The Last Moments...
/Why is it that you never know when a moment in time, something that’s become a regular part of your life, is going to be a last moment?
Some things you get to say goodbye to. Some things make it clear that you’re on your last with them, and you have a moment in which you get to bid farewell. Like when you’re traveling and you’re saying goodbye to a city you’ve spent a few days in, you have a flight and as you’re packing you’re saying your goodbyes to that city. Or when you’re moving out of an apartment, and you’re able to look around you, consciously watching as the final chapter of this last life closes and you move on to the next. Or when you have a clean breakup with a loved one and you both look at each other, seeing love in one another’s eyes and you lean in, kissing each other for the last time.
When we get to say goodbye, when we get to honor the finality of such profound moments it creates opportunity for seamless closure as you close one door and look towards the next. This type of goodbye, although sadness may exist in the moment, and we may mourn the loss, the changing of the tides, it can also result in a sense of wild freedom in the allowance of the time needed to process and move forward.
Other lasts you don’t get to choose and it’s bewildering to me as to why some lasts we are aware of and others we aren’t? Why are the lasts that we don’t anticipate often so much more difficult to heal?
Why don’t we typically remember the last...
kiss with a significant, soul-shaking romantic partner?
family dinners with everyone there?
holiday celebration filled with traditions and all the right people in the room?
words from grandparents, ex-lovers, family members, departed ones, loved ones?
gathering at a childhood home?
party in our old college apartment, or home?
single girl/guy night we had before settling down?
happy moment before a painful tragedy?
laugh we had with an long-lost, old friend?
Why don’t we typically remember these last significant moments?
Although I considered researching the science behind our brains, memories, and understanding what stays with us and what doesn’t, the more I ask this question, the more rhetorical it feels. It’s not about the why as much as it is creating the space for questioning. It’s not about the answer as much as it is processing strong emotion, and building a container for pain to be felt.
Treat every moment like it’s the last. Have an awareness of every moment, grand, and mundane. Not drenched in melancholy but rather an allowance for every moment with those that we love to burst at the seams with love. If we make the choice to consciously be aware of the kiss with our partners as they walk out the door for work, saying out loud, I love you, feeling inside the power of the kiss rather than the monotony of the routine, maybe this can soften the pain of the lasts we don’t remember. Maybe by allowing love to drive each and everyone of these moments we are treating like the last, we can imprint the everlasting love on our minds, our bodies and even if it’s not the last, when the day comes that that act is no longer with us, we are able to remember one of those powerful love-bursting moments and use it as fuel to move us forward.
Love always fuels us forward. No matter the chapter we’ve said goodbye to or are about to enter, live fully so that we may treat every moment like it is the last and let bursting-love be forever.
