Read this and PLEASE, treasure each moment you are alive!

We often take for granted the simple fact that being alive is truly a gift! We are poised to dwell on the challenges, the tough times, the almost impossible probability of how life can drain us if we allow it to do so!

Yesterday began as any other day. Within hours the phone rang and my neighbor said, "Marsha, I need you." It was only then I realized that the fire department and an ambulance were parked in front of her home.

As I entered the home my neighbor said, "Marsha, the paramedics have been working on mom for 5 minutes. She fell out of bed and was turning blue. I called them right away."

Then she cried as I hugged her. I told her that she had done everything she could do to help. For 15 years I watched this young woman care for her grandpa and her mama. She dedicated her life to doing so.

Never a smoker, she lived in this home, filled with smoke from these two chain smokers. She faithfully cared for them over the years. Her grandpa died from cancer, and her mama.....yesterday, passed on from congestive heart failure.

As I hugged my neighbor, I whispered in her ear. "The quality of your mama's life was diminishing ever so fast. You know she hated being able such a burden to you, being so trapped in a 300 pound body that she needed help just to sit up in bed."

"If she doesn't make it, you must know that her spirit will be with God."

She looked at me and said, "And with grandpa too?"

"Yes," I replied, "and with my mama - who will probably drive her crazy." She smiled through the tears and told me she knew.

The fireman was young. He came out of the bedroom and said, "Maam, we've done
everything we could do. Everything that would have been done in the hospital. I am sorry, but she is gone."

I held my neighbor again as she cried. Then she stood up straight and said to the paramedic, "We know what to do. Grandpa died in October so we'll just wait for the coroner to arrive."

She will be okay. She will survive, and at some point, her life will begin again. There are stages of grief, but she is strong, so I know she will begin to heal soon. She somehow knows that it happened as it should.

I say again, TREASURE EACH MOMENT YOU ARE ALIVE! LIFE IS FLEETING. DON'T FORGET TO LOOK AROUND YOU AND LOVE THE ONES YOU LOVE. SMELL THE FLOWERS, FEEL THE BREEZE AS IT MAKES THE LEAVES IN THE TREES SING. AND IF YOU FEEL YOU ARE ALONE, REMEMBER - YOU ARE NEVER ALONE!

God loves you and so do I - you are, afterall, my human family!

This process, this thing we call life, it goes quickly. Cherish it.