They say “today is the first day of the rest of your life.” I am still not sure who “THEY” are, but sometimes they are annoying. Sometimes they are right. Why we humans don’t remember that today is the first day of the rest of our lives every day, every moment, is absurd. (Collectively, also, we have bad memories.)
You know how it is: somebody you love dies and, besides the fact that your heart is ripped out, you can’t breathe, and it’s the worst feeling ever–except maybe that one guy in college who broke up with you and you thought you might die because it hurt so much, well, outside of that, somebody you love died, and for a moment you just…stop. Then you remember that life is short, precious, and beautiful. You realize–you remember— time is short, too, nothing lasts, the person you love just died…and that really sucks.
However, even in that moment when your heart is breaking again (and you realize that it really is much, much worse than that breakup in college, which, come to think of it, now that you are older and wiser, wasn’t really that bad after all), you are alive.
Also, as an aside, if you hadn’t broken up, then you probably never would have met Alan, and you are suddenly so, so glad that Aaron broke up with you and you think: I am so very lucky–it is only because Aaron broke up with me that I got to meet Alan in the first place and he is actually pretty cool. Maybe Alan will be my one true love forever and ever, except he’s named Alan, unlike Aaron. Then again, Alan is kind of a dumb name, and why do I always fall for guys that start with an A? Maybe it’s a pattern (I should ask my counselor about that, and see what she thinks). Maybe I’m making a mistake and I should just break up with Alan myself; he was probably going to do it himself anyway and that was going to be the worst heart break ever and maybe I really should just break up with him so I can, at the very least, move on to a Brad or a Benjamin, or something?
Or maybe, oh, my God, it’s not Alan or Brad and I should really be dating women, and I should be moving on to a Brigitte or something? OMG, what if I’m a lesbian, and now I have to come out to my parents and tell them, and won’t they just be shocked? What if they disown me and ask me to move out? No, wait, it’s the new millenium, and people can’t really be all that narrow minded and hate-filled still in this day and age, can they?
Oh, wait, I’m not actually attracted to Brigitte, anyway, so I don’t have to tell my parents after all, or now that I think about it, I’m not attracted to women whatsoever, so I don’t have to come out to my parents and I can just go back to looking for a Brad. Wait a minute, I still like Alan, and it’s not his fault he has a stupid name, that, if not stupid, was just alphabetically after Aaron. He can’t help it, right? So maybe, since I’m not a lesbian and I still really like Alan, I don’t even need to think about that past anymore (when, for a brief minute I worried I was a lesbian, and before that when I dated Aaron, and, and, and— instead, I can just come back to the present, once the caffeine wears off, and I can just stop already, and breathe and…feel the pain.
You realize that, in fact, the Aaron/Alan breakups were not nearly as bad as the death you are now actually grieving. So, in that moment, again, you stop, and you realize that death is horrible (for the bereaved, because honestly, who knows what it’s like for the dead? It might not be that unpleasant, actually, except for the breathing tubes, the ventilators, the IVs dripping in the chemo (if it’s not Covid and it’s cancer instead) or any or all of that, but really, the point isn’t about all of that icky death stuff. The point is that “they” were right this time: life is short and we have to appreciate each moment because who knows when it is going to end?