"Of the Nature to Get Sick"

Me and my sick DS taken by my DD.

Today, my friends' daughter, almost a year old, burned her hands badly on the fireplace at the day care where we take our children. One hand is so badly burned she will have to have skin grafts later in life, they were told by the specialist.

Today, my husband's friend lost her granddaughter to the flu. She was in the sixth grade.

Recently, my daughter was ill with the flu. We worried about her, especially since her asthma makes getting any respiratory illness complicated and at times down right frightening.

All this made me think of my first day as a member of my sangha. The group was discussing their homework from the week before. They were to read the Buddha's daily contemplations on life every day. I haven't been able to find them today, but they go something like this:
I am of the nature to get sick. I will get sick.
I am of the nature to get old. I will get old.
I am of the nature to die. I will die.

I spent the next couple days thinking about these daily contemplations, and it occured to me that what I need to be contemplating is that my children are of the nature to get sick, of the nature to get old, of the nature to die.

They will get sick.

I know this sounds morbid, but the truth is that I cannot control my children's health. And that is the point of this meditation, to accept the vicissitudes of life, to accept that things are beyond our control, to accept the finality of our mortality.

Today made me very aware of this contemplation. And oddly enough, these contemplations, though they seem morbid, actually make me feel better, more at ease.