Appreciate the Present



All too often, despite living in the best of all possible times, we fail to appreciate the wonders of the world all around us while we can.



Cousin Bonny, Aunt Irene, Cousin Darlene & Uncle Bob

My cousin Bonny, a decade younger than me, found herself constrained to a hospital bed in northern California for most of the last few years, and she made her transition to pure spirit this week.

I remember when Bonny, as a little girl, a year or two older than my granddaughter Emma is now (Emma turns three tomorrow!), came over to spend a couple of days at our house.  My mom had a white glass basket filled with my favorite fruit in the center of the round kitchen table, and I would take one banana for myself and hand one to Bonny.  "If you eat too many bananas, you'll turn into a monkey," I said while taking a bite.  Then, of course, I would do my best imitation of an ape, complete with scratching my head and grunts of "ooh...ooh...ooh."  I made the same silly joke several times over the years when our extended family got together to celebrate holidays at Mom's house, always greeted with happy giggles.

When Bonny was about ten, my Uncle Bob proudly paraded her out to play the accordion for us, and she happily complied with a cheerful tune.  This is the kind of snapshot memories I have, not knowing much of her day to day life going to school, running to Chief Auto Parts with her dad or helping her mom set the table.  She had her personal universe, just as I have mine and you have yours, with lives intersecting occasionally.

About ten years later, Bonny and I both found ourselves working for my dad.  Friendly, smiling Bonny was a favorite of customers and co-workers.  By that time, she had started smoking, which might have contributed to her breathing problems later in life, although I doubt that was the major cause.  In any case, she enjoyed many happy times with friends in and around Old World Village, where she worked.

My nuclear family in San Diego plus Mom and sister Darlene.

The best of times seem like they will continue indefinitely, but just as seasons inevitably change, so the people and places in our lives evolve and sometimes dissipate from consciousness.  While I was busy focused on my own family, I lost touch with Bonny until she came to my mother's funeral five years ago.  She and her brother Mark attended, having seen the obituary in the Orange County Register.  Several times before my mom passed, she had mentioned that Bonny was already having breathing problems, confirmed by her mother, my Aunt Irene, who I joined for dinner at Mom's at some point.

We connected on facebook, but not really.  Just along the lines of seeing each other's posts.  I could tell she had a life of quiet desperation, confined to a hospital bed with a breathing machine.

In the final analysis, we either believe in something or we don't, and I do believe in everlasting life, so I have no doubt Bonny is better off now, freed from a body that had failed her.

My dog Alvin at Mom's house.

Humans may be the only life form to contemplate our own mortality, although as my friend Pete pointed out, we don't actually know what animals may or may not think.  In any case, as Wayne Dyer says, until we accept the reality that we all have a finality to life in this form, we may never truly live.

Find your passions.  Explore your possibilities.  Love and be loved.  Experience the world. 

We all have the same number of hours each day, but we also have free will to decide how to employ them.  I'm not saying to take hedonistic disregard for earning a living or exercising your body, mind and spirit, but rather to appreciate it all, and to also take time to get away from the daily routine so that you can gain perspective and bring greater appreciation of what it is to be alive when you return to it.

While we have the same number of hours in a day, none of us know the number of our days, and even the person devoted to a macrobiotic diet and hours of daily exercise will find that eventually he will die of something, even if it is simply "natural causes," just as a seemingly healthy 48 year-old athlete did recently upon completing the swimming portion of a triathlon in Redondo Beach.

I write this not to be morbid or crass, but to remind us all to seize the day. 

Carpe diem!