You know, sometimes, it’s just one of those strings of days that really take your breath, set you back on your heels, and make you look around you – and at your life – with deeper appreciation.

For example –

My Dad would have been seventy-five this past Tuesday.

He’s been gone three years already; hard to believe. Sometimes it feels longer, and sometimes, it’s like he left us just yesterday. But Tuesday brought it home. Instinctively reaching for my cell phone to call and sing him ‘Happy Birthday’, and then going oh wait, that’s right... That was a single moment, a blip within the vast infiniteness of time, but boy did it hurt.

Then on Thursday evening, my Aunt passed away at the age of sixty-nine.

And now my dear, sweet cousins, whom I love to my core, have to walk down the same path that my sister and I have walked for the last three years. They’re heartbroken, understandably so, and I wish with all my might that I could spare them this particular journey altogether.

I can’t, though, but man do I wish I could.

Yes, I suppose in a way we are lucky in the respect that we got to have my Dad and my Aunt in our lives for a long time. And yes, they’re both no longer in pain; they’ve been restored, their spirits free of the bodies that caused them such distress in their later moments on this plane.

And there’s not a single bit of what I just said that makes this walk suck any less.

Fact of the matter is, no length of time with a loved one is “enough”.

So appreciate each and every moment with the people in your life as big and as hard as you possibly can – because there are zero guarantees about the next moment with them.

D.F.