My ability to predict the future isn’t good.

I learned—relearned—this when my beloved Ma died so suddenly and unexpectedly.

She was 83, which is getting older, but not old.  I didn’t think of her as old at all, because she was so vital and so alive.  And she was in good health.  And my grandmother lived to be 100.  And, and … there were a lot of good ‘reasons’ for believing this, so that I literally thought I knew for certain she’d live another 15 years.

I suppose the world and our lives wouldn’t work too well if we constantly anticipated catastrophes.

Yet we shouldn’t take Time or the Future for granted.  

I had promised Ma to take her to Italy again, where we spent most of a summer when I was 12, which was a wonderful trip, the first time I went to Europe.  Yes, it got complicated during the pandemic…but I wonder now why I wasn’t actively planning that trip…or some other trip, until we could go.

It is obvious, and we hear it all the time, that Family is Everything, but it’s also easy to get caught up in thinking we know what will or won’t happen, to default to spending time together, or calling, or planning that big trip, later, rather than now.

I had a video call earlier this evening with my cousin, who lives in Japan and I don’t get to see much.  He was saying that Ma’s death had really brought the family closer and that that’s a gift from her, a part of her legacy.

It is and I’m glad we made time to visit, even though we’re both busy, and half a world apart.

-Chris