In our world of fleeting meaning there is a meme (I think it’s properly called a meme, but I’m unsure) that stands out. It arrested me because of my experience with its truthfulness. The meme features Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez hoisted on the shoulder of his Sandlot compadres. The copy reads “At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it. I think about that quote a lot.” As for the origin of the quote, that remains a mystery. Some attribute it to the movie The Sandlot, but I checked the quote against a screenplay and couldn’t find it. While the source lingers unidentified, the potency of the quote can’t be missed.
Lasts, when they are experienced as such, make a momentous impact on us. Teary eyed athletes announcing their retirements, parents watching their children march at graduations, heartfelt eulogies at funerals. All of these moments of life’s liturgies help us adopt a posture to process and accept, and hopefully celebrate, the holy moment characterized by something coming to an end. But what about the millions of moments that come and go without our knowledge? As my youngest was aging into a full-blown toddler and out of infancy I was cognizant of certain milestones like the last nighttime dry pull-up tossed into the trash, and the last time I pulled a sippy cup out of the dishwasher. With each one of these lasts, seen and savored, I took time to say goodbye. But many more weaseled their way out our lives unannounced. I don’t remember the last time I held any of my children on my lap. I don’t remember the last time I scratched their backs and said their prayers. I don’t remember the identification of the last tooth that was exchanged for a dollar from under their pillows.
I had a thought this morning that arrested me. It’s possible that some time recently, I can’t identify when, we ate our last supper together as a family of six. Dinners together are becoming increasingly scant. Roy’s evenings are filled with work, dates with his girlfriend, youth group and extra-curricular commitments. Mabel plays volleyball. Lillian is almost always rehearsing for something. But the possibility of our communal dinner of lastness is framed by a pair of impending realities. Thursday, if nothing changes, two little girls will be placed in our home through the foster care system. The real question mark is how long they will be with us. We’ve had a placement that lasted three days and one that lasted a year and half. Fixed in the ambiguity of the placements longevity is the reality that one way or another, Roy will depart for college in August. So there, perhaps somewhat remotely, does exist the possibility that we ate our last supper together as a family of six and didn’t realize it.
It may be that we’ve evolved to be a people whose lasts escape us for emotionally healthy reasons. One can become immobilized by the threat of constantly missing precious lasts. Think for example, if you knew the last moment you would see someone, every time it was the last time you would see someone. In 2017 The Daily did an episode about a Canadian man with a terminal disease who celebrated his wake with his friends before being euthanized. The magnitude of facing death when it’s scheduled is almost too much. Best for our psychological selves to be surprised by death.
The gift of lastness is that it demands our attention, in a way that successive moments of not lasts are incapable of. But what if we became a people who were better at seeing lasts routinely? What if we made a practice of noticing that each moment as it comes to us, will never reappear as that moment again in history? That each moment is like a snowflake or a thumbprint? Father Richard Rohr says that contemplation is a long loving gaze at the real.
It may be that for everyone else this kind of thing is instinctual. Not me. I’m an enneagram three who’s spent so much of my life fighting to be present. To notice. It’s hard for me. Long loving gazes are not efficient, productive, nor do they win the admiration of onlookers, so there’s nothing in the DNA of my personality that is interested this practice. But I’ve been malformed by my addictions for long enough to know what I’m missing.
There’s a rabbinical tradition that says that in Exodus 3 when Moses encounters the burning bush it’s not that suddenly the bush started burning, but rather that Moses was finally able to see the bush as it always was. In its full radiance. I’ve heard similar commentary about Jesus and the transfiguration. What changed was the disciples’ ability to see Jesus as He was for the first time. It’s made me wonder if a similar eye opening experience happened on Pentecost.
At some point last year, I began doing an emotional exercise of imagination in which I time traveled. I went back to 2004 the year I was engaged. There, in 2004, I peered forward with Lindsay to the chaos of our nightly lives where I handed Mabel something to put into the recycling while asking Roy where he was going as he headed out the door, yelled for Wendell to set the table, and inquired about Lillian’s whereabouts. My 2004 self is floored. There’s a Roy and a Lilli and a Mabel and a Wendell! And how did we ever afford that house we are in? And we have three cars! And my mom lives in our garage apartment! And my sister’s family lives next door! The furniture’s run down, but it’s lived in by vibrant life. Somehow, we can afford all that food and car insurance and the Texas electric bills. The kids have personalities and interests. Some of them I understand, and others reflect the unique ways they’ve become something completely other than me and my wife. In the bewilderment of being stunned by everything that went right in my future I don’t notice the paint worn off of the kitchen drawers or the fact that the vinyl flooring has gaps in it. I forget that the sprinkler head next to the sidewalk is broken and am instead amazed I have a sprinkler system. I’m fascinated by the genetic anomalies found in my eldest’s blonde hair and his six-foot frame. And though she’s plagued by a more feminine version of my eyebrows, Lillian can sing which suits her theatre interest, a passion latent in my wife but not even on the palate of my extra-curricular possibility. Mabel is made from the exact same mold that crafted her mother. An enneagram five with a propensity for the peculiar, I find that I’m most eager for her help and partnership like I am for her mother’s. And Wendell seems to have all the same peccadilloes I do. He’s a bullshitter who dashes from one moment to next with charm and instinct. My God their fascinating! And my wife has found a fountain of youth, but her beauty has become more sophisticated. The transition gifted only by time and through elegance. We built this life together and it’s better than the one I thought I wanted.
I’m Geore Bailey came back to the present able to see it all burning with the radiance that it always has. The whole thing is on fire. Everything is a last.