The inescapable heartbreak and glorious redemption of 'last times'
When our kids were babies, we made a lot of formula. We had these plastic pitchers – the kind with the plunger on top, and you move it up and down to mix what’s inside so the liquid is smooth and the kids aren’t choking down Enfamil granules while starting to build a case against you. We were constantly filling and cleaning those pitchers, morning, afternoon and night – nonstop. The pitchers helped keep our babies alive when the babies could only eat one thing. Our lives revolved around them. Fill, twist, empty, rinse, wash. Repeat. Always, with the pitchers. Then, one day, without ceremony, it stopped. The kids didn’t need formula anymore. Those pitchers stood on our kitchen counter, clean and ready to be used. Like soldiers waiting to be called into battle. I remember looking at them and realizing, “I’ll never make formula again.” And I become irrationally emotional over dumb hunks of plastic.
It took having kids to realize the unspoken heartbreak of last times.
There is a human need to mark occasions in our lives. We celebrate birthdays. Holidays. Communions and bar mitzvahs. New jobs. New cities. Weddings. Anniversaries. Baby showers. Kids. First houses. Vacations. Promotions. First days of school. Last days of school. Graduations. Retirements. And of course, the undefeated occasion – death. This list is incomplete, but you get it. There are days that are acknowledged as a moment marked in time.
And there are invisible occasions that can touch us just as deeply.
Like empty formula pitchers.
We have twins. That means we changed a lot of diapers. When you’re a new parent, it’s what you do. Every couple hours – up on the changing table, old diaper comes off, goes into the trash, wipe, wipe, wipe, new diaper, kiss on the forehead, and we’re on our way. I changed every type of diaper — ones with cute little poopies, and I changed diapers that were crimes against humanity. For years, we bought diapers. We had a special table for changing those diapers. We had a special garbage can for the diapers. (A can that closes tight and rues its lot in life.) We took diapers everywhere we went. We had travel bags just for diaper-related items. Then one day – a day whose date I do not know – the kids were potty-trained. No more diapers. But we still had boxes of diapers around the house, and diapers in the car, and in our bags. I saw them, and I became irrationally emotional over even more dumb hunks of plastic to the point where I placed one random one I found in a drawer because tossing it away felt too final.
I think part of my problem – and humanity’s problem – is that in order to keep going, we all have to act like we’re going to live forever. There is something about the human Operating System where the default setting is delusion, which is why we may not fully notice when a non-obvious milestone has passed. These have been happening throughout my life – the last time I played at recess in grade school. Last time I ever took off my baseball cleats. Last night I spent sleeping in my childhood home. Last time I went to the bar on a Thursday night with my college buddies. I was looking ahead. Not knowing an era had passed.
When the kids became old enough to sleep in beds, and to toddle out of those beds on their own, we entered into a ritual that I looked forward to every day. It was the best part of my day. I am the early waker in our house, and for a couple good years the kids would get up bright and early and walk out to the living room and sit with me on my Dad Chair, and we’d cuddle and talk and giggle and tickle and laugh and do inside jokes until they got hungry and I made them breakfast. Then one day, I sat in my Dad Chair, and no one came out. It was over. An era passed. I still sit in that chair in the morning, looking for them to come toddling out.
Last moments are heartbreaking – probably we don’t want to think of them because they are a reminder that time is running out. The clock is ticking. The end approaches. (Can you tell I have a milestone birthday this year? This essay serves as ironclad proof.) Every heartbreaking moment – marked or unmarked – is the gravestone inching its way out of the ground with a little more of our names on it. And you just want to scream because in a perfect universe we would hold our loved ones near to us forever. (If you’re religious, you have faith that you will, but it is an act of faith.)
So.
Yeah.
There it is.
Beginnings. Endings. Joy. Heartbreak. Life. Death.
When we finally see it, what do we do with ALL THAT?
The easy option is this — we can wallow in sadness and fear, as I’ve written before, and selfishly and thoughtlessly take your angst out on the world.
Or we can do something positive with it and see our accumulated heartache as a chance to make the most of the time we have left. We can use what’s passed to treasure what’s now.
It’s a choice.
We get to choose how we feel about our experiences.
I believe that.
We can choose to use last times as a way to propel ourselves forward, as tough reminders to make the most of these miraculous moments that we get to be alive together, and we can redeem the pain.
I am despondent over last times.
If I’m lucky, there will be many more.
Last times are a price we pay for love.
Joe Donatelli is a writer in Cleveland.
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I don’t know what your milestone birthday is, but I can tell you that after 83 years those last times, sure accumulate!
“At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time and nobody knew it” I don’t know who wrote that but it gets me every time.