Celebrating Life

Hi Everyone,

Here is the first guest blog entry we received. I am sure you all will like it as much as I did.

Sarah is a writer and artist who works on celebrating life and making a little bit of progress every day. Some days, that means taking a longer walk, other day it means making an effort to reach out and encourage others to speak their truths.


Last week, my partner and I went off on a planned trip to Baltimore; we left home around 4am Friday morning. This part is all background. We were going to the area to check it out; it's an area where we may someday move. My parents knew this, and are considering the whole thing to be a done deal. Her parents knew that we were going, and thought it was just to scope out the area and celebrate my birthday.

That's why her mom didn't call to tell us that, on Thursday, her grandmother was taken to the VA hospital because she was panicked and uncomfortable, screaming in pain.

In fact, the call didn't come to us about this until Saturday morning, when it was decided by the family that only "comfort measures" would be taken - oxygen and morphine so that Harriet would be comfortable. We were told that Harriet would want us out there living our lives, to follow the path that we'd set out on. We knew that there'd be hell to pay if we changed our plans.

So we set out and explored on Saturday, and again on Sunday until I finally suggested, late in the afternoon, that we could change our flight back on Monday. I had decided to call the airline, to see what we could do to try to get back in time to say goodbye before she passed. It seemed like the best possible compromise - we'd head back early, but not so much so that anyone would be upset or give us grief about it, especially because it was my birthday.

It worked out that we left six hours early than anticipated; and once we landed we headed straight to the VA hospice suite. My partner was unsettled, bracing herself to say goodbye; I was unsettled, because I believe in celebrating life, because I'd changed my plans. We went to the suite - my in-laws were there, along with both of my mother-in-laws sisters and one of her brothers.

In the midst of the hospice suite, in the midst of the family coming together to be there when its matriarch passed through the ending stages of her life, her dad had baked a birthday cake. There was singing, and laughter. In a room that sees mostly death, there was a celebration of life.

I give her family credit; I know that mine wouldn't have been as strong, as committed to a celebration, as committed to living in the moment and embracing all of it: the awful, sad and scary along with the joy, and the sense that life continues.

Celebrating life doesn't mean only looking for the good things. Celebrating life means accepting all of the imperfections, all of the things that just don't work out exactly the way that they were planned.

I think that celebrating ourselves is also a way of celebrating life. We can have all of these great plans that fall apart. We can buy a great shirt only to realize that we don't have anything to wear it with. We can get a great job only to realize that there's something that isn't quite so great about it - long hours or a boss we can't seem to agree with.

Ultimately, I think that celebrating life is just that - accepting that nothing is anything without all of the pieces, good, bad, beautiful and ugly present and accounted for.