A very good friend who spent many a night with me at Beth Israel North ten years ago while John lay in a coma, barely alive, wrote this to me the other day about the New York Times article: “How’s the Times thing feeling? Want it over or pleased the horror of the event still impacts? What a thing!!”

I pondered that question before falling asleep last night. Do I want it all to be over or am I pleased that there is still impact?

“What a thing!!” And what a question!

The simple fact of the matter, the fact of our lives, is that “it” will never be over.

When life knocks you to your knees as it is bound to do with most of us at some point in time, we will go through what we must go through to survive or we will perish. God knows John and I have gone through every imaginable device, vice, shrink, exercise, heart-to-heart discussion, argument, emotion, exertion of pure will and attempt to deny, but it all finally comes down to facing, accepting, and embracing the fact that life has changed. Period.

The “it” and the “impact” is what we live with each and every day. If we try our damnedest to look at our dark experience as a sort of gift (and sometimes we are able to do that) then the impact is not so much one of horror, but of love, survival and growth.

If our ever evolving story can help others with the trauma or tragedy they may encounter in this journey called life, then we are pleased to tell it as many times as need be.

Happy New Year to you all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/health/when-the-plague-came-to-new-york.html