Fragility

One of the things I often say is that “life changes in the space between one heartbeat and the next.”  I know it to be true, as we all do.  One moment we are convinced that life will look the same tomorrow as it did today and, without warning, something changes, often dramatically.  An illness comes out of nowhere, an accident happens, and nothing will ever be the same.

As we live through the aftermath of those changes, especially the traumatic ones, we remind ourselves of the fragility of life, we remind ourselves to make every moment count and take nothing for granted.  Yet, as we heal and move forward, we fall back into those patterns of complacency, believing that the status quo is more than just two words.

I was reminded of this last week as I stood at the gravesite of my cousin Mike.  Mike and I were months apart in age and, even, high school classmates.  In fact, there is a family photo of the two of us walking down the aisle, hand in hand, at his aunt’s wedding.  We are both 3 and I am in a long, pale yellow flower girl dress.  Mike is the ring bearer in a mini-sized white dinner jacket.  It’s clear that he is determined to get down the aisle quickly as he is holding my hand and tugging me along.  I suspect, even then, I wanted to linger in the spotlight.

While we didn’t share the same circle of friends, we did have overlapping friends and knew each other pretty well.  After all, we were cousins, and life frequently threw us together.  Later in life, we lived in the same suburb for a while.  Our youngest sons were the same age and in the same grade in high school and we had connections over our family dogs, all beloved family members.

Mike was always involved with our high school class. Staying local, he still connected with old friends, and he was one of key organizers of our reunions.  Before reunions, he would make a point or reaching out to me, reminding me to be there.  I have to confess, more than once I told him that I couldn’t be there, or I agreed to be there and later reneged.  I always felt a little badly that I was disappointing him but not badly enough to make the effort.

I saw Mike last summer at a graduation party and knew he wasn’t well.  He didn’t tell me everything, but he did tell me that he was fighting cancer.  And he told me that he was tolerating the rigorous chemo regimen well.  I hoped, and believed, that the outcome would be his victory over this disease but that was not the case.

Losing Mike is a terrible blow to his beautiful family, his wife, children, and grandchildren.  It is even more devastating to his mom, who could only say to me “This is wrong, this is wrong.”  And it is very wrong, it is not the natural order of things.  Our high school classmates were there for him in force at the funeral as were so many from the community who loved him.  And I felt both the sorrow of loss and the guilt of not having acceded to his simple request.

Would my presence at our reunion have made any difference to anyone? Only to Mike who would have greeted me as he often did, with a big smile, a warm hug and the words “Hey cuz’.”  Little things, little moments, reminders that tomorrow is not a given, that memories are made by small things as well as big ones, that life truly does change in the space between one heartbeat and the next.