DECEMBER 1
Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what
will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of today.
—ROMAIN ROLLANDIt is hard, at any time of life, not to be unduly concerned
with what lies ahead. But when we have lost a loved one, it
is doubly hard. All the plans and hope we had for a future
in which that person continued to figure have to be reshaped.
Even if the loved person has died in old age, the future still
has to be recast. If it’s a parent who has died, the remove of
that buffer between us and death has its own sobering
meaning: How will it be for me, being the older generation?
How will it be in ten years—or twenty—when I am “the old
person”? Will others be there for me? If one’s child has died,
the reversal of sequence in the human drama evokes all
kinds of anticipated pain about a future that should have
been different.
And in the meantime, while we are worrying and fretting
and feeling sorry for ourselves, life slips away.
It is a hard discipline to adopt—and we can’t do it all the
time—but let’s try to greet each day as its own gift—or its
own trial if it’s that kind of a day. But let’s not bury the
sunshine and beauty of this day under the shadow of a re-
gretted future—about whose nature we can only speculate.
I will look around me now, this minute, and see what my life holds.