If I Had Known...

I sometimes consider the likelihood that whatever I’m doing might be the last time. I’m not talking about remembering the last time I did something; I mean realizing that I might be doing something for the last time while it’s happening. I can’t remember when I started doing it, and I’m really not being morose or morbid, but it is something I do. 

I just close my eyes...

Maybe it stems from the age-old question we ask each other from time-to-time: Do you remember when we…? Maybe it comes from the consideration of truly precious memories of the tiniest moments when the apparently least significant thing somehow lingers in life-affirming consequences. Holding hands with the person who would still want you to decades later. Holding a sleeping baby. Wiping away tears or sand, or both. Lying stock still across my grandmother's lap in hopes that she wouldn't stop rubbing my back. I can remember it as if it were this morning. Easily. But what I can’t remember is the last time. If I had known the final time was, in fact, the very last time I might never have gotten up; or let the hand go; or laid the baby down...

1974

Would it have been somehow more significant if I had realized it would be the last time I played “Let’s go up to the ceiling” with my two oldest grandchildren? For as long as any of us can remember I would lift them high over head singing “Let’s go up to the ceiling” (to the tune of “The Bear Went Over the Mountain”) until the return part of the journey concluded with “...and give Granddad a kiss.” Surely there was a last time; I just didn’t realize that the next time I tried to lift one of them my atrophied arms and their unwillingness to remain toddlers would combine to reduce greatly the number of smooches I could steal.

Gwaz, Mike and Pat in Delft

Maybe because I do ask “What if I had known…” that I am inclined to consider it. Three weeks ago as we walked the streets of Delft with our dear friends, Pat and Mike, visiting from home, I was keenly aware that the privilege of being in such a gloriously beautiful place would never repeat. Later in the week we shared with them their first and our last ever visit to the Rijksmuseum, and believe me as I stood before the renowned “Night Watch” I was keenly aware that it was the last. And, as silly as it might seem, knowing that sooner or later we would eat €5 pizza for the very last time in our favorite, sentimentally-significant, remarkably-authentic Italian restaurant in Amsterdam, we took Pat and Mike to share in the occasion.

It is with all that in mind that Gwaz and I plan our last two weeks in our adopted home. Ridiculously priced cocktails at Freddy’s in Hotel l’Europa? A Cuban in the 100-year-old the Hajenius tobacco shop? Fish and chips at St. James Place Cafe in Rembrandtplein? Surely a stroll in our old neighborhood past the home of the greatest painter the world has ever known. Also Dam Square. Old Sailor. “Girls” in red lights. The “fragrance of an old acquaintance” wafting down every side street in Amsterdam...the list seems longer than two weeks allow.

5JT

There’s one more “last time” for sure. Early in the afternoon on 16 June, in a fifth grade classroom on the second floor of the International School of Amsterdam, nineteen of my newest friends will engage me one last time. Whether they realize the finality or not, I will. Perhaps each will wonder why the hugs last a little too long or seem a little too tight, but I won’t.