I have heard more times than I can count, “When it’s your time to go, you will go?” I’m sure you have heard this more times than you can count too. I have also heard people say, “She lived longer than expected,” “He was living on borrowed time,” or “The doctor said he had about 6 months to live and that was 10 years ago.”

I cannot assume that any of us will be here tomorrow and I think we should treat each other as if it could be our last day. This makes me think about the expression, “Life’s too short.” But we don’t know how short or how long our life will be. I sometimes take life for granted and for this reason, I treat others as if they will be here for years to come. Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t.
When someone dies I am powerless because they are gone, there is nothing I can do about it, and it is final. I wasted a lot of my life before becoming motivated and finding meaning and purpose in the way I live my life and the way I treat others.

I have procrastinated about many different things over the years, but death is not one of them. I have a choice to do things or put them off until later, but my time on earth will not last for one day sooner or one day later than my Creator has chosen for me.

If I knew that someone whom I love and care for had until next week to live, would I treat them differently? If I had known a year ago that my best friend had one year to live, how many times would I have seen him before he passed away? Then I look at how many times I actually visited him in the last year. It is then I see how much procrastinating I have done. Procrastinating leads to a lot of should’ve, could’ve, and would’ve statements.
I could have been a better son. A better friend. If only I would have said more, done more, and done it differently. I should have done this instead of that. A lot was because I just assumed they would be here for years to come. I treated things “as if.”

This is why I now try to spend time with people who are important to me. I don’t want to see a friend’s name in the obituaries and feel guilty or regretful because I had meant to see them but never got around to it, or I wish I wouldn’t have kept putting it off and paid them a visit. I knew I should have gone to see him, but . . .

In fact, I have a personal story that is quite the contrary. I like many have submitted to social media, and through Facebook was able to reconnect with my very first girlfriend after more than 30 years. Either of us could have procrastinated and just continued to stay in touch on Facebook. Instead, she and I agreed to meet and catch up on the many years that had gone by.
My wife and I began spending time with her and her husband. We all became great friends. We were so happy for each other and pleased that we could get to know one another again as adults. Her husband and I became friends. She and my wife became friends, and we all enjoyed the time spent together.

This is profound to me because after a few years of our new friendship she died at the young age of 49. Had we chosen to procrastinate I know we would have regretted it. More importantly, none of us would have had the many enjoyable times that enriched our lives during that brief period.

My mother told me years ago that getting flowers while she is here is far more important than having them placed on her grave because while here she can appreciate their beauty and scent.
Death has put things in perspective for me. It reminds me of what is really important. The older I get and the more funerals I go to the more I realize how precious life is. I try to spend my time and energy in meaningful ways.
I admire the John Walsh’s of the world who took their tragic loss and used it to give their life meaning and purpose and to make sure that their loss was not in vain. I’m talking about the family members who lose a loved one to cancer and begin walkathons and marathons to raise money for cancer research. These people are using their energy in a meaningful way and this is admirable and inspiring.
I have come to accept that death is not in my control and not for me to determine. I have also realized that I do have control of how I choose to respond to the painful loss. Will I use it to learn from and to motivate me as the examples above? Or, will I allow it to devastate me and miss an opportunity to find meaning and purpose.

The more I keep this in this in mind, the more thoughtful I will be about my actions and behaviors. I am more likely to live with a sense of desperation, like time is running out. This is why I make a conscious effort to tell my wife how much I love her several times a day. I give her a soft kiss while she’s half asleep, and tell her I love her before I leave for work early in the morning.
Make a “bucket list” now and don’t procrastinate as none of us know how long or short our life will be.