Welcome to Living a Life of Gratitude.
I'm Sarah Wiseman.
An Ordinary Day.
Most of us don't know the day we'll die.
We just know we will.
I met Riva years ago when I was doing a lot of dancing.
By dancing,
I don't mean the formal kind with steps and choreography and timing.
I mean ecstatic dance.
Free movement to find awareness,
Opening,
Bliss.
I'd go to dance workshops at retreat centers in nature,
The woods,
The mountains,
The ocean.
I'd stay the weekend,
Becoming for a few days part of a newly met community.
Dancers,
Kindred spirits,
Who also like to move as their meditation.
Often we'd share rooms to save money.
A bunk room,
A sleeping bag room.
We'd share with someone we didn't know.
I met Riva that way,
A shared room box checked on the registration form.
When I arrived to our little cabin in the woods,
She'd taken the bed to the left and I was reserved the bed to the right.
It was a plain spare room,
As these rooms often are.
Rustic might be the word on the brochure.
But even though it was already alarmingly chilly outside,
The room was warmed up for me.
Riva had dialed up the heat and welcome.
She wasn't there when I arrived,
But her presence was loud and clear.
The bed was neatly made up with linen she'd brought from home.
A cozy hand-sewn quilt and a lumpy pillow,
Probably taken straight from her own bed.
Her suitcase was unpacked.
Everything was neatly hung from the pegs in the wall.
And there on the small wooden shelf under the window,
She'd set out her treasure,
Pictures of her children and husband.
She'd even brought work with her,
Which surprised me.
We'd all be so busy dancing during the workshop,
I couldn't imagine getting anything else done.
But there were her books on naturopathy.
Big,
Thick,
Complicated textbooks with pages marked and tabbed to study.
It's my life dream,
She told me later that night,
After a long day of dancing as I settled down for sleep.
She hefted up a book and turned up her reading light so it wouldn't bother me.
I've always wanted to be a naturopath,
And someday I will.
And someday she was.
Riva treated many people in the years to follow.
She danced,
And she raised her kids,
And she loved her husband,
And she healed soul after soul in her work.
I didn't see her for many years.
Her life was full,
Busy.
And then one day I got the news that Riva had died.
She'd had a heart attack out of the blue.
It was an ordinary day.
She'd been working.
She transitioned before the EMTs arrived.
Sometimes we meet these bright,
Bright spirits who are lit from within.
They move quickly through life,
And they're given all the joys they can handle.
And then they're gone,
Just as fast.
Riva is missed by people every day,
Not just her family,
But so many that she touched.
I sometimes think back to that night when we talked quietly and easily from our separate beds in the little cabin with the trees waving and swaying above.
If I had known Riva was going to die a few years later,
Would I have acted differently?
I don't know.
But I do know it was a gift to have a moment with Riva,
With her quilt,
And her pictures,
And her books all around her,
On an ordinary day.
You will meet people who are going to die soon.
You will meet people who will seem to live forever,
You don't know how much time you have with anyone.
Each moment is a gift.
Open these gifts in gratitude.
