August 23, 2013 - Life Can Change In A Moment!

Life Can Change In A Moment

          Many times in life I have thought how quickly life can change. We can go along living and at times it seems like everything is mundane. Day in and day out the same tasks seem to drag on forever and then in a moment life is different.

          My life changed dramatically when I lost a beloved teacher while in high school, never being able to express the gratitude that I felt for her was a deep regret. One moment she was teaching and assigning projects and the next day we had heard that a car accident claimed her life. We were all changed. The experience taught me at a young age to express yourself for you never know when your last moment may be.

          After college in my twenties I was hired by 9 major airlines, I chose to fly for United Airlines as a Flight Attendant and I moved to Chicago. My life became a series of change, due to constantly going and coming. For a while it became so crazy that I didn’t know where I was or what time it was due to flying so much. I remember clinging to moments of normalcy. I cherished days off to do laundry, visit friends, cook dinner to do normal everyday things.

          One late afternoon in September, 25 years ago, the plane I was working on hit an air pocket and had a depressurization, in that moment my life changed forever, as the plane dropped 1500 feet, I hit my neck and my back. To this day I still live with this injury.

          We have many moments in our lives of great happiness, of awaited news, of sadness and of change.

          I recently lost my best friend of 30 years. Carla died May 14, 2014 in Tucson. She had estranged herself from family and friends for the past two years, as she struggled alone with her illness. When I received a call from her daughter, Jessica, on the 11^th of May, I immediately went to Tucson to see Carla. She had been in a coma for over 2 weeks and was on life support. It was horrifying to see my best friend so gravely ill.

          Carla and I became friends when we were 15 years old; we met at our first job at a department store. Although vastly different we became immediate friends. Carla was 5’2” and Native American – Navajo and Pima, she called herself a Pimajo! I am 5’8” and due to my heritage I am very white, her family used to call me their Albino child.

One of the greatest things about Carla was she loved to laugh. I have never laughed as hard and as long as I did with my best friend. The way she looked at life and lived it – always questing for the best, adding ‘color’ to everything that she did. A bench did not stay a bench long, for it was soon painted to look like a cow. A chair needs glitz, gems, bow to be ‘jazzed up’! Oh how I miss her…

We had been friends through our teens, twenties, thirties and forties; this was a person that knew your moments. Moments of greatness, sadness, happiness, loneliness, celebrations – all the moments of our life; graduations, boyfriends, new jobs, travels, marriage, late night conversations, babies, children’s birthdays, loss of relatives and divorce.

In July 2005, Carla’s mother was going to visit family in the northern part of Arizona, Ganado, and Navajo Reservation. Her mother, Karletta was traveling with her best friend. In a moment, life changed tragically. Karletta’s best friend was driving, she ran a stop sign while exiting the freeway near Holbrook, and was struck by an oncoming truck. The vehicle was thrown and rolled 4 times due to the impact. Karletta was killed instantly in the accident.

Carla called me hysterically crying, I was on the road traveling home. As soon as I arrived back to the valley we began the journey from Scottsdale to Holbrook to identify her mother’s body. Life had changed and would never be the same. I began to lose my friend that day. Carla began to seek pain management for many ‘illnesses’ and eventually left her employment to sleep away her days. No amount of consolation helped. She eventually pulled away from all family; her children, her father, her brother, myself; life was just too much for her.

So when I received the call from Jessica, Carla’s daughter, that her mother had been in the hospital for over 2 weeks and they had just been notified. I immediately drove to Tucson. Seeing my dear friend so ill and just a shell of life was one of the most horrifying moments of my life. I talked with Carla, thanked her, apologized for not being there for her in these ‘final moments’ and blessed her. I gently took her hand in mine and prayed with her and for a brief moment there was a slight squeeze and that was all. I told her I loved her and would always remember our times of deep laughter. I thanked her for the gift of her friendship and will always cherish it. And then I left.

The next day I had to go to Pinetop to help my mother complete packing up my parents’ home for a move to the valley. As I went out on the front deck to take a break and have a cup of coffee, the breeze kicked up and a couple leaves floated by it was the winds of change and I knew as the phone rang that Carla had passed on. In that moment a part of life changed for me. I will always remember and miss my dear friend.

Cherish the moments. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. Author unknown

Celebrate the moments!