A Year to Live

I have a friend whose brother died three weeks ago. She’s not a close, intimate friend, but is someone I adore, admire, and whom I do call friend; a person I’d like to get to know better. Her brother was diagnosed on a Tuesday with melanoma and died in three days. The doctors described it as an “explosive cancer.” It reminds me that our physical lives are finite – our flesh, from the moment of our birth begins to decay, our bellies extend, our skin and tits sag, teeth yellow and rot, our butts hang down like pancake batter, our sight wanes, hearing loss joins the march of time, joints ache, and we shrink. My dad used to be 5’6”, now he’s 5’4”. The last time I visited him I had to ask, “Is the house getting bigger or are you getting smaller?” I told him that if he lives to be ninety I’ll be able to simply bury him in a suitcase and save a few thousand on a casket. “Get one of those wheely ones,” he said, “then you won’t need pallbearers.”

Last week, friend Kenneth sent me an email that stated he had one hundred free tickets for "The Story of My Life", a new musical on Broadway currently in previews. He wanted to know if F. and I wanted to go. F. did. I didn’t. I’d checked out the musical’s website and it wasn’t a production I was really interested in attending. It sounded hokey, corny, not my kind of thing. I’m not a musical queen, although I do enjoy some, like The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Singin’ in the Rain.

I did, however, change my mind and this is why: after my mom died last year, another friend, Pamela, sent me a book on CD called A Year to Live. Author Stephen Lavine had culled research on people who were dying and through this discovered unique lessons that people with terminal illnesses could teach all of us. A Year to Live is the book he wrote about the experience his wife and he had after they vowed to live for one year as if it were their last; as if they had been given a prognosis that they would cease to be, bereft of life, when three hundred and sixty-five sunsets had sallied forth into the wide blue yonder.

After listening to the book, several points resonated with me. They were ones the authors found consonant with many women and men who were terminally ill. The first was that people wanted to concentrate on expanding their horizons. Next was that during their lives they wished they had stopped, or slowed down at least, to smell or plant the roses. Even more said that they would have foregone their sequacious, unhappy jobs to pursue these goals.

Many spoke of the present moment as being the only reality. The past to them was a dream that, if unmindful, served to obscure their true nature. They wanted to become more mindful, more present. They wanted to extenuate their fear of their imminent deaths by truly being alive for a change instead of sleepwalking through life.

It was because of listening to and trying to live what I learned from A Year to Live that I decided to go to the play last week. I thought: if I had one year to live, would I go to this show? And the answer was affirmative. It was an opportunity to see friends, have a drink at the inimitably nostalgic Sardi’s beforehand, and even if the show was a complete bomb, I’d have the knowledge and experience that it was.

A young investment banker, recently laid off, was interviewed on NPR. He was thirty-four years old and had been making over $250K/year. When asked if he would eventually like to return to his former profession he said, “I don’t think so. I want to do something in which I’m valued for who I am, not valued for how much material things I produce for other people.” This wasn’t the first time I’d heard or read interviews in which people intimated that the recession has made them re-evaluate what’s important in their lives. This was especially true around the holidays when I heard a father say that his kids wouldn’t be getting many presents under the tree. He thought it was a good opportunity to show them that time with family, kindness, love, and charity are more important gifts.

Will I put into practice every day the concepts of living life as if each day were my last? Probably not every day. My intentions are usually good, but alack, alas, life is dirty; if it wasn’t, each day would be a goodly bore. Life is messy for a better part of the day and distractions and encumbrances deter me from focusing on being present and mindful of my spirit, but I make a concerted effort to wade through all the muck.

On an early frigid February morning the gray blanket of twilight mutes the urban soundtrack. I do my best to set my intentions when the city is still sleeping. I read a daily thought from Madeleine L’Engle, get on my knees and pray. I don’t ask for anything, I just give thanks to my Source for everything and everyone in my life. I then sit on the sofa and silence my mind so that the voice of my Source can come through to let me know what I need to do today. This helps me reset my mind and kickstart my spirit every morning lest I’ve forgotten since yesterday. I remind myself to try to live this day as if it were my last.

Each day I find a new aspect of me. My present self is born from the experience of the erstwhile Timmie. Death is an ineffable concept, but Socrates said, “We should always be occupied in the practice of dying.” By doing so we learn how to live. What would you do differently today if you had a year to live?