On Living in the Moment
Today at work a colleague asked me if I had recovered from yesterday. At first I had no idea what she was talking about. Then it came back to me: I had a very difficult court appearance on a domestic abuse case where I had negotiated a settlement thinking it would spare the victim a trial. Instead, it put her into a psychological tail spin, resulting in a hospitalization. When I had gone to see her, she perseverated on how the defendant (her husband) had gotten away without admitting to all he did to her.
At his sentencing yesterday, I became pretty fanned up on her behalf and let the judge know just how this man’s actions affected this woman, who had previously functioned as a high ranking engineer in her native China.
And afterward? I promptly forgot about it.
This weekend, a friend posted that it was 5 months since her young dog died suddenly and unexpectedly. Her post was brief: “5 months,” with an attached “feeling sad.”
After reading that, it dawned on me that I never celebrated anniversaries of deaths. My first dog died on Martin Luther King Day, so I will always sort of remember that, except the date changes every year. My second dog died a week or so before Labor Day, but I do not recall the exact date. And I never counted months. I barely even count the years.
The night after my first dog died I was consumed with grief. I bundled up and took the other two for a walk and was struck by how completely unfazed they had been with it all. She had even died at home and they had the opportunity to inspect her body, which they both declined. As I walked with them on that frigid January night, I made a determination that they had it right.
Most self-help books and websites extol the virtues of living in the moment. I have a history of Alzheimer’s in my family, so I am uncertain as to whether my lack of memory for certain events represents a decline in my mental functioning or a conscious choice to live in the present.
Either way, I’m okay with it. The vast majority of my days are happy ones. While there are a few sad memories that linger, my focus is on each day as it happens. It just feels right.