The Last Time

I recently visited my son. They have two little ones – my grand babies. It is such a joy to be with them. It reminds me of a time when my own kids were little tikes. It also reminded me of how fast things change. Career, health, and most of all family.

We suggested that they record their kids laugh. A sound full of unbridled joy. “Make it your ring tone. It will be gone so soon.” An integral part of today, then one day it’s just not there.

For years, there was a routine in our life. A child falls asleep on the couch or in the car, and you scoop them up and carry them to their room. Their head lands on your shoulder. Arms hang loosely. Shoes come off. Covers go on. Then you turn off the light and leave.

I should have said, “Pay attention. At some point you’re never going to do this again.”

Instead, life just moves along. One ordinary day replaces another until, years later, you realize something that had been part of your life simply stopped happening.

There was a last soccer game I coached. A last family vacation when everyone lived under the same roof. A last Christmas when all the kids were still kids. A last time I drove someone to school.

I remember some vividly. Some vaguely. And sadly all too many have simply slipped away.

Maybe that’s because when we’re raising children, we’re too busy surviving the present to appreciate its impermanence. Anyone who has raised kids knows the feeling.

You’re trying to get everyone fed, dressed, transported and reasonably presentable. You’re working. You’re paying bills. You’re sitting through practices and school programs and parent meetings. You’re wondering why a human being who can build a massive Lego spaceship can’t locate the shoes he was wearing ten minutes ago.

There isn’t much time for contemplation. And, frankly, some of those moments don’t feel particularly precious while you’re living them. Nobody thinks, “I should really treasure this argument about bedtime because someday I’ll miss it.”…but someday you do.

That’s one of life’s little jokes. The things that seem endless eventually end. And the things we thought were interruptions turn out to have been our lives.

I’ve been thinking about this more as I’ve gotten older. Not morbidly. Just mathematically.

When you’re young, life seems to contain an unlimited supply of next times. We’ll go there again. We’ll have another Christmas. We’ll take another trip. We’ll get everybody together next summer.

And for a time we do. Until eventually we don’t.

Sometimes we know a last time is coming. Specific events: Graduations. Weddings. The birth of a grandchild provides some warning. But the important endings are often much quieter.

I don’t remember the last conversation I had with my father. That’s probably because it was completely ordinary.

Had I appreciated there would someday be no more conversations, perhaps I would have listened differently. Asked another question. There is so much I don’t know and now never will. There are times I wish I could call and ask his advice. I lament the fact that I can’t.

Sadly, life doesn’t give us “do overs.” If we knew every last time in advance, it would probably become unbearable. We’d be constantly stopping everyone to appreciate the significance of the moment.

“Nobody move. This could be important.”

The kids would hate us. Maybe there’s mercy in not knowing.

But children complicate this whole idea because your last times are often their first times. The last time you take your child to school is the beginning of the life they’re building away from you. The last family vacation before someone gets married is followed by the first vacation with a spouse. The last Christmas when everyone comes home to your house may eventually become the first Christmas they host in theirs.

The last time they need your help may be the first time they realize they can handle something themselves.

That’s what we’re supposed to want. As parents, we spend years preparing children to leave us. We teach them to walk and then spend the next twenty years watching them walk progressively farther away.

If we’ve done the job reasonably well, they eventually don’t need us very much. Isn’t that success?

But something else happens as our children move forward. They begin collecting the first times that once belonged to us.  Their first home. Their first child.

Their first moment of looking at a tiny human being and realizing that somehow they are now responsible for keeping this creature alive. Then, their first sleepless night. Their first school program. Their first soccer game.

Their first Christmas morning when they are more interested in watching a child’s face than opening anything themselves.

That’s the part I’ve come to find comforting. Life isn’t simply disappearing behind us. It’s being handed forward.

The traditions we inherited become the traditions our children modify and pass along. The stories we heard become stories they tell, although probably not exactly the way we told them.

For a while, we’re at the center of this universe. Then we’re not. And that’s okay.

Maybe the mistake is believing the purpose of life is to hold onto things. It isn’t. You couldn’t if you tried.

But perhaps I should pay more attention. Last times aren’t endless. At some point there really will be a “last time.” Forever.