one more day
the last few weeks have been filled both with new opportunities and resurfaced memories.
today i was looking on google maps and i pulled up my grandparents house in connecticut. i have a lot of memories from there, even though i did not spend nearly as much time with that side of my family as i did with my mother’s side. their house was a marvelous, old, new england style home with a wood burning stove, though i wonder if the stove is still there. i used to go there for the christmas celebration for that side of the family and remember loving that house and the smell of that stove. they also had a pool that we enjoyed in the summer. it was a round pool, and i remember everyone making a whirlpool by circling the pool in one direction and i thought it was the greatest thing to try and swim against the current. the house was also next to a cemetery, and i remember being petrified to be there at night while my sister and aunt seemed fearless.
looking at the satellite image of the house, i never realized how amazingly close to the house we lived when we lived in our apartment complex. i mapped the directions and it was actually less than a mile. less than a mile, yet it might as well been on the other side of the world. with everything going on right now, i am overwhelmed with sadness.
i was listening to a talk radio station last night and they had mitch albom as their guest. mitch, who wrote tuesdays with morrie and the five people you meet in heaven, was promoting his new book for one more day. i haven not read his other books, but i believe they were pretty popular as i recognize the names. as he was discussing his latest book, he talked about how he came up with the idea and it struck a chord with me. how many relationships do we have that if the person was gone tomorrow we would be wishing we had them for one more day?
i thought about my grandfather. i think about how little i talk to him. i think about how that mile seemed like a thousand. i have it on my to-do list to write him. it has been on my to-do list for almost a year. what if i never get the chance to send it?
i thought about my father. i think about how i have not talked to him in ten years. i think about the opportunities i have had to contact him but never did. what if i never get the chance to contact him?
i think about my friends. i have the best friends that i have ever had at any stage of my life, and i try to show them in my own way how important they are to me. if i have enough to drink, i may even tell them. i feel that i am doing some of the right things now with my friends, but that i never went back and took the time to do the same thing with those strained family relationships from the past.
i have already lost some people that were and always will be important to me. there will always be things that i wish i had said or done differently. the question, i guess, is whether I am going to make the same mistake again.