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Posted by on Jan 11, 2022 in Blog, Personal | 3 comments

When Midnight Comes

 

 

Let’s strive to live more, learn more, love more, and laugh more. All internal clocks are ticking and we never know when midnight strikes.

I’ll share something here that’s very private. Some of you may get something from this. For me, I have a philosophy that sharing information is almost always a good thing. You never know who is out there reading who might need to read something that’s uplifting. Many times, I have taken strength from the posts and wisdom of others.

I live a blessed life, with great food, wine, family, and friends. But there are also challenges.

The biggest challenge in our lives right now is being a caretaker for my mother-in-law, who has lived with us for the past 25 years. She’s 89 now and is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. It’s a brutal disease. If you haven’t seen someone you care about with it, trust me, it’s horrific.

Today, “mom” refused to walk the stairs. This was a first. We take her downstairs at least twice a day with supervision so she gets exercise. But this was the first time she refused to walk. Actually, make that “forgot” how to walk. That’s what Alzheimer’s does. It robs the victim, slowly of who she is, and was. This is a woman born in Bucharest in 1932, who lived as a girl under Nazi occupation, survived 45 years of communist rule, and immigrated to the USA in her 60s. She was a pharmacist and is as tough as a bar of iron.

Which brings me to what we see and what’s hidden. My writing and sharing provide great joy. It’s a tremendous outlet. But it also masks a harder reality behind the scenes, in between the posts about wine and football, those things that usually we don’t share.

I’m not looking for sympathy, nor even encouragement here. I get plenty of that from some wonderful sources. But there’s a lesson here for us all, that behind the closed doors of who we are and who others may think we are and what our lives are like, there’s perception and then there’s reality. All of our realities are what life truly is, behind the masks of smiles and the posts on social media, which can be a helpful distraction but just as much an illusory mirage.

My takeaway from all this and what I hope is a helpful lesson is that while we have our complete selves, we should strive to live more, learn more, love more, and laugh more. All internal clocks are ticking and we never know when midnight strikes.

3 Comments

  1. So true. Nice piece.

  2. I love your takeaway. Life goes too quickly and then it is over. It’s so important to live every day and be happy and make others happy.

  3. Gratitude on your sharing.
    Know that I am one, of who I expect are many, which visit this site frequently and come away having laughed, learned, and better from it.

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