Celebrating life and it's dichotomies

Today was a good, but strange day.  

Good because it was quality time well spent with the kids. 

Strange because of the dichotomy of our activities today, both celebrating life in different ways.

9:00AM

Hannah, Luke and I went to a memorial and celebration of life for my friend and colleague's beautiful, sweet 7-year-old  son, Max who passed away after 4 years of fighting cancer. 

It was a beautiful and heart-felt gathering of his family's friends, family and general support network -- there were probably a couple hundred of us there at the park sitting high on the bluff in scenic Seagrove Park in Del Mar, celebrating Max and listening to his favorite stories being read, hearing his teachers telling us their favorite Max stories, and watching his favorite vintage WWII planes fly overhead to salute him as he stared down at us from heaven. Family, friends, teachers, colleagues, kids, babies, parents, classmates from Max's school were there to pay tribute.

The event was purposefully family and child-oriented, complete with various Lego building stations of the take-your-Lego-creation-home-as-a-memory-of-Max-and-the-toys-he-loved-s-much variety.   And with that, Hannah and Luke left with an airplane and a robot creation made from the very Legos that Max played with.  Despite our sad reason for being there today, the kids had fun.

11:00AM

Contrast this with our next planned event 2 hours later, where we attended a birthday party for our friend and neighbor's daughter at PumpItUp, which is basically a huge gymnasium of inflatable bounce-houses.  

Hannah and Luke and friends ran around for an hour and fifteen minutes jumping in the bouncies, sliding down the slide, and then ate pizza and had birthday cake.

There were at least 25 2-5 year old kids there with protective parents in tow.    And again, not surprisingly, for different reasons at this particular event, we were surrounded by the birthday girl's friends, family, classmates, etc.  Of course, the kids had fun.

******************

Two events, back-to-back, both celebrating life in different ways.  

One event (the birthday party) was planned weeks ago and meticulously and lovingly executed. 

The other event (the memorial) was not planned and meticulously and lovingly executed.

The dichotomy of life.

In either scenario, it is worth celebrating.   And today, in particular with the unplanned juxtaposition of these two events, I have better perspective on how to value it.