December 11, 2013: Life sure has a funny way of getting its point across. Today was … trying. I picked up my anesthetized sister at the hospital this afternoon. She thought I could just zip her home after day surgery. This quick ride home turned out to be a significantly more time-consuming adventure. (She’s fine, but needed to be monitored, so off to my folks’ house she went.) Traffic, ten minutes late with a senior director at work, red tape, annoying processes … sigh. Today was the kind of day that you’d generally classify as a pain in the neck. Thank heavens I had happy hour scheduled with a friend. Just what the doctor ordered … a nice glass of chardonnay, fireside.
There was a couple that sat across from us. Friendly faces … the kind of people you start a conversation with. We went from past travel stories to design plans they had for a house they were building. From what it’s like in Kelowna to how strolling the Great Wall is a terrific item for anyone’s bucket list. We talked about my plans to visit Jasper next year … what the Northern Lights look like from Yellowknife, while Dave drank his beer from a straw. Didn’t think much about it, but everyone’s got their quirks.
My friend, Lynn, and I told the story about how we met. Sixty miles of pavement-pounding in a fight to end breast cancer. From there, the conversation morphed to the value of health. I told the two of them the story of what will forever be known as “my really bad swim workout”. Dave’s brother suffered a similar situation, and the two of them got very animated about naturopathic health care. Turns out they weren’t here for wine tasting. Or shopping. Or looking at the Christmas lights. Turns out, Dave and Karen were there to see someone about the ALS Dave was diagnosed with last July. It wasn’t until then that I noticed that he leaned over to sip his beer from his straw while his hands, turned slightly inward, remained in his lap.
Dave was a long-distance runner. A mountain climber. A nature lover. He simply said, “well, you can’t not fight”. No truer words have been spoken. Today was not a pain in the neck. Today was a gift …