This moment......remembers that moment!

Haven't been able to write much lately.   Seems like all my feelings and emotions are mixed up and confused.   I feel well physically, although I do notice that I am more tired than usual.   Seem to want to nap alot and often have an idea for doing something then 'sleep' gets in the way.  Oh well, at least I am still essentially healthy.

I am feeling very sad though b/c someone I have known for thirty years is dying of cancer.   She has just sort of been around in my life all these years and I guess in many ways I never thought about a time when she wouldn't be.    It is also very close for me b/c she seems to be going down  hill really quickly.  Things can change so fast.  As I write this I find my eyes welling up and the tears starting to fall.  Life seems to just go by so quickly sometimes, and it scares me.   What seemed like just yesterday is actually many years ago. 

Eleven years ago today, I was at my 25th high school reunion in Montreal.   I was so excited!    A friend and I had driven up from Toronto (each with a child in tow) and were getting ready in our hotel room to go to the dinner and dance.    Another friend that we hadn't seen in 25 years (at least I hadn't) was due to come by the hotel to go with us.  It was such a fun time and so much to look forward to.   We felt like we were so old celebrating 25 years, but at the same time the emotions and excitement were similar to getting ready for a school dance.   Oh to get that time back!

The other side of that weekend was it was the beginning of my not feeling well.   I ended up leaving the dance early b/c I was just too tired.  I figured it was the trip and the excitement and so I didn't worry much.   The next day I spent walking around in all my old haunts with my then 12 year old daughter showing her all the childhood places and telling all kinds (albeit censored of course )stories of the things we used to do here and there.  I even went to my old house, knocked on the door and asked if I could show my daughter - the new owners were very happy to oblige.  I  remember we went for supper at the St.Hubert BBQ restaurant that was built on the old golf course that was behind my house when I was little .....it was a great day.   Little did I know that what was coming would make that day engraved in my head because it is the last day I remember that she and I spent so care free.    39 days later I would be diagnosed with Stage 3, Grade 3, Clear Cell Epithelial Ovarian Cancer.    Our lives would never be the same again!

Life can change in a moment.....it can change for good or bad...but nothing stays the same no matter how hard we try to make it.    Eleven years ago I was diagnosed with cancer and would go home to the East Coast about two months later.    This woman who is now dying would come to see me and comfort me......
I had the privilege of seeing her while I was in NS this past month and I am so grateful.   Who would have believed that so many years later I would still be here to say good bye to her.    She is much older than me and she has lived a full and good life, but still it breaks my heart to know that she will soon be gone.

As I sit here I realize that we all need to take a minute and just live now, right now, not tomorrow, not yesterday, not even a moment from now BUT RIGHT NOW......can you hear the birds, the silence, see the beauty, taste or smell the air, if so sit in it and wallow....don't move on till the moment is over and then live in the next moment......it may be your last and you will have missed it, and then again it may not.....but it may be the one moment you really want to remember and hold onto.....like that day 11 years ago, feeling tired and drained, I still took the time to share it with my daughter and can sit and recall just about everything we said and did....living in the moment then has given me many moments of joy both now and over the past eleven years.

New found happiness....for the moment

I know that happiness and contentment is an attitude that one finds internally and not through external sources.   Well, if you find it through something outside of yourself it will probably be very fleeting.
BUT....and I mean a big BUT...is that sometimes its o.k. to acknowledge that you have found that wonderful albeit fleeting feeling from some material source.    I did just that yesterday....oh it was so sweet and I was so happy, I was dancing (sort of) and laughing and being just really silly because my heart was so happy and excited.....no I did not find Mr Right or fall in love at first site...at least not with anything resembling a human species.    I rec'd a gift of yarn....oh not just any yarn...a gift of silk, alpaca, merino and ewe boucle.    In the most beautiful colours and also so soft and subtle, you just want to maul them and hold them and stroke them, and feel them, ok so now it is bordering on sexual.  

I have the most wonderful people in my life and I know and appreciate that fact all the time.   Then sometimes they do something for me and I am just amazed at how really nice these friends are.   Well, I had mooned over, pined over, and whined over some yarn I had seen about a month or so ago at a Yarn Fair, but alas I was strong enough to realize that it was not meant to be the two of us....that perhaps in another time and place our paths would cross again and we could be together forever....again I have moved in to the questionable area of sexual....really I am talking about yarn not men!!!!!!

A good friend gave me that yarn  yesterday with the pattern to make the most amazing sweater ever.   So I am tickled pink, and didn't want to sleep a  wink last night.   I took that yarn and spun it and wound it, and stacked it and then started to play with it....I mean knit with it.   OMG I think I know how you feel in heaven....at least from a mortal point of view.

So, although it is material this happiness, it has lingered into this new day and will continue to arise in me a feeling of absolute devotion until I have completed the sweater....at least a good 50 hours of knitting I figure.....better than a man...he would never last 50 hours....Oh my I am bad!

So, for the moment, and I AM living in the moment, I am ecstatic....over the moon, swooning like a teenager over my new found love....I mean yarn.    Take a look.....isn't he....I meant it beautiful......