One day to live

If you had only one day to live, how would you live it? You might first take care of your loved ones by arranging your financial affairs and making sure that any loose ends are tidied up. Then you might contact anyone that you need to say something to, and find, surprisingly, that you will more often than not have something nice to say. Faced with only a day, the fear that feeds resentment seems to melt away.

 

Then you might eat some ice cream, or smoke a few cigarettes, maybe watch a sunset for the last time noticing how exquisitely beautiful it is, and maybe pet your dog. And that night, you would hold the one you love, very tight, and notice how beautiful she is, and always has been.

 

Then you might reflect on your life; the mistakes you made, the triumphs, thinking not only of your own successes, but the assistance you received from all the unselfish people in your past, the ones you never remembered, until this day; the ones that helped you out.

 

Maybe you will wonder what in the world you were thinking of when you gambled away so many possibilities of expressing love. My, how quickly life goes by, and perhaps you now understand, at last, the really important things, and how you could have made life so much easier for so many others. But you did the best you could with what you had, and as Frank Sinatra once sang, I did it my way.

 

As the day closes, you might wonder why you didn't live each day as you did this one, as if it were your last. Such a good question. What was it, exactly, that moved your attention off things so important?

Why is it that you seemed to think you had so much time to do these things later?

You can never be sure you know; you might have only a day.

 

E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers