As If It Were the Last Time
As the rousing Sousa march, Semper Fidelis, began, 3-5 year-olds started running on the gravel path that encircled the bandstand, a ritual that seems genetically transferred from one generation to the next, without instruction or intent. A toddler struggled to keep up, with I suspect no idea why he was gaily doing so. That fact lessened his joy not one bit. Townspeople and tourists, families and lovers, lounged on the grass. Oldsters commandeered the benches.
I had last observed this in the very same spot at a performance by the Bar Harbor Town Band eight years ago. Then, I never thought about whether I would see it again. That I could was something I assumed. I was 66 then. My father died at 77 and my brother at 75, so now I wondered if this time would be my last time.
That thought heightened my joy at this cultural ritual. It was a joy born as well by the familiarity of the music, provoking the soft, comforting warmth of nostalgia. It was a joy I always feel in seeing our future in the twinkling eyes of children. It was a joy launched by a cool evening breeze after a blistering (for Maine) day and the dedication of the musicians, who seemed to range in age from the adolescent to the aged. It was a joy anchored in the fact that life had given me this opportunity.
It occurred to me at that instant that thinking this might be the last time should be my orientation to life, rather than just a moment in it. If I can savor at least some things in each day, as if they might be the last time I would experience them, how much more joyous could my life be? How might this change me from hardening myself against frustrations, disappointments and the endless media reports of tragedy, to opening myself to the awe that surrounds us if we are only open to it?
Life puts sickness, loss, career struggles and other obstacles in our path. But that is just another reason to live it as if every positive experience will be the last time we get to have it. The last time we get to sit around the breakfast table sharing last night’s dreams and the dreams of our lives. The last time we get to see a butterfly alight on a flower or the humble bee doing the mundane work of pollination on which so much of what we eat depends. The last time we kiss our children as we send them off to school and the last time we hug a loved one as we go off to work. The last time we share a laugh with a colleague and say good night to those we love, because seeing them in the morning is an expectation not a right. How might this deepen our gratitude for life and the people in it that we too often take for granted? How might our example reshape the lives of all the recipients of our appreciation for who they are, what they do, and what their presence means to us? We should tell them, after all. Telling comes in hugs and glances but also in words that sometimes we utter only when we know we won’t have another chance? But why wait until it really is the last time?
When I first saw Casablanca, in my twenties, I loved the grand, romantic moment when Ilsa tells Rick “kiss me; kiss me as if it were the last time.” Having fallen in love with him, she has just learned that her husband, a leader of the Resistance, was not killed by the Nazis but is deathly ill, hidden in a train car outside Paris. She must flee to care for him and realizes she will never see Rick again. But now, in my seventies, I know the deeper meaning of “as if it were the last time” - because there is the possibility that it always is.
My wife, who loves taking photos of those butterflies and bees, knows this. She always has. Early in our courtship, she told me “there is no tomorrow.” Having survived a congenital heart defect predicted to end her life before she became a teenager, she understood the uncertainty of the next day. She still does. Now, slow learner that I am, I finally grasp it too. If I can live it, then each “last time” will enrich my life as well as those around me.
Photo Credit: Stephen Crawford
