Sa Tús: In the beginning...

In the beginning... we ignored the words.

We had heard, in that vague way of people busy with living in a rush, that there was an illness, that it had started in China and appeared to be spreading in Europe but there was no sense of urgency to the news. In fact, the biggest stories seemed to center around Russia spreading disinformation about the disease ( Coronavirus: US says Russia behind disinformation campaign ) or a re-direction of concern from Covid-19 to the seasonal Flu (There's a Virus Spreading in U.S. That's Killed 10,000: The Flu ). And we had something else that needed doing, something which seemed infinitely more important at the time: We were taking a short, week long, trip to Tucson. The trip was served two critical purposes and one less critical: I was going to go see my father whose Alzheimer's disease seemed to be on the fast track, we were taking my 86 year old mom back to visit her friends (She had just moved up to live with us in May of 2019 and was desperately missing the community she had left behind.) and finally, we were taking our teen sons to the Arizona Renaissance Festival. Thinking back, I do not regret that decision at all. There are some things that cannot wait. Life and death do not wait. Had we not gone, we would have missed moments that could not be re-created.  I saw my father, though it broke my heart. Alzheimer's is a horrible disease. It steals memories and personality and leaves a living shell, one who looks like the person you knew, one who hurts because, periodically, he realizes that there is something missing. And it made me realize that the Buddhists are right: Suffering comes from attachment. We love a person but it is not the body that is the most important part, it is the soul. And regrets for all those things left unsaid, undone, unlived hurt beyond measure. I have friends who have lost children and it is all those moments that they will never get to share as well as the realization that maybe, just maybe, they didn't appreciate the moments they had had that they grieve. We all do that. Life can move so fast, days passing before we have even noticed them