June is bittersweet now...

June has always (35 years now) been one of my favorite months each year. The second day in June is when I was born, so I think that might have something to do with it. But it's much more than that, really...it also has to do with my Father's birthday falling on the seventeenth and another Hallmark day, Father's Day, being in there somewhere. Also, June was when summer vacation and swimming pools were in full swing, two luxuries that I cherished as a child. Nowadays, I have the extra joys of celebrating the anniversaries of my son's baptism on my birthday and saying the most important vows I will ever utter on the fifth day of June in 1993. So, June continues to be an extraordinarily joyful and blessed month for me each year. And yet, one event has forever altered that experience. In 1996, at around 0230 on the sixth of June, Laura answered the phone to a call from my father. She spoke to him for a moment and handed the phone to me. My mother was ill my entire life. Chronic asthma made sure that she was hospitalized nearly every spring, no matter where we lived. But she was having a good run of health the last year or so, although it was at the expense of elevated dosages of Prednisone, a steroid she used to control her condition. We thought for sure that the Prednisone would take her bones first, but it turns out that it had caused her heart to become enlarged. My father was checking into a hotel in Monterey, California while my mother waited in the car anticipating an enjoyable week's vacation when her heart finally gave up. Both of my parents thought it might be an asthma attack and the bronchodilator she used merely accelerated the infarct. I had heard stories about those middle-of-the-night phone calls, but none of them do justice to the actual experience.
I believe that one of the aspects of our relationship with God (Tao, universal law, et al) is that we are here to work on getting it right before we move on to the next, far more glorious phase. I believe this explains why the "good" die young, because they've done what they were here to do, for themselves and for others. My Mother, Maureen, passed from this mortal coil on June 6, 1996, at the age of 52. She truly lived love and generousity and self-sacrifice and humility and those who knew her were forever blessed to have been touched by her. Thanks Mom.
I am not sure if I have dealt with the loss of my mother yet, even now, nine years later, but I do know that she had earned the release a thousand times over and I am pretty okay with it.
So, that's colored the way I view June a little bit, but it's mad sunny out there and I think I'm gonna spend the weekend at a friend's pool, so be good to one another and treat this thing like the adventure that it is, kids, 'cause it gets lonely and depressing if you don't.