Well, That Went Fast

Today would have been my dad’s 89th birthday.

Instead of cake and a phone call, I am cleaning out drawers in the house my parents lived in for 65 years. He has been gone three years. My mother has only been gone six months.

Grief shows up in practical clothes. It looks like banker boxes, donation piles, and the quiet decision about what stays and what goes.

And yet, life keeps moving forward.

My granddaughter turns five this month. A sorority sister welcomed her first baby three days ago. Tiny new beginnings. Big hope. Birth announcements and estate paperwork in the same season.

It has me thinking about how close birth and death really are. They sit right next to each other on the calendar of our lives.

Near the end of her life, Marian Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama, said, “Well that went fast.”

She lived nearly nine decades. She raised her family in Chicago and later watched her daughter serve in the White House. A full life by any measure. And still, when she looked back, it felt fast.

I believe it will feel fast for me too.

So I keep asking myself: how do I live so that when my time comes, I can look back and say it was a life well-lived?

1. Honor the Ordinary

Most of my parents’ 65 years in that house were not grand milestones. They were weeknight dinners. Chores to do. School mornings with corned beef hash, toast and grits. Conversations at the kitchen table with cousins.

The ordinary days were not filler. They were the story.

If I want a life that feels full, I have to treat today like it matters. Because it does.

2. Love Out Loud

The ache I feel right now is proof that love was real. I would not trade that ache for indifference.

So I want to say the thing. Make the call. Apologize quickly. Celebrate loudly. Let people know they matter while they can still hear me say it.

3. Steward Time on Purpose

I plan for retirement. I plan for travel. I plan for projects.

But do I plan for impact? For faithfulness? For generosity?

Each day is a small investment. Compounded over decades, it becomes a legacy.

4. Hold Grief and Hope Together

I can sort through my parents’ belongings in the morning and shop for my granddaughter’s birthday gift in the afternoon.

I can cry over what is gone and marvel at what has arrived.

This is not contradiction. It is the human experience.

Maybe I cannot slow time. But I can fill it with meaning.

So today, on what would have been my dad’s birthday, standing in the middle of endings and beginnings, I am asking myself:

If someone were sorting through my things decades from now, what story would my life tell? What about you?