Life Happens.

I’ve heard that trite saying “life is what happens when you’re busy making plans,” and it always slightly annoyed me. The thing is, it’s true. I can make a detailed, step-by-step plan and work toward its implementation and boom the tidal waves of life wash the plans away. Looking back, I never thought my life would be here. Here: living on my own away from my tight-knit family and close friends, finding the love of my life that didn’t match the image in my head, contemplating moving literally half-way across the world to hold on to that happiness. And while I might join K eventually in PNG, he is leaving in 47 days. Alone. Without me.

I am always in a mad rush to make the most out of our days together. I protect our time together fiercely and I won’t allow myself to feel guilty for putting other things on the back burner. He is finishing up his coursework and I have a job, so of course, we can’t be together nonstop, but we make time in the evenings and on weekends. I have a mental list of things I want us to do together and he is always taking photos of us. We load the photos and often review and laugh at them. I’ve put together a small album that he can take back with him and it’s small enough to pack in his field bag for when he is gone for months at a time in the wild, remote jungle.

All that being said, last week I had a meltdown.

Now, in my family, I’m the litmus test of meltdowns. I define the term. I’m not proud of this, just stating the fact.

Scenario: A close friend of mine’s mother, Mrs. F,. had been battling lung cancer. She was diagnosed at Christmas 2008 and went into remission last spring. Unfortunately, the cancer returned the first of the year and ravaged her body and mind within months. By the beginning of April, the cancer had spread to her brain and pituitary gland. Mrs. F. went into hospice and in just two weeks, ironically on my mother’s birthday, passed away. I took two days off work to travel to the visitation and funeral. When I told my mom about the trip, she insisted I come home, and I tried to explain to her I just had enough time to go to the funeral and not travel four extra hours. . . and I felt immensely guilty.

The night before I was to leave to travel for the funeral, K and I went to a concert he had bought tickets to a while ago, and even though I didn’t want to go, we went. It was a bad time had by all, so bad I wished I had gone home and done laundry at my local Hispanic-Pakistani Laundromat.

In the morning, when I had to leave, I was late, K and I were both still annoyed from the events last night, I didn’t have clean clothes, I hadn’t showered, my hair would put Don King’s to shame, I was sad, I felt guilty, I was overwhelmed, I didn’t want to go.

I had a meltdown. Tears, hysteria, whining, yelling, etc. It was one of those moments that make reality television shows so addicting. The train wreck moments.

K and I got through it and soon I was calm enough to put the pieces back together and head to the visitation.

The funeral had a profound impact on me. Mr. and Mrs. F. had been married for over 36 years. The grief was etched so profoundly on Mr. F.’s face, and the sadness so deep in his eyes, I couldn’t approach him. I didn’t know how to say I was sorry for his loss, when sorry isn’t even the same realm of his grief. And Mrs. F. was deeply loved; nearly 1,000 people attended her funeral. When we left the funeral to drive to the cemetery, hundreds of people stood out in the rain, in a line with their hands held above us as we passed, praying. There are some images that stay in one’s mind forever, and that is one that will stay in mine.

I was gone for three days and on the third day I left early in the morning. When I surprised K by arriving home earlier than planned, seeing how his smile to me spread across his whole face made me so happy.

I may want to plan an elaborate wedding, or design the perfect house. I always wanted to be married by 28 and have my first baby at 30.

What happens while making all these plans is life; the births, the deaths, the love, the forgiveness, the unexpected, the unplanned. The way life happens is much better than any way I could have planned it.