MikelBear

Hi--I just want to tell you that your parents must have done something right, because they raised you folks up to be caring, loving and concerned people. I understand the frustrations you are facing. My parents both died fairly young, of Lung Cancer, all the while my mother smoking like a chimney. No matter what I said or did, she would not quit. Her choice, no second guessing her--she said she had made her choice and was prepared to live (and then die) with it. Toward the end, when she was hospitalized and in pain, she did get somewhat frightened. She began a series of "What if's...?" to reduce the gulit she felt at leaving my sisters and I as orphans. She died in my arms, and it was both horribly gruesome and indescribably peaceful. That's my side of being the child of parents who will not do what we know is best for them. I miss my mother every day, and resent the lack of care she decided to take of herself.

I've been diabetic now myself since I was 12. I contracted the disease in 1965, and have battled it for 38 years. Nothing about it ever gets easy. It will require constant vigilance and determination to stay where other people can stay by doing anything they wish. It requires generous measures of self-denial, discipline, acceptance and good humor. In return, one DOES manage to get something in return--the strength of beating something that kills lesser people. I guess, in that sense, beating diabetes (as opposed to letting it beat you, which are the only 2 choices...) proves a lot to a person--it tests our mettle, challenges us to a lifetime of strength and committment, and wakes us up to live very consciously.

For me, I've take lemons and made lemonaide. I've taken this wretched disease and used it as a path of spiritual development. Think about it--to be a 'successful' diabetic (ie, a living one!) one requires physical, mental and emotional discipline, a constantly elevated state of alertness, a calm center of peaceful joy, and a belief in both a higher force and one's own self-determination. Diabetes has been my gift, a way to discover and develop these qualities in my life and in my Self.

Perhaps it's a lot harder to deal with it if you develop it later in life--the "old dog/new tricks" problem, but life shows us the exact way we need to go just when we need to go there. Refusing to change with the diagnosis of diabetes is turning away from one's karma and refusing to travel one's own path. Okay, but remember--you'll be back and you'll have to travel it eventually. You're being given the perfect opportunity to do the self-discovery that is required to BE you SELF. "Be Here Now..."

I know I've rambled, and addressed some of this posting to you, and some to your wayward parents. Sorry--I've kinda gone stream-of-consciousness on this, maybe because this whole issue--acceptance of reality--is NOT a simple thing, it's a truely monumental spiritual quest. It's a much bigger deal than it appears on the surface. It's sort of as though turning away from diabetes self-care is turning away from God... Hmmm, now THAT sounds strange, doesn't it...?

Go with the flow,
Namaste,
Michael