They All Add Up, Letter To Dad 3

Dear Dad,

    I had one of those moments today that make me feel alone but yet part of a whole. A moment, looking back, that was coming for a week or more and is a collection of a lot of small pieces ..let me explain.
    First, this morning and yesterday morning, I read the headlines in the obituary section, oddly noting how many people in the same age decade as me had died, of cancer mostly. I had this thought which I had yesterday and dismissed. It was stronger today. Today is the one day they didn't have. I bet they would do anything to have it.
    Then, I made breakfast for Nadia, who turns 18 in two days. She is so happy, so cheerful and so excited about her 18th birthday, graduation and going out in the world.
    I saw her off to school, got dressed to go the gym and drove my car through clear Spring sunlight. I think Spring sunlight has some blue in it. It's sunlight still going toward the butter yellow light of summer. Anyway, this clear sunlight was showing through trees decorated with fat green buds, glinting off green grass and rain washed sidewalks.
    I drove past the huge slew where the water is draining back from our unending Spring rains. I heard crickets and frogs all talking at once through the open window and against this backdrop, a red winged blackbird flew out and kept pace by soaring, barely flapping wings, with my car. As I turned my head to watch it, I thought again about this one day.
    And while all this was going on, I was playing my new (in the last week) favorite song which I have listened to every day for the past 6 days. Its called I Lived by One Republic. The words I heard ( not in the songs order) were

Hope that you spend your days and they all add up.
Hope you take that jump and you don't feel the fall.
If everybody runs, you choose to stay.
Hope you fall in love and it hurts so bad.
Hope you don't suffer but you take the pain
and when the moment comes you'll say
I did it all. owned every second this world could give.

    Do you understand Dad? How sometimes you do, what seems random or scarcely considered and "they all add up"? into a bittersweet, almost painfully beautiful moment? Maybe only a single minute, of a message and feeling like, I am inside time. Time has slowed down and allowed me in.
    What I regret, is when caught up in the pain, drama or busyness of my life, I must miss some of these moments. I hate that, its such a waste isn't it? Those moments are alive.  I must miss some of those moments.  They fill me up. It feels spiritual or driven by God or whatever power we believe in. and this is out there but what if those moments are gifts? And I, oblivious, busy,  just keep driving by missing them? I know, I know what I think you would say. Slow down. Pay attention. I'll try, I'll try harder.

Love
Margot