T. Jacira Paolino
YOLO (You Only Live Once) is a pat phrase that people use for different occasions.
It really hits close to home when you have a personal brush with death or lose someone close to you. For a short time, it makes you want to savor each moment, live life more intensely, check things off your personal bucket list. After a while, life returns to the normal routine, and we forget to see the beauty in the details. We forget to stop and smell the flowers, as my mother admonished me to do often throughout my lifetime.
Death
Years ago I nearly died. I came very close to leaving my underage children orphans in a South American country when I contracted Meningitis. I had respiratory failure and heart failure and the doctors at the Hospital para Enfermedades Infecciosas jump-started me twice. They told my then 9-year-old daughter that she had to be strong because it was likely that I would not make it through the night.
Fortunately, they were wrong.
Ever since, I have lived life intensely, with a finite focus on every task I undertake; with a passion for new projects; with a determination to complete what I start; with a careful connection to the special people in my life. I taught myself not to lose that intensity, and it has become a part of me, of who I am.
Love
The most important lesson I learned is that what you do with your day today is important. Pay attention to the details, to human connections, to the laughter of your children as they run out the door to catch the school bus, to the aroma of baking bread as you walk past the bakery, to the tickle of a snowflake as it brushes your cheek. Pay attention to the people you love, and always, always tell them you love them, every chance you get. You never know when it will be the last chance.
R.I.P. mom.
Sunrise: June 12, 1921. Sunset: February 22, 2017.
