Life: Use it or lose it.

Either way, life is precious and you don't see that until you come face to face with it.

Life is a gift. It has it's exciting moments and it's mundane ones, and both have value. As do the really, really, really hard things that some of us have on our little life paint palette. Sometimes you wish you had more blue. Sometimes you complain about all the red, and sometimes you just want to paint a happy little tree. Even if it is with all of the surplus red you have.

Tonight I heard the news that my cousin, who had been difficult (at best) to deal with over the past ten years, passed away. He had a terrible history with hard drugs and despite all of the support and love around him, it just wasn't enough to cut through the grip.

Drugs are serious business.

I cannot explain what happens when a life is taken over and whisked away by drugs. But that's basically what happens. Poof, the person you knew is gone and they have been replaced with this wasted, angry, empty shell. If a person comes back they are lucky, but I don't think most do, or ever get that chance.

Part of me wants to believe that he was just like any of us, dealing with the hard parts of life. He was just trying to get through it, whatever it was. But because I haven't been where he was, and don't want to be, I can't relate to it or understand it. Nor do I want to. There is no closure because there is no explanation. Life is that precious - it defies reason, gravity, and our ability to wrap our minds around it.

All that we are able to do is marvel at the secondary reflection of how beautiful it is, and how quickly it's image can bounce off and away.