Any Time Could Be the Last

 I've an inveterate habit of looking at my Facebook Memories. Almost every day I do it - I go through all the posts from this date in previous years, and I relive my joys and sorrows. Sometimes I see a comment from someone who is no longer in the world, and that's a bittersweet moment.

Today I came across a short video of my dog, Beau. It was the last video I ever took of him. He'd been ill for a long time, and he was recovering, and the video is of him happily playing with his squeaky stuffed pelican, and although the ravages of his long illness can be seen in his face, it's a happy time and it made me smile. 

It was sad, too, though, because this was the very last video I ever took of Beau. And six months later, he was dead. I wasn't expecting it; he'd fully recovered, and I'd just spent weeks carefully building up his fitness again, and that day he seemed to be completely back to normal, and a few hours later, he was gone. 

It makes me think about last times. We almost never know when we are doing something for the last time. It could be anything - the last time you hug your friend before the accident. The last time you film your dog. I wish I'd taken more videos. But however many I took, one of them was going to be the last.

Many years ago, I had another friend die suddenly. I was washing the dishes after dinner, and my cat Samson leaped up to the very top of the kitchen cupboard (a jump of about eight feet from the floor, which he executed with effortless grace.) He knocked down a whole lot of cardboard boxes which I had stored up there. It was very naughty of him, but for some reason I was feeling mellow and instead of shouting at him, I just laughed and made some little joke about it. Shortly afterwards he disappeared up the hall. I finished the dishes and decided to walk to the post box to post a letter I had written, but first, of course, a trip to the lavatory. And I found him lying on the bathroom floor, quite dead. I have always been so, so glad I didn't shout at him about those boxes, because those were my last words to him, and I would have hated them to have been angry ones.

We never know when something like this is going to happen. So now, while we are bracing ourselves for Christmas, while we're stressed and tired and overwhelmed with the huge list of things that still have to be done, let's take a moment to be sure that our last words to anyone won't be angry ones. Let's reach out to anyone with whom we've been quarrelling, or having a coldness, or anything of that nature. Let's decide just to let it go, even if - especially if - we feel we are in the right and they are in the wrong. Just let it go.

Because you never know if you'll have another chance.