Right now, as I fight back tears, I try to remember a very important lesson: live your life to your fullest. Enjoy your moments, seize them when you can, and never ever think that you cannot do something.
There is a short story that I read in my late education called "The Death of Ivan Ilytch" by Leo Tolstoy. One of Tolstoy's shortest works, it in essence describes a man's unexpected death (well, at least he didn't expect it). He'd spent his every moment focusing on work, not on the important things: family, friends, fun. He spent all of his living moments indulged in only WORK.
His family eventually left him. In his moment of truth, while he's on his death bed, he realizes that his only source of comfort is the boy he's hired to take care of him. His only confidante is a strange slave boy trying to make his discomfort more comfortable. Ivan is filled with regret.
When I originally read this story, I was determined to live my life without regret and have managed to do fairly well. Everything I do, whether it be stupid or unfounded or retarded or humiliating, I stand by everything. I don't want to do things over again because I like the lessons that my mistakes give me.
What's my point? My point is that today I heard something horrifying, something that makes me reflect back to Ivan Ilytch and the type of person I don't want to be. My point is that younger folk don't really consider death as a reality but should.
My boss is a wonderful woman who has endured things that she's probably too humble to recap. Her husband has been fighting stage 4 liver cancer since this past December. The doctors did not sugarcoat it....they told them that he would die of the disease. So Helen and her husband decided to try to prolong his life for as long as they could.
They fought the insurance companies, they fought through many different chemo cocktails, and now they are told that all of their efforts are all for naught. Today her husband was told that they could try a more rigorous form of chemo which would have nasty side effects, or that he could relish his ONE to SIX months to live.
This announcement put my life back into perspective and it made me recognize those dreams that I still have to reach. Life is so short and it can be taken from any one of us within the blink of an eye. I don't want to be like Ivan Ilytch. I don't want to think, upon my deathbed, that my life was not fulfilled to the extent I wished.
Neither do you.
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4 comments:
DOn't worry baby, we will definateley live life to its fullest!!! Luv you!!!
Yes, life is definitely too short. I remember when my friend Karen died of Stage 4 colon cancer almost 3 years ago. A mother of 3 young children, she was taken way too soon and had so much to give. I will never forget her strong will to live for her children and upon her death, the wonderful caring children she left behind.
Not a day goes by when I don't worry that something like this will happen to me. I know to smell the grass, breathe the air is such a luxury.
Sorry to hear about your friend's husband. I hope the medications/chemo treatments offer them the chance to be together and embrace the little life they have left together.
Oh yeah, and I agree with Scottito. I think you two should live life to the fullest and start producing some darned nieces and nephews for me.......start tonight!
That's so depressing, I am so sorry to hear that. A few months ago when I was in work I asked this man who came up to the counter to buy something, How are you today? ...and he replied.....well, I'm above ground so I'm doing very well thank you.I will never forget that man and what he said.
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