TICK TOCK

On the TV show ER, a couple in their 80s are stage center. The man is dying, the wife asks concerned Doctor Carter, "How much longer?" Doctor C says, "A few more minutes." Woman sobs in stunned and saddened disbelief, stares at Carter with a look in her eyes that rips your heart out and mumbles numbly, "Only a few more minutes?"

Sixty years of loving togetherness for that man and his wife came down to only a "few more minutes."

There comes a time for all of us when our relationship with those we love will be over in just "a few more minutes." The difference between most of us and the TV characters is they knew which minutes would be their "few more."

Given this finality fact of earthly relationships, should you then be kind, tender, warm, devoted and giving to your loved ones every single minute of every single day? Commendable, yes, but just as certainly unattainable, and in many ways, undesirable. (How would you like to spend a serious amount of time with someone who treated you as if you were going to croak any minute?)

Here rests our earthly dilemma. You shouldn't treat others as if they are going to die before lunch because 99.99 percent of the time you will be wrong. But if you're not treating them the best you know how when their few minutes are indeed up, you beat yourself upside the head with the guilt stick. "I was going to call Aunt Lenore last night but I watched ER instead. Now she's dead, I'm a terrible person."

It would seem to be a part of our human makeup when someone close to us dies to feel we didn't "do enough," "weren't there for them," "didn't say what we wanted to say," yada yada. Get over it. The odds are against us always doing the right thing at the right time.

A loving relationship is a balancing act of living daily with the humanness brought to that relationship. A loving relationship is the times you called Aunt Lenore twice in a day blended with the times you didn't call at all. Death as well as life is a game without rules. You can't judge the quality of a relationship on the last "few minutes." But you definitely could hold yourself accountable for all the years, months, weeks, hours and minutes before the last few.

When you have treated your loved ones the best you know how for 99.99 percent of the time, the last few minutes are just the last few minutes.


Lesson: Enjoy others as if they will live forever, and love them as if they only have a few more minutes.