Life becomes an endless series of meaningless details. If you are lucky, you enter the state of blank. If you are not so fortunate, a thousand times a day your heart is pierced by a memory or a smell or a strain of music, or a phrase'or regret about something not done.

Loss is a lesson any sane being will do anything to avoid. The sheer emptiness of it is unimaginably frightening, and, it is inevitable. I sustained a loss so complete that I wished for my life to end. I did not want to face the years ahead of me. I was not equipped to continue. The plug had, in a very real sense, been pulled. My juice was off. I moved about robotically. My life was a flat line. I was breathing in and out. I was putting one foot in front of another. I subjugated everything to my job. I ate enough. I thought just enough. I slept almost not at all?

Years passed. I worked. Then I worked harder. My heart was on ice.

Then I got hit by a car. More specifically my small sub-compact was broadsided by a van going 55 MPH.

When the car stopped spinning I looked down to where my body should have been seated and I was looking at the outside of the car encasing it Screaming. A mouth full of glass. PAIN. FEAR. Crying. Paramedics. Jaws of Life. Ambulance. Hospital. Harsh lights. Pain Meds. Vomiting. X-Rays....Waiting

Amazingly'no bone was broken! Incredulously, after only a few hours I heard them say: ?You can go home now.? I was bruised and sore and had suffered terrific soft tissue damage, but I was going to be OK. My ribs had been dislocated from my sternum by my seat belt, and I saw an angel of a chiropractor every day for the following ten weeks, but I had cheated death.

* Breath * I am not suggesting that if your heart has been numbed by loss, you walk in front of a car. I want you to know the lesson I received was, ?Live each moment? From that day forward , the ?If only? and ? I should have? and the ?It wasn't supposed to be like this ? simply lost their charge. Freedom of movement was slow to return, and it took the better part of a year to be able to breathe deeply without a wince, but when I did return to feeling good, I was eternally grateful to be alive.

I realized that ?now? is ?someday?, and I started in on My LIST with all I had. I learned to play tennis, and to swim, and to scuba dive and to skydive and I read classics and went the opera. I traveled to Australia and Alaska. I became proficient in a darkroom, started a business, and I moved from Manhattan to Hawaii. In the process, I discovered it was possible to experience joy after the loss of someone I loved deeply.

I gratefully moved on. I shall never forget the light in his presence and the warmth of his smile. I intend to take them on each segment of a long and joyous journey.

When it is the last day of my life, my smile will reflect my joy. I will know what it was to love, and to freefall, and to feel the vibration of a whale song in my bones. I will rejoice in the richness of all the lessons that were mine to embrace.