Hard-Core Prioritization - When Death Pays a Visit

I beg your pardon, dear readers.  It has been a challenging few months, and while I'd love to think that most of you are hanging on my next newsletter or blog post, trust me, I'm not that misguided.  I apologize, though, for completely ignoring you all in January, but I had reasonable cause (as the title of this post indicates).

The minor challenges of fostering a pair of heart-worm positive, unneutered male dogs in October through November (and finding them the most wonderful adoptive homes - for which I'm so very grateful), and the rapid decline and death in early December of my beloved horse, Venus, whom you may remember from previous blog posts, left me drained, but capable enough of attending to my business and completing the doctoral coursework I'd committed to.  But there was more to come.  

While hosting company and completing some coursework, and just as I was wrapping some gifts at my Florida home on the afternoon of Christmas Eve the phone rang.  Incredibly, it was the police in New Jersey telling me they had found my brother, dead, in his townhouse.  Incredible because my brother was only 53 and hadn't been ill at all that we knew of.  He was my only sibling, and he and my mother were very close.  She was out in California awaiting his arrival - how was I going to tell her this terrible news?  How could I let her make the flight back alone?  What about my friends, who were visiting from abroad and weren't leaving for a few more days? Who could I find to go identify my brother's body? And what had caused my brother's death?

These were the questions crowding my mind in the frantic, adrenal-filled minutes after the call.  Most of them I found answers for quickly (though we're still awaiting lab results from the autopsy).  It's a little over a month afterward, and we're getting through it.  Aside from being a (very sad) life milestone, it's been a reminder in hard-core prioritization, the kind that dire/urgent circumstances necessitate, but which also offer a broader perspective upon reflection.  What mattered most in the days and weeks after than phone call was not the same as what had mattered in the days preceding it, and the event and aftermath have skewed my focus and energy.

That's been uncomfortable, even though it's normal. For example, I didn't prioritize my own health and well-being, and left myself open to a set of viruses and exhaustion.  Business was completely put on hold.  But I wouldn't do it any differently if I had to do it over again.  Like the psalm says, there's a time for everything.   

It's a 7 Habits cliche, I know, but how would your priorities change if death or terminal illness touched your family?  What would you do differently?  What would you spend more time on, and what would you let go of?  

Some people ask themselves this question regularly, to wipe away the fog of misplaced urgencies, fads, and social pressures from their long-term lens of closely-held values and lived satisfaction.   Most of us require occasional reminders.