Just Keep Walking

A few weeks ago I listened to an interview on the radio with a Chinese woman walking down the road outside of her town. She had her children in tow. She was wearing high heels. They had nothing with them. Their home was gone. Their village was gone. She just happened to be wearing high heels when the earthquake hit, I guess. She tried to answer the reporter's questions, but her confused purpose was clear through the translator.

I was also wearing high heels that morning. While I cooked eggs in my kitchen for my kids who were going to get ready and go to school.The only thing we had in common were our shoes and our kids, yet I felt a connection to her half a world away from me and recognized that anything can happen to anyone at any time.

While Frank and I ran in a charity run on Saturday, Eric's girlfriend had a heart attack. She was in the hospital in a coma for three days and tests showed that there was severe brain damage. The kids and I went swimming and baked muffins and watched the Yankees/Royals series. She stopped being responsive to light. We made hula hoops and twirled in the yard. She died last night. I had a hearing this morning and stopped a foreclosure sale less than an hour before the sale was scheduled. And then I learned that she died.

Eric is hurting. My heart aches for him. It has been a hard year for him and he really does not need this, too.

I want life to always be the sunshiney goofiness that is hula hooping in the yard. I am lucky that is how things are for me now. But it's not always like that. Sometimes healthy 37 year old women have heart attacks. Sometimes you have to walk out of your destroyed village and head down a road without really knowing where you are going. Just be glad you have your shoes, I guess, even if they are high heels.