The Lucky One

If you don’t have it, run, beg, borrow and/or steal to find Allison Kraus’s “The Lucky One”. It’s philosophy in action, poetry in motion. It’s simple. It’s complex. It’s me.

I’m the lucky one.

I have 2 sisters. One has two ex-husbands. The other has never had a long- term relationship. One’s older, the other younger.

I also have a dead husband (we were together for 5 years) and, now, a crazy one for 7 years. But still, I’m lucky.

My first died young. He was only 27. It was sudden and unexpected and totally devastating. I made the decision to cut his life support and held his hand while he died. The I went home, fell apart and was crazy for about 5 years.

My current is bipolar. He’s been hospitalized twice in the last 10 months because of acute psychosis. He didn’t know who I was or who he was. Much less where he was or what was going on.

And still, I’m the lucky one.

I’ve known deep and abiding love twice in my life. Some people never get that at all. And even though it was taken away once, I found it again.

I’m twice blessed.

Lucky to have a crazy husband who reminds me every time he gets ill what it is I love and what can’t be replaced.

Sitting up all night in an emergency room or a waiting room might not seem so lucky, but it is. I have a reason to be there. The reason is more important than the circumstance.

I’m lucky to have to be there in the first place.

Good times come and go. They are a shadow playing across a stage, fleeting, intransigent and of no ultimate value.

It’s what you come home to that matters.

Even if he’s crazy as hell.

I really am the lucky one.