No one wants to die.

I am not a techy by any means, but my husband is. So when I shared with him yesterday morning that Steve Jobs passed away, I was not surprised by his sad expression and deeply concerned tone. It was expected. For Chris, it's the deep loss of losing one of the greatest visionaries, that affected him. For me, I can't help but think of his family and children feeling the greatest loss there is: losing a loved one at a young age. Yes, 56 is young. 

As I sit and read MSN's editorial on  Steve and his great successes, well spoken words and visions, several quotes seem to be resonating in my mind that I feel compelled to share. The first:

"When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."

For those of us (and I use the word us, because many people don't share this same belief), short cuts aren't worth it. IVF is a short cut. (I'm having a love/hate relationship with it at the moment, if you couldn't already tell.) It's also known as the band aid approach. "We don't know what's wrong with you, so let's skip all these steps and see what happens." For most people, that's fine. There may be nothing wrong, but for some reason these two people's systems struggle together. So I get that. But when you know hear several concerns expressed and you never look into them, there's an even bigger problem present. NaPro gets to the route of the issue, fixes it, and allows couples to conceive naturally. So why isn't our country, one of the most advanced in the world, using the NaPro approach to infertility instead of the band aid approach?

The second:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."

As we make our way through October, I'm flooded with memories of shots, blood draws, internal ultrasounds (yuck), and the many people we've lost this year. 

7. Yup, I said 7. 

I can not remember a time in my life that I have lost so many people in a span of 12 months. The thought of it, always brings tears to my eyes. And as each day passes and we get closer and closer to the anniversary of these deaths, I'm slowly being taken over by anxiety . How do you get through the day you miscarried on? My hope is to be pregnant again, somehow I've brainwashed myself into thinking that that will help. It won't. I know that. But something has to happen, and soon. Because honestly, I don't know how much longer I can last. 

3. years.

That's how long we've been doing this, come January. 3 years. I've been pretty patient, considering I'm a very impatient person. I am, however, clever enough to manipulate myself into staying distracted and positive. But how long can that last for. Apparently not that much longer. We've made decisions recently. Decisions on what will happen if nothing happens. I'm not ready to share them yet, but they're coming. My hope is we won't have to reach them. But if we do, you'll know.