Today is filled with emotion.

Ten years ago today my husband and I became parents.  And, life was never the same.  As we celebrate Wills 10th birthday I am overwhelmed with the joy of being his mom.  I am also very aware of those for which being a parent isn’t possible.  I am so thankful to feel well enough to celebrate with him today and every day.  This weekend we took he and his team to the Louisville City soccer game, yesterday we made his favorite dinner (burritos), this morning we made him breakfast in bed then I went to my monthly treatment with two dear friends.  This afternoon Jay and I brought our smoothie maker to school to make his class fruit smoothies! Complete with umbrellas.  Tonight we will cheer him on for a birthday win (hopefully) on the soccer field.  Every year on our children’s birthday I tell them the story of the day they were born.   Wills was breech and we had no idea!  (so much for the natural childbirth we were planning… so quickly the way he got here didn’t matter but just that he was safe).

As I was running around today getting miniature umbrellas a dear friend with Metastatic Breast Cancer is breathing her last breaths in the loving care of Hospice.   I carry the sorrow of her family close to my heart.  As I hug my son I think about the fact that my friend won’t be there for her children at their next birthday.   The heart wrenching reality of this awful diagnosis.

I am thinking both about birthdays and deathdays.  Then I get really angry that my reality points toward such morbid thoughts.  But, I have several friends living in the “alternative reality of advanced cancer” and it makes me so very angry that there are not more options for them.   I am aware of how fortunate I am today to be worried about miniature umbrellas.  Life is derailed with cancer and ultimately destroyed for so many living with advanced disease.   I don’t have profound thoughts about end of life.  I am in awe of my friend whose deep faith enables her and her family to rest in peace as her body weakens.   Right now, today, as I celebrate my sons birthday.  I am more angry than anything that there is nothing else we can do to help her.  I am really just in such disbelief.  I am reminded about how thin the line is between celebrating birthdays and facing death for those living with advanced cancer.  I know how much she would love to care, for just one more day, about mini umbrellas.

So today I celebrate Wills’ birthday and the lives of all those living and dying.  I am reminded today how precious and fragile this life is.  Celebrate and be grateful. Live with intention and gratitude.   That is my birthday wish for my sweet 10 year old and all of us.  This is my mantra as I take a deep breath, hold my head up and walk up to the carpool line. Balancing on this fine line.  Live each day with intention, joy and gratitude.  Life is fragile.

here’s to today… and mini umbrellas,
Lara