If you found out you had a year to live…

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Considering our current global health crisis, thinking about dying and death has been on the forefront of the minds of many of us.  I work in a hospital treating Covid patients and I must admit many of my recent dreams (otherwise known as nightmares) have been about finding out I’m sick and have little time left on this earth.  Last night, I dreamt I was very ill and needed immediate treatment.  My husband decided to take me out for a day of fun before the treatment began.  He told me there were things he had always wanted to do with me before either of us died.  Sounds sweet, I know, but my dreams rarely have sweet aspects to them.  Without going into much detail, he had forgotten to bring a mask with us so everyone was running from me, I was bleeding from parts of my body that were quite concerning, and he kept disappearing, leaving me sitting alone on a park bench.  My inability to have happy dreams is a topic for another day.  It did get me to thinking, though, what would you do if you had only one year to live?  If you were not restricted by health limitations or finances, how would you spend your last 365 days? In the real world, I spend my waking hours working at my paying job (speech-language pathologist), working at my semi-paying job (writer), and working at my non-paying job (managing a household).  Throw in the extras, like commuting time, watching Jeopardy, and stealthily staring out the window to figure out what my neighbors are building in their back yard…and you get the picture.  Like most of us, we don’t spend a lot of time in preferred activities.  Don’t get me wrong–I love my jobs, all of them, but is that how I would spend my last 365 days?  No way.  I want to see the Highlands of Scotland where my ancestors once trod.  I want to learn how to paddle board.  I want to hold hands with my husband while we marvel at the Alps.  I want to sit at an outdoor cafe in Italy and talk to the locals.  Hopefully their command of the English language is better than mine of Italian.  Oh yeah, I want to learn Italian.  I want to read my grandson his first Dr. Seuss book.  Side note, he’s due in 109 days so I would still have time to make that happen.  I could go on forever.  I think it’s a good practice to think about what you would do in your last year if you had that freedom.  It won’t change much in reality–I still need to work, I still need an obsessively clean home, I still need to figure out these neighbors…but it does remind us of what a quality life is really about.  Over the past 3 months, I’ve watched people die.  I had a “frequent-flyer” patient who was hospitalized for another health issue when she contracted Covid.  The day before she went into respiratory arrest and was diagnosed with the virus, I was leaving her room after a treatment session.  She called after me, “I love you, you know.”  Now, I don’t usually answer in like when patients say they love me.  I’ll say “thank you” or “that’s sweet of you to say.”  On this day, however, her emotional declaration struck a chord in me and I responded, “I love you, too.”  And I did.  I loved her spirit and her continued will to live.  I loved her open manner of expressing her feelings.  I never spoke with her again due to her quick decline and death but it was quality moment in my life and in hers.  Learning to stand upright on a paddle board might never happen for me, but making connections with others is doable, for 365 days and beyond.