LITTLE ROCK — Lately, I’ve been getting the same message ... repeatedly.
It’s a message that had been tugging at my conscience for a while. In the span of a few days, that tug had become an urgent - and painful - yank.
The message manifested itself nearly two weeks ago with the news that a very dear high school friend had passed away suddenly ... a friend whose Facebook request I’d happily confirmed a few months ago, and with whom I had a brief Facebook conversation, but no real contact after that. I posted a tribute on his page and on my own; got a few compliments on it ... but the compliments didn’t drown out that old adage running through my head: Give them the flowers while they live.
The message came again July 20, via news that dealt an even bigger blow than my friend’s death. Some young man had walked into a packed theater in Aurora, Colo., early Friday morning and started shooting, leaving 12 dead and nearly 60 injured.
I was still reeling from that news on Sunday morning when the message came to visit a third time in a kinder, gentler format: A televised Joel Osteen sermon to which my husband had flipped. Osteen, the noted Houston megachurch pastor, was talking about how important it was to stay in contact with friends and loved ones.
He gave two memorable examples: An older friend whom he’d put off visiting for years, but whom he was prompted to visit shortly before the man’s passing; and his own father, with whom he was grateful to have obeyed the prompting to spend the day with just before the elder Osteen died.
The fourth manifestation of the message came the next morning when I read a message a Facebook friend had posted the afternoon after the Colorado shooting:
“Praying for my daughter ... and praying for the family of Makayla Medek,” she’d written. “Makayla ... was my daughter’s student mentor from an honors society. She ... was her host when she visited [the University of Colorado] and always kept in contact with her. We just got the news she was killed in the Colorado shooting. ... If you have not said it today, tell your kids you love them. Call your friends and tell them you love them. Tomorrow isn’t promised.”
The message was loud and clear. Let your friends and loved ones know how much you care. Especially those you haven’t seen or talked to in a while. And do it now.
I thought about my father, who lives in Missouri and is about to turn 91, and how few and far between my calls to him are. I thought about how seldom I talk to my older siblings. I thought about how often I’m on the receiving end of concerned calls or e-mails along the lines of: “Hadn’t heard from you; thought I’d better check on you,” and the occasional, “I keep up with you through your column.”
Yikes!
Am I super busy? Sure. Do I deserve to spend precious little free time resting? Of course. I paddle the same boat so many of us are in, rowing as fast as we can amid the ever-increasing requests and demands on our time, gifts, talents, funds. Deriving no satisfaction from completing Task A, because we must immediately start to figure out how Tasks B, C and D will be completed. Or, more likely, sweating Tasks A-D at once, wondering if any of them will be considered well done. And we rush desperately to meet the needs of others while wondering how our own needs will be met.
None of the above even approaches being an excuse.
We’d all do well to heed the message, even if we and our loved ones were guaranteed to live to be 100. Considering all the adversity being dished out by the world we live in, it would behoove us to create our own good news.
I’m forming my list of those with whom I need to do just that.
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Style, Pages 47 on 07/29/2012