Numbering My Days

     The late-night phone call stabbed our hearts: “Maggie had a seizure.”    
     How could this happen to our four-year-old granddaughter when her older sister died following a seizure this spring?      
     Maggie and her parents had flown to California to make fresh, good memories. But before they reached the Magic Kingdom, Maggie fell unconscious in her father’s arms.     
     The thought of losing Maggie, my little Magpie, pierced me. She and I sing a kids’ song in which we stoop down to touch our toes, but she leans over and touches mine because I don’t have the flexibility to bend that low. Now would she leave me to touch the sky?     
     When paramedics arrived and pricked her with an IV, Maggie regained consciousness. Then she spent two days in the hospital where doctors ran tests. Nothing conclusive…seizure perhaps brought on by a fever…didn’t seem related to her sister’s mysterious death.     
     We exhaled the breath we’d held too long, and I pondered how thin the thread of life is. How quickly it can be severed.      
     Recently I’d attended the funeral of a cousin and observed how wisely he invested his eighty-four years. And at a high school reunion I’d studied two poster boards filled with photos of classmates who have passed on.     
​     Whether we’re four or eighty-four, life is precious. Magpie should have decades more to touch toes and touch lives. My days are fewer, and I want each to count before I arrive at that ultimate Magic Kingdom. So I’m learning to number my days. To make each moment matter.

My Magpie Maggie in the hospital.