Working Notes – October 31, 2011

An Unsettling Thought Or Two For Your Halloween Trick Or Treat

This post was going to be about something else entirely.   It was going to be about the fact that one of the world’s greatest magicians — Harry Houdini  — capped off his brilliant career by dying on the most auspicious day of the year for one of his profession:  All Hallows’ Eve, when everything magical, mysterious, creepy and death-defying stalks the earth.

I was also going to write this post somewhere other than where I’m writing it.

I had a lot of plans covering the last week.

What I didn’t plan on was spending the week in hospital and next week, too, so far (they tell me).

I’m pinning a lot of expectations on this post, too.

I’m hoping that either my techno-geek son or my husband when he gets back into town, or both working together, get me some sort of temporary internet access so I can upload this post by October 31.  I had only written ten days worth of posts ahead of myself, and they’ll run out on October 31.  I’m getting antsy looking at the calendar.

I’m also assuming that there’s a reason to keep on pushing through with posts, writing books, the whole shooting match.  The test I get this afternoon will tell me more.  I’m not planning on waiting for test results to shape how I live the rest of my life.

Despite it taking ten minutes to actually get the first sentence of this post written, the post will get written, and while I’m in this hospital, I will write my ass off as long as the nurses leave me be (which they don’t, much.  There’s an astonishing amount of prodding, poking with sharp objects and blunt questions…and charting.  Reams of it).

You never question your health while you have it.

When you don’t have it, it’s suddenly one of the most precious things in the world.

Life can turn around and snatch it from you in a second….or steal up and take it from you by degrees without you knowing, and despite everything you do right, well and preventative.

That makes your health, if you really want a downer thought, one of the bad guys that hangs around with a smiley mask or clown’s makeup (remember Tim Curry in It?).  Some people are lucky:  Their health doesn’t take the mask off until the end, and only after a good number of decades have gone by.

Others, despite everything they do, get to see the rotting side of the clown’s face at regular intervals, and go through life bouncing back from one health crisis or another.  Regrouping.  Forging ahead.  If you’ve always enjoyed good health, you’ve got no idea what sized crater and fallout even a relatively minor disease (minor in relation to something like terminal stages of cancer.  It’s anything but minor living through it) like, say, acute viral bronchitis (no, that’s not what landed me in hospital), can do to someone’s esteem, ego, social calendar, diet, household routine, marriage, energy, and finances – especially if they get fired for taking off too much time.

So if health’s other face can be revealed at any moment, no matter what preventions you put in place (exercise, diet, rest, water, etc), what’s left?

Taking life by the horns and living it for what it’s worth now.  Because who know what’s around the corner?*

(*The perfect example of this:  I ended up with Internet access in not two days, but two hours after I wrote this post.  And it wasn`t husband or geeky son, but death metal band son who came up with the solution.)

There are real ghosties and ghoulies in world. They just don’t look like anything you and I have grown up to think they should look.