A Pause

It seems that every year around this time, I hear about a lot of people getting sick and/or dying. My greataunt passed away last month, my friend's boss died from cancer and one of my other friends went through a cancer scare.

On the plane back from Bermuda, I was digging through some long-forgotten paperwork and came across an article by Kathleen Norris. I think it speaks best for itself.

"It often takes a crisis to give us perspective. A man sipping a drink in a restaurant coughs, stops breathing, and turns blue. Everything changes in that moment. Family, friends, strangers -- it does not matter -- drop whatever they are doing. One phones 911, others place him on his side until he begins to breath again. When he opens his eyes and responds to a question, they cheer. It's as if time had been suspended, waiting for this moment. Once the EMT's arrive, the rescuers drift back to their business lunches or their offices. Having stared hard into what is true -- that life is both precious and precarious -- one will order a stiff drink, one will phone her husband to tell him she loves him. Another will sit at his desk, staring at the photograph of his children until tears well up and he turns back to the blinking cursor on the computer screen."

All of it gives me reason to pause -- and simply be.