Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Mortality

April 30th is the 8th anniversary of my father’s death. (How’s that for a starting sentence? *grin* Just wait, it gets better.)  May 3rd would have been my mother’s 63rd birthday and May 10th would have been my parent’s 45th anniversary.  I can live with the other two statistics - it’s the fact that, had they not finalized the divorce a few days before my mother died, they would have been married FORTY FIVE YEARS.  FORTY FIVE! Who stays married that long? If my mother hadn’t been the woman she turned into, the woman I knew and loathed, there is no doubt that my parents would have still been married. I know this because my father found it very important to tell me this several times during our last conversation.

I’ve been in the ER twice recently because of a recurring mitral valve prolapse related issue.  My main symptom is the racing / irregular heartbeat.  It makes me lightheaded, you can literally see my heart pounding (seriously - my shirt moves) and it hurts like a mother. To be quite blunt, it scares the shit out of me.  Heart disease runs in my family and I was already diagnosed with a heart murmur.  I’m also bipolar and in the past I (unknowingly) took meds that made this whole heart mess worse.  Of course, I find this out now. 

So anyways, recently, my thoughts have tended towards the morbid.  I have a very dark sense of humor, though, so it all balances out in the end.

I’ve known for a long time that life is too short, but this lesson was driven home so clearly on April 30, 2001, that I live in fear of NOT living every moment to its fullest. My father was obsessed with history and one of his favorite topics was the Kent State Shootings.  I lived in Ohio for several years and every single time he drove out to visit me, he’d always say he wanted to stop by Kent State and see where it all happened. The lyrics to Neil Young’s “Ohio” are forever engrained in my psyche. (Side note: I actually got to see the handwritten lyrics on a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before my father died. He was unimpressed, oddly.)

He moved to Ohio on April 15th. He had decided to go on Tuesday, May 1st because all his furniture was to be delivered by then.  He had his route all planned out.  He was so excited.  It was all he had talked about for the week prior.  Monday, April 30th, he was dead.  He had so much time, that I still don’t understand why he put it off…

I’ll admit, I’m burning the candle at both ends lately (and from the middle as well it seems).  I don’t want to slow down. To quote my hero: ”...I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”  I don’t want to miss out on anything because I’m afraid to wind up back in the ER or, worse, dead. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, so why should I live in fear of my heart giving out?  Exactly.

As if everything else that had been going on recently wasn’t enough, I had yet another “life is too short” moment shoved in my face.  I still don’t know what happened… I got cranky last Monday and snapped at a friend. (Well, one of a few, truth be told.  I had a VERY BAD Monday.  *sigh*)  She went completely off the deep-end.  She sent me these angry emails and then went so far as to remove me from her friends on Facebook. I, very honestly, have no freaking idea what exactly I did to set her off like that.  But, c’est la vie.  If that’s how she wants to play it, fine. I can’t stop her.  I don’t even want to stop her.

The thing that bothers me the most, though, the thing that I can’t let go of yet: she kept saying she didn’t need any more drama because she has enough of her own.  Well, sure, I get that. But if you don’t need any extra drama, why are you creating it?  Life is too short to get that upset over what I think went on. Seriously, do yourself a favor and get over it.  I need you in my life only as a professional contact, and I don’t care if you never want to be my friend again.  Honestly, I didn’t even notice that you weren’t my friend on Facebook until I was looking for someone else I thought I friended who has a similar name. (Turns out I didn’t.  It’s on Someday/Maybe. )  I probably would have never noticed… that’s how little I choose to be upset by your overreaction. I just don’t care enough to waste more time than necessary on you and this drama you feel the need to add to your life.  I don’t have the need for more drama, and so I choose not to take any more on.

I choose instead to spend my time working through a horrendous backlog of photos from the end of the BU Hockey season, two trips to Vermont, a crazy Twilight DVD viewing party and the latest Instrument show.  I also have two websites to design, several books to read, several road trips to take, and finally, writing that blog entry about my latest experiences with LotusNotes/eProductivity… *sigh*  So, yeah, I really don’t have time to focus on your negativity right now. If you’re out to hurt me, you’re out of luck.

Life. Is. Too. Short.

Both my parents died relatively young, and while I know I won’t die of the same causes, it is in the back of my mind that my expiration date is sooner rather than later.  I refuse to waste a single second on doing anything I don’t find rewarding.  Hence, my obsession with BU hockey, photography, GTD, and Instrument. (Hey, GTD keeps my life together so I can do all that traveling and photo taking! *grin*)

And now, I’ve realized that I’ve spent way too long on this entry, so…  it’s time to move on to something a little more fun and a little less therapeutic. *grin*