Worst Advice Ever

"Live like you are dying"

Yes, that is the WORST advice ever.

Because there are some things it makes you want so deeply before you die.

Like LOVE.

Like a committed, loving relationship where the other person is committed and loving as well.

I wish that I could live as if I were NOT DYING.

Because living like you are dying results in your putting up with a lot of shit you should never have to.

It makes you "settle".

Because quite frankly, who the hell wants to be with someone that is dying?

Hope

I had hoped the day before yesterday was a fluke.

I had hoped that, by some miracle, it wasn't going to happen again.

Summer had been so good to me.

Why couldn't it just last forever?

Yet, this morning I woke with that old familiar pain. The pain that causes you to scream out loud and moan when moving, despite your best efforts not to. The pain that makes you want to plead with someone to knock you unconscious. The pain that radiates through all parts of your body. The pain that feels stabbing, burning, piercing, throbbing, pounding, radiating all at once. The pain that makes you laugh at the sad faces on a scale of 1 to 10, knowing that the majority of people out there have no idea what pain like this is like. The pain doctors say "most people" would not be able to handle. The pain that doctors willingly, with no questions ask, want to prescribe Oxycontin and IV drugs for. The pain that I can't take prescriptions for because the side effects render me useless as a mother.

I do this every year. I feel so much better through the warm and hot months that I start to secretly, inwardly hope that I've gotten better. I know that the doctors have told me there is no cure. I know that the doctors have told me that it will only get worse. I know that the doctors have given me a death sentence.

Yet, I can't help but hope. Hope that somehow, someway, it will get better. Hope that I won't end up spending most of winter in bed. Hope that I can run and jump and hike and bike.

Then, when cooler weather hits, and I wake unable to get out of bed without help, the feeling of defeat starts flitting around the edges. The anger starts to rise. The reality of how complicated life is as a single parent that can't hold down a "real" job. The unjustness and unfairness of it all. The envy that comes with seeing capable people with healthy bodies. I want to scream to God that it isn't fair.

Yet, I know that life isn't about fair. It isn't. Life is what it is and the only part we can change is how we approach it and deal with it.

Problem is...... financial responsibilities don't stand by and wait till summer comes back with warm weather and the bodies ability to function.

I am feeling very defeated today. Very tired. And above all else........ in PAIN.

The Strong One

Yesterday, you introduced me as "the strong one".

You dear, you are the strong one. You are the one who has never let people forget how your beautiful son died. You are the one that held the people who contributed to his death responsible. You are the one who made sure laws were changed so that other children would be protected. You are the one who comforted me and helped me to carry on when I was crushed with the guilt, thinking something I had said could have made a difference in his life.

You are the one who now is sitting in a hospital room, watching your "better half" of 11 years slowly fade away. You are the one who still comforted me when we spoke of your son that was gone so many years ago. You are the one who is still smiling for others when inside you must be experiencing such great ache and agony. You are the one who is still clinging to God, even as you wonder if He's given you more then you can bear.

You, dear Pam, you are the strong one. I love you and I would do anything to take this away from you. (((((hugs))))))

RIP Childhood Friend

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

Every year, as August 8th nears, I begin to think of my friend that died when we were 14 years old. I always dwell on the last time we were together. We went to eat seafood with several other families. On the way back home, she and I sat in the middle seat of Dad's brown Toyota mini-van. We sang "We Are Family" while dancing around and then "Lean On Me". That was when all we had to listen to was radio or a cassette. These songs just happen to play on the radio back to back. We smiled and laughed and said we'd always be family.

This year makes 20 years since Mary died. We were 14. I was on vacation, worried about a boy. He broke up with me that trip, and I remember thinking it was the end of the world. We were on vacation, and I didn't know she had died.

I remember so vividly, I'd just gotten out of the same brown Toyota mini-van and had my blue suitcase in my hand. I was walking to the front door and Dad was reading a note left on the door. I remember he looked at Mom who was somewhere behind me and said in a shocked, stunned voice, "Mary's dead." I don't think he quite believed it and it seemed almost as if he was hoping she would tell him he was wrong. I don't even think he realized that I was there, or that his words forever altered me. I'd just lost my best friend.

I can't tell you how long I spent beating myself up over the fact that I had been on vacation, worried about some stupid guy, while she was being laid to rest. I never got to say goodbye and for the first time, at 14 years old, I understood that funerals aren't for those who've passed...........funerals are for those that are left behind.

20 years..........it seems so big, so long. I've lived more years since Mary passed then I had before. I grew up to go to college, to have children, to marry.

I remember being scared that I'd forget her. Yet, even now when our songs come on the radio, I crank it up and I am taken back to that day, cruising down 109 in a brown Toyota van, singing at the top of our lungs, knowing we had our whole lives ahead of us. When I eat seafood, I see her smiling and laughing beside me.

When I was 16, I was in my first wreck. It was in that brown Toyota mini-van.

I remember when the boy I was so wrapped up in on that vacation got married, and all I could think about was my dear friend who I missed.

I remember when her Mom asked to speak to me on the phone. She told me that Mary had always looked up to me and that she loved me. I remember being so shocked............she'd looked up to me? I had always looked up to her.

I still have the ring that belonged to Mary. Her mother gave it to me after she'd passed. It's worn now, and bent out of shape. When I was 18, I had a severe allergic reaction. My boyfriend at the time, who was later to become the father of two children, was in the ER with me when the reaction started. He told me later that I screamed and fought the nurses when they said they had to cut off my rings due to swelling. He said I couldn't even talk, and could barely breathe, but that I fought them so much that the doctor told them to figure something else out. I had to be treated and the doctor couldn't treat me while I was fighting. I have that ring sitting now so that every morning it's one of the first things I see, and I see it throughout my day as well. I see it before I go to bed at night.

I've had the type of life that is seen in movies, read in books, and even though it's marked "based on a true story" no one really believes it's true.

BUT, I've had that life. I've had those years. I've lived longer since my best friend died then before.

It's been 20 years, and I haven't forgotten.

I love you Mary. I can't wait to see you again!! We have so much to talk about.

*name changed to protect anonymity 

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

Quote taken from the movie "Stand By Me"

RIP Childhood Friend

Each year, August 8th is noticed by me. It's the day my dear friend died. I wasn't with her. I was on vacation. I found out from a note on the door when I returned, long after the funeral.

I remember us sitting in the back of Dad's brown Toyota mini-van singing "We Are Family" and "Lean on Me". We were on our way back from a seafood restaurant that sat on Hwy 109 in the middle of nowhere. I even remember what I ate, where we sat at the table that day, and the guy that I was unabashedly flirting with.

Her death touched me in a way no other has. We were 14 years old, she just a few months younger then me. I had all kinds of things I was going to tell her about my vacation. Death was not even a possibility.

Then there was the fact that I wasn't there. I missed the funeral. I didn't get to say goodbye.

We were only 14 years old.

And so begins the thoughts of what she would be like today. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that she would be vibrant and full of life. That her smile and laugh would light up a room.

I'm gonna kick over to youtube, find the videos to the two songs we sang the last time we were together, and sing it while doing the same dance moves she and I did that day so many years ago.

I'll always remember you Mary.