Fish

Today has been rather interesting in Scarlettville, folks. A morning of highs and lows. Let me share with you the good first, because that's just how I roll.
This morning I ran in a 5K race to benefit a UM center that studies diabetes. The run was hilly, but there were lots of people there and it was definitely a good cause. The center will be using this money to do research into diabetic neuropathy. I'm not going to tell you about it, because one can Google these things and I wouldn't do a good job explaining it anyway. All I know about it is this: it kills the nerves in diabetes patients and they no longer feel their toes, their fingers etc. Pretty nasty stuff.

Onto the sadness.

After the race, I went to work and saw that a fish in our lab died. I had to give it a burial at sea. This fish was in our lab for, by most estimates, 7 years. And in the past couple of weeks, the poor critter was not doing well. I knew that its *time* was close at hand. Yet, every morning when I saw it flutter about, I did a mental cheer and prayed that it would just last one more day. Today, fish did not putter about the aquarium or kinda try to move. I did a death check, as I had done a couple of times in the past month. I picked up fish and moved him around the aquarium this morning, but his lifeless little slimy body told the truth. He had given up the spirit. I cried, and I buried him (at sea). For a fish, whom I had never touched or talked with, his loss had affected me.

It made me appreciate how close humans are to each other. Tommorow, we mourn the loss of over 2900 people. Most of whom, we have never met or never seen on the street or heard chatting in the subway. I did not know any of the September 11th victims, but I mourn their loss. Their death, affected me and so many people around the world. We forget how close we are until that connection is missing or lost or stolen. Those people, those families, those folks...they were stolen from us. And the world suffers still.

So, tommorow I'm going to rededicate myself to making a few more loving and positive connections. Tommorow. Rededicate to hugging your family a bit longer, telling your mate how much you love them more often, petting your dog or cat a bit more. Hug a tree and kiss a squirrel. The world, even in its apex of sadness, can be made happier and brighter if we all "make it so".

:) LJS