Old friends

 “I always wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.” – 
-Gilda Radner

What if the day we met someone the path we would travel together was visible? What if a movie screen in our hearts revealed a quick trailer of what was to be? Maybe it would change the story to know in advance.  Plus, that would change the "delicious ambiguity," as Gilda Radner describes it.  The joy of discovery and of looking back years later thinking how incredible life is.

Old friends are so unique because they were there before it all.  They've walked beside you and remember who you are at the core.  And when the bad cards are dealt, they help you rebuild your hand.  People inevitably change through their own triumphs and failures. That's what makes enduring friendship so special because as much as we change, it stays constant.

I was recently talking with an old friend about how our time together is energizing.  She is going through one hell of a crisis helping not one, but two family members in the fight of their lives and somehow she remains optimistic.  The same girl I used to laugh with around the lunch table in the school cafeteria is still in there.  It amazes me.  I realized that she energizes me by being the kind of person she is.  One who can appreciate each day for the value it has.  Who remembers that being kind and willing to laugh can be the best remedy.  And though neither of us is perfect, somehow we have managed to hang on to our connection to one and other.  I wish desperately that she and I could hold hands and jump into the flood of uncertainty her family is facing and figure out a way to fix it.

In the end I guess there are a lot of things we can't control.  But we do have the opportunity to maintain those friendships that have seen us through it all.  To attempt to give as much as we take.  Then when we look back together, the staggering beauty of the story will be something we never expected.

Change. Grow. Be happy.

Life is about change.  It's always our choice to grow with the changing tides or stand still until they crash down around us.

Even though it's been almost four years, the details of that morning are still so fresh.  I think a lot of people say that about the moment they found out that they lost someone they loved.  I remember the phone ringing and each word that hung in the air as my brother told me on a long distance call that she was gone.  The packing and the rush to get home.  The disbelief. 

My mom passed away in her sleep in February, 2008.  My uncle spoke in his eulogy about her watching the moonlight bounce off the Chesapeake Bay as she took her last breath.  My dad spoke of St. Francis of Assisi and the way he lived his life fully, completely, and bravely, straight through to the end.  That was to make an "art of life," and that was his Marsha Beth.  And my mom.  The one who sang me to sleep as a child and made me believe as an adult. 

The things my uncle and my dad said the day we told her goodbye stuck with me.  In the years since, I have become committed to notice the moonlight and to live more like St. Francis.  I think that changing point in my life had a positive impact on the person I am.

I've found that in recent years, my priorities have shifted a bit.  More towards embracing the little moments and away from all of the other noise.  The things that don't matter.  In doing so, my heart is so full.  Somtimes, I feel like it might burst.

I guess this blog will be about my own response to the changing seasons of life.  We all are responsible for making our own way.  For chosing to be kind and giving.  And happy.  It's the way I honor her.