No, not just written because I’m getting older, tho I am, but also because of something that happened.  I’ve treasured each day purposefully and with conscious thought since a time many years ago when I had a long struggle with a sick husband.  He and my father died within two years of each other.  It was a bad time, and taught me how precious each day is.

I take care of my health reasonably well, tending to the things that need tended to without driving myself crazy.  I tend to plan for tomorrow but think more about today.  I often say I could be dead yet tonight by falling down the stairs in my own house, but I’ll try real hard not to do that.  Or, it could be the tractor-trailer next week.  Times are crazy, they say we should eat dessert first.

Or, it could have been the other day, while taking my garbage out.  Here’s a story.

A lady  must have had a diabetic problem, lost control out the road, came up on the retaining wall on the other side of my double house, missing a telephone pole by a foot, took down the  street sweeping sign and metal pole over there, rode on 2 wheels on my retaining wall, tore up my grass, totalled my garbage cans, tore out the street sign for the alley, and then hit the utility pole at my corner. Sheered my pole, and if it hadn’t stopped her, she would have met my neighbor and family, IN their living room.

I was very shook up, cos I had put the garbage cans out there about 10 or so minutes before all this happened.  10  minutes………the neighbor on down the street saw all this happen from his front porch. He said she had the horn blowing as she crossed the center line just out the road from my property. Evidently she was in some state of less than quite conscious, and had slumped over the wheel.

A woman going out the road in the opposite direction saw her coming into her lane and quickly drove into a drive way for a business on the other side of my house.  That woman saved a head on collision and possibly saved her life.  5 seconds for her, and life could have changed forever.  I don’t know who she is, but bless her heart, she might have saved her own life, any passengers, and the driver who ended up wrecking.

10 minutes or so for me, sitting my garbage cans out at the street the same as I do every week.  I would have heard the horn blowing and would have looked up, I think.  But how fast can I run?

I don’t know who the woman is who wrecked.  There was a business name on the side of the car and I’ve called that number and left a message asking about her, because my neighbors and I are concerned, hoping that she will be ok.  She was air lifted to a trauma center, and must have been badly hurt.

She was just driving in the road, probably to do some errand, and something that happened changed her life forever.

I’m always thankful for each day.  That gets more important as I get older.  Or when something like this happens, to make me think of it all the more.  I don’t eat desert first, but I do eat some, and I do stop to smell roses.  Always did.  Some days they smell even better.