November 11, 2014
A few months ago, a friend suggested I compile a “bucket list” to commemorate my birthday. It was a milestone-kind-of-day that earned me an AARP invitation and, apparently, a chance to list all the things I’d hope to do and see in my ripe old age that now afforded me restaurant discounts to use at early bird buffets.
So I jotted down a few things on a piece of paper and placed it on my desk, since I’ve never known anyone who actually puts lists in a bucket.
A decade prior, dream posters were all the rage a la Oprah, and I made one or two posters with the dreams and desires of a 40-year-old woman.
But my 40s were hard. I lost loved ones unexpectedly. Our country’s economy further disrupted my poster-inspired dreams and desires, replacing them with stark realities forcing difficult life choices. My family and I moved six times in six years. And my daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy.
Suffice to say, I was hesitant to draft a list of rosy wishes for the next decade.
Still, I’m a sucker for hope.
Seven weeks after my birthday this year, my college-aged son, Griffin, was rushed to the hospital suffering from diabetic ketoacidosis. He had undiagnosed Type 1 Diabetes, a disease that doesn’t run in our family, but neither does epilepsy. As the medical staff stabilized Griffin, we got a crash course in diabetes — just as we had gotten a crash course in epilepsy.
For a diabetic, numbers are critical in blood sugar terms: 400 is bad, 100 is good. In the hospital I kept a log of Griffin’s blood sugar counts (as if the doctors weren’t doing the same charting; a parent will do anything to feel useful for her child.) One sleepless night around 3 a.m., the nurse entered quietly into Griffin’s room to prick his finger for the latest count. Grif’s numbers had been high for the past few hours.
“Hey, look at that!” the nurse said, smiling. “You’re at 120. Man, that’s a rest-of-forever kind of number.”
Indeed it was. I scribbled on my notepad in the dark. The next morning, I looked at my blood sugar count notes; oddly, they were devoid of sugar counts. In a sleep-deprived fog, I only wrote one thing: “rest of forever.”
I used to count my life in different terms — things you’d see on a dream poster or a bucket list. Now, I count EEG spikes and insulin units for my mathematical formula of wishes.
I keep it in perspective. I have friends who consider a good day measured by red blood cells. I’m certainly not the only person who has gone to bed as a wife, mother, and daughter only to awake as a newly initiated (and scared) health care advocate for my loved ones. More than 29 million Americans have diabetes; 2.7 million have epilepsy. Millions more suffer from other life-threatening conditions.
They, and those who love them, assess their lives in ways not listed in glitter on a dream poster.
So I’ve decided this list thing may be backward.
Life has reminded me to be more aspirational in who to be, not what to achieve. I have friends and family who have shown up in emergency rooms, on moving days (multiple times with homemade food) and found resources to help in ways I didn’t know existed. They’ve made the speedbumps and ditches and everything in between bearable. And my children have shown grace and determination beyond their years.
If I can be like them, my rest of forevers will trump all bucket lists and Oprah posters.
