Live Like You Were Dying

 

"It isn't true that you live only once.You only die once.You live lots of times, if you know how."  ~Bobby Darin

In the early 2000s, my kids were in private school in Providence, Rhode Island, and every weekday morning I left our country home, and drove them to a bus stop a few towns away. Invariably, at least half a dozen times each week, the 2004 Tim McGraw song, Live Like You Were Dying, came on the radio. My son was eleven at the time, and sitting there in the backseat, he could belt out the words and final few notes of that tune without missing a beat.

That song, and the Bobby Darin quote in the heading of this post came back to me this week as I prepped for a medical procedure. As I pen this post, I am awaiting word from my doctor about an abdomen ultrasound that I had on Wednesday. My doctor has reassured me that the ultrasound is routine, precautionary after some elevated blood work, and nothing to get worked up about, yet, I fret. If you've ever had a mammogram or other diagnostic test and been called back for a second look, then perhaps my anxiety will strike a familiar chord.

After years of recovery and 12-step work, I've learned to keep my head where my feet are, meaning I try to harness my fear by staying off that wild ride of what ifs. But on my long solo drive to and from Tennessee last week, it was hard to not fall down that rabbit hole of catastrophic thinking. As a creative midwife, helping women give birth to their creative ideas, one of the key tenets I teach is: choose love over fear. So, today and until (and perhaps after) the results are known, I plan on doing all the things I love: writing, taking photographs, hanging out with my kids and grandkids, going to the movies, and eating popcorn. 

Downton Abbey: A New Era, here I come.