My friend,
I am sorry to hear that.
You know, unless you are counting on reincarnation and additional lives, all you really have is your life now?
There’s nothing more valuable. That is, if you, in fact, experience your life as having value.
If you are sure, however, that you are making the very best use of the time you have left, then good.
But if not, then regret at the end is a terrible thing.
Many people work and work and wear themselves out trying to ensure that they have ‘enough’ and that everything is arranged perfectly. They save and save so that their savings are always maximized. Somehow, they imagine that all this preparation and saving will serve to help delay the arrival of mortality.
But, nothing, other than careful attention to our health, can actually stave off mortality. And even then, the results are only temporary.
For many of us, failing health catches up with us and all of our preparations are meaningless.
None of the things we’ve stock-piled can change our mortality.
All the money we saved to use to do enjoyable things with when we retire, it all now gets spent on futile and expensive efforts to preserve what little failing health we still have.
And in the end, we realize all we ever really had of value was just the time that we had left in our lives.
It is unlikely that you will ever be in better health than you are now, that you will have better strength or better intelligence than you have now. These days now, literally, are the best days of the rest of your life. It all goes downhill from here as your days keep passing.
Saving more money or getting ‘everything arranged just so’ will not changes these facts.
At some point, before it is too late, you should give yourself permission to be the a little girl you once were and allow yourself to take immediate pleasure in your life.
Of course, you can and should make provisions for your son. But, he is like a little paper boat with a bright, burning candle set in it. You gave him life, you raised him and you love him. But it is, and always was going to be, his life. His to lead.
And once you’ve done what you can to push his little boat off into the stream of life, what about you?
Will you work 24/7/365 until one day you die? Everyone gathers and says, “What a good hard working woman she was.”
And then you are gone, your house is emptied and most of what you collected is scattered to the wind.
And your boy loves and misses you but he moves on with his life, as it was always destined that he should.
As the Poet Kahlil Gibran says,
“Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself… You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow…”
Just some philosophical thoughts and advice from a friend of yours.
Stop and reflect, my friend. If you continue as you are now, you will arrive exactly where you are going.
Or you can cup the years you have left like sweet water to your lips and drink it as you like. You can do the things you always thought ‘someday’ about. Someday is now and time can only grow shorter.
Fondly,
Dennis