Name one person who hasn’t had something tragic happen in life. We all fail at something. Marriages come to an end. Sickness consumes those we love. Car accidents suddenly vanquish a spouse, a friend, or a child forever from our lives in the blink of an eye.

We are left to live with the pain and the guilt, the sadness that burdens our hearts each and every new day. Time does not heal all wounds. Oh, we manage to cope and get through our years, but there is always the “what ifs,” the “shoulda, woulda, couldas” that build new scars of guilt on top of the old ones we already have.

Some of us move about our day subdued and distressed whenever the curse of memory returns us to that moment when she said, “I don’t love you anymore,” or he said, “I’m ready to give up. I can’t live with the pain” or they said, “If only she had not gotten into the car when the roads were still frozen with ice.”

We try and force an obligatory smile here and there, suggesting to the world out there, that we’re OK and we moved on.

But we’re not OK.

Our courage to keep on keeping on is a little bit less. We fear letting our hearts be true to what they want to feel because we don’t want to be hurt again. A young woman once told me she would never tell her fiancee that she loved him. “What if he leaves me someday or for whatever reason, he doesn’t come home one night and I’m left with a broken heart and nothing more? I couldn’t handle that,” she said. “My life would be just too hard.”

The other day I was scrolling down my Facebook page and I came across a scene from the TV show, “America’s Got Talent.” I stopped and listened to a young woman who went by the name of Nightbirde singing an original song she called, “It’s OK.”

Her back story was riveting. She told the panel she had cancer that had spread to her lungs and her liver. As she prepared to sing, you didn’t have to think if every word would be on key and in tune, you just admired her for singing with such incredible courage. Here are her lyrics to “It’s OK.”

“I moved to California in the summertime. I changed my name thinking that it would change my mind. I thought that all my problems, they would stay behind. I was a stick of dynamite and it was just a matter of time. Oh, dang, oh my, now I can’t hide. Said I knew myself, but I guess I lied. It’s ok … if you’re lost. We’re all a little lost and it’s all right. I wrote a hundred pages and I burned ‘em all …. I blow through yellow lights and I don’t look back at all. Yeah, you can call me reckless. I’m a cannonball. Don’t know why I take the tightrope and cry when I fall.”

Her voice was soft, simple, and pure. Her smile was radiant and real. The judges were obviously moved and Simon smacked the Golden Buzzer, emblematic of the best performances only a few manage to earn on the show with extraordinary talent.

Here’s more of Nightbirde’s back story. Multiple tumors were discovered in her body on New Year’s Eve in 2019. Days following her diagnosis, she was facing a terrible divorce, a global pandemic, and a “2,000 mile leap of faith” across the country from Nashville, where she had recorded her song, to Los Angeles.

“I just felt this rebellious hope rise up in me, and I just said no, I’m going to live,” she said.

Nightbirde, also known as Jane Kristen Marczewski, had to leave the talent show competition in the quarterfinals because of her worsening health.

When asked why she had chosen the name, “Nightbirde,” she said that she was dreaming of songbirds singing and when she had awakened at 3 a.m., she went to the window and there they were singing their songs. “I wanted to be one of them …,” she said.

She had first been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 and then told she was cancer free the next year, but it soon returned. Given three to six months to live, she was later told she was cancer free again in 2020 before it came back for a third bout and this time it had spread throughout her body.

On social media sites, she said, “I have two percent chance of survival, but two percent is not zero percent. Two percent is something and I wish people knew how amazing it is.”

She died on Feb. 19, 2022. Nightbirde was 31 years old.

When I think back to her performance on “America’s Got Talent,” I remember something she said that has profoundly stayed in my memory more than the beautiful words from her song.

“You can’t wait for life not to be hard anymore before you decide to be happy.”

Whenever I look in the mirror, I will remember these powerful words spoken by this dying young woman. For me, making the decision to be happy is in honor of my mom, my dad, my two sisters, and some great friends who have since departed from my world.

“We’re all a little lost and it’s all right,” are courageous words from a woman whose legacy advises us that life can be amazing if we decide to enjoy what we have each day.

Before we think that’s too much to ask, remember what this young woman did with just a two percent chance to survive. And right now, I believe she’s a beautiful bird perched in somebody’s backyard singing her songs with joy.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.