Memento Vivere

Starting over again at 50 seemed pretty pointless. I kept telling myself I was too old. I tried applying for housing and public assistance. But like so many other occasions in life God had other plans. That’s just a fancy way of saying I was stuck where I was. With the debt I incurred paying off my dead husband’s debts even a Section 8 apartment was beyond my financial reach.

It is on faith that I’m speaking in the past tense, because I’m still here. Still looking up.

It didn't take long to go from there to here

So, brethren, in whatever state each was called, there let him remain with God. 1 Corinthians 7:24

My hang up with death started when my mother died at forty-eight. I was twenty-three years old, and I always felt like I was working against the clock.

Thirty years later and only two of my mother’s six siblings are still alive. Then my cousin, Sandy, who I regarded as more like a sister than a cousin, died. She was fifty-four years old.

When Sandy died, it wasn’t a shock. She had been a diabetic since childhood. In her adult years, God bless her, her health only continued to decline. The last few years of her life she spent in bad shape. She said as much herself. And now she was gone.

My cousin, Sandy, RIP

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 1 Thessalonians 13:14

It wasn’t until I was helping her mom and sister put together picture boards for her memorial service that it all hit me. Sandy and I grew up together. Now we’re not only not kids anymore, but she’s dead. I could be next.

At her memorial, I looked at the faces of my other cousins. We're all getting gray hair. Their kids look how I remember us to be: young and spry. Now they have kids of their own. It all reminded me that the clock is ticking. But rather than inspire me it filled me with fear. I spent my whole life so afraid to die that I never learned to live. It’s not just a lyric in a song. I’m proof people really do that kind of thing.

I went into panic mode.

“I could be dead in five years,” I kept telling myself. “Why bother now?”

Then I heard somebody say, “Where God wants you to be five years from now is none of your business.”

That hit me right between the eyes.

It was a TV interview, and the man was saying something to the effect that even if nobody reads it in this lifetime write it anyway. He said, “Just make the transaction.”

Time flies whether you're having a good time or not

         Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; Ecclesiastes 9:10

My dad said about my cousin, “She still had a lot of living left to do.”

I realized he was right.

I couldn't keep wasting the time I had left lamenting the time I had already lost. I thought about all of the people who died young and still managed to do something productive with their lives.

Would they have started had they known what little time they had? Sam Cooke, for example, was only thirty-four years old when he was murdered.

Nobody knows how much time they have left.

Keep moving on

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43: 19

Sandy’s sister offered me a necklace with her ashes in it. The Catholic church is against that kind of thing, but I talked it over with the local priest. He said although it’s “not good” it’s not sinful. I thought I could regard the necklace as a memento mori. As I wait for that item to be given to me, I realize I don’t need a reminder that "we too will die". At this stage I know more people who are dead than still alive.

I need to remember to live.