On Extending Our Last Time(s)

Back in April (ish…he’s a rescue, so his birthday maintains some mystery), my dog turned 10. He’s a big mutt, over 100 pounds, so he’s not destined to age into his late teens. Stairs, in both directions, are already challenging; a walk around an extended block - infinite stops for sniffs! - will leave him sacked out the rest of the day. Point being, his greying face and stiffening joints signal the finitude of days we have left together.

I thought of this as I walked past Ed sometime around that decadal birthday of his. I thought of Oliver Burkeman, and a flag he waved in front of me in his book Four Thousand Weeks: “Just as there will be a final occasion on which I pick up my son - a thought that surely appalls me but one that's hard to deny, since I surely won't be doing it when he's thirty - there will be a last time that you visit your childhood home, or swim in the ocean, or make love, or have a deep conversation with a certain close friend. Yet usually there'll be no way to know in the moment itself, that you're doing it for the last time.”

There will be a last time.

I paused, turned back towards my boy, and made a decision: I will never again walk past him without pausing to reach down and scratch his beautiful face, pat his heavy head, or give his barrel chest a whump of love. I will choose to express our connection at every one of the finite opportunities I have left.