Live Like You Were Dying

I asked him when it sank in, That this might really be the real end?
How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news? Man whatcha do?
An' he said: I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter, And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying.
An' he said: Some day, I hope you get the chance, To live like you were dyin.
"Live Like You Were Dying" – Tim McGraw

Isn’t it kind of funny how all your days, from the most boring and normal ones to the ones filled with excitement to the ones wrought with worry, almost always start the same?

The other day started the same, normal routine — get up, do my thing, get the boy up, fed, and off to school, go to work. Cruising along until sometime after lunch and my phone goes off, it’s a good friend of mine, one of my best friends in town.

“Hey, need you to take me to the hospital, right now,” she calmly but with emphasis said.

I knew she had gone to the doctor and I knew this phone call might be a possibility but still, the reality of it dropped pretty heavy.

“Ok, what’s going on?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you when I get to the office,” she said. “I’ll be there in a few.”

Fast forward to me and my friend driving under emphatic doctor’s orders to Cheyenne Regional’s emergency room, rolling down westbound interstate 80.

“What if it is a heart attack?” she said, fear just slightly creeping into her voice.

”It’s not a heart attack.” I replied, trying to assure her.

We talked on the half-hour or forty-minute drive down, trying to keep things fairly light.

“I’m not ready yet,” she said.

“It’s not your time,” I replied.

“I’ve been wasting my time, so much left to do,” she said.

“So here’s the deal,” I replied, “When you get out of all this your going to start living as if on borrowed time.”

About that time we pulled into the hospital ER, walked in and my friend disappeared into the bowels of the building surrounded by nurses and doctors — the doctor from our town had called ahead — and I went to wait in that sterile, depressing room.

Article Author: Benjamin Cossel

A working journalist, Benjamin currently serves as a combat photojournalist and is the managing editor of a weekly newspaper in southeastern Wyoming. He’s worked as a reporter in Ohio, Arizona and done several deployments in the military crossing the globe. …

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