Today is one of those days when life seems to be sending you a few hints and nudges to stop and look up. To think a bit extra about how we go about our lives and the loved ones that we share it with.
I have this thing about not going to bed angry and always saying goodbye to D in the morning with a kiss or a touch, even if he’s still asleep. We work different hours and if he gets up before me I ask him to kiss me goodbye so that I know that he’s left. Sometimes I don’t remember it when I wake up and get frightened when I find his side of the bed empty. It leaves me with a bad feeling for a few hours afterwards. Most of the time I do wake up enough to register that he’s leaving before I fall back asleep and those mornings I know he won’t be there when I wake up and as a result don’t get frightened wondering where he is. It doesn’t matter that I know the night before. It’s that goodbye in the morning that is needed.
Little things like saying hello and goodbye properly is really important to me and so is never going to bed angry. You hear stories of people passing away and how the last thing they said to the person who passed away was related to an argument. Or how they didn’t do or say something they’d been meaning to say/do for some time. This morning I didn’t kiss D goodbye or touch his arm when I got out of bed. As I walked out of the room I thought to myself that I had to remember to do it before I left because what if I didn’t and today was a day when something would happen. I don’t know why I thought that but I do get a little more aware of how quickly life can change before I’m due to go on a big trip, like fly to New York which we’re doing on Friday, and this morning I did think a bit extra about having to make sure to say goodbye to him. But then I didn’t. It was a combination of not wanting to go back into the bedroom and wake him and then forgetting when I left the house. I only remembered as I’d walked out the door and crossed the street and nearly turned around. But I felt a bit silly so instead I sent him a text wishing him a good day, telling him how I loved him and that I’d made some fresh juice that I’d left in the fridge. Once I sent the text I felt a bit more at ease. A bit superstitious I know.
Walking up to Ealing Broadway to catch the tube and then walking to the office I was a bit more careful with the traffic. Just in case the fact that I’d thought a bit extra about the importance of those small moments this morning was some kind of warning I wanted to make sure I was paying attention. When I got into work there was an email from one of our colleagues warning us about how a guy who’d been walking down the street had had his phone nicked from his hand. Lately I’ve walked around with my phone in my hand a lot, multitasking, reading emails and tweets and sending some, and that email from my colleague made me think that perhaps it was time to focus on walking when I was walking and start leaving my phone in my bag a bit more. After all when I walk down the road staring at my phone I miss the beautiful buildings and the people I pass along the way, and to add the risk of having my phone stolen, well that’s not too tempting either.
Then it was this afternoon and a tweet that I saw that really made me think. It was from someone I follow on Twitter and about how one of their parents unexpectedly had fallen ill. There were a couple of more tweets, one mentioning saying their final goodbyes and it sent chills down my spine and made my eyes well up. We can plan all we want but when it comes down to it we have no idea what the day ahead will bring.
Life has different ways of telling us to stop and look around us and today was one of those days when the message was hard to miss. Our time here is so precious and with no guarantees for tomorrow we should really do and say what we want to do and say today.
Tomorrow – Day 278 | All packed
Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/hansel5569/6102720457/in/photostream
