I have been thinking about death a lot lately.
That is a depressing way to start off a post on a blog called Pursuing Potential, but hear me out. Death is a common denominator. It is the opposite of birth and dying is the one thing we know we are all destined to do. My dealings with death have been few, but trauma worthy. The first funeral I went to was my mom’s. She was killed in a car accident when I was 14. One minute she was there, and the next she wasn’t. That still blows my mind.
My next major dealing with death was last summer when my cousin, age 22, died of heart failure. He had been sick for a while, but nothing prepares you for the moment when a person slips from this world to the next. He had Down’s Syndrome, so he did not communicate like an average person, but he was still such a part of our lives. Sadly, you never really realize what place someone has your life until they are gone.
As I was walking out of the subway today, I thought about how all of the people on this earth will someday be a memory. But there is an upside to all of this, and me being me, I compare it to food.
Life is like the white stuff in the middle of the chocolate Oreo cookies. Who really knows what that staff is made of. All we know, is that it is darn tasty. Life is what we get in between birth and death. And there is a lot we can do with it. We choose how to view our life. And we choose how to live our life. We were blessed with ability to make decisions about how we think and what we do.
I could spend time dwelling on the mystery and fear that surrounds death. But instead, I will choose to celebrate life. I had 22 wonderful years with my cousin, and nearly 15 years with my mom. So I will continue to look forward and enjoy the moment. I’ll live it up, and as my mom used to say, “do it with pizazz.”
