Operation Be a Bad-Ass, Part 1

I don't pay attention to platitudes or trite sayings much, but there is one that has always made me think. I saw it again on a friend's Pinterest board today:

This question is of particular interest to me lately. See, when my friend Karen died last month, she had just turned 40. She was talking and laughing with her husband one minute, and dying the next. She was too young. It was too quick.

On top of that, Karen's and I lives had a handful of similarities:

• We both have two kids ages 6 and 3.
• We are both stay-at-home moms who work our tails off on top of parenting. Karen did video and helped helm a holiday-light business. I am an editor/writer/designer. We fit our jobs around our kids, with the end result being that we were/are often exhausted.
• We both probably spend/spent way too much time wondering if we were doing it all right. If we are good enough and doing enough for those around us, especially our families. 

There is another thing that has been haunting me. Karen and I always ended up near each other. We grew up together in Nebraska, but I moved away when were were 12, right after the 6th grade. Somehow, years later, we were both back in Colorado attending CU, living together for many of those college years. After college, I rented my first solo apartment in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood. On 14th and Vine, I was in Apt. L. Karen moved into Apt. P. Then Karen bought a house in another neighborhood of Denver, and Jerry and I purchased our first home about a mile from there. We moved back to Denver in 2010 and eventually bought a house in Broomfield. Karen, Eric and their girls were planning to move over here, possibly into our very neighborhood.

See, the thing is: Karen and I somehow always ended up in the same place, in similar circumstances. We joked about how we'd grow to be crotchedy old widows, living together and sharing a car. It was a joke. But then, not really. I could have totally seen it happening.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that my life has so closely paralleled Karen's, in both circumstance and proximity, that I am scared. I am scared of my own mortality, not to mention the mortality of those that I love, in a very big way right now. Throw in a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of hypochondria (that I work with every fiber of my being to fight ... it unfortunately runs in the family), and you can imagine how every little ache, every hiccup, every sniffle is, to put it quite plainly, freaking my shit out right now. 

And yet I know enough about the grieving process to know that these kinds of thoughts, be they unreasonable or not, run rampant after the death of someone you love. I clearly remember that after my mom died, I sat in a sushi restaurant with Jerry trying to tell him that "superbugs" were going to kill us all. That we had to have a plan. That I was scared.

And so I know that this is probably what's happening again. I'm just being unreasonable as a result of grieving. The "trying to make sense of it all" brain works in mysterious ways.

And yet ... what if I'm not? What if I die tomorrow or next month or in December (a little inside Scott family joke there ... a lot of us die in that month)?

What would I do? What would I change?

What would I attempt to do if I knew I could not fail? Or, more precisely, if I just didn't give a shit if I failed anymore?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I can not italicize those words enough. A LOT. A lot. A lot. You get the point. 

Karen Emily Nalezinek Mraz: 1972-2012

So I'm coming up with a list. A list of 5 or 10 things that I want to accomplish. It won't be hard — unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to admit, I think about doing things I would love to do or that I think I need to do, way too much. And yet I never do them. For someone who approaches the definition of the word "workaholic," I am so very lazy when it comes to my own happiness and fulfillment.

I will publish that list in Part 2 of this post, but here's the thing. I want you to do one, too. Yes, you. The person reading this. And I'd love it if you shared it with me. Put it in the comments below, or post it on your own blog and link to it here.

And then I would very, very much love it if we could support each other — through harassment, peer pressure, friendship and a friendly sense of competition — to get our damn lists done. Yours doesn't have to be five or 10 — it can be one big thing. We all have that OBT, don't we?

I would like to die — whether I'm 40 or 480 and my soul has somehow been uploaded to the internet — knowing that I tried. That I had done my best and been my strongest and not been afraid. Maybe I'll fail, but god dammit, I'm gonna fail with the company of friends.

You do it, too. And please, share this post with your friends. With people you know but I don't. Let's all turn 2012 around and make it count.

And maybe, just maybe, Karen's death will count for something. I know I'll be doing my list in her honor.