It Makes Life Feel Different

I have a picture on my phone of my father and me holding my twin grandsons, my dad’s twin great grandsons. The picture is meaningful in so many ways. My mother and father lost twins, who would have been born immediately after me. My father is no longer here, but he got to see his great grandsons. My mother died before that picture was taken and before she knew that her grandson was going to have twins. That was so long ago in so many ways, yet in other ways if feels as if it was just yesterday. I saw the picture on my phone while I was looking for something else. It struck me then, and has somehow come back to haunt me now, because I cannot be there with my children, nor with my grandchildren. I can’t be with my dad and my mom, although I know they are here with me.

We forget sometimes, we get so busy with our lives sometimes, life moves so fast, and we just don’t tell the people whom we love them. I know everyone has had that experience. But, viewing that picture, remembering that day so vividly, thinking of Mom and Dad, it just makes life feel different. If feels different for all those people for whom we have cared, but not told, that we love. It feels different for the risks we haven’t borne, especially if the risk is in telling someone that you love them.

It feels as if, in the world today, it is all about speed, money, power, and that we forget that those things are not the end all be all. Sometimes it is well worth taking a beat, taking a breath, and just looking at someone you love and feeling that emotion well up. Sometimes I wish I had more time, sometimes I wish I could make more time. But, it all reality, we do have time, and we can make the time.

The world has changed and we feel like we have to compete, and that we have to keep up. But I am convinced, and the picture reminded me, that the best part of life isn’t the part that goes fast, it not the part about money and things, nor is it the part in which we feel we have to keep up and accomplish. The best part of life is where sitting on a lawn chair in the back yard, having an iced tea or a beer with you mother and father, your brother and/or sister, your children. It is when you climbed the cherry tree in your grandparent’s back yard and helped pick cherries, and then had hot cherry pie as your reward. It is about remembering to remember. It is about remembering to take time.

When I composed this, I dictated it into my phone because I was feeling the emotion of it, and I thought that if I waited until later in the day to sit down and write it out, I would lose some of that emotion. I am glad I chose to dictate. When you speak words and you recall the memories, it feels different than it does just writing, and worrying about punctuation and diction. It makes we me want to reach out to the people that I very much want in my life and invite them in. It makes me want to be brave and to speak my truth, express my feelings…even if that risks my being embarrassed or being hurt.

I wish I could have some of those days back, but I can’t. I can remember the days, and remember the emotions, and remember how badly I wanted to express my feelings. Hopefully those memories allow me to do things that, in turn, make new stories and memories.