LAST THOUGHTS

It's funny the things we think about when lying on our death bed. It's even funnier, not to say depressing, to realize the many things life tried to teach us through situations we just dreaded. What's very sad about it all is to look back throughout the line of our life and see that only after we've spent most our lives we receive the epiphanies and the growth of those experiences… If only I had spent less time winning and suffering for every single stupidity that crossed my path, and I had just lived my life a little bit wiser.

These days, I frequently remember my first true friend. We where friends since we were babies. We went to the same school; he was my best friend in the whole world, and the only person I completely trusted. We were friends until junior high, when he yielded to the cancer that had taunted him since he was born. He was my first true friend, my first kiss and my first love. After I lost him, I was always afraid to love so freely again, even with my husband, who I love so much more, I feared to let myself go… This was what I took from the most wonderful boy I could ever meet.

I remember how a simple summer breeze could light up his face. He was amused with the most trivial things. Obviously, he was known as the school weirdo, no one, including me, could understand his excitement of living. In reality, he did and was what we all wished to be but where so afraid to: happy, joyously happy about nothing. Now that my life is coming to the end I understand my dear friend, I just wish I could've done it earlier in my life. A couple of days before his death, with the smile that never left his face even in the last minute, he said: "Don't waste any minute… Don't be afraid to be the freak, enjoy what you have... Walk barefoot in the rain once in a while, dance if you're happy even if nobody’s dancing, cry out loud if your heart aches, and enjoy the summer breeze.”

I never took my friend’s advice, I thought I was too mature to do so, but I was just afraid. I saw him then as a crazy kid who lived in wonderland. Now I see he was a wise soul, and I regret never been in wonderland. Sure, you must be thinking, “she has spent the bigger part of her life winning and suffering about the past instead of living life and learning from it, and now she'll spend the shortest part of life in regret”. Yes, it seems completely absurd, but when you can't move, see, speak or listen, when you're dead to the world and simply waiting for the transaction to be completed, there's not much to do but to think, what if...