Randy Pauscher

I saw part of a videotaped interview with him, a professor at a small college. He's got three beautiful young children, a beautiful young wife, and pancreatic cancer. They tell him he has just a few months to live. Yet there he stands on the stage, then jumps down and does push-ups to show the audience that he's as healthy as they are, then talks about what it's like to be dying, to know he's only got a few months to live. He stays pretty upbeat until he says that he'd like to be around to see how his kids turn out. Then he gets quiet and his eyes tear up. I was crying FOR him, when he wasn't even crying. I think that would be the toughest part - leaving my kids. Yes, I know we never really LEAVE, just transform, and I know that we're always together with everyone, especially those we love, but I wouldn't be able to BE BE with them, you know?

I would miss the physical things, the really small things, like putting on my favorite pair of jeans, or drinking some really good water, or seeing the beautiful gold trees with the dusk sun shining on them. I have slowed down my life lately, am taking the time to really BE here fully, to take care of what is important to me, to spend the time doing what makes my life meaningful to me, and it feels really good. It feels DEEP, and believe me, I haven't always lived a DEEP life - it's been wide and shallow, sweeping as broadly as possible so I don't miss anything, but I have missed big chunks of my life - I can't even remember some times, like when Bill was a toddler - a blur.

So now I remember cuddling him at night, reading Harry Potter. I remember cuddling up to Steve's warm back, wrapping my arm tightly around him. I remember hearing Mom's voice when I call her every day - I stop whatever I'm doing and focus on her voice, listen to her closely, slowly. I remember hugging Erik and feeling his broad shoulders, looking squarely into his eyes to see those eyes that look so eerily like my own. I remember watching "Sex and the City" with Kari, even when I'm tired, especially when I'm tired. I remember burying my face into my cat's furry stomach and hearing his loud purring - I think that is pretty close to heaven. I remember all of these things, and I've heard the phrase "God is in the details," but I have amended it to be "life is in the little things," because the big things in life are few and far between, but it's what happens in the rest of your hours that shapes the whole of your life. It's the routine things that you remember, the first batch of split pea soup in the fall, having the neighborhood kids over for the annual Christmas party, strapping on your iPod and walking, always walking, just because you love to feel the air going in and out of your lungs. Just because you can. Because you're alive.