COMING HOME LATE

This was a long day. I’ve just eaten dinner. My boys and my wife are asleep. I’ve just made eggs for dinner and eaten an avocado that wasn’t quite ready to be eaten.

I’m tired. My body literally hurts. All I really want to do is take a shower and go to sleep.

And yet I know these are sacred minutes. Minutes I’ll someday want returned to me.

Because if I’m lucky, and I mean really lucky, I’ll die in a hospital bed with a jungle of wires surrounding me. I’ll have drugs for the pain and a cadre of family saying things like, “93 years. Heck of a life.”

And they’ll be right. Because to die in old age is to receive a precious gift from God, the gift of years.

But what I know is that while I lie there dying, I’ll drift back to the night I was a young, stressed, and exhausted dad who came home late. A dad who ate dinner alone. A dad who kissed his sleeping children and wife good night. A dad who had to settle for drinking a Miller Lite because all the good beer was gone.

And in that moment of death I’ll want nothing more than to relive this very tired night.

I will want the stress. I will want the eggs. I will want the joy of making the rounds and touching the faces of the three people I love most in this world.

I might even want to taste that yellow, fizzy, sad excuse for a beer.

My friends, every day is a blessing. Every. Single. Day. No matter what has happened, if you’re lucky, someday you’ll want it back.

So be grateful and ever aware that this moment, this precious moment, will not last. So breathe deep. Take it in. And count your blessings.