No, I don’t mean that I am quitting. You will have to read to get to the punchline today. First, we have a long and winding path to get there, so let’s get started.

Valentine’s Day is over, so what is next for merchandizing? Why Easter of course. What does this have to do with anything? I am getting there.

When I first met my wife, I was introduced to something that I don’t see often. It is tradition called cascarón. This is where you save your egg shells be used for Easter. Essentially, you try to preserve as much of an intact eggshell by cracking off one end of the egg. You want to build up a large inventory of egg shells for coloring and filling.

This is where it get’s fun. Some of the shells are filled with confetti, flour or oatmeal and some might be filled with money and occasionally, there might even be a raw egg! What you do is run around and crack them on peoples heads. We hide them with traditional Easter eggs and then inevitably wait to get cracked. If you want to participate in this tradition, now is the time to start building up your inventory of eggshells.

You should know by now, I am going to take this a lot deeper. One of my first Easters with my Wife’s family was in 1995. We were going to school over 200 miles away and of course it was a school weekend and we had little means to travel so they came to us for the day. They brought the cascarones.

My wife was living in a townhouse with several exchange students. One of them was Japanese and this holiday was foreign. So, we invited her to join us for the meal and the Easter egg hunt. She brought a friend to the dinner whose name was Ai (also a Japanese exchange student).

After the dinner, and when it came to cracking eggs (by surprise is the best) they quickly caught on to what was likely going to happen. Ai got so freaked out that she ran to her bicycle and peddled away not to come back again that day. This was our Sophomore year and consequently my wife became really good friends with her Japanese roommate.

We have kept in contact with her roommate over all these years. Her roommate and Ai came to our wedding. Five years later, we all met at her roommate’s wedding in California. Ai studied theater in college and dreamed of Hollywood, which she pursued. Yesterday, Ai died of cancer.

We had heard that it was terminal a few months ago. In December, Ai left California to go back to Japan for her final days. To be honest, we weren’t nearly as close to Ai as we are to my wife’s roommate and dealing and our own demons concerning cancer, it was out of sight and out of mind. But, it hits that this was someone who we know that left us too early.

My wife deals with strong survivor’s guilt. She had a coworker who was our age and kids are the same age that died of cancer a few years ago, that was hard. They had even done chemotherapy at the same time. Then she had another friend who was younger than us by probably ten years die a couple years ago, that was worse. It feels like we know too many people battling and losing to cancer way too young.

I know, this is being hypervigilant. I see it one place and my eyes are open to where else it could be. But, I also can’t help but wonder what God is telling me in this situation. Not just me either, for people with survivor’s guilt as strongly as my wife’s what can she get out of the situation? Is there a message here, am I trying to make a connection that doesn’t exist or is this a fact of life that now I am getting older the probability to bad endings happen in life?

I talked about the neighbor kid that is battling last week, my mother-in-law is in her second year of treatment, people that are in my inner circle are in the fight of their lives. I’ve gone through it with my wife too. Compassion and empathy are some of my weaker areas for sure. I think I have them, but it is really difficult to express them adequately. Maybe that is what God is trying to tell me?

Yesterday in church, the sermon was conceptually about making the most of a situation (not necessarily dying). What can you do with what you have. The question of the bucket list came up. I had never really given it much thought because I have never created one. At least for me, I came down to goals and achievements are for the living. I don’t really have a traditional bucket list because I think that when that time comes, I wont want to have a final bunch of experiences before I die. I think the point of making the most of the situation actually means living before dying.

End Your Programming Routine: Of course, we are all going to face the inevitable. There is no doubt that if we live long enough, we will see our fair share of tragedy – however we define it. I suppose that I can consider myself lucky not having to witness something like the holocaust or to be born into slavery. With all things, it is not how we handle the acute situation, but the aftermath that is going to make the difference.