Bridget

I was saddened this week at the loss of a woman I never knew. I mean, I never knew her personally. I have, however, come to know her through those that loved her.

My friend's sister had a lovely friend named Bridget. Bridget had a wonderful husband named Steve. She also had a sweet little girl named Grace and a newborn named Chloe. Bridget loved to dance and be with family.

Bridget had cancer.

Early on in Bridgets pregnancy with Chloe, she was given the news. During that time, she spoke of a calmness that washed over her knowing that everything, somehow, would be all right... even if her earthly body died. She believed that God was standing right beside her and in that strength, she lived each day. After many weeks of pregnancy with chemo, an emergency C-Section was performed and Baby Chloe was saved. Unfortunately, the prognosis never got any better for Bridget, and after much prayer and discussion and tearful last goodbyes, Bridget passed on. The email I received yesterday left me a little sad, but also feeling amazingly blessed for having been a witness to the strength and grace of a woman I never knew.

Her husband wanted me to know her. He wanted everyone to know her. Everyone who was ever touched by her. Everyone who will miss her. Everyone who ever breathed a prayer for her. So he pulled out an email from six years ago and invited us into a moment between a man and a woman so that we might know what a special person Bridget was. It's a long list, but don't worry... you have time to read it...

LOVE 101

1. I love when you smile

2. I love your Yahtzee celebration

3. I love how supportive you are of others

4. I love that you can dance

5. I love that you don't like Strawberry Hag -- more for me! :)

6. I love that your value our relationship

7. I love it when you rub my back in church

8. I love it when you laugh at my jokes

9. I love how supportive you are of your mom

10. I love that you love your family so much

11. I love that embarrassing things don't embarrass me when it is a result of you (see V-day cookie)

12. I love that you have entrusted me with your heart

13. I love your ankles

14. I love how we are able to work through our problems and come out stronger at the end

15. I love how your personality balances mine

16. I love how you support your friends

17. I love that you accept me and my many flaws

18. I love that I can give my life to you and know it was a good investment :)

19. I love your nose

20. I love that you pull me out of my shell so many times

21. I love the fact that looking into your eyes and smile can calm the storms inside me

22. I love your heart

23. I love smelling your hair after a shower

24. I love driving the Rav-4 with you as my co-pilot

25. I love that I can trust you to do the right thing

26. I love that you are a committed Christian

27. I love that we made a shift from 4:30 to 11:00 service for eachother's growth

28. I love that you are working on telling me concerns or things that bother you quickly

29. I love rubbing your back

30. I love rubbing the tops of your feet

31. I love your generosity

32. I love your kindness

33. I love that you have stopped breaking hard for me

34. I love that you were not late on Sunday or this morning

35. I love the glow you get when you talk about our relationship

36. I love hour head smashed in my chest when we hug real tight

37. I love your bumper

38. I loved it when you taught me how to ice-skate

39. I love how you compliment my strengths/weaknesses

40. I love how we have great talks about different things

41. I love that you know my WSU jersey number

42. I love that you don't hate me for buying a Nextel phone

43. I love how truly supportive you are of me

44. I love how we both rave about Gordon Huegenberger

45. I love that we both love Park Street Church

46. I love that we met at Park Street Church

47. I love kissing your neck

48. I love spending entire weekends with you away (see Wash. DC)

49. I love watching people get drawn to you

50. I love how others admire you so much

51. I love snowboarding with you

52. I love snuggling on the couch with you

53. I love taking walks in the rain with you

54. I love sitting on benches in the park with you

55. I love going to sleep on the couch next to you

56. I love waking up next to you

57. I love being your disc jokey

58. I love when we go on trips together (NYC, DC, Oregon...Australia?)

59. I love when you open up to me

60. I love opening up with you

61. I love looking at the picture of you on my cube wall

62. I love dreaming up pictures we can put up on our condo's new walls

63. I love going to BC football games with you

64. I love going to Sister Sorel with you

65. I love hearing your "smokers" voice

66. I love calling your office

67. I love walking by Bakey's on my way to Fanieul Hall and reminiscing

68. I love picking up your tab

69. I love making you happy

70. I love it that you make me so happy

71. I love it when you clean my earlobes

72. I love it when we sit close together on the T

73. I love it when we went on runs together...we should get back into this

74. I love talking to you after your dance class, you're so full of energy

75. I love playing tricks on you

76. I love giving you zrbrts

77. I love rubbing your stomach and back super softly

78. I love seeing you wake up

79. I love scaring you when you go to pick something from my face

80. I love that I have written 79 of these without hesitation

81. I love that I can call you my fiancee

82. I love that we have wonderful mutual friends

83. I love that you are my life's number one priority

84. I love that you are forgiving

85. I love that you are understanding

86. I love it when you look at me with your sheepish grin

87. I love it when you hold my hand

88. I love it when we hug that special way on the escalators

89. I love falling in love with you again and again when I dream of you

90. I love that you are accepting of my love affair with REM

91. I love that you love family as much as me

92. I love that we look to hang out with one another before anyone else

93. I love that you are 5'6''

94. I love that you looked into buying me some new chinos

95. I love in a few months we will look back at Thursday as just a blip in the radar screen

96. I love that you stuck by me through my weird time in early January

97. I love that you didn't run away when you were scared I was cheating on you with Lisa

98. I love the dream that I will be this old (98) and still call you my sweetheart

99. I love that you strengthen my character

100.I love that you will be this old (100) when I am still calling you my sweetheart

101.I love that God brought you into my life.

Just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that cannot be explained in words.

Your forever,

Steve

Goodbye, Mr. Last Lecture

I'm late to this news only because I've been cleaning and catching up on life and otherwise living under a rock after a weekend away. I had no idea that Mr. Randy Pausch had passed away. (Chicago Tribune Story) While it saddens me that this world has become just a little less beautiful because of our loss, I am thankful for his energy in telling the world the amazing message of living life to the fullest no matter what. We all have an expiration date... what random collection of time and space that is, we don't exactly know. It's an artificial moment in time compared to the time we are living right now and the space we are occupying right here. Some of us struggle with physical ailments. Others of us struggle with emotional scars. But through it all, we are here. We are alive. We are now.

What are you going to do with this one and only life?

God Bless you Mr. Pausch for the last lecture that grew and spread in the ways that only a message of truly inspired love could have. You showed us how a man facing the reality of death took his one and only life...

and lived it.

...

The Invisible Sugar

You wouldn't know it, but when I was little, I was terribly shy. Seriously. Stop laughing! No, I mean it. I wished that nobody could see me. I wished, especially, that nobody would look at my eyes. I was famous for them. Not too many Mexicans with sky blue eyes. I didn't care about that anomaly. I just didn't want to engage. I wanted to just fade away... into the trees, or the walls, or wherever I could hide.

I wanted to be invisible.

I used to turn beet red whenever anyone even asked me my name. I know what color I was turning because it was making this glowing aura thingy all around my face. And I was feeling like I did when I had a fever and needed a cold wash cloth on my forehead. I always tried to hide behind my moms legs at parties. Either that, or I would find the coat room and hide in there. If there were any teens making out (happened more than once), then I would look for a walk in closet to hide in. I walked hunched over just in case anyone wanted to actually have eye contact with me. I didn't want to hear about my pretty eyes. I didn't want to hear about anything. I rarely spoke except to people that were familiar... safe... I was always just so scared.

I'm not quite sure what happened, but I think sometime around fourth grade, I started to feel comfortable in my own skin. It was when I began attending St. Dominic Savio. It wasn't Catholicism that brought me out of my shell. Heavens no! The thing with Catholic schools is that you are in a class based on your grade and you do pretty much everything with that class. The only time you really ever know any kids from another grade is because they happen to be your younger or older sibling. At least that's how it was at Savio. This environment felt safe. Stable. Consistent. Things that were seriously lacking at home. It wasn't really anybody's fault. I don't know that too many adults would have done any better than the ones that happened to be our parents. They had a lot of shit thrown at their already f*d up selves.

See, the year before we entered Catholic school, my little sister died.

Claudia, or Yaya as I used to call her, was born with severe Cerebral Palsy. From the time she was born, we were told that she would not live to be ten. I was always aware of that fact. That she would die. That I would never see her walk. That we would never ride bikes together. That she would never be Auntie to my future children. But I loved her anyway.

I loved God, too.

I think I should have been angry at Him. But I couldn't be. He was really all I had. Except for Yaya. There were times I prayed to him, not to make her better, but to ask Him why this had to happen. Why would her little lungs never grow? Why couldn't she tell us what she needed? Why did she have to writhe in pain? I don't think I ever got mad at God. I was just very sad that this had happened to her... to us. I remember watching the ball drop on New Year's that year. I remember being so sad that we had left her behind. And I prayed to God that she was with him. And walking.

And that she was without pain.

They say that your personality is formed by the time you are seven. My sister was born when I was two and died when I was eight. I wonder now how loving a dying person almost all my life must have affected me; this young sweet child. I wonder how much of my fears about living and loving are based on that experience. Besides going to school, I only remember those years as the years that I loved, cared for, laughed with, and mourned my little Yaya. I think I was playing shy, (cause I'm not) because if I ever looked up long enough from my humble stance, I might have just started crying... and I don't know that I would have been able to stop.

No wonder I'm in therapy.

...

Shocking Goodbye

It's not that I was a huge fan. It's just that I love to see people clearly living the life they were meant to live. Which is why last night, I stood shocked with my hand over my mouth as I tried to understand why the radio announcer was putting the words together in such a strange string... "Heath Ledger... dead at the age of 28." Not THAT Heath? What? Oh dear God! Why? Why did such a light get extinquished? And 28? That just seems so wrong. So heartbreaking.

Today I read a quote of another person I admire. Another person living life to the fullest. Johnny Depp. This is what he had to say about dying:

"I don't think anybody's necessarily ready for death. You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you've said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence."

Mr. Ledger definitely left mid-sentence. Far too soon for those of us who were not ready to let go of such a talented person, huge fans or not. And little Matilda... he obviously loved her with his whole heart. There was joy dancing in his eyes when he carried her on his shoulders. So sad...

I don't even want to mention reality checks or hoping that this will shock others to be careful. I think there's enough of that going on in the speculations of his final days and hours. It's tremendously more important to note that he lived. Really, truly, actually lived. Every moment. That may be the only solace the world has now that this one glorious human is gone. That he seemed like the kind of person that would be alive and vibrant in even the smallest moments of life. Making this quietus all the more tristful.

Goodbye, Mr. Ledger. Thank you. For your art. For your passion. For really living.

Living Your Life

It never occured to me that talking about death would elicit so many facial ticks!

Recently, I asked several friends who they wanted to have speak at their funeral. Who would tell their stories and make people wish they would have known them more? Harmless... uplifting, I thought... but no...

I forgot.

I forgot how scary death is to people. And I think I know why. Maybe because of our fears of not really living. Of course we are all alive... breathing, at least. But who is ceasing the day? I see my death as number line. I don't know how many little ticky marks there are left, but I know that there will be a final one. This line gives me something to think about when I choose what's imporant, where I'll spend my time and energy, who I'll let walk away. I don't see death as a looming evil waiting to take my last breath, but a reminder that time is slipping by whether we like it or not. And while we all have the same twenty-four hours, am I making it count?

Someone mentioned the Secret and Bad JuJu by bringing up the "D" word. Here's the real Secret... you WILL die and saying it out loud isn't going to make it go away. I think it's funny that we will walk through life and put so much time and energy into buying or having or consuming, but talk about celebrating a life you dared live and people get freaked. "Teach me to number my days aright, Oh Lord." It's a prayer... not a curse.

I challenge you as I have challenged myself to live a life that matters.

It's My (Last) Party

Some of the things you start to think about around the mid-life years can be exciting. Some are just plain depressing.

In re-evaluating my personal goals, I always keep in the back of my mind that A) I'm not getting any younger, and B) I'm on a bit of a time crunch. What's the one thing, other than taxes that you can always count on? Yep, the D word.

I'm kind of a freak about planning. However, since the day you die is the one thing you can't really set a date around, I thought I'd get all the other details taken care of ahead of time. My family already knows that if there isn't a bagpiper playing Amazing Grace, I'm coming back in their nightmares! I even started gathering the photos for my montage complete with Green Day's Time of Your Life playing in the background, of course. Like I said... I plan.

One detail I recently thought about is: Who would be speaking at my last party? Unfortunately, that's not really anything you can bank on but if I could, I would pick:

Roger Burns: my mentor and friend. He knows just how to say anything. He makes you think while making you laugh. If I could, I'd clone him so you could all have a Roger. A long time ago, he told me not to be afraid to go out on a limb... that's where the fruit is.

Julie Hollenbeck: my old Blue Bird pal. We went all through school together, from first grade to graduation. We walked down the aisles at each others weddings and cried through each others divorces. I swear God put us together. I would walk through the gates of Hell for this lady.

My Children: all of them. I don't know what they would say about me, but no one can give you the full scope of who I am better than these little creatures. Good or bad, I hope they are there to see me off with a word or two.

Not my husband. He'll be dead WAY before me! (Love you, honey, but you know it's true.)

So who would speak for you? Tell the stories to the grandkids? Make people laugh and cry and wish they would have known you better? For the more dramatic, feel free to choose anyone, dead or alive, real or fictional, famous or infamous.

Rest In Peace,
Sugar