One day you are going to watch your cat play like a kitten or your dog run with complete freedom for the very last time, and you won’t know it’s happening. What does that mean?
My youngest daughter and I make fairly regular trips to Atlanta. Every time we go she mentions that she’ll have her drivers permit soon and can help me by driving the boring part before Atlanta traffic picks up. Yesterday, we made our last trip before her birthday this summer and I said to her “You know, this is probably the last time we will go to Atlanta and I’ll have to drive the whole way.” She didn’t say anything for a moment as we both thought about what that meant. Finally, she said “that doesn’t seem real.”
Since then, I’ve been thinking about all the last times, and how rarely we recognize them. As my oldest daughter prepares to leave for college, I have a sneaking suspicion I’m witnessing a lot of last times without knowing what they are. Is this the last time she is asking me to pay for her gas, share my Netflix password, or keep it down at 11am because she’s sleeping in? (Sadly, the answers here are no, no, and definitely not. But you get the picture).
There was a last time that I picked either of my children up and carried them, and I have no idea when it was. There was a last time I kissed an injury and made it better, and also a last time I checked under the bed and in the closet for monsters before bedtime. I didn’t know they were the last.
I remember watching the best dog I ever had, a Vizsla named Phoenix, run wide-open through the fields of my friend’s farm. He was beautiful to watch, and everything about him radiated a sense of unbridled joy and freedom. Over time, as he got older, he spent less time running free and more time sniffing the flowers. At some point, I stopped taking him to the farm because he seemed to think there was better sniffing at the dog park. I do not remember the last time I saw my old dog run joyfully, or the last time I took him to the farm. Now my old dog has long crossed the rainbow bridge, and I’m just grateful for a grainy photo I have of him jumping over a log with his ears flying behind him.
I’ve been trying hard for the last few weeks to remember the last time I saw my friend Erin before she unexpectedly passed. I remember her face and snippets of conversation we had. I remember watching her do a presentation for the Uncharted Veterinary Conference in Atlanta in 2024, but I don’t know that I spoke to her after she finished. I really hope I told her that she did a wonderful job. If I’d thought it might be the last time we spoke, I would have invested some time in encouraging and celebrating her. But I didn’t know.
That’s the thing about last times: they are timid and secretive creatures. They are silent, blending into the background and slipping past us when we are distracted. We rarely recognize them in the moment, not while spoon-feeding a toddler, laughing at a cat’s final burst of kitten-like energy, or leaning into a conversation with a friend we’ll never see again. They are all around us, hiding in plain sight.
The only solution I can find is to remember that last times are everywhere, slipping past us without our notice. Maybe we need to say the things we would regret not saying, to give the things that matter our attention over the things that do not, and to relish the moments that brighten the world, improve our lives, and remind us that life is worth living. Because we never know when it will be the last time.
