Carpe Diem: It's Time, Stupid....

Just got back today from the funeral of a friend, a 37-year old mother, who died tragically trying to save her 8-year old son who also perished in the fire.  No words ... except, perhaps, "gone too soon"....


A month or two before, I had attended the funeral of a former protégé, a young man in the prime of his adult life at not-yet 43 years old, who succumbed to cancer.  Also gone too soon....


The month before that, someone who was a new friend whom I had recently met but who seemed to be a kindred spirit and with whom I shared a deep interest in emotional intelligence and wellness and spiritual development passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at 49.  Also gone too soon.


As much as I grieve, I can only imagine the depth of the sorrow, hurt, loss and absence being experienced by their families: in one case a father whose ex- and effervescent son were lost without warning, in another a spouse who was really just beginning to live the good life with her soul mate before he became ill and in the last a mother whose daughter was reaching the zenith of her professional life and seemed to be in a great place personally, too.


At times like this, how does one wrap one's head around this grief, this aching loss, this painful sensation regret and of what could been?  As far as I can tell, the answer is a difficult one: simply put, you don't.  Nothing can explain tragedy or illness.  Like so many things in life both good and bad, they happen.  And we are left with the struggle to accept them, coming as it does after the grieving for the life that could have been in the absence of adversity.  And sometimes we just never quite learn to accept them, but move forward because life forces us to do so....


Unfortunately - or fortunately, I now understand the poet Robert Frost, who so memorably observed, "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."  Yes, it does....


It goes on even when we don't want it to, when we're grieving and still hoping against hope that fate turns out differently than it has.  At the other end of the emotional spectrum, it also goes on even when we want it to stop for a moment so that we can savor a particularly transcendent moment.  And as every parent who's seen his/her infant become a very different and yet wonderful young adult in seemingly no time, it goes on too quickly....


I guess what the passing of my friends is teaching me anew is something that I know but haven't fully internalized, try as I might: that I/we must live fully today and each day, that tomorrow isn't promised and that opportunities postponed voluntarily are sometimes made permanently so by fate.


We all know plenty of things.  What we've internalized, however, is typically an appreciable but modest subset thereof (at best).  As a former colleague of mine has put it:  There are three levels of agreement: the intellectual, the emotional and the behavioral.  In order for us truly to "get it," we have to process what we know (the intellectual) fully from an emotional standpoint so that it shows up in our behavior.  Until we process it fully emotionally, we know it but we really don't.  Only when our behavior changes based on what we know - in essence, showing that we've gone beyond knowledge to learning and wisdom - can we truly claim to know something.


I know that I should seize the day.  I just don't do it as often as I should.  So I really don't know this after all, as my friendships with each of these three unique, gifted and impressive people suggest:


I had always intended to get in better touch with my devoted mom friend: we were both raising spirited young men - my two just a little older than hers - so we had our shared deep commitment to parenting in addition to our aligned professional interests to explore.  But we were both too busy raising our kids or working or....  We'd see each other from time to time and "threaten" to get together, as I jokingly described it, but we never quite pulled it off.  No more....


I had always intended to reconnect with my former protégé now that he was "all grown up" and living up to being the very pillar of the community that we had all projected and expected him to be.  And he also worked at my former firm but in a different division, so I also wanted to learn about his experiences with this, too.  We would bump into each other occasionally - usually at an event for the not-for-profit organization that had brought us together in the first place more than two decades prior - and pledge to catch up.  No more....


I had intended to get to know my new friend better as her infectious enthusiasm for some of our shared interests made her seem like one of those kindred spirits with whom it would be a pleasure to develop a meaningful collegial relationship.  In just our first few interactions - the initial one at a presentation that I made and subsequent ones via various electronic media channels - we really hit it off, so I was looking forward to learning more about how she had leveraged her (television) media experience to become a published author and columnist, among many other things.  We kept agreeing that we had to set a date to get together to talk more substantially but never did.  No more....


In each of these cases, I was left stunned, hurting and wishing "If only I/we had...."  Overcome the inertia in relationships that "busy people" often have so that my late friends and I could have made better use of the limited amount of time that it turns out we had, that is.  No more....


Life moved on while we were still planning to get to know one another better, to catch up and keep up and to be more meaningful presences in each other's lives.  And now we have no time left to do so.  A harsh lesson, but one that must be learned lest it be repeated.


So, today, after my devoted mom friend's (and her son's) heartrending funeral, I actually followed up with the handful of people who gave me cards or to whom I gave one.  I hope that indeed dates will get set, gatherings will occur and something(s) positive will come out of the depressing and deflating tragedy of our mutual grief.  If so, then it will be clear that I/we really do know the value of time in life.  To paraphrase the singular former presidential advisor James Carville, it's time, stupid.  And if I am more mindful thereof and take advantage of more of the opportunities that life suggests, then I really will have learned its value and thus truly know it.  And I will live a lot more and better along the way....


Or, as I noted in a previous recent installment of this blog,


(I)n reality, if death has any lesson to teach us in life, it's that we must live life to the fullest now.  In the words of the incomparable Bishop John Shelby Spong, we must "live fully, love wastefully and be all that (we) can be."


Good-bye, my dear departed friends.  And thank you for the smiles, memories and lessons with which you gifted me during your too short time on this earth.  Your spirits live on and continue to guide me and the many whose lives you touched, though we wish we could have shared this learning with you during our time together.  Because I/we didn't, we'll remember you and pay forward your gifts to us, thankful for having been enriched and instructed by both your presence and by your legacy....