Reading between the lines

“One of the only things that we are guaranteed in life is that everyone that we love will be taken away from us.”

When I saw those words on the page my heart skipped a beat. I quickly closed the book and shoved it far down in my bag. Damn you Dave Eggers. Why did I have to read this now? A wave of emotion started in my feet and rushed towards my eyes. I had to hold it together. I was alone in a hospital waiting room full of strangers. I was freaking out inside. In that one sentence two years worth of fears and ghosts were released inside my head.

That happened around the end of last month month. Dad was in the hospital undergoing cancer surgery. My sister couldn’t make it down from NY for this surgery so I was the sole family representative. After having gone through the death of my mother to cancer two years ago, this was an all too familiar experience. Not one I had expected so soon. That line from the book, And You Shall Know Our Velocity, would continue to haunt me for next month. So much that it would cause me to put much of my personal life on hold for a month in order to regain my equilibrium and regroup.

My first reaction was in a negative way. Obviously I hid. I even refused to touch the book for at least a couple weeks. Of course it is not something I didn’t know. Of course everyone dies. But the context and location of the message made the reality seem as close as it had ever been to me. The possibility that I could be alone so soon in regards to being without the two people that we all grow up thinking are invincible.

For the next few weeks I went to work, dialed in, came home and just thought. Running every bit of my life through my head. About all the times I had taken the chance to love only to have it taken painfully away. Be it past relationships or my past with my mom and dad. I took everything apart. Put it back together. Reasoned with it. Prayed. For a while I felt like I felt like i could sink no lower.

Until the week before last. I woke up one Wednesday and there was a peace in my head. A peace I had not had in a while. The answer was suddenly clear. That quote was not a beacon of hopelessness but a beacon of setting me free. Because once you realize that it is all temporary then it gives you all the more reason to grab on to what you have now. To not hide from experiences in life and with others in fear of being hurt. Which is, once I gained the courage to open the book back up, what happened to the hero of the story as he traveled the world with the loss of his good friend running through his head. He learned to live.

So for the past week I have felt lighter. Passions that had gone numb are slowly coming back. I’m am falling back in love with design. Reconnecting with friends. Finding the will to create again. Dad is recovering nicely from his surgery. Things seem to be coming back together. WHich brings me to close on a passage my mother kept hanging up in our house. One that I had seen every day but never taken the time to truly consider until now:

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson