Pick and Choose

I visited with my Grandma this weekend. She is eighty something and not doing well. Hospice has been called in and the goal now is comfort. I have lost three family members this year to death and disease. We could be facing number four real soon. After visiting with her it caused me to think about life, death, quality, quantity, and control.

Have you seen or heard Denis Leary's "No Cure For Cancer" routine? He talks about cigarettes and the comment health and environmental organizations always use. "Every cigarette takes five minutes off your life." His rationale is that it is the last five minutes and they will suck anyway.

First off, we don't know that. Secondly, it triggers another memory of an old Lost in Space episode where "Father Time" had everyone's life reel. What if we could edit our own life reel and choose the five minutes we could take out for each cigarette? Think with me for a moment about times when you just wish you could go back a few minutes and undo a hurtful word or spiteful action. Which ones would you edit out?

I have listed a few of mine below. Please share one of yours with me in turn.

• Those few minutes when I was nine and I was doing cartwheels in the neighbors yard. Because my very first "boyfriend" had given me a gold bracelet that day and I lost it that night.
• The first and only time I ever cursed at my mother when I was fourteen.
• Blaming something on my little brother because I was too chicken to own up to my own stupid actions when I was sixteen.
• Not walking away from a zillion fights with my ex-husband.
• Not walking away from my ex-husband early enough.
• Saying the wrong name at the most possible wrong time with my new husband.