The Moments After The Last Moment

The Moments Before the Last Moment

John Paul Derryberry

I never wanted to own a house. Most people think I'm joking when I bring this point up. I never wanted extra chores and I view a lot of what goes into a home as chores-- stuff I have no interest in doing. That notion caused, in the past, a couple of significant others to think I was not the long-lasting type. I am currently sitting in a house I own with my wife. Why the change of heart? It's easy. She wanted to own a home more than I wished not to own one.

The ability to love someone unselfishly is a difficult concept to explain and understand.  It's 1,000 times more difficult to operate as a human who finds the balance between when to be selfish and when to unselfish. It's a battle most of us fail at because we lean too far into the realm of selfish behavior, thinking love, compassion, and kindness should first be given to us before we reciprocate. Except in moments that force us to evaluate who we are as a person. These moments strip us of our status, money, profession, and reveal we are only our choices, and how we decide to treat people.

I call this time, "after the last moment". My parents preached to us that everything ends with either deciding to go our separate ways or in death.  In those days and months following the end, we realize what we should have done differently to love, care, and show our appreciation for that person.  We wax poetic about how we would act so differently if we received more time, a second chance, a miracle. We are the best version of ourselves in those revealing moments. We have to be unselfish and realize that neither things, nor large bank accounts, nor our given status define us.  In a forced moment, we know that we are how we treat others, nothing more, nothing less.

It was a loss at a young age that taught me this lesson, but it wasn't the loss that taught me this lifelong lesson. It was the people around me and their response to the losses. I watched my mom take care of my sick father for four years and then not fight him on driving again after a year without seizures. She loved him enough to risk again. My brother realized I needed a father figure from age 14 to 20 when he was just 21. He committed to a role he was never supposed to have and did it while never asking for a thank-you. One of my best friends spoke truth to power with humor by being brave enough to make fun of everyone in the room.  He wouldn't leave stuff unsaid.

All of us will have many last moments with the people we love. One day our interactions will end. The question in the moments after that final interaction will be: did it reveal that you loved them, cared for them, displayed compassion, and showed kindness?  Or, will it show we failed to be our best version until it was too late? No one gets the balancing act between selfish and unselfish correct all the time. No one is their best version all the time. But the people we love deserve that version a lot more than we give it to them. The goal is that, in those precious moments after their final moment, we are able to say,  "I did this relationship as correctly as humanly possible. I loved them the way they wanted to be loved". We owe it to ourselves and to our loved ones, to act before it's too late.