When The News Makes You Reflect

I got ornery today. It started out as any ordinary day. My eyelids frosted into slits. I creaked and needed coffee to rise. I tipped the creamer into my nectar of the bod and it splashed down the front of my chest, to my leg, and the floor. I sat there and wondered if the day was going to be more of the same once I was out the door.

The freeway was slammed. It took two hours to get to my doctor's office. The parking structure was full and I parked far away. The scooter lift got stuck and had to reset. A woman with a handicap placard gave the rest of us a bad name by parking her car in the pedestrian walkway and blocking it so my scooter could not access its safety zone. This forced me to make my way around the structure into oncoming traffic. Like creamer filtering its way down my chest then my leg. Then she gave me stink-eye. After I gave her stink-eye. An eye for a bloodshot eye.

I arrived at my doctor's office to a waiting room packed with other disheveleds like me with the word LATE etched into their foreheads. All were abuzz with the Sigalert on the 405. The same one I crept through amidst lipsticks in rear views and closeted texters on wheels that couldn't spin. Then a man said, "It was a bad wreck. A motorcyclist died." It would be hours before it flowed freely again. Until his stain could be removed.

I paused.

Suddenly my day did not seem so daunting. A reminder of the brevity of our time.

I arrived home defeated. My spine a wreck from hours in the car and a spinal stimulator that's malfunctioned and causing more surgery. This clouded the pause I took earlier in the day. When I remembered what I should never forget. To be grateful for each day no matter what has spilled, because we don't know how much time is left.

I filleted my limbs on the couch - waiting for my husband to ask, "Hi Honey, how was your day?'

Ding!

A voicemail chimes in from my mother.

"Honey, what is wrong? I heard something happened on Camden in Beverly Hills today and a friend posted a prayer for everyone in that area. Is everything okay? I know you went into town today. How did the doctor go? Give me a call and fill me in and I'll watch the 4 o'clock news to see what happened."

So I googled Camden, Beverly Hills, News.

There it was. 'Woman jumps from 15 story building on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills. Onlookers were distressed and horrified at the event and the sound of her body hitting the pavement. She later died from her wounds at the hospital.'

Why does it take the misfortune of others to ease the burdens we bare? Perhaps it's because we hear of bad things happening all day long between the computer, radio, internet and television. But a specific guilt slips over the skin when another's misfortune is revealed.

There will be more mornings when the coffee will burn or the creamer will spill. The freeway will close and all will be late. But I hope the next time, I take a deeper breath, and first give God thanks for the time I have left. I hope I remember that each day I have, is one left behind by an unspoken breath.

I got ornery today. But by the grace of God I'm here tonight to tell my husband about my day.