Life Worth Living

For most of my life I loved life, loved being here, loved the highs and even tolerated the lows, knowing that these troughs were still evidence that you were living, and whose contrast with the crests would make me appreciate the latter even more.  

I was not a morning person but loved the mornings, especially during the winter when you’d wake up to the first snow fall. I loved dusk and with its accompanying Golden Hour of light, even though I didn’t know that was a thing then. I loved the twilight, when the sun had just set and some stars would start to make their appearance while the western lower skyline would be ablaze with brilliant oranges and reds. I loved the night, especially when my young eyes could still make out the Milky Way and I’d marvel at the infinite expanse of dots of starlight.

I loved spring with its rebirth. I loved summer and the lazy days it afforded playing outside until dusk and spending the late evenings in my room with the windows open hoping to catch a breeze, the room bathed just in the flickering light provided from the small black and white TV that had on a Cubs’ road game. I loved the fall and the wonderful colors associated with the changing leaves, and listening to the gentle sound of the leaves falling and swirling in the wind. I loved winter, walking in the stillness hearing the soft crunch of my boots walking on the snow and becoming entranced with my visible breath with each exhalation. 

I loved my friends and loved my family. I loved the Saturday night CBS TV lineup. I loved books, their content and their form. I loved my dogs, and cats, and occasional pig. I loved a surprise dinner of breakfast cereal from a box, and I loved spaghetti. I loved The Cubs and The Blackhawks and The Bears. I loved going to school in order to get to see whoever my current crush was, and lived for whoever that was smiling at me. I loved music, I loved magic. 

But mostly I just loved life, and I wanted to live forever. Not because I was afraid of what happened after; that undiscovered country did not worry me one whit. When I was younger and extremely religious, I knew what came after was glorious, and when I gradually moved away from traditional religion and I did wonder what if anything came next and of course wanted to hold on and appreciate all of this now, in the moment.

My daughter was the same, it seemed to me, when she was younger, if not more so. Where I loved life internally, I was a bit withdrawn and would not often go on and on about it. Adri, on the other hand, was extroverted and made no bones about her love of life. I’ve written about her at the roller-skating rink already that illustrates this, but she was always openly in love with life, and it became the biggest thing I loved about my life, seeing her life and how much she appreciated it.

However, I sensed a change when she was at the latter end of high school, and though she’d still have moments, many moments of unabashed love of life, there was still a sadness evident in her, and over the years this grew larger, and life, I feel, began to throw more than her fair share of curveballs her way. She endured, but it was a struggle, and as close as we were, I still feel there was perhaps a depth to this sadness that even I couldn’t tease out of her. 

The last years since covid were the worst, and this accelerated. She had many issues thrown at her, some her doing but many if not most out of her control. I tried to be her constant, someone she could turn to and lean on, but it got harder and harder for both of us. 

She said this to me more than once:

“This is hell, dad. I’m living in hell. I mean that literally, I think this is hell.”

She’d always follow that with something that tore me up and destroyed me every time, and still does:

“God thinks I’m a joke. I’m just God’s big joke.”

I would try to remind her about our shared love of life, and tell her that she wasn’t alone, and that she couldn’t be anyone’s joke, else what would that make her boys? But I could tell nothing I said or did would really make a difference at that point. But I kept trying. I kept trying to remind her of how glorious life could be, especially if we got out of its way.

I’ve not talked about her cause of death, but reading between the lines one can probably get a good idea what happened. However, I realize that some of the things I’ve said, and especially what I just disclosed about how she thought of herself, might lead people to the incorrect conclusion. I want to stress, therefor, that she did not commit suicide. Life in general still held some promise for her, and she was still planning and trying to reach goals she had set for herself. And her boys, especially her boys, were important to her and she’d never do that to them. And she didn’t.

Still, I wonder about life, and wonder the reasons it's worth living, if the joys and crests of a lifetime are worth the sorrow and troughs that accompany it. So, I want to ask those who are still reading at this point (almost 1000 words in) if they could tell me:

What makes life worth living to you?