An ordinary day

She was beautiful. Now, she lay lifeless. Her fight with cancer; over. Victorious, she’d moved away from pain to a life where I could feel her smile somewhere in the heavens. I had visited her as she’d battled with the terrible disease that devoured chunks of her young life every day. Then one day, while holding her hand and silently crying, I’d asked, “Tell me what you miss the most.”

She’d looked at me with those beautiful expressive eyes of hers and whispered, “What I miss is an ordinary day!”

At thirty-five she’d been a success in business, but it wasn’t the excitement of a business deal she missed. She was a young mother, but it was not the success of a child’s report card she missed.

She missed the ordinariness of a normal day.

Rain and potholes. Delays and missed appointments. Grumbling and crosswords. Sleepy afternoons, maybe wide-awake nights. All these, the trappings of an ordinary day!

I leave her and walk slowly away, pondering how needed her message is for us today. How can we start enjoying our ordinary days?

Read the full article by subscribing to the print magazine or the digital edition.