I heard from an old friend today, with tragic news. Her husband had passed away suddenly last week.
There’s no way to respond to that.
I’ve been in a bit of a daze since then. Of course I know that people y age can die, but when it hits so close, the odds seem so much higher. And now that I have a family of my own, it’s not so much the things that would be undone, it’s that I would leave my daughter behind. I think it’s one thing to not have known one’s dad, but she’s an aware individual now. And she’d know me, and then lose me.
And it has altered the way I look at everything today… but in ways that reflect my existing considerations. For example, the question of choosing a tasty dinner or a healthy one tonight. I realized that I could use the “stay healthy, stay alive for your kid” view of things… or I could take this as a reminder that life is short, and as someone once said, we should eat dessert first.
(To answer the obvious question: rotisserie chicken dinner from The Alamo restaurant, with rice, beans, and flour tortillas. Peeled the skin from the chicken. So I suppose I landed somewhere inbetween.)
