Life and Death

I’ve come to the conclusion that we live in a pretty strange world. The past two days have been a real eye opener for me and how I look at life. Taking a step back a few more weeks, a friend of mine was recently admitted to the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia and has been there ever since. While he is slowly getting better, he still remains on a respirator and they don’t know how long it will be till he is fully awake again so they can take him off the respirator.

Fast-forward to this past Thursday, I had picked up a shift at Magic Kingdom with my old area, Main Street, and was doing a quick re-certification on my steam trains so I can keep picking up shifts. Shortly after leaving the train to go help with other things, I am paged out to Frontierland along with a manager for a guest who had passed out while in the que line for the train. Upon arrival, CPR and AED were in progress and once back stage, the guest was pronounced DOA. For anyone that has never first hand witnessed a sheet being pulled over someone’s head, it is pretty moving but death doesn’t end there.

Last night while picking up Adam from work, I was made aware that a fellow Cast Member from Steam Trains who had been in the hospital for a week had past away. Marie Belasthon had been working with Main Street and Trains since 1992. She could always been seen opening Frontierland Train Station every weekday. She was also a single mother of 3 with the youngest still in high school.

So as I am sitting taking in all that is going on, this week alone I have personally witnessed one death, had a co-worker pass away and still have another friend in the ICU fighting for his life. What a strange world we live in.

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