mourning the lasts

I’ve been thinking about “lasts” recently, these past few weeks even more so, as I try to fathom the imaginable for so many who have suffered incomprehensible losses here in LA - losses that are woven tapestries of live being lived, generations of memories, safe havens.

We celebrate the firsts, these beautiful milestones that create a notch in time. Yet, the lasts, the timing of lasts is never known. You can mourn them before they arrive and yet still, they are felt so deeply. They can leave you longing. Heartbroken. Mixed in with other raw emotions including celebratory ones (the last of potty training certainly was).

I’ve been feeling lasts in context of raising a kiddo, who will be an only child. Playing with him with all my presence and joy as one day, there will be a last to him asking me to do so.

I’ve been feeling lasts in context of giving a senior dog his best days. 
In context of living far from family, with time as fleeting as it is.

I hope from this awareness I can make it a practice to note and give the same ceremony of observance of passage of time to lasts rather than have them go unnoticed. To not rush to hit the next milestone and luxuriate in the “where we are”.