Okay, the wind has totally gone out of my sails. My energy level is squat and I’ve a blog to write. Thank goodness I have gratitude. Because I can always find something to say about gratitude, right?
On days like today I am grateful for every moment I have on this planet with the people I love. Yes, every moment, even the ones when I want to throttle the people I love. We receive constant reminders that we ought to (ought: a word I don’t use very often) treasure the people in our lives who are most important to us. I received yet another today when I learned that a former student of mine had lost a grandparent near the end of May and a few weeks later a sibling was killed in an accident. I cannot imagine what it is like for people when they lose multiple members of their family in a short period of time. Losing my mother 17 years ago was a deeply significant experience to me. I cannot imagine if I’d had to face another loss of that magnitude around the same time. I have been fortunate that my dearest family and friends are for the most part still here on the planet with me, though I still feel the impact the loss of my Dad two years ago.
I have two children, two older sisters, two older brothers and a younger sister. I treasure each of them. I don’t talk to my siblings nearly often enough, and I often lament that I live so far away from that I’m lucky to see them once per year. Still, I think of them nearly every day, pray for them often and try to reach out to them using various means as often as I can. Social networking and technology makes that a lot easier than it used to be: I Skype with one of my brothers every couple of weeks or so, swap quick comments and chat with some of my family on Facebook (and many of my nieces and nephews, which is really cool), and exchange text messages with various sibs at various times. All of that feels like too little sometimes and I find myself thinking about how I can make contact more often–not to ask for anything (which I feel like I’ve done too much of over the past year)–but to connect and check in and find out how things are going with and for them.
I’ve always been sort of a family-centric kind of person, and though time and distance have sometimes thwarted my interests in remaining in as close contact with my siblings as I’d like, I haven’t quite given up on making that happen. Meanwhile, I am grateful to have my daughter here for several weeks in between finishing up her undergraduate degree and heading for graduate school at the end of July. Although we haven’t maximized the experience–having her, my son and me again under one roof–I am hoping that we create a few more opportunities to spend some time together doing fun and goofy things as well as having some meaningful family discussions about what we’re going to be doing next and where. My daughter has a pretty good handle on this already, but her input will still be valuable as we each think through what where we’re going to be by the end of the year.
Tomorrow is definitely not promised to any of us; we have only this moment…until the next moment, and perhaps a whole bunch of moments. In this moment, I choose to tell my daughter (who is sitting here in the room with me) that I love her and that I’m grateful for her being here. And heck, even though I’ll be picking up my son from work in an hour, I think I’ll text him now and tell him I love him too. (He’ll probably text back that he loves me too, even if he wonders what the heck has gotten into me!) I want them to know how much I love them and tell them as often as I can remember; and to remind myself of that, even when I’m angry at them. I am more grateful to have them in my life than I am about just about anything else. I look forward to continuing to find ways to show as well as tell the people I love just how important they are to me.
© M. T. Chamblee, 2012
