ALS/Lou Gehrig's Disease aka My Beloved Godmother

Here we go again.  Another person in my life is faced with a fatal disease.  Let's see, there was my cousin...Waegner's Granulomotosis. Age 50.  There was my sister-in-law...stage 4 colon cancer that had metastasized to the liver. Age 51.  And now my Godmother...ALS.  Age 73.  Although she feels blessed to have lived this long without the disease.  Her father died when she was 10 from ALS (in 1947 they called it MS because ALS was not an official diagnosis).  I don't understand why all of this happens.  But then, I am not supposed to understand.  I am supposed to know that bad things happen to good people (a book by Harold Kushner) and that it is all randomness.


But why, oh why do the people that I presume love life and live it to the fullest always end up dying.  And here I sit, "Living in Loneliness".  Take my life instead of theirs.  I have nothing.  I am No One.
 
"Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Album is a chronicle about a man who lived with ALS and his journey to the end.  Time to get the book out and re-read it.  This man lived his life to the fullest up until the very end.  Maybe I can find some inspiration to share with my Godmother.  I don't think I can type any more right now except to say that I was looking on other Blogger sites and found one about ALS.  God does work in mysterious ways.

A Poem about death:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.
Mary Elizabeth Frye
I Did Not Die.