long time no see

it's been ages since i last wrote. family health dramas, ensuing issues and emotions. holidays and a load of shoulds have fully packed the space between now and then.
something that i have been thinking a lot about is the quality of life.
during the past 5 months, my mom has faced some death defying stuff. the doctors said, repeatedly that we needed to have the end of life talk. which we did.
it was hard to wait while my mother took the time, overnight in this case, to decide what she wanted to do. and yes, there was a living will.
what i came to realize about a living will is that it is much about one's will to keep living.
amidst the charts, procedures, tests and vitals, the doctors didn't see it. the nurses didn't see it. they only saw despair and a woman whose body had been through hell. desperate cries for a mere, though potentially life threatening, glass of water. endless bags of this and that and more of something else that i had hoped to never learn about in this lifetime. tubes. miles and miles of tubes.
but our family saw it.
my mom wasn't done.
it wasn't recorded on a chart anywhere. there was no test for the fight left in her. while i listened to the doctors, nurses and even hospice people talk to my mother, i heard what they were really saying. this is big and serious and c'mon you have already lived this long and you should be comfortable.
i lost count of the number of times that i listened to them during this period and watched my mother trying to process what they were saying through the haze of medication.
it was a trying time. okay, that is one of the biggest understatements EVER. but i reminded her, in front of them, that what they said was a possibility not a guarantee, because they didn't know anything for sure.
my mother came home, after just shy of 5 months. she surprised everyone. maybe herself too. doctors and nurses came to say goodbye and wish her well. her third day home she went out for dinner. and on the 5th day she and my sister are going out for her first shopping trip.
all of this is to say that i have been thinking about the quality of life.
i am not good with death. i wish that i was better but i guess it doesn't matter that much as it's coming either way.
this has me looking within even more than normal (yes, it might actually be possible) and looking at others as well.
there are a lot of people who are not living a life of quality. who really aren't happy.
and i think that it is because we, like the doctors, are basing the future on the past. this is what has happened so this is what will likely happen again.
but it doesn't have to be that way.
we don't ever have to stop asking ourselves if we have what we want. i am not talking about an ipad here. i am talking about what actually fulfills our spirit, our life purpose. the thing that ticks off all the boxes of our own cosmic 'honey do' list.
this is way too big for one blog posting. i am in this long running show called life and am doing my best to explore my role in it.
so this, like life, will be continued...