Lucky

I remember reading some Gary Zukav book years ago when I was in India. I was staying in this dingy 3$ per night hotel in Bangalore which had cockroaches crawling up through the sink and a single metal fan on the ceiling that rotated at a speed just fast enough to create noise but no breeze. I got to this section in the book where he said,

"If you had three minutes left to live who would you call? What would you say? And why aren't you on the phone right now?"

I know, it is nothing that profound at first glance perhaps. But I remember racing down the stairs and out into the dusty streets, finding an "STD" Booth (as they are called) and tracking my mother down for a strange, random, out-of-the-blue profession of admiration, love, and gratitude.

Working in the ED one gets reminded (too often sometimes) that many people never get to have those conversations before they unexpectedly leave this earth.

And so, that quote haunts me still from time to time. Who would I call today? And what would I say? What words are unspoken?

I am grateful for the phone calls and emails I've received lately regarding Jody, and grateful also for the conversations her death has inspired.

Today was Jody's funeral and thankfully the emotions and expressions were not too little, too late. Jody knew how much she was loved and respected, and in turn she made sure we knew the same.

It made today truly a celebration of her life, and not merely a declaration of our loss. I doesn't make her any less missed, but it does make all of this just slightly easier to bear.