Once on an episode of COPS, a woman, upon being arrested, was throwing a Made-For-TV tantrum when her mother, giant breasts sagging out the sides of her tank top, cigarette hanging from one side of her mouth, drawled, “Shut up girl…you aint dead.”
You aint dead.
And ever since, when things are tough or one of us is whining, my husband or I will raise one eyebrow and remind the other, “You aint dead…”
So at 3:30 this morning as I’m scanning my Facebook home page, feeling sorry for myself that I can’t sleep, I come across a post by a fellow I follow named Ryan Woods. Ryan, a man I guess to be somewhere in his thirty’s with a wife and two small children, is dying. Ryan, sometime in the wee hours of the morning, while I’m lying in my comfortable bed dreaming about the next fifty years of my life, wrote a blog post called, “Dying and Entering Hospice”.
And suddenly the reality of the line with which we so casually joke, takes on new meaning. Because soon, Ryan Woods will be just that. Dead.
I don’t even know how to write about his and his family’s heartbreak, a topic I can’t begin to understand. And so I won’t do him or his family the disservice.
I’ll just put this DONATION link out there…in case anyone feels inclined. And a link to his CANCER WRITING in case you want to read his story. He’s funny and smart and even in the worst possible circumstances has undying faith.
And next time I’m feeling whiny or feeling like I got the raw end of the deal, I’ll think of Ryan when I tell myself, “Shut up girl…you aint dead.”
