Just An Ordinary Day

In the play "Our Town", one of the characters

gets the chance to choose one day

to go back to. To re-live.

I remember the author's writing that described the character

as an observer of an ordinary day in her life.

If I were given the opportunity to go back, observe,

enjoy, just one day out of my life,

I would choose the day that we

went to the Bronx Zoo.

Not because it was a holiday, a birthday, a wedding.
Not because it was any different than any other
day. I would go back because it was
such an ordinary day.
Our lives had yet to be touched with mortality.
It was the last time that we were
all together, before life
was shadowed with cancer.
With death.
We spent a whole day together.
We walked through the zoo and enjoyed
each other's company. We met my
brother. We ate lunch.
We laughed.
The weather was perfect. We had so much
fun.
We thought there would be a million more
days like that one.
Less than one month after that trip to the
zoo, we found out my Mom was dying.
On that day, she wasn't dying.
We weren't hurting.
We weren't healing.
We were a family that was whole.
If I could go back, just for the day,
I would enjoy it more.
I would savour the time that we shared.
Some how I would make the day last longer.
I would slow down and enjoy it more.
It's funny how an ordinary day, spent with
loved ones, can become such a special
memory.
I'm so thankful that we shared that day together.
I'm so thankful that we had that time.
One thing that my Mother's illness and death has
taught me is how finite life is.
How you just never know when the ordinary
may become the extraordinary.