My mom told me a story about luck this morning.

This is the story of a neighbor of my parents. She grew up in New York City, dating lots of guys with little to no luck until she met her future husband. Things were wonderful, they get married in their late twenties and have a little girl a couple years later. Life is good. A year or so later they get in a massive car wreck. She escapes with a few broken bones, but he is left a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. She raises their daughter and cares for her husband, never wavering and never losing her positive attitude. They even adopt a baby boy because they both grew up only children and didn't want their daughter to grow up an only child as well. After 19 years of living this way he dies of a heart attack at age 49. She is understandably devastated.

After a few years she is dating again. She meets a new man, falls in love with him and they get married a year or so later. Her kids both love him and fully accept him. She is starting her life fresh with him and loving every second. After 6 months of marriage they are out to dinner celebrating his birthday when he gets horrible pains in his stomach. They rush him to the hospital, thinking he's having some kind of gall bladder attack. He's not. He is diagnosed with liver cancer. He dies 5 weeks later.

A year or so later she goes out to a dance. Usually the guys there are terrible dancers, but there's one guy who actually knows what he's doing. They hit it off, dance the night away and then drink coffee and talk at Denny's until 4 in the morning. They talk on the phone during the week and arrange to go out dancing the next Saturday. He picks her up and as he's pulling onto the highway she asks him a question. He doesn't respond, his face blank and all his muscles tense. She realizes he's having a stroke. She desperately tries to pry his foot off the gas and tries to turn the wheel, but to no avail. They hit 3 cars before careening off the road and rolling the car multiple times.

They both live, but she loses the middle, ring and pinkie fingers of her right hand and has to have extensive physical therapy on her index finger in order to use it again. She now has to learn how to write with her left hand. She has problems with her knee because of glass that embedded itself in there. You could say that she now has legitimately had four major life tragedies, all connected to the men in her life.

Despite all this, she is the most positive, upbeat and happiest person you will ever meet. Why? Because she has all the good memories that her life has brought her and she's able to forget about the bad ones and not regret what could have been. She'd probably go crazy if she didn't. She can even joke about how much the birthday card she gave my mom had better mean to her since it took almost a half an hour to write.

The point? A lot of people, myself included, tend to say they have bad luck in their relationships. I'd say losing two people you could consider your "soulmate" to tragedies like that is bad luck. That's the kind of bad luck that makes ending a relationship with someone who's not ready to be with somebody as awesome as me seem pretty insignificant. It's all a matter of perspective. And there's nothing like a parent to put that exactly into perspective.

Thanks, mom. Happy Mother's Day.

Honest to god last post about this. Funny stuff coming soon. Promise.