life - so precious

i had planned to spend the morning re-basking in the glow of yesterday's incredible party...eating leftovers, starting in on some of the books i received, and trying to formulate the words to describe the events. it started out fine. then bill noticed he had gotten a cell phone message sometime during the night. just after 2am. from his ex-wife. from what we can put together, his 17-year old daughter went to a concert with some friends. first they stopped at an older kid's house (a grad of their high school who works from time to time at menial jobs and has an apt on the other side of town). there he gave them a bottle of vodka to help enjoy the show. my stepdaughter filled a water bottle with it and throughout the next few hours, drank it, and re-filled it at least once. she got in an argument with the girls she was out with and went out to someone's car and passed out. her brother was at the same concert and was trying to keep an eye on her and was texting her for 2 hours "where are you? answer this immediately." the girls she came with continued enjoying themselves. when brother finally found them, he insisted they go look for her. when they found her, and were not able to wake her, the girls said they were going back to the older kid's house to party and would let stepdaughter sleep in the car. brother insisted they immediately take her to his mom's house, which they did. he can be fierce. mom immediately called an ambulance, which arrived just after the police. she had a blood alcohol level of a person considered comatose, and nearing death. the police interrogated the girls, called their parents to come get them, and an investigation was launched. stepdaughter is home at her mom's this morning, very very hungover, with not much recollection of the events....but alive. she will be required to attend alcohol counseling, which should give her something to do since she will have her phone, computer and car taken away for the rest of the year. she will not be sleeping over at anyone's house. ever. her brother is mostly pissed off at the fact that the deadbeat that gave them the alcohol is a friend of his and now he will probably get in trouble. he feels there was nothing wrong with that, and that it was his sister's responsibility to drink responsibly. i think "luckily" is the wrong word here, but luckily their father is on his way to rochester to attend calling hours of a friend from his former job. otherwise, the county jail would need new construction for the number of family members convicted of crimes today. and the so-called alcohol counseling? well, the girl that was driving (and wanted to leave my stepdaughter in the car) completed that particular offering last year. it appears they need to re-work the class a bit. so although i woke up feeling a little pissed that these kids couldn't make time in their busy lives to stay at the party longer than 20 minutes, after showing up late, i now see they had bigger fish to fry. and in the spirit of what's to come, i will just let it go. so very sad. and so very scary. my husband was between rage and tears, with tears winning out, when he left. his emotions were high enough, given the fact that the friend who had just passed away the day after Christmas was only 57. woke up. heart attack. gone before the ambulance got there. i proposed to him, and now to you, not to put off things....trips you want to take....days spent with a friend or relative....words that need to be spoken...issues that need resolving. especially the last one. "i'm sorry," "i love you," or "you are a special person because..." whispered over a casket is never the same as in person. my husband always says "in 5 years when the kids are out of school, i want to..." What if there is no 5 years from now? yesterday, in the shower, I thanked God for all the incredible things that had happened in my life - good and bad, that had made me become the person I am. and i asked God what He required of me. what is it that He would want me to do with all this "Linda?" one of the first things was to Let It Go. i ask people to see things from the other person's perspective constantly. i gripe that my husband doesn't understand how i feel about such-and-such. at times, i resent and even rage at him for being that way. so yesterday, i secretly tried to see how he might feel in a particular situation. what was his perspective? and i have to say it opened my eyes a bit. yes, we have fundamentally opposite politics, for the most part. yes, we have fundamentally different opinions on most everything, actually. can i accept him without giving up Myself? honestly, i don't know. i'm willing to try, but along the way, rather than harbor seething rage against hurts and wrongs, maybe be more vocal, in a gentle sort of way, about what's bothering me. and also be sure to add in the compliments and kudos. maybe they will be returned. i have come to depend on myself alone in my life, and maybe that's part of the problem. trusting someone else to take care of things has never been in my vocabulary. maybe i need to learn, a little at a time, how to give over some of the responsibility. some of the control. ah ha...maybe now the core of the issue. back to that again. maybe recognizing that my need for control makes it easier for another to give that control to me - the responsibilities of running a budget, a household, the day-to-day things that make a house tick. and instead of resenting the job, know that i applied for it and was accepted. and maybe, just maybe, realize that it's not such a horrifying thing to make out the checks every month. and that maybe all the other parts of couple-hood would be more rewarding if Everything didn't have to be done my way. maybe that blase blase that i get bounced at me is actually a little resentment ....at having choices taken away. when a child misbehaves, they get priveledges revoked. it should have a statute of limitations, i'm thinking. a husband and wife should not continue to lock themselves into that same mindset with one another. hmmmm. l.