How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

It's amazing how quickly things can change ... One moment I was sitting at the airport with my mother and oldest brother, waiting to see them off for their flight to Southern California to spend Christmas with my two younger brothers. The next, I was trying desperately to remember the names of my mother's many medications as the paramedics were loading her into an ambulance. Literally minutes before she and Chuck were scheduled to board their plane, my mother had a heart attack. Thankfully she is fine now, following 9 days of tests and angioplasty and beeping monitors and nurses who were always wonderful despite the fact that they are horribly overworked and (I suspect) incredibly underpaid. But I realized that night how quickly our lives can be turned upside down.

As another year comes to an end, I hope that I will carry the lesson with me. Let us all try to make each day count - because you never know how quickly things may change.