Tomorrow I'll head out early to visit with a dear gal pal who is vacationing in the area.  We'll eat lunch and catch up on things happening in our lives.  We'll laugh about the time she froze corn with me in my kitchen, while tediously cutting the corn off the cobs and grumbling about the amount of work it took.  She kept asking, "are we having fun yet?" Covered with corn kernels and surrounded by a mountain of bowls, cobs, husks, and boiling pots, we both laughed.  

I like her a whole lot even though we are very different souls.  She's no-nonsense, painfully direct, pragmatic, impatient, and unemotional (at least on the surface.)  She married well and has never had to work a day in her married life, has one son and several step-children, grandchildren she adores, and leads a charmed life with her very handsome, ambitious, and successful husband ... until now ... 

A little over a year ago, her almost perfect, Hollywood handsome, and physically fit husband was showing signs of Alzheimer's. Recently, he has been formally diagnosed.  He is in his early to mid seventies, finally enjoying retirement from the successful business he created, has positioned them to live in a beautiful, new home that they built themselves where they can do all of the things they love ... and today occupies himself with washing his hands, shaving, and sleeping.  They have a pool he must enjoy only with supervision, his boat and gear sits idle or is used by other family members, and his wife, my friend, can no longer leave him unsupervised for even a trip to the local grocery store.

Family members are providing respite relief for her so she can fly here and check out for a week in a world she enjoys.  A truly bitter-sweet time for her, I'm sure.

  

As I consider her circumstances and look at the calendar to confirm the date for our visit, I realize that one year ago my nephew's wife, aged 52, died of lung cancer.  They had fourteen months between diagnosis and her death for them to try to come to terms with her illness and make as many memories as possible for their family.  My friend and her husband probably had the same amount of time to live fairly normal lives and prepare for the inevitable.  Time ... so precious, so taken for granted until the sands in the hourglass run at breakneck speed before our eyes.  It waits for no one and it cautions us to use it wisely.  So, when someone asks, "are we having fun yet?" one can only hope that the answer would always be "yes."  It is up to each one of us to make it so.