Last Time

December 31st, 2024

There is a four letter word that you find yourself saying more and more when getting old. The word is “LAST”. For example, today is the LAST day of 2024. The reason I think about that, is you start to wonder how many LAST days of a year will I see? Also, just like that, 1974 was 50 years ago. I graduated from high school that year. It was the best of times. I was naive then, and thought that everything would turn out all right. But soon you learn differently, and all the responsibilities of being an adult start to weigh you down.

In retrospect, the first “LAST” I really thought much about was in February of 2014. My youngest son was a little past the middle of his high school senior season of basketball. He had always been a gifted athlete. He excelled at most any sport that involved a ball. His senior year, he had been elected as captain of the varsity basketball team.

Defense was his specialty. Some of the mothers of the other players referred to him as the Gazelle, due to his ability to sprint down the court and leap into the air, stealing passes thought to high to reach. His team was undefeated in conference play, surprising for a small town team playing against the much larger suburban school teams in the area. He loved playing the game, and I loved to watch him play. In the end, his team won more games that season then the high school had since 1943, being undefeated in conference play and thus, winning the conference.

At the time however, that was still in the future. In the game in question, he suffered an injury to his right hand. An errant ball hit his hand from the side. Fingers are made to bend up and down and not flex very far from side to side. His index finger was pushed outward beyond the limit. That limit was set by the length of a tendon that stretched from just past his first knuckle to his wrist. The tendon held, but it broke a small chunk of bone away from his finger. It would require surgery, a temporary metal pin, and several weeks to repair.

The rest of the team went on to win the game, but my son would not play for the rest of the season. He did not know at that time, but there came that bad four letter word. It had been the LAST basketball game in which he would ever play. He didn’t get the chance to savor the moment. He didn’t look around the gymnasium, seeing the fans, parents, and students and realize it was the last time they cheered for him. It never entered his mind that it was the end of anything. “LAST” can sneak up on you that way.

Later that year, and in those that followed, I saw the LAST time I would have a child in high school, and the LAST time both of my sons would live at home. I had growing osteo-arthritis in my right hip. So, I ran for the LAST time. There was the LAST time I would make a Telemark ski run down a mountain, the LAST time I would backpack, the LAST time I would ride a bicycle. Eventually there was even the LAST time I could balance well enough to enter a canoe without falling in the river. Of course, I was a little wrong about some of those, as in 2020, I had a hip replacement that gave me a reprieve. But, that just means the LAST time I do those things will come again.

As you age, the LASTS come at an increasing rate. There was the LAST time I will sit on a Christmas morning and watch my two boys open their gifts, the LAST I will live in my home in Oxford, the LAST time I will see some of the people with which I worked. Another made me especially sad. In early 2020, I went to Minnesota to see my parents. My dad was not doing well. He had been seeing a palliative care nurse. When I left to fly back to Michigan, I knew that I had seen and talked to him for the LAST time. He knew it also.

Thinking about all those things that you will never do, see, or experience could make for a pretty sorrowful old age. So, my resolution for 2025, is to enjoy every single LAST wonderful thing, and survive all those that are not so wonderful.

When LAST comes, burn it into your memory and savor the moment. Be thankful for the people that were there. Strive for a happy New Year! Make sure to enjoy and seek out all the experiences, events, friends and relatives that make your life wonderful. You never know when the final LAST will arrive, your LAST breath.

“The most beautiful things in life are not things. They are people and places, and memories and pictures. They are feelings and moments and smiles and laughter.”