A shot in the dark
"Brushes with mortality" are so trite. That whole "life passing before your eyes" thing. You hear about it all the time, stories of people who "should have died." People who saw something as they almost slipped away in the darkness (or light for those that believe such things), and they come back with a renewed sense of what is important. The touch of death renews and clarifies their joy in the touch of life.
It seems hackneyed and saccharine, until it happens on a personal level, either to you or someone you know well. And last night, someone I know, someone in my family (although the law would not recognize that family tie) was shot in her home. Someone tried to kill her with a shotgun. Her eight year old daughter was at home at the time. Luckily for the intended victim but not-so-luckily for this young girl, the daughter heard it, she saw it, she called 9-1-1, and then she hid until help arrived.
I've written before about denial. About how it's a place of fear, and it should not be a lifestyle choice. But it's totally woven into my life, into every human life, because I think it's the foundation upon which every coping mechanism we ever learn is based. Think about it: how many times have you been walking at night, and thought maybe you were being followed, and instead of verifying this suggestion, you keep walking. You ignore the threat. You deny it exists. Or as a teenager, did you ever heedlessly risk your own life, because you were in denial about just how truly destructible (not indestructible) you were? Or do you live your life now, expecting that when you retire you'll take that trip you long for, or you'll move on to a relationship that might actually make you happy, or do you wait to resolve a conflict with someone you still care about but are just afraid to reach out to?
Denial, denial, denial, we are riddled with the cancer of denial. Can we get a cure for THAT?
Certainly I am in denial about how much longer my own life may last. I'm healthy, I'm alert, I'm training myself to be strong and competent in defending myself, but I am in denial about how I can be felled at any time by a car I didn't see as I cross the road, or the aneurism I might have been born with that will stop my breath and heart at some unexpected moment, or the crazy person in my life that I denied was crazy enough to shoot me in my own living room because I dared love someone else.
So today, while I watch an unexpectedly blue sky that isn't covered in rain clouds, while I feel the breeze kiss me tenderly on the cheek where tears of shock and sorrow are drying ... I deny denial the right to run my life. I want to "carpe diem" the hell out of whatever life has been dealt me in my deck of cards. For this moment, this frozen moment, I am aware. I am awake. I am fearlessly focused on the oh-so-transient and ephemeral NOW.
Who knows what today holds?