Andy Livingston

Last August I began noticing bruises all over my body with no apparent explanation. After a few weeks, I became a little concerned when a really deep bruise appeared on my arm. I went to the doctor, who drew my blood. Later that day he called me and told me to go to the emergency room, as my blood platelet count was dangerously low (it was 13,000, where it should be 120,000). When I asked him what had caused this he said, “It could be leukemia or other lymphoma, or it could be something more innocuous.” Right, but all I heard was leukemia. As I drove to the emergency room, I wondered if they were going to tell me I had six months to live, and I started to think about what I had done with the years of my life. Am I really living at all? I wondered. What have I done that I regret, and what have I learned? And what does all of that mean now? It turns out that I did have something relatively more innocuous (it’s an auto-immune/blood disorder called ITP where my immune system destroys my blood platelets), and for that I was grateful; however, it stuck with me that this was the first time I had come to realize that I am a mortal, temporary thing. Perhaps I may have eluded the Gardener this time, but none of us is fast enough to outrun Him forever. Eventually, my time, too, will come. Magnolia: a beautiful flower that blooms only to wilt. I don’t know that we are much different than she.