Another one gone

I am pretty introspective today...oh oh, watch out!!

A couple of days ago one of the motorcycle forum guys died from lung cancer. He and his family knew for just a couple of weeks. Good for him, but quite shocking for those left behind. He signed the shirt that was given to me after the 2007 motorcycle rally in Maggie Valley. I had a relapse of the disease and was beginning treatment when the Rally occurred and "Sunshine" passed the shirt around. (Thanks, dear lady.) So now two are gone. The other was also a rather sudden death during the holidays a couple of years ago. She was one that I was sure I would get to meet at some point.

I think that Donna's passing was part of the incentive that got me going on the trip in the fall. So often I wait "for the right time" and who really knows when, or if, that right time will come. S2's cancer and my relapse put us both in that space of realizing that we have things to do before we are gone. And gone seems to be riding on my shoulder, as of late. I have no feelings of impending doom, rather those feelings of "it is something that I have wanted to do for a long time; time to get to it." Budgeting is tough on a fixed income, but there is generally enough to get done what needs to be done with a little extra to put away for a rainy day. Is this constant budgeting for the future a taught thing? Wouldn't it have been horrid to have saved for years and then never get to do that thing that was saved for?

I think my own mortality runs through my mind at least once a day now. I don't sit and dwell on it, and I don't ignore it. It just "is." When someone I know dies, I don't seem to mourn like the majority of others. I cannot explain it, it is just different. Of course I feel the loss. I feel it quite deeply. It just has an interesting twist to it. A quiet sense of urgency, and the knowledge that my number could come up at any time. My Mom died quite suddenly. One day she was here, and that afternoon she was gone. Dad died slowly; a piece at a time. Both sucked. My heart still hurts and misses them. If I could choose, I think I would still choose neither. I don't want my kids and grandkids to feel the pain I have carried for 27 years. The thing is, I cannot choose on that. I can, however, give to myself enough that my kids can say "I am so glad that she did the things she wanted to do." I think that is my legacy and the gift I will leave my kids.

G2