“Tolaugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the
affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know
even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to
have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A year ago my father died. Today. The day after my birthday. It was unexpected but who ever really expects things to end anyway?
I know what you are thinking. We all know that our time will end, eventually. We are not meant to be here forever. The clock does not continue to run. Eventually the ticking will stop. It always does. And yet?
Life is filled with endings. The end of a relaxing vacation spent in the mountains among ragged granite peaks and the refreshing azure water of the lake. You argued briefly about where to go and what to do but in the end it didn’t really matter anyway because after all, you were together. Vacations end.
Days spent with family, celebrating birthdays or anniversaries or civil unions. The Fourth of July barbeque when it rained so hard you had to picnic inside, roasting hot dogs and hamburgers under the canopy as the raindrops fell all around you. A champagne toast at a civil union ceremony, the punctuation of a moment in time. Moments end.
A relationship with a friend met while at school. Side by side you faced life together. The hours spent studying for the art history exam on the modernists, none of whom you really liked anyway. Dinner parties of ratatouille made from the Moosewood Cookbook. Sitting on the hardwood floor of the apartment on Commonwealth Avenue and listening to Joan Armatrading sing “Love and Affection”. You thought you would be friends forever and you meant to. But friendships end too.
The marriage that was meant to be. You were so much alike, you thought. You wanted the same things in life. You loved him with all your soul, like you had never loved anyone before, and he loved you. Until one day he didn’t. Relationships end.
We always think we have more time. “There’s always tomorrow”, we say to ourselves, or “next week” or “next month” or certainly “the next time”. Surely there’s always a next time. Except sometimes there isn’t.
What I know today is that nothing is guaranteed. Not tomorrow or next week or even next time. What I know today is that we have this moment to do what we want to do; to live intentionally, to be conscious, to love, to feel deeply and to say the words we need and want to say. What I know today is that we have the chance to live in the present, to make a choice to be here now because we do not know what tomorrow may bring.
I miss you, Dad.