the inevitable

La cuenta, por favor = The check, please.

well, long have i heard it, and repeatedly in a variety of ways, that the only thing man is sure of the minute he is born is that he will be one day closer to death.
yet, you never really think about what you would do if you knew unequivocally that you only have 1 year to live. most "normal" people think it's a macabre topic and so that's just that... (and we all know how i detest the concept of normal!)
i am guessing that a lot of what you would do next, would in the most part depend on how healthy you are at this exact point, when you receive "the" news, and how long you will stay healthy after.

all a moot debate i suppose, as one never knows how one will react per se. but i now have the ultimate role model. and i will struggle to stay as cheerful, as upbeat, as optimistic and as loving as my dear friend Narelle Cameron was right until the very end. and i will try to embrace each day to its fullest. (aside - Camo married her prince and has gone to heaven knowing how very loved she is. and every single loved one she has left behind, knows too, without any doubt, how very much she loves them.)

and so i started to think, why the heck wait for news like that??! i am almost 40, and have spent the bulk of my life thinking some Bollywood movie is just going to happen to me. but i should know better... and so i made this list of the top 5 things i want to do by this time next year (22 August 2007) regardless of if i live "forever". the list is intended to make my own Bollywood movie, to carve a little of my own karma. and so maybe this list is a little fictional at points, and even maybe a little blue sky thinking given my current life-style and state-of-mind, but as my mates in adidas used to chant - "impossible is nothing".

so here we go-go:

1. i want to be at my own wedding, and as THE bride, i want to be looking into the eyes of MY MAN, who is marrying me as he loves me with the full force of his heart, and i want to see and feel that love without a doubt. oh, and i want to be wearing that exact same lengha that Rani Mukherjee wore when she met Shahrukh Khan for the very first time, in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. so that my hero, my Dad, can dance the Shava Shava song like he promised (he will be 72 next year). maybe i can rope in my crowd-phobic cha-cha-ji and my very suave disco-dancing thayah-ji into the Bollywood sequence. hmmm...

2. i want to have saved up so much money that i can just not work for a year and stay at home and write my best selling... novel? collection of short stories? vampire tales? hmm, how about my suicidal dark depressing unrequited love poems?? whatever! i want to write full time! and still pay all my lifestyle bills. moving along here...

3. i want to start a small center/shelter for education and rescue in honor of my best friend, the green iguana. word IggySingh :) for all the times you have rescued me right back and helped me become a decent human being.

4. i want to meet a vampire. and persuade him that i do deserve eternal life, and that he should bite me. where are you?? what? you don't believe in vampires??!

5. i want to stand at the Iguazu falls and feel the dreams of my childhood... and reflect on how we are all connected, every single one of us, even before we realize it.

so meet back here in August 2008 people, and remember, live every minute.

the end: Narelle is being buried tomorrow at the Springvale Botanical Cemetery, 3pm at the Boyd Chapel, Melbourne, Australia. and she has "organized" the idea of drinks for her friends. to drink to her full life at a pub in North Fitzroy. i salute you Camo. and until we meet again in our next lives, Chak De Sista!