I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

A family member is in critical condition, and not expected to pull through... What makes this even sadder is that the person in question has led a very limited life, you might even say, hasn't ever really lived at all. She's a year older than me, and there is nothing that can be done for her. I feel powerless, and very sad at how much she will have missed out on.

That is something I really hope is never my epitaph. And with the PTSD thing, and how much time I have already lost to it, it might apply, though to a lesser degree.

There's a poem by Dawna Markova that seems particularly significant to me today:


I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
Of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
To allow my living to open me,
To make me less afraid,
More accessible,
To loosen my heart
Until it becomes a wing,
A torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
To live so that which came to me as seed
Goes to the next as blossom,
Goes on as fruit.

--Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life. Maybe that's my new mantra.