I spent last weekend seeing a family member who had recently been admitted to hospital; she has cancer and the prognosis isn't favourable. I drove a few hundred miles to see her and have been staying with another aunt, the sick aunt's sister, and it's been a little miserable, despite me enjoying the time spent with my two aunts.
We spent a lot of time talking about the situation, what it means going forward and what may come. We also reminisced about the past and laughed and cried in equal measure. It's been a sad trip at times, however I've also found value, happiness and a degree of contentment.
It's likely I'll not see my aunt again as her condition is declining rapidly which has been difficult to accept. I have lost people to cancer before, my father when I was eleven for one but many others, it never gets easier and always leaves me contemplating life, the meaning of it and the meaning I bring to my own.
Over the weekend I found myself contemplating happiness, sadness and how one finds a balance between the two, the correlation between the two.
I don't believe one's life can be declared happy and bright without it having held a certain amount of sadness and shadow; I feel also, that the word happy might have less meaning, less relevance, should sadness not provide a counterpoint. Life is like a set of balance scales with all of the events and happenings, the good and bad, placed on one side or the other. I'm not sure if they balance out and bring an overall equanimity to life, but I know both sides of the scales will be used as no life will progress without good and bad occurrences and, therefore, happy and sad moments.
In spending time with my aunt, the last moments I'll spend with her, I thought about the meaning of life and how people talk about searching for it and I decided it is a fools errand. Looking back on my own life I see that it's not something I've searched for, the meaning of life. Instead I have looked for the experience of life, of being alive and able to enjoy the good things it can hold whilst learning from the bad. It's the good things that have allowed me to endure the bad, and the bad things which have made the good so much more valuable.
Becca 💗