A Lifetime...

Today, it’s been 2 months since Zach passed. We didn’t know on September 10th, 2023, that the next day our lives would change forever. I looked back today on September 10th in social media land…I was having a lazy day and cuddling with Porter. I was making silly reels and tik toks. In real life, I was resting. Unfortunately, I learned that my aunt had fallen at church and was needing surgery due to a brain bleed. She had suffered a stroke and needed serious medical intervention. The next morning, I made a funny tik tok. It’s still in my drafts and it will never be shared. I prepared to go visit my aunt in the hospital and was conversing with my cousins via text about my planned visit. Then the news came about Zach. The world stopped for us but went on for others. What a strange feeling.

I watched that tik tok the other day, the one I made in the morning just a few hours before we got the news. I looked at myself and thought, that is the closest I will ever get to seeing who I was before this tragic event unfolded in our lives. I’ve looked back at photos of Chris. Of the kids. Of our extended family and I have thought…you clueless souls, a devastating and life changing loss is barreling toward you, and you are all CLUELESS!!! Wake up!! DO something!!! HEEEELLLLLOOOOOO!!!!

Change it.

But we can’t of course. We don’t know as we smile in front of a landmark, enjoy a day outdoors, laugh into the camera with friends that our days are numbered. Zach didn’t know either. He didn’t know as he posted a joke on social media or shared a video game clip with friends that they would be his last. We just didn’t know…and that seems a lifetime ago.

Two months? My brain says. How could that be? We’ve survived a lifetime since then it seems to us. And then even weirder…our hearts say…wasn’t this just yesterday? Just yesterday didn’t you feel devastation all over again? Yes, we did. I don’t know exactly how to explain this. My therapist says cognitive dissonance. Thoughts and behaviors don’t quite match. We go about life. We work. We eat. We sleep. We talk. We plan. But our thoughts are elsewhere. And our hearts are elsewhere. It’s a truly indescribable feeling if you’ve not experienced it. But I do think most of us have, in one way or another. At one time or another. It’s the human condition. Again, that price for the privilege of love.

I’m struggling to pull these thoughts together. All I can think about his Zach, and his lifetime. His hopes and dreams. His pain and angst. His healing and growth. His lifetime. It was too short. Not really a lifetime at all, but rather abbreviated. Is it weird? The entitlement we feel to a long life. The expectation we have of that long life. I sort of think so. I’ve always said, “Life is not short, it’s long”. To long to be unhappy, to long to live unhealed, to long to live hardened by the world, to long to not do the things important to you because why wait. But I see now that I’m saying life is short, I’m just saying it in a way that, to me, makes cognitive sense. Even if you get 100 years…it seems short right? My grandfather asks me almost every time I see him, “how old are you again?”. I say, “48 grandpa”. He shakes his head, snaps his fingers, and says, “it went by just like that”. I say, “what about you, how old are you?”. He says, “92 Mandy Josephine” and as he snaps his fingers, tears rim his eyes and he says, “it went by just like that”.

I suppose this is where I say something inspirational about living life to the fullest and not taking life for granted or some other nonsense…as if we all are. As if are all just out here being flippant about life when I know for a fact, we are not. I don’t think people I know, or people I don’t know are just flippant about life. I know people, and I see people I don’t know, who are VERY aware of life’s fragility. Because most of us have lost someone or something we hold dear. Zach had lost a friend just before he passed. He knew that life could be fragile and fleeting. He understood the value of a lifetime. And we know he valued his. As did we. We’ve never assessed his wins and losses since he passed. We’ve never wondered, did he do all he could with is short life? Although we mourn what could have been, we do not lament over what was not. We are so thankful for his presence, his place in our lives, his smile, his sense of humor and what it brought to a conversation. So, what really are we measuring for ourselves? All those to-dos? That work project? I know these things can be important and far be it from me to bash ambition because I’ve been one of the most ambitious people I know for a while now. But in the scope of a lifetime…what is it really that we seek? I don’t know. Maybe for others it is work. It is being the best at what they do. One super cool thing about Zach is that he did not put a lot of value on what he did or what he had. Secretly, let me tell you…for a while that drove me nuts. When I was pounding away in my three-inch heels in the halls of a large corporation and Zach was just…chill, it drove me nuts. But he taught me a lesson. A lesson I will cherish and try to emulate. Just be. It’s enough. It’s enough for a lifetime.