The first time I saw this image and the text with Andrew McLaren’s Facebook post, I nearly cried. When my mother died last fall, it gutted me. I was drowning in grief, guilt, regret, even for things I had absolutely no control over. Losing her detonated an avalanche of emotion that buried me, suffocated me.
My husband must have felt like a full-time therapist during the worst of it. I cried at movies, news stories, commercials, or just the wind blowing. I leaned on him, collapsed against him, shattered into pieces with him, that he gently held together until I could do it myself.
Yesterday, the afternoon was just too beautiful to stay inside. I took a walk at work, and I looked up and thought how gorgeous the sky looked, brilliant blue, with fake-looking, fluffy clouds splashed here and there. It was the kind of day my mom loved, the early fall days with cool breezes and warm sun, as summer slowly slips away and autumn makes its presence known.
It never seemed fair to me that my mom died at the beginning of fall and didn’t get to enjoy one last day of her favorite season. It felt cruel. The thought made me drop my eyes to the sidewalk, thinking, missing her.
Then I realized I was making a huge mistake. No, my mom can’t be here to see this sky, or enjoy this day. But I can. Why waste it? Why not enjoy it for me, for her? Why not live even harder, love more ferociously, not only in her honor, but for my own true happiness as well?
The post mentioned above ends with, “Don’t die with your dead. Honor them by living your life as they would have wanted you to. Let them transcend. And you keep living.”
It’s one thing to read those words. It’s something else to reflect on them, really hold onto them and let them sink in. And it’s finally something altogether different to truly act on them, absorb them, live them.
I feel like yesterday, I finally embraced those words and made a conscious decision to live better, happier, more grateful, with intent and peace and meaning. It’s not just for me; my husband deserves this too, to spend his days with a healthier and stronger me. He held my head above water when I desperately needed him, and now that my feet are back under me, I want to do more than merely exist. I want to live. To fly. To love until we are breathless, to laugh as much as possible, to try new things and discover adventure of all sizes, to appreciate all the little moments that make life magnificent, and to never, ever miss a beautiful sky.
Sweat & Sparkle 