I can hear a pin drop in the house. Toddler sleeping, girls went swimming with Dad. Seldom I get to enjoy time all to myself. I ponder how last year ended and this year commenced.
We just laid to rest my Mom’s older brother this week, after a long journey with a heart pacemaker and dialysis. It had been a long week of preparation for the family.
When I greeted my Mom on her 69th birthday today, she said she missed the serenade from my Uncle on her birthday. But she’s looking forward to her massage session before the day’s end.
My Mom had cared for her older brother who had never married and had no kids. He had been in and out of the hospital several times. Before that, My Mom’s mother was also confined in a nursing home where my Mom had frequent until my Grandma passed away.
If there was one person who deserved a massage, that would be my Mom. (Though I would gladly have one too!) She is so giving and self-less, putting others first before her own needs. She’s the oldest of five girls and second of ten siblings. She’s blessed with three daughters.
I have three kids of my own now and I know how you can lose time for yourself trying to meet all the needs of everyone in the house, count in my two Jack Russell terriers. My husband considers himself my fourth child also.
My Uncle who just passed away, though never married, considered all of his siblings’ families his own. His nephews and nieces were to him his own children. As the oldest of ten siblings (5 boys and 5 girls) he stood as the head of a big clan.
Being the oldest of all my Uncle’s nieces and nephews, at least twenty of us, I saw how he breezed through life with music. He had his own signature laugh that was very contagious.
Yet I know there were crossroads in his life where he had to choose whether to follow his own happiness or make a compromise to help the family he considered his responsibility.
All of us have journeys to take, battles to conquer, lives to live. At one point we reach our crossroads. We have decisions to make, paths to choose.
At the end of the day what matters is we can choose to rest, to cast life’s worries aside and recharge for tomorrow’s gift. Today is past, and tomorrow is present.
The crossroads ahead only remind me that life must go on. What an honor it is to look forward to tomorrow’s surprise. Unwrap your present from the Giver and cherish the moment.
