Read this post
Or I will come and fuck you up.
I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with, but I try to be nice. It’s very easy, with a sense of sarcasm, to go through life casting aspersion on any and everyone or thing, and acting like your shit doesn’t stink, but it’s just as easy to be nice, and try to be nice enough that the people around you are enriched by your presence.
Hug your kids. Call your mom. Go look your dad in the eye, shake his hand. SOmeday you won’t be able to. Today, take the time.
Don’t wait till you’ve lost those people to wish you’d had more time. Live life now.
I was very fortunate to be able to be with my parents a great deal in the months before my mother died. I was also able to see my father many times in the months and years before he died. Mom was 87 and Pop was almost 96 when they died. Every time I left them, I kissed them (yup, Pop too. His beard was still scratchy) both and told them I loved them. There was sadness when each died but no regret. I too had been an asshole but I made that as right as I could.
Russ
My parents are alive as well as my wifes mother. Her brother went through some tough stuff lately and I have been close to death recently as well as once long ago.
Life sucks. Enjoy it while you can cause it can end with 0 warning. Never forget that fact, but don’t remember it either.
Concur!
When I hit 40 three of my grandparents were still alive, and it has been less than a year since I lost my last one. Grandma Esther, my father’s mother, made it to 96.
I think most of us (if not all of us) go through a time in our lives when we think that we know everything and have the world by the tail. Some people never get past this, of course, but a lot of us do. For me, it was like being in a fog of self-importance until I was in my late twenties. At that point, I came to a moment of clarity: My parents really do know what they are talking about! After this, we all got along much better and my dad started relating to me as a peer.
As a parent of adults, I got to see this process from the other side, too. Og, getting things right with your father made him very happy too, I’ll wager.