Life is precious

Life is precious. I know this.  Every night before I go to bed I creep into Lara's room, just to watch her sleeping (usually face down with her bum in the air - it looks neither comfortable nor ladylike but it seems to work for her).  I often hold my breath just so I can hear her breathing.  Sometimes I think I could sit all night just watching. 

I've generally gone through life without worrying too much about things.  I tell myself: if you focus on the potholes in the road you'll miss the scenery.  But really, I don't know if not worrying is a good thing or a bad thing.  I don't even worry that much about Lara - I have somehow convinced myself that she'll always be ok. Maybe I should worry more. Maybe I will, as she starts to find her own way through life and inevitably loses her blissful toddler innocence.  

I hope that Lara outlives me.  Yesterday I received an email from my mum telling me that her cousin Pamela's daughter, Emma, had been killed in a road accident. I'm told that I met Pamela and Emma at a distant relative's wedding anniversary party at some point in the 1990s. I must have been in my early teens.  I vaguely recall the occasion but I don't remember meeting Emma herself - in my mum's words "pretty, with blonde curly hair".  She was just 36 when she died.

By chance this morning I read a post on Kevin Landolt's blog. I don't know who Kevin Landolt is, except that he lives in the USA, he is a rock and ice climber, and he is slowly dying of leukaemia.  This is what Kevin wrote:

Things can always get worse. There really is no bottom to the depths of suffering, but I have learned that through it all we somehow find within ourselves the courage, strength, and humor needed to carry on. We can dig so deep, and then deeper still when facing our personal tragedies, and we have the ability to view those tragedies as opportunities to grow as individuals. 

A slow death is calling me and I know she’ll be a welcome relief when she arrives - whether that be in this hospital bed or years from now in the mountains where I have searched for and found dazzling smears of ice that appear for a number of hours on the flanks of granite walls and then disappear in a matter of minutes beneath a fierce western sun. I hope it’s the latter.

Life is precious.