Two Weeks to Live

Last weekend I dreamed I was dying.  In the dream, I had gone to the doctor who laid out the prognosis in no nonsense fashion – I would be dead in two weeks, but would remain “healthy” until the last moment.  Or, I could go through a treatment plan that would give me an extra month, but I would be sick most of the time.  That was the first choice – an easy one.  I chose the two weeks healthy and went home wondering what to do next.  I don't recall feeling sad or scared in the dream.  But, I knew there were things I needed to complete before moving on.

The dream was very vivid and woke me with a start at 4:00 a.m.  I flopped around in the bed for over an hour, wrestling with the question of what I would do if I really only had two weeks left.  Two weeks are 14 days and 14 days are only 336 hours.  I stared at the ceiling and wondered how would I spend those fleeting hours?

I thought about my grandkids.  Peter, age 4, would probably have a few vague memories of me.  Addie at 2 wouldn’t remember me at all.  Jackson, he’s just a few weeks old and I would be nothing but a hazy image in an old photo.

Peter

So, I figured the first thing is to shore up those memories with Peter.  Since it was just a dream, I chose to set it in the summer months.  I would take Peter to Ocracoke.  We would sit on the ferry dock and catch Pinfish until the ferry arrived, then we would wave to the folks on the ferry.  I would called him "Cephas" my special name for him.  Then we would feed the gulls.  Elizabeth would snap many photos.

Addie

I would take Addie to Pullan Park in Raleigh.  We would ride the carousal all afternoon, switching from horse to tiger to horse with each new ride.  Maybe the carousal tune would lodge somewhere in the recesses of her malleable mind so that whenever she heard it in the future, a faint memory of war horses and ostriches and an old bald guy would come to mind.  Deja vu. 

Jackson

Jackson would have nothing to remember.  So, we would go to the Linville Gorge, on the Table Rock side, and I would tell him about hiking into the gorge with my friend Toad.  John would video the conversation so Jackson could watch it when he was older.  Like Peter, I want Jackson to say and remember, “Papa had a friend named Toad.”

As I lay there in bed, I went through a list of family and friends that I would like to visit one last time before kicking over.  It would make for a busy two weeks.  I doubt I would waste much of it asleep.

The thing that struck me most was that not only did I want to visit all these people, I also wanted them to know how I felt about them.  Later that day I spent four or five hours traveling alone which gave me some time to assess what all of that meant and means.

I determined that how we would spend those last two weeks says much about what is important to us.  We could easily be self-absorbed and spend the time doing the things we always wanted to do.  Heck, we could put it on a credit card and let someone else worry about it when we’re gone.  I have taken the love languages assessment and my languages are “quality time” and "words of affirmation.”  So, it makes sense that I want to spend time with people I care about and to let them know their value to me.

Our fragile, impending mortality has been the fodder of songs.  Tim McGraw’s Live Like You Were Dying reflects on what “I would do if I could do it all again.”   Nickelback narrowed it down to If Today Was Your Last Day.  It would be hard to squeeze it all in in just one day.  I’m glad I got two weeks.

I woke Amy after wallowing around for over an hour.  She was a pretty good sport to listen to me wonder about my last two weeks.  Her advice at 5:30 a.m. made perfect sense: we should never put off spending time with people we love and should never leave without them knowing what they mean to us.

What would you do if you only had two weeks left to live?