In case the subject of death hits too close to home right now, you might want to skip reading this. Go watch the new season of The Great British Baking Show and have a cocktail.
Or, you can read this, and face death head on. Maybe use the idea of our time on earth being limited to help get you going. It’s up to you.
I still remember vividly when my grampa told me he was going to quit chemo. “I’ve got a metal taste in my mouth,” he said. The chemo made him very sick, and he told me he didn’t want to live like that.
That was June or July…a few months later, I came home to visit, and as I pulled in the driveway, I saw my 84-year-old gramps up on the roof with my uncle, doing some work. I yelled at him, “Grampa, what are you doing?!”
“If I fall, I fall! I’m not going to die in a bed.”
Gramps had a point. You have to live while you’re alive. He was actually a pretty cautious person, so if he wanted to get up on the roof and replace some shingles, by God, I guess that was alright.
By Christmas he was bedridden, so frail I didn’t see how he’d make it past New Years. But he did.
He held on until the end of April.
My grandparents, Lambert and Caroline Konze…two of my favorite people ever to grace this earth
Grampa’s death was the first big loss I had experienced in my life, and it caused me to shut down in many ways. I sought safety and security, and gravitated away from taking risks in my life and my business for a long time.
Years later, when my grandma went through the exact same thing—reproductive cancer, radiation, chemo, hospice—I had a much different reaction.
While she was sick, I called gram every single day to talk. My Grandma never ran out of things to talk about.
One day, as we were chatting, she let slip, “…like that time I flew in the Red Baron’s plane.”
Just casually dropped that sentence, like no big deal. “Uh….you did WHAT, Gram?”
She goes on to tell me how sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, she signed up for a drawing at the grocery store to win a flight in the Red Baron’s plane, and won.
“Well, I guess your aunt actually won, cuz her name was drawn, but she was pregnant at the time and couldn’t go, so I went.”
“Um…wow. What did gramps say?” I asked, knowing my grandfather who was paranoid about danger of even the minutest kind would definitely have had something to say about my 60’s-ish at the time grandmother flying in an open cockpit plane from WWI.
“Oh, I suppose I just didn’t tell him”
And then she proceeded to tell me “And I guess I played hooky from work that day…just called in sick”
This is how I like to imagine my grandma
I loved my grandma’s attitude and spirit. She married my grandfather when she was 16, had seven kids, a job, helped on the farm, and they were never especially well off. They took one trip abroad in their lives (not counting Gramps’ three years in France during WWII).
So Gram took her kicks where she could, and didn’t let anything get in her way of having that experience.
Gram and Gramps visiting my aunt and uncle in Germany in the 70s.
So while my grandfather’s death closed me off, made me cautious, my grandmother’s death brought me back to life.
It was at this time that I decided that I wanted to live like my Gram, or at least like I think she would have if she had lived in a different time, where societal expectations of motherhood and housewifery hadn’t held her back from doing even more.
I didn’t want to wait until I was 84 and dying of cancer to actually start living the life I wanted, because by that time, it would be too late.
Right after that, I got my passport and went to Italy for my first ever trip abroad.
Glorious Orvieto
That same year:
I made my voiceover demo…something I had put off for ten years.
I created and produced a play with one of my best friends.
I went to London to see my acting teacher perform on the West End.
I spent three days in Iceland by myself, my first time traveling entirely alone.
That was five years ago, and SO MUCH has changed for me in that time. Including a little bit of backsliding into cautiousness.
The pandemic requires some level of cautiousness. Right now, not doing so can quickly land you on a ventilator.
So…we must walk this razor’s edge of being more careful of our health, while remembering to live while we’re alive.
Pursue our dreams while we can.
As autumn begins, and we approach the second Covid winter…I am faced with another relative diagnosed with cancer.
This time, it’s my cousin. Someone I grew up with. Someone younger than me by a few years. Someone who has two daughters under the age of 9.
Life can be terribly unfair.
And #fuckcancer. Seriously.
So, what does this all have to do with you, fair reader?
Please answer these questions:
Do you frequently put off things for “someday?”
Do you repeatedly tell yourself that you’ll finish your project next year?
Do you hesitate or hold off on things because the time is never right?
If so, I want to remind you:
You will die.
I will die.
We will all die.
Watch out for weeping angels
These days, we are so removed from death in so many ways. We like to pretend it doesn’t exist.
I’m sure someone will accuse me of being morbid.
But occasionally contemplating our mortality can actually help us to live fuller, richer lives.
It can remind us that taking certain types of risks to pursue our dreams and achieve our goals, while they might be scary…won’t kill us. But something will, eventually.
Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives…
The time will never be ideal.
So make time.
Know what things are most important to you in life, and make time for them.
Then make a list of the things that are not important to you, and find a way to do less of them.
Say no more often.
So you can say yes to the things that truly bring you joy.
My cousin just went skydiving. And she is going to take her two daughters to Disney World.
That’s what’s on her bucket list.
What’s on yours?
