Would you rather...?

Remember the game you used to play as kids, would you rather? Would you rather....kiss this boy with "cooties" or smell this hot boy's feet? Would you rather lose an arm or a leg? Would you rather run through school naked or would you rather dig through a full dumpster? Would you rather die really quickly and not get to say goodbye or know you were going to die and get to do things and say your goodbyes? It's all fun and games when it's theoretical but when it hits a little closer to home...well, you start to realize, you still don't know. I never knew the answer and I don't now. And truth be told, it is still, in essence, theoretical. I would rather live until I was 87, with a clear mind and a relatively healthy body and see my kids and grandkids. I would rather not have to think about any of this. I would rather go back to being blissfully unaware and ignorantly healthy. That's what I would rather, but that rather is gone, no matter what happens, even if I live to 87, even if all of those great things happen, my mind is tattooed with this knowledge.

The news stories the past few days, along with some new members in our facebook group, have me thinking. I know, as if I don't think enough, all the live long day. A few of us have run into (do you run into people on the internet?) girls who have metastases, and are younger, and that sucks by itself. Many of us, with a few of the girls having recurrences lately and such, are having such yo-yo days, where we are feeling great one moment and despondent the next, and so we post and ask each other what to do. And then I read the news where two hikers get lost and are found and then proceed to drive into a lake and drown an hour later. Or the newlywed who goes halfway around the world on her honeymoon to get mowed down while looking a patchouli and rasta hats at the beach. Or the guy on the motorcycle that I witnessed under the yellow blanket on Sunday while getting Jack a burger. And it really just gets replayed in my mind on a loop lately - NONE of us know what is in store for us or when - not even when some of us have already played ding dong ditch at the reaper's door, not even if he has peeked through the peephole but not opened the door yet. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse, I guess it's just one of the mysteries of the universe that I have to come to terms with.

But with all of this going on, I just go back to a line from a TV show that hit me years ago. I loved the show "Dead Like Me". It was a one season show, and I adored it. In one of the first episodes, George has to reap the soul of a little girl,who is to die in a train crash, and she can't do it, it's unfair that such a little girl should not get to live. And Rube (Mandy Patinkin, in one of his so many many great roles) says to her something along the lines of "No, it's not fair, she should get to live, but life is not fair. But we don't make the rules, and if souls don't get reaped when they are supposed to, I have seen what happens. They wither and rot and die inside of a person. Would you condemn her to that?" And with all that has been going on around me lately, what I have seen and heard, I'm starting to truly believe that. No, life isn't fair, it's not, and that really really sucks at times. Young children should not lose their parents. Kids shouldn't die. But we don't make the rules. I don't know that I will ever understand that. Maybe I just have to live with it.