TODAY I CHOOSE TO LIVE LIFE OUT LOUD!

"Maybe someday we'll live our lives out loud
We'll be better off somehow
Someday"
Rob Thomas' song Someday

I lost my Father on New Years Day this year and my Mother justb a year ago last October.  One thing I have learned from their deaths is just how they lived their lives.  When they were young, they were vibrant and alive.  They worked hard and they played hard.  Then somewhere along their lives they told themselves they were old and needed to slow down.  They slowed down so much they stopped Living!

At my Dad's funeral, people talked about a man that loved to dance and bet on the horses.  A man that was a practical joker, a free spirit.  A man, sadly I never got to know because by the time I was 30 and got to know my dad after 25 years estranged, he was not the man I got to know.  The man I knew worked, watched TV, read the paper,ate, said his prayers, slept and then did it again--until he retired and then he just did more of the rest.

My Mother on the other hand was also a woman who played softball, coached young girls, worked in a garden, danced, bowled, and did a number of other things when I was growing up. She too, one day began to slow down and soon her life became one continous circle of work, eat, watch TV, sleep, only to get up the next day and do it again. When Mother retired, her life also became one less thing. She at least did travel for a while with my aunt. Then that too, stopped.

Both my Dad and Mother were heavy smokers and smoked up until the day they died from Lung Cancer. I could insert a diatribe about smoking here but that is another post for another day. The entire point is that both of my parents stopped LIVING long before they DIED! I loved them both and I will miss them deeply. However, these two vibrant, life living people one day just stopped living and began dying a little more each day.

I am not talking about the Cancer here, rather I am referring to the fact that they became sedentary, lonely souls that just "existed" along with the rest of the world. It wasn't the cancer that slowed them down--no both of them lived the slow painless death of just being and not much else long before the Cancer consumed their bodies.

My Mother did still do family things, though not quite as much. My Dad and Step-Mom seldom left the house after a few years retired except to go to doctor visits and hair appointments or the grocery store.

It was hard to watch my parents wither away and I am not sure if there was any one catalyst that caused the shut-down on life for either of them. The sad part is that they both had about 10-15 years after retirement to live life to it's fullest, yet for whatever reason they chose not to do so.

It isn't just old people that give up on life. middle-aged and younger people do it too. For the past eight years I have lived a failry sedentary life and I have put on 80 pounds. I kept telling myself that I was getting older and my body was slowing down. I worked, ate, watched TV and slept only to do it again (Sound familiar?). I started having breathing problems, I started snoring again and Sleep Apnea reared its ugly head for the second time in my life. Then a few months ago, I started having knee problems in my right knee. It turned out to be a torn meniscus but the orthopedist said I would need a knee replacement in 5-10 years. This was my wake up call. I decided I was going to defy the doctor and prove him wrong. I began to really watch my eating, stopped sitting in front of the television every night, I began exercising and in general started reclaiming my life.

It was at my Dad's funeral that I realized I could either keep the momentum going or be like my Dad and Mother and just die a little more each day. I did not want to end up in a rut, doing the same things every day as I gave up my will to live. On the contrary, I decided to Live my Life like it was my last day on Earth. I decided to Live my Life out Loud! I will not go gently into that good night. No I will go kicking and screaming all the way--just like the passengers in my Grandfather's car--Just kidding.

Still, while I know that I am going to a better place when I die, God did not intend for His children to die a little each day, rather, He intended for us to LIVE every day to its fullest potential, and that is just what I am going to do! If you see some middle-aged man passing you on the greenway or skydiving or hang gliding--move over. It is just ME, and TODAY I CHOOSE TO LIVE MY LIFE OUT LOUD!