upside down, right side up, and somewhere in between

i had a good weekend.

no, i had a bad weekend.

no, come to think of it, i had a great weekend.

backstory. the weekend was full of mostly not-blog-worthy activities. i ran. we walked the dogs. we loaded up at the farmer's market. but, you know, we always do those things.

we watched the mariners shut out the rangers. seven-zip. that hardly ever happens. we attended a ridiculously good concert, lyle lovett at chateau ste. michelle. that was noteworthy.

oh, and for awhile i thought a friend was dying.

then i found out he's not.

the dying part was devastating. i mean, obviously. i cried like a child. i mentally composed a blog post that made me cry more. i was crushed.

later that evening it turned out that i had completely jumped to conclusions on the basis of very incomplete information. and viola! he's not dying. yay!

that's where things get odd. there was no "yay!" moment. once the good news was conveyed, i quickly folded it into my world view, and went busily on. without missing a beat. the turnabout was almost comical.

only after many hours did it hit me what had happened.

the ordeal was a product of my imagination, but still, as far as i knew it was completely real. my reaction reflected just how important this person is to me. what's unreal is how quickly i recovered when the bad news turned into good news. he's not dying? okay, cool, hey what's for dinner?

in less than 24 hours, i experienced a stunning, even miraculous turnaround. in a few blinks of an eye, untimely death turned back into life. whiplash-like i went from full-on grieving to...business as usual.

where was my equal-but-opposite emotional reaction? nowhere to be found.

somewhere between death and life i was cheated out of a jolt of joy. or a rush of relief. even a bolus of endorphins would have been acceptable. but i got {crickets}.

i suppose i know why. once i got the homerun, i took my eye off the ball. i didn't take time to acknowledge and celebrate something actually worth celebrating. the most important event of the last hundred weekends was brushed past in favor of what? trifles.

this is, however, a teachable moment~~and i am willing student. the lesson for me is this: there will be plenty of times life will turn us upside down and shake us. if we're going to give the times of grief their due, we better give equal time to the yay moments as well.

while we have the chance.

"You know, we just don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they're happening. Back then I thought, well, there'll be other days. I didn't realize that that was the only day." ~~archie graham, field of dreams