Having lost Mum in August and having arrived at a place of transcendent peace beforehand, for most of this year I’ve had the sense of foreboding. Not a bad sense. Just that I need to be prepared for what’s coming. I think we all need to be prepared for what’s coming. Who knows what’s coming, I just have the sense now’s the time for readying.
At my age, I’ve lived long enough to have had many experiences of life, yet I do crave 10, 20, 30, 40 more years, mainly for my wife and younger family members to not have to grieve me for too long.
Yet, in acknowledging Mum’s in Paradise, I do sense every day could be the last, and if so, it wouldn’t be the worst thing. Living with one’s death ever beckoning yet still possibly thousands of days away breeds gratitude, and it also puts seemingly big issues (that aren’t) into their proper perspective.
There are some momentous times ahead! The climate change emergency and the threat of global conflict are the front runners, but more truly there are a stack of personal and private challenges in all our lives that will command our attention, that will derail a day’s thoughts and longer. Now’s the time to prepare. Now’s the time to get ready to be ready. Now’s the time to be organised to step into whatever the moment calls us into.
The blessing of losing a loved one is it reminds us of OUR eventual fate, which reminds us to make the most of the day we have. None of us is promised tomorrow. If we leave it there, we can easily become anxious, but if we imagine we’re powerful to act, we can live purposefully while we’re here, for the days and probably thousands of days that remain.
To have my father, my wife, my children, my grandchildren, my wife’s family, etc, around me is enough to be thankful for. I truly thank God for all these relationships. Every moment of every day can be an investment in our loved ones’ lives, if not by our presence with them, then by our carrying them in our thoughts and prayers.
One thing that assails our thinking in loss is that the past was better than it is now, and that we’d be back there in a flash to relive what we can only imagine was better with our loved one with us.
But life’s not like that. Life continues to move forward, second-by-second.
Even when we, ourselves, are gone, time will continue to move forward, second-by-second, so all we can do, and all we should do, is keep making the most of the seconds we have. And a lot of that, paradoxically, is not about achieving or doing anything — quite the opposite if we’re to truly enjoy the moments we have, especially with loved ones.
And yet, the current moment prepares us for a destiny that awaits our stepping into it.
And that destiny begins or continues, today...
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