Love life!

I'm not feeling insightful, but I am feeling inspired.  I recently reread from "Death Be Not Proud a Memoir" by John Gunther.  It is a sad, but beautiful tribute to this man's teenage son who lost a brave battle with a brain tumor.  In the end of the book, however, the author gives us a gift.  He doesn't drag the reader down with thoughts about the unthinkable (ie. surviving one's child) but encourages parents everywhere to love life and love their children more.  In fact he proposes that loving life more is the way to love your children more...but I will let him speak,

Today, when I see parents impatient or tired or bored with their children, I wish I could say to them, But they are alive, think of the wonder of that!  They may be a care and a burden, but think, they are alive!  You can touch them--what a miracle...Exult and sing.

All parents who have lost a child will feel what I mean.  Others, luckily cannot.  but I hope they will embrace them with a little added rapture and a keener awareness of joy.

I wish I had loved Johnny more when he was alive.  Of course we loved Johnny very much. Johnny knew that.  Everybody knew it.  Loving Johnny more.  What does it mean?  What can it mean, now?

Parents all over the earth who lost sons in the war have felt this kind of question, and sought an answer.  To me, it means loving life more, being more aware of life, of one's fellow human beings, of the earth.

It means obliterating, in a curious but real way, the ideas of evil and hate and the enemy, and transmuting them, with the alchemy of suffering, into ideas of clarity and charity.

It means caring more and more about other people, at home and abroad, all over the earth.  It means caring more about God.

I hope we can love Johnny more and more till we too die, and leave behind us, as he did, the love of love, the love of life.


So, I tried to love life a little more yesterday and on the spur of the moment took my little boys fishing.  I didn't really know what I was doing, but the lake is only a 20 minute drive and we found a shady spot on the dock and listened to the water and braistormed about birthday parties and saw some minnows and got our toes wet...We didn't have a single bite, and I'm sure I threaded the poles incorrectly because they wouldn't cast properly, but it was a lovely pause.  Two hours later, we stopped for frozen yogurt on our way back, and still got home in enough time to straighten up our messes, make dinner, and set the table before Carlos returned a little world-weary and hungry.  He felt better though after supper and an evening swim with the boys, and when family night was over and the kitchen was clean, I turned off the tv and broke open Jules Vern's Journey to the Center of the Earth which is finally picking up the pace for my boys' interest. Blake fell asleep in our bed, and I read to my husband the above quote.  Love our life, love our children...
A happy burden.