The Last Five Minutes of My Life

There is a movie called "The Thirteenth Warrior" that I've seen many times and I love. So does Cristina. There are many, many, many images in this movie that I completely hate: the stuff about women, the dark people were of course the evil ones. Not happy with a lot of that at all. I'm also very embarrassed that I still love the movie even with these things.

Without giving any of the story away (or as little as possible), there are a lot of battles. The filming is outstanding, the color, the acting, Antonio Banderas, the landscapes. Cristina and I both really related to this movie. There is one scene where Antonio Banderas is praying and he says in his prayer, "Please let me live this last five minutes of my life well." So I was thinking about this movie and I started thinking about Cristina.

What I realized is that in the worst of the worst of everything bad and horrible, through it all Cristina lived ALL of her last five minutes well... Through everything, and I was there to see it. Cristina was always full of some innate grace and style that is just HER. She's a lot like her grandmother. Even in moments of extraordinary fear, anguish and pain, she had inner beauty. Especially considering how young she was when all this happened.

I called her and told her this. It's an extraordinary accomplishment to think about this. When you hover between life and death so much, for so long, and just to absolutely never know if there were going to be any more minutes. On this on this planet. At this time.

What an astounding thing to happen. How powerful she is. I'm so proud of her. It's really hard to believe she came out of me!!!! (ha, ha)