| Carpe Diem. Seize the Day. | The St. Catharines Standard - December 13, 2000 | |
Seize the day. Delight in the present. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. All trite but true maxims that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. While such reflection and retrospective thought is usually reserved for New Year’s Eve, this year circumstances have brought about an early mental year-end review.
You see, this hasn’t been a good year for fathers. At too many family dinner tables this Christmas Grandpa’s chair will stand empty. Despite medical intervention, fervent hopes and pleaful prayers, many families, including my own, have suffered the death of their father and grandfather. Logically I know it’s a fact of life: loved ones die. But in the past little while it’s become very personal, as death has come far too often to those I know.
No one ever warned me about this period of life. It’s a very strange stage of adulthood. On one hand there’s the joy of watching one’s children grow and mature, but on the other hand that happiness is often overshadowed by the worry over aging, sometimes ill, parents.
Over the course of the past year I learned that death takes many forms; all of them equally difficult to deal with. I’ve learned a person can be physically weak and heavily medicated, yet still have their inner strength shine through. I’ve learned that cancer is a swift and viscous thing. And only now do I truly understand the anguished look that haunts the faces of those who have experienced this trauma.
But as cliched as it sounds death has also made me appreciate life. Thus the Carpe Diem mindset. I’m very clear now on what, and more importantly who, matters most to me.
I think people shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss such platitudes as “May you live all the days of your life”. In our success-oriented, high-speed world with it’s fast-track mentality, happiness and enjoyment are often pushed aside to be savored later. But there isn’t always a later. You cannot take back the moments you’ve wasted, or spent doing the wrong things.
So, if I make a point of holding my husband a little closer, hugging my kids more often, or giving my son my complete and undivided attention throughout the entire length of one of his excruciatingly long stories, it’s because I’ve been reminded of what the priorities should be in my life. Held up against the harshness of death all those stupid little annoyances that previously seemed so urgent, now look rather silly. It’s amazing the clarity of your perspective.
I resolve to fully enjoy the good things, and will try to let the rest go. Not easy thing for an obstinate, out-spoken person to do perhaps, but something that now seems important.
So, while things may not be quite so jolly and bright around our house this Christmas, we will still be happy. Much to my children’s dismay I will continue to croon off-key to my favourite Christmas caroles. I will definitely over-indulge in holiday chocolate, and most likely be reduced to tears once again while watching Going My Way for the gazillionth time.
These traditional holiday activities will not diminish my family’s loss. Certainly sadness will creep in around the edges of our Christmas celebration. Sympathy cards will be mixed in with Christmas cards and kindhearted friends will temper their season’s greetings with a sympathetic word or two about my father-in-law’s passing.
But the spirit of Christmas, with those rather idealistic notions of true happiness, joy to the world and peace on earth, is exactly in keeping with my present frame of mind.
So to all of you I wish a Merry Christmas... and Carpe Diem.
My father-in-law gave me a gift. No, not a Christmas gift since he passed away just days short of the Advent season. But he did permit me to help care for him. Which to me, was his gift. Some may consider it odd, but I consider his gift a special one nonetheless.
Ours was never a particularly close relationship, rather a "polite", amicable friendship, the type sometimes reserved for a private “proud” older man and the woman who married his son.
Cursed with a fast-progressing cancer, he managed somehow to remain surprisingly strong and lucid, I’m sure he was proud to see how his entire family by his side. But Ken could still gather his thoughts. One look into his thin, jaundiced face and you could see he did know where he was, he did realize who was holding his hand. True there were just as many moments where the fatigue and confusion settled in, but he even managed to make those around his bedside laugh.
He could say thank you and call me by name, let me know he knew it was me. The thanks was of course unnecessary, some things are just understood, but the recognition meant much.
I chose to take this to mean that he liked to have me there, along with all the other members of the family who spent time and cared for him during his last days. He allowed us to glimpse a part of him we might not otherwise have known.