I cried a bunch yesterday…
“Time passes by, people pass on
at the drop of a tear, they’re gone.
Let’s do what we dare, do what we like,
and love while we’re here before time passes by.”
Kathy Mattea
Here we go with the maudlin part - Yesterday was my dad’s birthday and none of us kids could be with him. One of his good friends died at six a.m. - her birthday gift to him, I guess. Totally sucks. I’m heading north to spend time with my parents in a couple weeks. When I spoke with him last night, he’d had a great day, two parties despite the death, but he was melancholy. He said, “I remember the day I started high school and I thought, four years? I’ll never make it through four years! But they passed by in a flash. Geez, when I entered law school, I thought, three years? That’s an eternity. Passed by like nothing.”
So here I stand, between the generation going and the generation coming and I feel the moments of my life slip through my fingers like water. I think if I could sell my soul to stop the wheel of time from turning just once, I’d do it without hesitation.
Just in case I missed it, yesterday afternoon hammered that lesson home to me. We attended a reception for my husband’s patients - after twenty years of primary care, he’s moving on to take an administrative role. Most of these people/families have been with him since day one and they adore him. You cannot imagine how many patients came to talk to me to tell me that he saved their life or he’s been their main means of support through dark times or he is the best doctor they’ve ever met…They will miss him. And it was easy for me to see which of the women are still crushing on him after twenty years - wow, there were lots of tears shed and I was so touched by the spontaneous outpouring of affection for him that extended to me. Hundreds of people came to say goodbye. The experience was a bit daunting. When he began this practice, our kids were little tiny things and now they are out of the nest spreading their wings.
When we got home, it took us ten minutes to unload all the generous and totally unnecessary gifts from his car, but you know, people wanted to show him how much they care about him. It was better than Christmas morning, better than a birthday party - I kid you not! We read every single card and they all said the same thing - we love you and we will miss you! I know these people as the fisherman who gives us home-smoked salmon. The tennis player. The father of the professional baseball player. The kidney transplant woman who came back from the dead three times. The owners of the orchard who give us pounds and pounds of walnuts, pecans and chocolate covered plums. The wine collector. The poet. The author of scary true crime novels. The butterscotch fudge lady. The Scot with the incredible brogue and his proper English wife. The Nagasaki bomb survivor, the Auschwitz survivor, the leukemia survivor…Everyone has a life story and my husband knows them all by heart. What can I say? Wow.
Other tidings: Mia Watts has a new release today. Congrats!
Freeze Frame, by Mia Watts
Resplendence: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/
