Like everyone else, I was just shocked and heartbroken to learn of the passing of Chadwick Boseman when his family shared the news on Friday evening.
He was only 43 and had chosen to keep his cancer battle private so it was totally unexpected.
A few hours after I saw the news, this well-timed and totally appropropriate tweet began making the rounds:
It’s so important to remember this.
Since his passing something else has been on my mind though and I’ve written it in about seven different ways and tossed them all, searching for the right words.
I was thinking, still stuck, when a friend since high school shared that her daughter – who just moved to college last week – lost her roommate in a car accident.
I am totally gutted for everyone in this devastating situation.
After sitting with such terrible news for awhile, I’ve decided to just say what it is I need to – because maybe there aren’t “right words” for this.
Life is fleeting.
I may be more cognizant of that on a regular basis than you as I’ve walked the edges of “what if” more often than I’d have liked to with sepsis and GI bleeding and all manner of difficult to interpret symptoms.
I also do research my diagnosis to understand what’s going on – and, for better or worse, I know what the studies mean.
As it happens, this past week has also been a sick as shit (SAS, as we used to call it in my urgent care days) one for me. Some stresses kicked off my CRPS – even in my FACE – and it’s been off to the races.
(As an aside, I won’t be shutting down on writing here anymore when it is a sick week. In the future, the good, the bad, and the ugly will be reported in real time – as that’s the honest life of a spoonie writer.)
Perhaps even more so BECAUSE I’ve been sick as hell this week and it’s been one of such terrible loss, I want to remind everyone, myself included, that we best be about the business of really living and loving well.
For me, even on my sickest days, I am grateful that there is grace enough and love enough and joy enough.
Today, after a night of no sleep due to pain, Frida arrived for my gallery wall:
It was said that, having been terribly ill and bed bound most of her adult life, she kept a skeleton by her bed and shook hands with it each morning.
Frida always reminds me:
All day, my family checked on me and my furry little loves kept me company. ❤
I rested as I could and now it’s back to work.
No matter what, we are here for a purpose – and we need to be about it.
Love God. Love people.
Get to living.
Don’t wait.
Time is precious. ❤
Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Grace and Blessings.
the autoimmune hippie. 