‘I’ll never forget the first time I……”
Even as I type this my wife was telling her mom a first time story herself. It seems we hang on those firsts. “I’ll never forget the first time…”
We talk a lot about firsts, don’t we. There are pictures we take and stories we tell about them. News makers are often the first to do something. Our parents watch our firsts and celebrate them. Firsts are a benchmark of accomplishment and of memories we hold dear. First tooth. First steps. First time you rode a bike, now there was a milestone for me. I remember that particular first time as if it was yesterday. Well honestly I don’t really remember yesterday at all but I do remember clearly the little red Schwinn bicycle that I rode with the training wheels off for the first time. My sisters and brothers had me focused on my reflection in the chrome goose-neck to keep me centered and balanced, and that worked like a charm. The first time.
It’s funny how a first time memory becomes so ingrained in us that it becomes a part of our fabric. There have been few times I have ridden a bike whether it was with my kids down to the park or in my twentieth mile of a triathlon that I did not for some moment think of that first ride. I rode that bike for years. In fact I rode it until it literally broke in half. Great memories.
October 5 was another first; first hunt of the 2019 season. It was also the first time I had bow hunted my acreage with a friend. It was a number of other firsts too. That is not what I’m writing about in this post. Nor am I rehashing my One Second Fall. That day became the threshold of a great many lasts in my life. The reality of that has lead me to look back, not on the firsts but on the myriad of seemingly unimportant times I did not realize were my lasts and how I now see things. What I didn’t know as I stepped from my back garage door was it was the last time I would see my future as going how I planned. It very well could have been the last time I stepped out of that door at all.
From this day forward I would no longer take walking for granted. My world was simple and easy then. Shortly I would realize that there are a great many lasts we never consider. Maybe we don’t think about them because we never expect that they may be our last time. When was a last you never thought about? Maybe it was the last time you played catch with your son. Or it could be the last time you saw a good friend before they went off to college or the military… or passed. I’ve taken note of a number of times that may be lasts and I’m cherishing the memories as much or more than those firsts. From my perspective there are a number of lasts that are just that because I am no longer able do them at all.
These important last time moments are everywhere every day. They leads to the old saying, “Live every day as if it were your last.” That’s so easy to say and put on your facebook page along with a thousand other memes with pretty pictures and deep philosophical words of wisdom. But it isn’t so easy to live, is it? Do you live every moment, love every day as though you may never again? In the time I’ve spent whining and in feeling bad about the things I will likely never be capable of again, I have learned something valuable. Its easy to live every moment.
Living every moment is often thought of as taking life to the extreme, its not. It is mere finding the joy in what you have in the moment before you.
This is what I’ve gathered in the two years of growing through the trauma. Simply put, appreciate it. Whatever it may be, appreciate that you are there and find the pieces of that time, place, moment that are great. Yes you may be knee deep in cow shit but the farm is beautiful anyway and the work is honest. The entirety of what you are doing may not be an enjoyable thing. But I bet there are tidbits within to take joy in.
Recently I was visiting my parents’ at the home they raised me and my seven siblings in. I was asked to retrieve something from the basement storage room. Nothing special about this task. I grew up doing this and probably done it thousands of times. Today however, I stopped and took a second to look around that room. There on the shelves were a lifetime of memories. There were the board games we played as kids. The silver tea set that graced the small table in the living room was boxed up and sitting next to a fondue set I seen only a few times in my childhood. In those seconds I stood there I lived years of my youth and thought about all the last time we played those games. I wondered when the last time my mother polished that tea set was or when she set eyes on it. There were a lot of “last times” in that room I never even knew were. Before I grabbed the paper towels and went back to the kitchen I wondered if it was maybe the last time I’d think about some of those things. I hoped not.
My dad was fond of the saying, “This is the first day of the rest of your life.” It is also the last moment you have to cherish it. Think about that.
Live every moment. Love every day. Pray to God for the future you hope for. Find joy in what you have. Make the lasts last.
Tim
