"One must lose one's life in order to find it." - Anne Morrow Lindberg
In hindsight, perhaps watching the video of a PSA featuring a montage of dramatic auto accidents wasn't the best choice prior to going to bed. One of my friends had posted it on Facebook. I watched. I had to. Just to see if I could look the demon in the eye, I suppose.
I went so far as to re-post it, with a short commentary about how, at my internship today, as I was auditing charts and checking dates, staring at calendars from 2006 to 2010, I perversely counted the days since the accident.
One thousand, two hundred and ninety one.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure, measure a year?
My fortieth birthday is this Sunday, three days away. I get maudlin near my birthday. And the New Year.
So there I was counting the days and reviewing what I'd done with them. Had I progressed? Had I learned? Had I grown? Had I healed?
Was it worth it?
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball,
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all."
At 2:04 a.m. I awoke smelling burning plastic. Since the accident, I have olfactory hallucinations. No, that's not quite correct. I don't suppose they are technically hallucinations if they occur in dreams. Let me be precise then, I dream in color, which I always have, and now, I perceive odors while I dream. It's usually the smell of something burning. Toast. Plastic. Metal.
The fact that I awakened and all my muscles were pulled tight like harp strings, my neck corded and taut, my shoulders locked and ready and my inhalation paused mid breath makes me think I was in the middle of a nightmare. I did what I always do in these situations. I breathed. Then I tried to figure out if something really was burning.
Then I realized the smell of burning plastic was really the smell of the deployed airbags.
S'io credesse che mia riposte fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s' i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
I got out of bed, and walked around the house checking, just to be sure, that nothing was on fire. It's my fate now. To sometimes doubt my senses, my memory. Then I turned on the laptop and began to write this.
So what is the answer? What is worthwhile?
After posting the video I learned that this was the anniversary of my friend Shannon's brother's death. He died in a car accident. He did not, somehow, inexplicably, extricate himself from his vehicle and live to tell about it, and live to blog about his recovery and experiences. He doesn't get to be maudlin and self-deprecating about how much he hasn't done in the years since.
The answer is, "I don't know." And I do know. And it doesn't matter. And everything matters.
Someone asked me recently, "If you could go back and relive any time of your life, when would it be?" This wasn't asked in the sense of returning to alter the past or correct mistakes. She meant to ask which time period was so good that I would trade my now for it.
I shocked myself with the answer. None. I would not return to any other time in my life.
I guess that means I'm happier than I thought I was because, honestly, all things considered, now is just as good, if not better than any other time.
I am learning. I am healing. I am making a difference, even if I don't always understand how or to whom.
In three days I will gratefully celebrate my 40th birthday and toast what I have survived and who I have become because of it.
How do you measure, a year in the life?
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Measure in love.
Seasons of love.
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