I watched a man’s dead body being pulled from lake to shore by EMS this early this morning while on my usual run.
Needless to say, I am still in awe.
The way they attended his floating body in the water, and tried in the most awkward of ways to bring him onto solid ground. The way his skin and face looked like our fingers do when we’ve been in the bath tub too long. The way his clothes were completely in tact, there was no blood drawn. He was simple, seemingly perfect. But he was not.
He was not because when they finally landed the dead weight of him to the patch of grass — there was no emergency. There wasn’t that sense of urgency in the way they checked for a pulse and likely had found nothing. Even in their earnest resuscitations, there wasn’t much hope. They went on and on, as us passersby waited. As we waited for news of what we too knew, wasn’t true.
And then when he was wheeled away, that was it. For everyone else around that was it. We’re fine. We’re expected to go on with our day. Knowing what we knew and didn’t know, but having seen what we had seen and a whole new frame of view.
I spent this day wondering and thinking. Feeling and guessing about everything I knew. I thought about what I was doing and how I was living. I think about this everyday, but today there was something even more pressing.
This life that we have, right now in this way — how fleeting. And if we aren’t living it in the way that we truly desire, then why are we here? Why would we continue to go on living in pain, or with discomfort? Why wouldn’t we try and face what is hard and difficult for us, so that we can feel and experience something better?
We know this, we’re told this: Live everyday as though it were your last. But do you?
Do you really? Do I?
No. Not everyday.
Some days I live as if I have an infinite amount of everything. Some days I sulk in my own little circumference of privileges, and do absolutely nothing about it. Some days I let the rain pour down the windows as if it were my skin and I let it ooze and spill and fall away.
Other days, I sit alone waiting for someone or some thing to come down from the sky like a beaming green and gold shimmering light from the future and transform me into everything I’m day-dreaming of. They would change everything I disliked and turn me into the person I want to be. I’d be set for the rest of my life..
When I really want a lover by my side, sometimes I just fantasize over couples that I see in envy and cross my fingers that I’ll one day be brought my prince charming.
Other times, I close my eyes and cry as though I’ve lost everything. And it’s with full knowledge that I know I’ve lost little, and gained much.
So from what I witnessed today, from my eyes of green and openness…From a heart that I know works well and full on many good days…From being close to death for the last week in many forms I need to vow and make some kind of re-honouring statement for no one other than myself. It’s just for me and what I’m going through today. Right now, after this day. After this day that started off cryptic and strange and then opened up like a blossoming flower with love and sharing and fun.
I may not live everyday like it’s my last, but I can’t justify myself living as though I have infinite amounts. Not even for myself, but in honour of those we’ve lost, or who have left us too soon. I am going to live as though I’m remembering them, all of them. And my remembering will be felt by living in my own integrity. Of living in my fullest range of beautiful and bold, sensitive and passionate, quiet and exciting, irresistible and estranged, lost and found, and all encompassing.
I will live for you, through me.
In peace may he rest <3
