The Last Do you ever think about what might be your last moments?
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s)
I know. This could get morbid. I don’t mean it to be.
Sometimes I think about how God could call me home at any moment. What am I doing with my days when I think about each moment that I have in light of that possibility?
Don’t we all just go about our business as though it might never change? Or, similarly, though in the other direction, aim so hard for what we hope might be our future that we reach the end of a day (or a week) realizing we completely missed the now?
Today is September 11th. Twenty-five years ago, we were going about our business (or dreaming of the future, or the past) and sometimes soon after 8:46am Eastern time, the world’s attention was shaken out of the malaise of its daily life by a shocking event of death.
I did not live through Hiroshima, or Nagasaki. Nor the Holocaust. Nor the US Civil War, nor obviously many other such death events through all of time. So I can not put the events in NYC and DC and PA into such a vast perspective, but along with many who might be reading this, that day a quarter-century ago was quite a reminder that we truly never know when our last breath will be.
So many people thought they were just starting another day…
So many people thought they would see their families again…
So many people thought there would be more.
The truth is, as all who have come before us, we have a limited time here in this life God has placed us into. Limited time for the life we will live, and often, even more limited time with those we live it with, the ones we love. (So many goodbyes…)
Steven Curtis Chapman released a song with his Speechless album called “The Next 5 Minutes” that captures the truth of this beautifully:
I can reminisce about the already
I can worry and fret about the not yet
But when it all comes down I know it really
Really all comes down to the right now
So right now[Chorus]
I’m living the next five minutes
Like these are my last five minutes
‘Cause I know the next five minutes may be all I have
And after the next five minutes
Turn into the last five minutes
I’m taking the next five minutes
And starting all over again, yeah
Starting all over again
Are we doing that? I am not sure if I am. I think I have an advantage being a bit older now. There is more life behind me than ahead (most likely) so the possibility of an end to what seems “the eternal now” is more tangible… perhaps.
But do I live like that?
I would like to. I have taken some steps. Remembering to say things to people. Do things for people. Reach out to people.
I think that is the key. When you think of what you might do with your last minutes, it really only always involves loving someone. Whether giving or receiving love: expressing love or enjoying the presence of someone you love or who loves you. That’s really it.
I hope today, on Patriot Day, or Day of Remembrance, while you think of all those thousands of individuals whose lives ended that day, and the ones who lived on in the pain of their absence (almost certainly all holding some heavy burdens of how they might have lived their last days with them differently) … let that be our impetus to live this day differently.
… like they were your last five minutes, taking the next five minutes, and starting all over again… starting all over again.
That day September 11 was a normal working in the optometrist office until my son called from NYC/Brooklyn to tell me of a plane striking 1 of the towers. It don’t SEEM to be a big deal u til he called back to let us know of the 2nd plane!! We turned on the office tv to witness the de escalation. He called back when the towers fell to say he could not see out the windows of his apartment for all the accounting firm papers and debris on the windows. Then the call dropped!! No phone service which totally worried me for his safety!! He had called the other students in the Trinity LaMama School of Dance of which there were only about 15 to SHELTER IN PLACE since they lived in the YMCA! If he had not called them when he did they would have been in the zone of chaos at there internships!! The evening of 9-11 the President of Trinity College called my husband and I to thank us for our son’s concern for his fellow students!! He very well could have saved those 15 young dancers and friends from being hurt or killed when not only the 2 towers collapsed but the other several buildings in the plaza fell as well! The ensuring weeks were very difficult for our son. Subway bomb scares, walking at ground zero seeing all the pictures of loved ones, flowers, the dust from huge dump trucks moving debris from the rubble…. Took a toll on all New Yorkers. I just wanted to hug him but I couldn’t. There was no way for him to escape the sorrow which swept the city. Finally in November at Thanksgiving he was able to get a ticket on the train to come home for just 24 short hours but it helped him mentally to escape the city if only for those short 24 hours. He doesn’t want to talk about all that he saw and experienced but as the President of the college told those young dancers students….”you will always be New Yorkers wherever you go”!
I forgot that he was so close to all the action that day. And good thing he was! Thanks for sharing that story. I imagine that even if he doesn’t like talking about it, surely it shaped who he is and reminded him to live aware that life is short, and make the most of the meaningful moments along the way.