Twilight

Late on a Sunday afternoon as the sun sets over Yokohama.  Our two dogs are peacefully snoozing on my lap.  The teenage boys are upstairs paying a game together.  My wife is in the kitchen humming while she puts away the dishes from lunch.  Her parents are upstairs listening to music, Beatles tunes softly wafting down to our floor.  I feel content.

This moment will not last.  The dogs are already turning 10 years old, getting old for a dog.  Butch was always calm but he is a bit slower than before, preferring to sleep rather than play, moving from bed to couch and back again.  This summer my oldest son will head to Canada for university, the first extended time away from home he's ever had.  My younger one will follow his own path a few years later.  My wife is every bit as beautiful as she was when we married 20 years ago, but we have both had our scary moments along the way.  Her parents are in their seventies and still active, although far less so in the chilly Yokohama winter.  My biological father died at 62 from a heart attack and although I feel pretty healthy now, the future is out there, waiting...inevitable.

At some point everything I know and love will be gone, as will I.  The brief, fleeting moments we have together disappear just as quickly.  We grow old and die, replaced and exceeded (hopefully) by our progeny who will in turn go on to lead their own lives. And so on, and so on.

I feel a moment of sadness to imagine losing so much.  It's easy to be overcome with despair when we imagine our lives as futile, finally recognizing that we are not all destined to go down in history as Captains of Industry or civil rights icons or rock stars.  When we learn that our lives will not be like those in the movies or on TV and we will not leave behind statues of ourselves in the town square.

What we have, most of us, are a collection of little precious moments strung together like pearls on a necklace.  We have times when we made a tiny difference to someone, when we said or did something that helped.  We were there for each other when needed, to comfort, heal, laugh, listen.  We gave more smiles than frowns and we shared love and tears freely as required.

Tomorrow is never guaranteed, and very few of us wake up knowing that the day will be our last.  Rather than despair, I am so grateful for everything - good and bad - that has brought me here.  I have been blessed beyond measure and every single day forward is just that much more than I ever expected to get.  I am regularly reminded that I am flawed, broken, hopelessly imperfect.  I fail repeatedly and yet somehow manage to move forward.  All I can offer in return is my full gratitude in paying forward for what kindness I have received along the way.

I won't forget this Sunday afternoon - this precious, perfect twilight moment that can never last.  Gone but not forgotten.