March 23, 2013

• The End of the Century

         

  Saturday March 23, 2013

   

  100 days. Might as well be 100 years. Or 100 minutes. But 100 days since “I’ll see you later.” I posted to Facebook that if I were President, expectations for my term would be set based on my first 100 days. So how would I poll? Id like to think Id do well. But really I don’t care about how I poll save with one person. If I could ask one thing Id ask her if she’s proud of me. I want to know she knows Im doing ok and that she thinks Im doing a good job. But I often write of messages in a bottle and how I feel Steph communicate with me in that way through others. And everyone tells me Im doing great and she’d be proud. I’ll take that as a big yes then.

   

  So here at the end of the first one hundred days I’ve learned many things. One of the biggest things I’ve learned was that how I viewed life after a loss like this before it happened was totally off. See if you haven’t been through this you may view it as something chronologically neat a tidy. For a while you are sad, maybe months, maybe years but for a while you are sad; you are “bereaved”. Then “time heals all wounds” and you are happy again. Well…..

   

   

  Here’s the real deal. Both happen concurrently. There are many times I have been happy in the last 100 days. With friends, family, playing concerts, traveling, teaching, all kinds of things. I have also felt moments of great loss. There have been times where the sorrow seems unbearable or the loss to great to face or the unfairness so stark that the only way to right the ship and achieve cosmic justice is for the universe to reverse course and re-big-bang its self into a clean slate. But again; wrong. Those are the moments where I hear

  Steph: “Sammy, what does that kind of thinking get you?”

  Me: “Nothing”

  Steph: “Ok, so why would you keep doing that to yourself?”

  Me: “Cause its sad”

  Steph: “Ok so youre just going to stay sad all the time? Really? I don’t want that for you. For heaven’s sake go do something fun….GOOOOO.”

   

  See Steph always got it in a way that so many of us don’t. And that is the biggest point of this first 100 days. I will always be sad that Stephanie isn’t physically here with me. I will grieve that until the day I see her again. But I can be happy and find joy and rebuild my life at the same time. See you don’t stop grieving the loss it just becomes something you do in new ways. Its always there but you learn to live with the emotional scar tissue. I suspect Ill hear her voice and wonder what she would say or do for the rest of my life. I truly would be completely unsurprised if 50 years from now as an old man I am watching grandchildren play on Christmas morning and still pause and think “….yeah…Steph…” And that is ok to do. It is good to do.

   

  But what is not ok to do is to sit and stay in it. Some may wonder why I try to write of optimism and hope and not of my sorrow. I choose not to parade it. Everyone knows how much I miss Stephanie. I don’t need to remind them. My support from the people I care about who surround me is the antidote to those bad days. They have Spidey-Senses as to when I need them. But I won’t sit in it. “What does that get you Sammy?” Then her tag line to every hospital visit for 7 years: “Ok, so whats the plan?”

  You see that is the enduring impact of Stephanie’s legacy. She would not want a festival of sorrow. She would want a celebration of her impact. The night she passed I wrote three words: Live Give Love. Words to sum up her life and legacy and who and what she became; even beyond that I see what happened when those words took off. It was like the Phoenix rising. Stephanie left our sight but at the same time was freed from the bonds of her illness and became something greater; something more beyond the limitations of human life. I followed the three words up with the phrase “Live for Steph”. Id amend it: Live LIKE Steph. See if we, if I can live life like she lived her illness then in that we find her strength, her light and her spark. There you find the way to live each day with the urgency of knowing that in this life tomorrow isn’t promised to any of us; what do you do with the time you have? How much life can you pack into today? And if you miss that for the entrapments of pity and despair, then my friends, you have missed the greatest lesson from the greatest teacher I have ever known. Dark days will come but the skies clear. The snow melts and the grass turns green and flowers bloom again. We are not bound by illness, sorrow, sadness and were surely aren’t bound by fear. We are empowered to face each day with the urgency to live so fully that at the end of the day as we lay down to sleep we are amazed at how much we truly lived. Each day is a lifetime. What will you do?

  Tomorrow is palm Sunday and begins holy week. Now I am not here to preach. I have dear friends who share my faith and dear friends who do not. I love them all. But with the start of this holy week I am reminded of the new life that I believe in and the new life that we can all see as the world blooms again. Find joy in every moment. Every day is a choice. What choices will you make? LIVE GIVE LOVE…if we live LIKE Stephanie we live for her and for ourselves.

   

  Peace and Love to you all,

  Sammy

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