One last time

If you knew you were doing a thing for the last time, would you do it differently?

I’ve been sitting around thinking about this a lot lately. Or standing around. Because, you know, shower thoughts.

Seriously, though: If you somehow knew that whatever you were doing was the last time you were going to do it…how would it be? How would you be?

It’s kind of freeing to know when you’re right in the middle of a last time. Graduation. A farewell bash. The last day at a job you’d planned to leave. The final day of vacation. The break-up. The watching your friend’s moving van drive away, with her in it. The doing one last thing with your cherished mentor, who you’ve found out is leaving. (Like Hamilton in One Last Time. Sorry, the nod had to happen.) It’s not like this stuff isn’t hard and sad sometimes, but at least you know what’s going on. Hopefully you’re being present and really taking in what you need to take in, saying the things you want to say to people you won’t see again, making your peace with the loose ends as well as you can.  

The last night my grad school friends and I were all together: We were eating supper at a local restaurant, and we all knew what it was…and there was this moment that we all went silent and just looked at each other, tears in our eyes (or running down our faces). That night is inked into my memory, like a tattoo that makes me sad to look at, but that I’m proud that I got. I’m glad I knew it was our last night together. I’m grateful we had that chance to say goodbye, painful as it was.

I’ve had some other Last Time memories tattooed onto me. Experiences seared into my very being, right as they were happening.

But sometimes you don’t know they’re coming. You’re doing something that you’ll never do again, and you never even knew it.  The tattoo doesn’t happen in the moment: it comes later.

I’ve pondered on simple lasts that could happen, things that don’t mean a whole lot. Like, if today was for some reason the very last day I could ever eat Rocky Road ice cream, would I eat it differently? Would I slow down, really savor every nut, every swirl of marshmallow? I don’t know. I like Rocky Road, but there there’d still be Mint Chip and Butter Brickle and Zesto Peanut Butter Cup Mix-Ins….I mean,  I’m pretty sure I’d be okay just tearing through my last bowl of Rocky Road, business as usual. (I eat ice cream Like. A. Boss.)

And for years and years I was a designated butt wiper, and then one day, when Jonah finally, at age six, decided enough was enough, I was butt-wiper no more. Eight solid years of cleaning other people’s assholes came to a screeching halt. I was good with that. No tattoo needed on that one.

Some Last Times have been and would be a lot harder, though. I spend more time thinking about these things. Of course. Because it’s me and my head’s all like “Buzzkill, buzzkill, buzzkill” all the time.

What if tonight was the last night that one of my kiddos asked me to come lay with them? I get asked by one or the other of them almost every night. To be honest, I’m usually annoyed—it’s inevitably already past when they were supposed to be asleep, I’m tired, they’re tired, and I just want to sit and drink a cup of hot tea and space out. And I also know that asking me to lay with them is the crème de la crème of their sophisticated arsenal of Bedtime Stall Tactics. But beyond the ulterior motives, I think they still crave the warmth and solidity of me beside them, that this makes them feel safer and calmer. And I like the feeling of them beside me, too—the feeling of unconditional love, oozing out of these squirmy, noncompliant and precious little people. Last night I laid with Jonah for a little bit…and I wondered: what if tonight is the last time I do this? Would I stay longer? Would I let myself fall asleep, with my nose buried into his curls? I didn’t. But I wonder.

Evie used to call eyelashes “eyeflashes.” And then one day she started saying the correct word. And I wish she would just say eyeflashes in her sweet singsong voice again, because I wasn’t ready for her to be done with this.  If I’d have known the last day of this was the last day of this, I’d have recorded it. So I could watch it again and again.

I work in a field that involves a lot of last times. Transition is central to being a therapist. I meet someone, that someone shares the most painful or shameful or scary things about their lives with me, we develop a trusting bond, and then the client leaves and I never see them again. Repeat: I never see them again. (Usually.) It’s a super weird thing, if you think about it.  Ideally, I know my clients are leaving. Maybe they’ve gotten better (*fist pump!*) and are ready to stop coming to therapy, and so we plan for that and do a final session together to say goodbye. Maybe they’re moving away—and again, we know that’s coming and plan for a goodbye session. But sometimes, people just stop coming...they’re just gone. Sometimes even people I’d been seeing for awhile. I knew them intimately, and then poof, they’re gone, like they never existed. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that this sometimes sucks. If I’d known that the last time I saw them was going to be the last time I EVER saw them, EVER…there were things I might have said to try to be a helper, one last time.

I’m pretty sure the Big Guy upstairs is laughing at me. I built this woman to have a love of laughter, and to be absolutely abysmal at transition…and so what does she do with her life? She becomes a therapist. Hardy har har, Allison. You are cheap entertainment.

Indeed.

One workaround to all of this painful wonder, all of this “oh hell, what if everything is different tomorrow?” is to accept that tomorrow is inevitably going to be different than today was. It just will be. I don’t know in what ways, but it will be. I might do something for a last time and not know it.  So I should probably do that unrealistic shit that song lyricists and overly optimistic people say to do: Walk through every day like it’s your last. Live like you’re dying. Treat today like it’s the most important day of your life. Etc.

Ugh. That shit is hard, though…am I right? If today was really the last day of my life, would I go to work? Would I clean the toilet? No and no. Yet I have to do that stuff. (Theoretically. If you snuck a peek at my toilets right now, you’d think that maybe I really am living each day like my last. YOLO.)

Damnit, I don’t know if there’s a great resolve to this post. I really don’t. Which ironically fricking fits—sometimes endings are hard and unknown and I don’t know how to do them right. Oh jeez.

Even acknowledging that irony...I still crave the neat ending. I wish for a way to tie this all up. It'd also be neat if I had all of the answers to how to do life, including how to really cherish experiences Just Because or Just In Case.

Hmph.

Okay. Let’s do for myself what I would try to get my clients to do for themselves. One heaping dose of self-compassion and a realism chaser, coming up: It’s probably okay that I don’t have all the answers. Because I can’t. Because I’m human and inherently messy and rough around the edges.

Oh snap. I found my resolve after all.