Joy..and Suffering

Yesterday I was daydreaming while staring out into the sea, thinking about how a life worth living is filled with lots of joy and balanced with suffering. Conversely, a life worth not living is filled with indifference, monotony and a lack of risks with your emotion and ambition. Last night, I got a good dose of the suffering.

I found myself at 3:30am, on no sleep, waiting on a dirt road up in the mountains, on a village, on an island, waiting for an ambulence that felt like it would never come. I had to use every ounce of strength I had and some I didn't even know I had to lift my immoble ailing grandmother and get her all the way up a steep incline into that ambulence. She was having problems breathing and at 83 years old with a number of health issues it was a situation where I had to stare one of my worst nightmares right in the face.

They did all they could on the island, and then sent her on the first early morning ferry to the mainland. My mother and uncles did not think she would survive the trip but it looks like she might prove everyone wrong again and is starting to show signs of recovery in ICU. Hopefully she will pull through this so that we can laugh together again. This is how I would like to remember her in the past, present and future.

It is suffering because even though my grandmother lived far away for most of my life, we were still very close. I will endure the suffering because it was worth the joy. I arrived in Greece one day before all of this happened. This is why every day counts in a life worth living.