A Sad Reminder
October 31, 2021 by MarkHaroldsen
Filed under blog
What in the world is going on? Right after I posted two blogs about health, I got slammed in my face with a health issue in my family. My kid brother Scott’s family called me to say that Scott is not doing well at all, he’s gone into a coma several times, and I had better come and see him real soon. I told my wife Kimberly that we should go the next day, but she said, “No, let’s go now,†even though it’s a 200 mile drive up to Idaho Falls where he lives. I didn’t argue with her. We jumped into the car and headed north and to see him and give him moral support.
When I got there, it was so, so frustrating to both us and him as we attempted to talk. He was conscious by then, but he couldn’t get any words out. He would look at us and with a bit of a smile, a blink of his eye and a nod of his head, he would try to answer our questions and communicate with us, his kids, and the grandkids that gathered around his bed.
The next morning, back at our home, the phone rang with the tragic news that Scott had checked out of this life at 7:30 that morning.
He’s the third brother that I’ve lost in addition to my 16-year-old daughter’s tragic death years ago. Wow, that hurt big time. It reminded me of that old saying, “Nobody gets out of here alive.†That’s too darn bad and so tragic, but it’s unfortunately the truth. I’ve preached for years that we all must do some future thinking, planning, and, of course, goal setting. But after we do that, if we want to have the best life possible, we must push ourselves to live in the now, in the “right now momentâ€. The same thinking should be applied when we start thinking about (or over-thinking) our past mistakes and sad moments in time.
I’m certainly pushing my brain to think back about all the good times with my brother Scott, an ex-policeman who enjoyed all his exciting experiences and lived in the moment, even in his near-death experiences. Wow, I had a ton of great times with my little brother, Scotty boy. One of his dreams was to be on an airplane when it was being hijacked so he could save the day. He had a medical issue that caused him to pass out, even one time on a flight halfway to Kauai. Amazingly, the airline turned the plane around and flew all the way back to Los Angeles where everything turned out okay. I just found out before he died that he wrote a book called Cop Living on the Edge. I got a copy and, wow, it’s pretty good for a non-writer.
In closing, let me give you, the reader, and myself some advice — be in charge of your brain and direct its thinking paths to good places and moments, especially towards the Right Now Moment! It’s the most important moment we have.
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