My Day

When we wake up each morning we hope we are going to have a good day. I stress - we hope! Well let me tell you about my day and yes it went from bad to worse but it still turned out to be a good day.

I was woken up around 6:00am this morning from a very loud noise in my apartment. It scared the crap out of me. After I realized there was no one in my house, I got up to try and find out where the noise was coming from. The noise was getting louder as I approached the kitchen. The noise was really loud in the kitchen, so I knew where the noise was coming from.

Now the day before I was woken up around 5:30am by mice running through my bedroom wall! So I knew the noise in my kitchen was from the mice! I was so hoping that they had not moved inside yet. I could not find them but we know how fast they are. Once they heard me looking around they stopped whatever they were doing!

So I went back to bed and slept till 7:00! When I got up to take my shower I thought hume it is really cold in my living room. I have base board heating in my apartment. I bent down to see if there was any heat coming out of the heater and low and behold there was no heat!

So I get ready for work and as I am pulling out of my driveway, I get stuck in the snow! I try to back up and discover I am going into the snow pile on the left side of my driveway. I try one time and I am still stuck. It took me four try's to get out my driveway!

So I finally make it to work and low and behold the city has not plowed our parking lot nor the road going into our parking lot/community center parking lot. It was a mess.

So I do my eight hours of work, go Krogering after work, come home and shovel my driveway out, put my groceries away and sit down to listen to my messages on my answering machine.

My mother leaves me a message to call her back. So I call her back and tell her about my bad day and we talk awhile and she tells me the reason she is calling is to tell me that she heard from my cousin Robbie regarding Robbie's sister Chris. Chris's cancer has spread! And wow I thought I had a bad day.

When I was growing up my cousin Chris lived across the street from my grandmother so every time I went to visit grandma I was across the street with Chris. Chris is ten years older me and she was always my favorite cousin. She always had time to spend me even though I was ten years younger then her. When I would spend the night with her and Robbie they would put their twin beds together and make me sleep in the middle! But I never complained (OK, maybe a little)because I was with my cousins. And they meant the world to me. Even as Chris got older and had boyfriends, she always had time for me. She was always there for me.

Chris married an older man and I had to sever my contact with her because of my mother didn't like the way Chris went about her business. My mother would not let me see Chris once she left home. (Long story) But what my mother did not know was that Chris would call me and once I began to drive I would go visit her. Once I became an adult I was able to spend more time with Chris, who now had her first child. When she gave birth to her second child we had a falling out. She eventually moved away and after twenty years of an abusive marriage she finally divorced her husband.

We reconnected at my cousin Matt's wedding. She was the old Chris now. The Chris with all the confidence and the Chris who believed in herself. After her divorce she lucked into a great job and raised her two daughters. She was now living in Alabama so I would try and call or send cards. But you know what? I didn't call enough, I didn't' send enough cards and I never went to see her.

She was diagnosed with cancer over a year and a half ago. Never smoked a day in her life. They did surgery, they did chemo and finally she was cancer free. A day to the year she was first diagnosed the cancer came back. She under went treatment again and she had good progress. I called, I emailed, I sent cards. But I never went to see her.

Now my mother tells me tonight she is losing that battle! The tumors in her brain have not grown since her treatment but there is more in her abdomen. She is going to be put in a rehab as she is getting confused and then will be put into hospice.

This woman has been someone I have always looked up and never in her 58 years on this planet earth ever stopped and said why me? Why did this happen to me? Not only the cancer but so many other things that happened in her life that would of put most people over the edge. But not Chris. She just picked herself back up, dusted her self off and went on with her life. She never ever let the bad things in her life ruin the life she lived. She is such an amazing woman whom I am proud to call my cousin, my friend and my hero!

We go through life thinking oh I can do it tomorrow. I can make that phone call to a long distant relative or a long distant friend tomorrow. Or I will send that email, that letter tomorrow. We can reconnect tomorrow. Well guess what? Tomorrow is here and I didn't do it.

So I guess what I am trying to say is don't put it off until tomorrow. To quote Nike: "Just Do It". Tell the people around you that you care about how much they mean to you. The smallest little jester means more than you will ever know.

By the way: "How was your day?"