Cherish Every G*****n Day

You never know when it will all come to an end

I ran across this tweet last week…and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Of course, I felt sympathy for someone who’d suddenly and very unexpectedly lost her husband. But it was more than that. As much as I felt for Ms. Fowler and her tragic loss, the finality of how someone you love can be here one moment and gone seemed too awful to contemplate. No warning, no preparation, no easing into it. Kiss your loved one goodbye, watch them walk out the door…and then get a phone call later that day telling you that they’re gone.

Forever. They’re never going to be walking through that door again. Ever. That’s harsh. And it sucks.

No one ever thinks that when they send a loved one off to work or wherever they might be going that it’s the last time they’ll see them alive. They’ve always returned before…so why wouldn’t they today? Then your world changes in an instant, and your person, that largest part of your world, is gone. How do you process that? How can you make sense of some so senseless and tragic?

I have no idea.

I’ve never dealt with this sort of trauma directly, and I hope I never will. All of us got a taste of what it’s like on 9/11, though, when almost 3000 innocent people were murdered for no discernible reason. My friend Tim Haviland kissed his wife, said goodbye to his two stepsons, and went off to work, never to return. No one had an inkling that going to work on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower on that September Tuesday morning would be his last- as it would be for so many others. Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong everything. Especially for those whose loved one never returned home that terrible day.

We tend to take life for granted. It’s easy to do. But, when you live day to day, week by week, month by month, one day is much like the last before you even realize it. Before you know it, years have gone by, and you find yourself wondering what you have to show for it.

A couple of days ago, I learned that a good friend from college that I’d played soccer with had died of cancer- in 2002. How could I not have known this? How could he have died 19 years ago…and I had NO idea??

We let life take us in our what direction it will, and we slowly and inevitably lose touch with the people we once cared for. I’m not different from anyone else in that regard; it’s an almost universal phenomenon. You get wrapped up in your little world, and one day you look up and realize 10, 15, or even 20 years have passed you by.

I’ve done a bang-up job of burning bridges and letting people go. The reasons are many and varied, but I’m not sure most of them are valid. In some cases, I just got lazy. In others, I was angry or hurt, and it was easier to let people go than to deal with the pain. Ultimately, I felt I could walk away without concern or worry.

And so I did. Far too often. And I’ve come to regret it terribly.

Now I’m trying to reconnect with people I’ve drifted apart from over they years. It’s not as easy as I’d hoped in some cases and more straightforward than I’d expected in others. People have died- which, sadly, is what happens as one gets older. The cycle of life is something that one becomes more conscious of as the years creep up on you. In my case, they’ve stacked up more than I care to admit.

So I’ve made a resolution that I will tell people in my life that I love them whenever I have the opportunity. I don’t want to look back after losing someone and realize that I never told them how fortunate I felt that they were a part of my life. I never want to pass on an opportunity to make someone aware of how much I appreciate what they add to my sojourn on this rock. I’m fortunate to know some damned fine, first-class people, and they deserve to know that I’m grateful for and to them.

Beyond that, I’m going to do my best to cherish every g*****n day. I don’t know how many I have remaining, so it would be a shame to waste whatever time I have allotted to me.

I want to be certain to smell the roses and appreciate the people and things I have in my life, and I feel compelled to fully welcome and acknowledge every remaining day I have left.

I can only hope there will be many more of them.

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