This evening I find myself missing people. Like, I realized that I haven’t spoken with my brother in a few weeks. For a while there we Skyped on a semi-regular basis. In the hustle and bustle that has become my life these days it took me until just now to realize I’ve been missing that contact with him. Apparently I’m not alone in missing people. The other evening one of my sisters called me and said that as she was climbing into her car to drive home from work she’d thought she might call Daddy to ask him something and see how he was doing. Daddy died two years ago. For that one moment, that habit, that thought, that cellular memory of calling him on her way home was right there, present. “It hasn’t happened for a while, that I’ve thought about calling him, and it hardly ever happens with Mommy anymore.” She told me. Mommy died 17 years ago.
Missing people is a natural part of the human condition. People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, the poem says. With all the comings and goings, people drifting in and out we don’t always have time to evaluate who falls into which category. When my husband left and divorced me many years ago, I was stunned. I had not known what I was going to do with and for myself, raising our two children largely on my own. I had thought this was a lifetime relationship, so when our marriage ended, I was confused. I have since come to realize that our is a lifetime relationship. For one thing, we are connected through our children, and for another, much to my surprise and joy, we’ve become and remained good friends. That friendship is likely to last for the rest of our lives. The relationship morphed, and as I think about it in hindsight, he came into my life for a reason and for a lifetime.
I am grateful for so many of the people who have found their way into and often out of my life. When they go, no matter how they departed, it is inevitable that I miss them in some way or another. When my mother died, I was devastated–I’d felt as though I’d been orphaned, though my father was still alive. My primary parent and the center of my small solar system had departed and that left me reeling. She was a lifetime relationship, but unfortunately her lifetime was much shorter than I’d hoped it would be. I believe I’ve finally gotten to a point where I don’t miss her acutely like I used to, and now sometimes days go by when I don’t even think about her at all. Still, she’s never gone for too long and she doesn’t go very far. As with Daddy, I wake up in the mornings and they’re both still gone and I really am an orphan.
There are people I miss whom I wish I didn’t and others who have drifted away quietly and return only once in a great while, leaving me wondering how they are and what they’re up to. Perhaps I am conscious of missing people because I now live alone, at least in terms of being absent human company. It’s much easier to think about and notice who’s not there when everyone’s not there (or no one is there as the case may be.) It makes me that much more grateful for the people who are in my life currently who surround me, embrace me, make me smile. Whether they’re here for a reason, season, or lifetime, I’m grateful to have them with me in and for this moment. Their presence is a gift and a blessing; one which I do not take for granted. I will embrace them while they are here now and be grateful.
