Celebrate the feast of living this moment. Why wait? Serve cake first, compliment others, give your whole heart away. Celebrate the feast of living your life. Each moment is an extraordinary gift. Live the life you desire by dancing to your beat. Take the old tape out, the one that sings the same old tune, but doesn't cause you to get up and groove. Celebrate the beauty of you by knowing that at this moment you have everything you need to be all that you are.
Shelley (my friend with ALS) shows me this everyday. She doesn't live her life bitterly, nor is she jealous of those who take their lives for granted. She lives each day fully understanding the gift of now. She cannot move, she cannot breathe on her own. But that doesn't stop her from living. Shelley grabs each moment like a dance partner, she refuses to be the wallflower.
About a year ago, on a day like many others, I drove Chelsea and Sacha to school. On my way home on a street corner, I saw a well dressed man grab his chest and fall to the ground. The people around him quickly tried to help but their best intentions did not change the outcome, except that he did not die alone.
It was as if I stepped into a movie. It was surreal. The voices of those gathered there at that moment faded in and out, like a warped record. Their movements froze in my mind like sets of still life paintings. His face, his eyes, his parting. The only thing I thought to do was pray and hold him in my mind's eye.
Often I wonder how he lived those last moments? Did he sing a tune that morning when he was shaving? Did he kiss his wife goodbye?
I wonder if he noticed the leaves that swirled around in golden colors as he walked to work? Was he aware of the moment when he stepped between the world of here and now and ever-after?
The message of that day challenges me not to live my life by looking towards the future, but to live it as it is right here now.
Photo: Taken at my Aunt Sara's 85th birthday party.
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