Life is fleeting.

I keep sitting down to blog and then finding an excuse to not do it. And in doing that I've let my list of potential topics build up. So, this post is going to be a little eclectic, but I think I can pretty much tie it all back to the title.

I've experienced a lot of losses lately. Literally and figuratively. Big and small. I've made choices about what I'm doing with my life and I've decided on things I don't want to do with it. I alluded briefly in a previous post about some frustration and confusion that came up this year regarding things such as relationships, friendships, and even where I was going to be living next year at school. I let myself get very bitter. But as I've been realizing more and more lately that this life is so fragile, it has occurred to me that there is no room for bitterness in our time here on earth. People suck sometimes, and life sucks even more often but that doesn't mean that we have to let ourselves get pulled down into all that. In this world not of.

Finding that balance of existing here but living for the future and for God is something that I've had such a hard time with during my time at Anderson. I felt like I was doing everything right for the longest time until I turned around one day and realized how far I'd slipped from the good little homeschool girl I'd been in high school. That was kind of a tangent. I learned this year that I needed to realign myself and distance myself from a few things a bit.

I was reminded yet again of the fact that none of us know how long we have in this body, life, world this past weekend. Thomas invited me to go to Norris Lake in Tennessee with his family for Memorial Day weekend. We got to the lake on Friday and we spent the evening with his parents Tom and Vickie. The next morning Jane(sister), Mike(Jane's boyfriend), Joe(brother), Drew and Alec(Joe's friends) arrived. Saturday was a fun day of tubing, swimming, laughing, boat riding. Sunday morning we headed back out in the boat again and everyone took turns skiing and wake boarding.

Around 1pm Thomas decides he wants to ski. So, he does for awhile but he gets bored and wants to move on to wake boarding. Which he has done before but he decided this time to try some jumps and the like. Everything is going along just fine until around 2pm he tries to go for some "big air" you might say. He goes up, he comes down. He catches the edge of the board and his body falls quickly down face first on the water. Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but if you have ever skied/wake boarded/knee boarded/various other board types you know that the water right behind a moving boat can feel pretty darn hard. We see what looks like him wave from the boat and we all discuss how bad that fall must've hurt as Tom turned us around to go get him. Jane was in the front of the boat and she could see Thomas laying on his back with his eyes closed before the rest of us. She starts yelling at him to get up and stop faking it. The rest of us can see him now and we start saying the same things. Then we realize that his eyes are rolled back in his head and his body was shaking. He was having a seizure. A seizure.

Now, yes, I'm a nursing major and I have had "clinicals" (if you can call them that) but I had never seen that before in my life. He was limp but every muscle was shaking. It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life. I can still see him laying there. Ah, I have to stop thinking about it, it's freaking me out all over again.

His mom was the first one to react [she's a nurse, ;)]. She yells his name one final time then dives in the water. Mike jumps in next and the boat is slowly drifting from the three of them. When Mike gets to Vickie she's still trying to get Thomas to wake up. I'm basically standing lifeless on the boat. My knees felt weak and it all kind of seemed like something I was watching not something that was actually happening to me. Tom starts yelling at us to throw things to them in the water so they can use them to float. A couple lifejackets and a floating seat (courtesy of Joe) get tossed in. Tom tells Joe to take the wheel and he dives in, too. About this time I see Thomas sit up in the water with this look of utter confusion and anger on his face. His mom is asking him his name, where we are, what year it is. Mike has finally gotten the wake board unhooked from his feet and the three of them start pulling him back to the boat. The rest of us are standing with towels ready for them.

Thomas pulls himself up into the boat and stands precariously on the back deck. I tell him to sit down. He says no I gotta get these gloves and jacket off. My voice gets sterner and I say sit down Thomas, you can do those things sitting down. His mom echoes my direction. He sits down next to me. His eyes look a little distant. He mom starts doing a mini-neuro check on him. Asking him questions, testing his strength. At this point I know he's going to be okay. We take him to the local hospital for a scan and they find no bleeding or any problems.

I'm not trying to be morbid and say that I thought he was going to die. But it's definitely another wake-up call after losing Tony and Pappaw so close to each other. Pappaw was old and he had been sick for awhile, Tony was still so young, and then Thomas. He's only 21. But seeing him there in the water was another reminder of the briefness of life.

I don't wanna get bogged down in the gunk of this life. I don't want to miss opportunities to enjoy life and to grow because I was sitting in my room stewing over the latest "wrong" that had been done to me.

Life is too short. Our time is too precious.

"It's your nickel, BonBon"

Today I thought about all the funny little things my Pappaw used to say to me. He was quite a character. I don't ever want to forget his voice and the way he would answer the phone when I called him. I will miss all his stories of the "good ole days" of gambling and cain-raising and running the restaurant. The way he said BonBon and always like to tell people the story of my birth and how sick I was and him calling people to pray for me. How he would tell ANY healthcare worker we came across, "This is my granddaughter. She's a nurse." and I would have to clarify I was only a student and still had x number of years left. I don't want to forget the way he smelled of Stetson and how his whiskers would scratch me when I'd lean in to hug him. He is also the one who showed me how outlining the picture with the same color before coloring it in looks really pretty. I always thought that was the coolest thing. Also, all the days I spent in his pool room in Lawrenceville with all those old men who had names like Blondie, Skip, you get the idea. Playing cards and pool and gambling as a little 6 year old girl. Me, sitting on the counter eating a Drumstick while he stood next to me drinking a Diet Rite. Always having a wad of money in his front shirt pocket, honking the horn when he would get to our house as a sign that we should come out to see him. Those funny black shoes he had and how I would help him tie them. Alllll of his baseball hats. The man loved hats.

I loved getting the phone call from my mom the day Pappaw got saved a couple years back. Years and years of prayers and close-calls with death finally answered.

We won't get to hear him tell us the same things over and over like "Double cheeseburger from Wendy's. Plain. I want it Plain. Pickles and onions on the side. And tell them it's for a senior." or "I'll have a water with lotsa ice. Lots of ice. And she wants an iced tea with no lemon and lotsa ice. No lemon." Mustard on everything, gravy on nothing. Absolutely no pizza, turkey, or macaroni. Only all beef hotdogs, and very select pieces of chicken cause they're such a dirty bird. Ham, and lots of it, burnt to a crisp.

I'm sad about the fact that I didn't hurry home after finals like I usually do. I stuck around to go out for Donnie's birthday and to take my time packing. I would have been able to see him again. The last time I saw him was Easter. And I tried to call him a few times recently on the phone but he had a hard time with cell phones, so I gave up. I miss him. I don't think I've realized I won't see him again. Six other times he quit breathing on us. And six other times he came back to us. But this time was different, and this time he was alone.

I might add more to this one later, I know there's more I could say. 21 years of memories.

I love you, Pappaw. 4/15/28-5/8/09