in pain and misery suddenly knew the secrets of eternity. My dad found this out in the second that he drew his last breath of earthly air. How long did it take him to get to heaven? Was it as short a trip as was his trip to slip away? God I miss him. He's been gone for three years...that's a lot of minutes...it only seems like a few. How many minutes will it take me to stop feeling bad about trying to brush him off the week before he died alone in the bathroom? How many minutes will it be before I get to see him again and make him that cherry pie that he asked me to bake for him that he never got? In the minutes since he went away, I've moved, had my gallbladder out, had two carpal tunnel surgeries, seen three stepchildren move in and out of my house, lost two cats to cars, gone back to school, bought another car, and renewed my wedding vows. He's missed all of these events in a short amount of time.
It amazes me how torked up I get over the things that happen in the minutes of my life. It seems that I should try harder to enjoy the minutes. They are gonna keep ticking away to new minutes before I've dealt with the previous minutes.
Oh...the philosophical moments are the most amazing. I used to think I could only have these epiphanies when I was drunk. Now that I'm sober I find that I have them just as often and I can remember them to write them down. Beautiful.
In this current minute, I'm enjoying a great marriage. Damn, I've got a good husband. He's a gift that I hope to have plenty of minutes with. I'm also enjoying what will probably be the last minutes of the last days of my chocolate lab's life. I hope that her very last minute will be spent with me. I hope that her 14 years of minutes that she's had so far have been as precious to her as they have been to me. At this minute, I'm living in my childhood home that I love. I've got a good job and the opportunity to go to college. My fridge is full, my bills are paid, and my car has a full tank of gas. In short, I'm a blessed person at this minute. Originally I was going to draw up a post about how much I hate my stepkids (well....I only HATE a couple of them!) but I'm realizing that it ain't so bad. So many others are having horrible minutes right now and I have no reason to try to portray my minutes as anything near as painful as they could be.
I'm gonna go kiss my labrador and pinch my husband on the butt and thank God for the privilege of doing so.
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