The Gift of Today

There were a number of very nice and very empathetic comments to my last post in which I shared ... hmmm what exactly did you share AC? ... a few fleeting thoughts about death. No ... it wasn't so much about thoughts as about a feeling that has come over me by times lately. Regardless, it was good to hear from you, kind of a rallying of the blogging troops that I appreciated. (If you didn't already do so, do check out Turtle Guy's post called Who Dies? in which he links to a song by James Keelaghan called, strangely enough, Who Dies? The link to the recording is at the bottom of his post, right after the lyrics.)

Thirteen years ago, I received a call from my brother in law in Toronto. His five year old daughter had died suddenly. Cuppa posted much of the story in her Angels and Shining Stars post last month, so I won't repeat it here, but the death of a child gets a guy to thinking.

Several years ago, Cuppa had a cancer scare. I feared the worse: almost had the poor woman dead and buried. Happily, that's all it was — a scare. Someday it won't be, however. It gets a guy to thinking.

As I posted yesterday, I have been a part of three deathbed vigils. It gets a guy to thinking.

Whatever else I think, I have come to hold the opinion that our lives all feel about the same length, more or less at least. We all live one hundred percent of our lives. If I were to have died ten years ago, or if I were to die ten years from now, I don't think that my sense of duration upon this earth would be much different on my deathbed. Time is like that: a misty vapour that you can't quite grasp. That's why I can still feel like a young whippersnapper — at least until I look in the mirror or try to haul my stiff bones out of bed in the morning.

It does give me comfort to think that those who die young probably don't have a sense of having lived a shorter life. Oh, I'm sure that they have regrets about not living long enough to see children grow up, or grandchildren come into this world, or a million other things, but I don't think their sense of duration is really much different.

We have been given today. That's what life is really — today. I need to revel in today, to do something today that satisfies my inner self, something profitable for others, something good. If I always take care of today, my yesterdays will take care of themselves.