Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Life's Shampoo Bottle

I had lunch the other day with a dear friend who is dealing with a recurrence of her cancer. Originally diagnosed with breast cancer, she enjoyed a few years of remission before it came back with a vengeance. Liver, lungs, and a little bit of lymph...I guess the cells enjoyed alliteration. That got beat back by the wonderful oncologists at Baylor - for a while. Her New Year's resolution became finding new treatment alternatives for the ever-encroaching disease. The pain levels are becoming unmanageable, and her time is running out.

Then again, isn't that the same situation that we all are in? The blessing of a terminal illness is that awareness that time is marching, and the destination is looming. Rose Ann was annoyed at herself for being teary when talking about her "Bucket List" cruise to Italy, but I likened it to trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, or even like getting one last shampoo out of the nearly empty bottle.

Think of it like this: as a child, we have this seemingly limitless supply of shampoo. We're careless, wasteful, and unconcerned if the bottle should fall over and spill. So what? We have a lot left. No big deal.

Next thing you know, the bottle is half empty. Still plenty of time...no need to put it on the list. And then one day...it sputters. You turn the bottle upside down so you no longer have to wait for the drip, drip, dripping of the viscous substance that makes your hair so lustrous. Now, suddenly, you become hyper-aware of how much you are using. That quarter-size dollop has become something closer to the size of a pencil eraser. Huh...still works really well at that size. Why wasn't I conserving when the bottle was full?

The doubts and self-recrimination begins. Berating oneself for being wasteful, careless...and was it really necessary to wash your hair every day?

And then one day, the sputtering stops. That shocking sound of empty spitting fills the room, and you realize that your out of time. There are those who will simply toss the bottle into the trash, but for those of us who are eager to suck the marrow out of life, we take off the lid and fill it up with some water. Why didn't we do this earlier? It's fun to shake things up! Everything inside that bottle is now so fun and frothy!

But the bubbles don't last. The shaking only works for a little bit. And the time finally comes to bid adieu to the bottle, secure in the knowledge that you have used every last little bit of it.

Rose Ann isn't quite there yet on the bubbles, but the sputtering has begun. Her tears are cleansing tears, not to be dismissed, ignored, or worse, cursed. Rather, they are to be blessed as the necessary ingredient to add to the shampoo bottle of life, mixing with all that is left, ready to shake things up at least a couple more times before our time here is done.

And when that time is done, shake your hair in the most glorious way you can, allowing the world the opportunity to see the luxurious results of that wonderful shampoo before moving on to the next kind!

Wash, Rinse, and Repeat!

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