15 Minutes to Live

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.
1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes.
2. Write the story that has to be written.

There’s no sense rehashing the past. What they did to me, how they treated me and who they all were is irrelevant. However it is worth stating to whomever should read this that you have no idea how much pain and suffering you can cause another person just by never being interested in who they are, never acknowledging their gifts, never seeing their beauty apart from what you have judged on the outside.

I don’t care to share my truths with anyone but you Veronica. You are my greatest work, my sole blessing, my gift for all the pain endured at the hands of parents, the various lovers of my birth mother, the step mother, and so called relatives. My life means nothing but for what I can impart upon you and hope that you use it to move forward and change the world – even just to affect one person to live a life of love.

To live a life of love.

To stop and see another. To ask them. To have an entire conversation asking them about themselves, but to do so in a way that doesn’t frustrate them, just makes them feel special. Unique. Valuable.

Remember what I taught you.

Remember who you are.

Remember that there is no other Veronica.

Eight minutes left.

If I could just gaze into your soul for eight minutes then my life’s ending would be in beauty. You are not here so I shall spend the next 2 minutes contemplating our life together. The moment you were born, the first giggle, first temper tantrum, first moment of awareness when you realized you were not me but your own person and responsible for your own happiness — and from that moment you set out to make your destiny! Good God I love you.

—

Five minutes left.

I’d be remiss to forget the wonderful people who held me up, who DID see me, who challenged and directed me, who made me laugh, who saw right through me when I was genuinely working on validating them, being aware of them, loving them. They saw me. They knew I was (mostly) pure of heart. They were my strength when I was tired, hurt, saddened.

Part of me thinks that this is how Christ must have felt. (Not for a moment likening my own life to His.) But knowing that I did my best, I gave my all, I loved you — and in the end was a martyr (is that the right word?), was trampled, was lied about.

Except for the few.

Is that why Christ had so few disciples? To teach us that we can only be truly seen, loved, and understood by a mere handful of souls? So many questions unanswered even in the final moments of life.

Time’s nearly up.

Goodbye. I loved you all as best an imperfect human could.

Veronica, my love…

Keep your passion, take chances, live life strong, follow your heart. Don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t think that, act that, or be that.

LIVE!

pg. 168

“Only you, in the entire universe, believe that somehow you are to blame. Missy doesn’t believe that, nor Nan, nor Papa. Perhaps it’s time to let that go – that lie. And Mackenzie, even if you had been to blame, her love is much stronger than your fault could ever be.”

Thanks “Willie” for this book!

Thanks also to Lucille Burke from Burke’s Jewellers in town who lent the book to me.

I never read novels so this book, which attracted and held me right to the very end, was special. Special as well since it was one of the first of five steps into pulling me out of a 2 month depression, (dark days indeed) and catapulted me into a new journey of self-discovery. Seems I had it all wrong – the woman I thought I was – so at 45 I’m working forward to figure that all out now.

An easy read novel that inspires introspection and change – if you let it.