If there’s one thing I know for sure about life, it’s that it should be marked FRAGILE. In huge red letters, right down the middle of every single day, so it can’t be missed.
Last week, a good, young friend of mine whose mother is not too much older than I am had what the doctors have now identified as a “catastrophic rupture of the aorta” while vacationing at the Outer Banks. Earlier that day, she and her college roommate had spent the day together– laughing and reminiscing– as they had for many years. They parted with their usual promise of “Same time next year.”
That evening, she collapsed. Despite being airlifted to Norfolk, VA for care they hoped would save her life, she died en route.
To say this woman was full of life would be the understatement of the year. A huge Elvis fan, she had just celebrated a milestone birthday in May by making a pilgrimage with her husband, children and grandchildren to Graceland. She loved flamingos, the color pink and bowling. No doubt she was readying her golf clubs for another season on the links, and had a summer of fun planned with her grandkids, old college pals and countless friends. From where I was sitting, at least, she was inexhaustible. As her daughter told me, “She was not a bystander in life. She jumped in with both feet, every day.”
This past Tuesday, on July 2nd, hundreds of people packed the Coffman Chapel at Hood College to pay tribute to her life, and offer support to her still-reeling family. We heard words of welcome from her husband, who somehow managed to be entirely gracious under the most difficult of conditions. We heard words of grace from the family’s longtime friend Rev. Bob Manthey. And finally we heard words of love from four people. A friend from her growing-up years in Front Royal, VA. A college chum from her days at Mary Washington. A friend from adulthood. and finally from my friend who spoke with the impact that only a daughter can.
What will always stick with me from what my friend said was a little story. She told us that some time ago her mom invited her on a walk, that ended on a bench near their house. And her mom’s message to her was “I miss you.” She told her that she understood this busy time of life, with careers in full swing and family life packed with demands. But she said without a trace of self-pity but with the frankness that was her signature, “Don’t wait til your kids are grown and gone to make time for me, because I may not be here.”
My friend can take great comfort in the fact that she listened to her mother. She didn’t get defensive. She heard what her mother was asking her for, and she did it. She made time.
It’s so easy to get wrapped up in what won’t matter years from now, and ignore the most important opportunities we have in this very moment to live and to love and to laugh, right here…right now.
I’m going to start trying to pay better attention, too.
“The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present.”
Peace, friends.
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