Love now

These are tomorrow's "good old days".

Even if things aren't perfect right now, even if you're suffering, even if nothing seems right, you are STILL going to look back on parts of these times, and wish that they weren't gone.

And just a reminder, you'll never be as young as you are right now.

Also, not that youth and health are the same thing, but they're fairly correlated. You're definitely not getting younger, which means you're probably not getting any healthier. Some fluctuations in various aspects of your health can happen, but more or less, your enjoyment of life is on a downward slope.

The time truly is 'now'.

What seems mundane to you today will be a cherished memory in your future. You'll look back on these moments and wish you could relive them, you'll be willing to give just about anything to go back and have one more second with that special somebody, or in that special place. Or you'll wish you could go back to when you were healthier, when you could still run through a meadow, when you could still stop to smell a rose.

Run through that meadow, and smell the roses.

I have a fuzzy memory of tagging along for the ride in my grandfather's company car (a well-equipped 1980s station wagon). It was evening, and the hockey game was on the radio. It was raining. We were running some errands before going home for my bedtime, I must have been about 8. I probably dozed as we rode. Now in 2019, I can only wish to experience that mundane moment again, but it's gone. That car is gone, those times are gone, and that man is gone.

On his deathbed about 10 years ago, he called me his "good son", although I'm his daughter's son (grandson). I thought maybe he wasn't fully coherent (he died hours later), but now I realize he meant it how he said it. Not that he's my biological father, but that he saw me as his own son, considered me his bloodline and direct progeny. Something at the time told me how to respond: "I'm proud to come from you, Grampa. I won't forget you. Thank you for everything you taught me."

( Me, right, and my younger brothers helping Grampa in his garden, approx 1985. )

Grandma told me many times that I reminded her of him, in looks and in deeds. He passed me his green thumb, love for science, leadership by example, and sense of family. For a few years before she died, I helped care for the house and garden they'd lived in together all their lives. Sometimes she'd have the oldies station on in her kitchen, and ask me to dance. I wouldn't know the tune, but of course she did - it was probably something her and Grampa had danced to. I know she was, sometimes, imagining that he was still alive and still there, still dancing with her, still loving her.

And in a way, he really was.

Love. Not soon, today. Now.
DRutter