There are certain firsts in life we never forget. Your first day of school, your first car, your first real job, your first date with the person you eventually married, the first time you held your child or grandchild, or the first day you walked into a new business with your name on the door. We take pictures of firsts, write down the dates, celebrate their anniversaries, and tell the stories years later because we know when a first is happening.
Lasts are different.
Most of the time, we don't know they're happening at all.
There was a last time my parents picked me up and carried me somewhere, but neither they nor I knew it was the last time. There was a last time I walked out the door for school and came home to the house where I grew up. There was a last family vacation when everyone who had always been there was still there, a last Christmas dinner with certain people around the table, and a last conversation with friends I assumed I'd talk to again the next week.
That's the strange thing about life. So many of the moments that ultimately become important don't announce themselves when they arrive.
They just look like Tuesday.
I've thought about that a lot as I've gotten older, probably because there are more years behind me now than there are ahead of me. That's not something I say sadly; it's simply a mathematical fact. When you're 25, you naturally assume there will always be another Saturday, another Christmas, another vacation, another dinner with friends, and another chance to make the phone call you've been meaning to make. Time seems almost unlimited because you've used so little of it.
Eventually, you learn differently.
There was a last time I walked into a dealership I owned as the dealer. I actually knew that one was coming. Twenty years ago, I sold my last dealership and left around lunchtime, closing a chapter of my life that had defined me for decades. I knew when I drove away that I would never again be the guy whose name was attached to a dealership, but even then I couldn't have imagined the career waiting for me in radio or that I would still be talking about cars to millions of people all these years later.
Most lasts don't give us that kind of notice.
There was a last car deal I worked with someone I liked, a last lunch with an employee I never saw again, and a last time I talked with friends who are no longer here. At the time, none of those moments felt important enough to memorize. We said goodbye the same way we had a hundred times before because we naturally assumed there would be a hundred-and-one.
And, of course, there was a last conversation with my son BJ.
I won't make this entire message about BJ because that's not really what prompted me to write it, but losing a child changes the way you understand the word "last." There are conversations I can remember clearly and others I wish I could replay just one more time. What I wouldn't give to have known during one ordinary moment that I should slow everything down, look at him a little longer, listen a little more carefully, and somehow store every detail where time could never touch it. That explains why I still have voice mails from him on my cell phone.
But that's not how life works.
If we knew every last in advance, we'd behave very differently. We'd hug longer. We'd put the phone down. We'd forget about the meeting that suddenly didn't seem so important. We'd ask one more question and listen to the entire answer instead of thinking about what we were going to say next. We'd probably say "I love you" more often, and we'd certainly say "I'll call you tomorrow" with a lot less confidence.
Maybe we're not supposed to know.
Perhaps knowing would make life unbearable. Imagine leaving every family dinner wondering whether it was the last one, or ending every phone call afraid there might never be another. That's no way to live either, and I don't think that's the lesson.
The lesson, at least for me, is to become a little better at recognizing the value of ordinary days.
I've spent much of my life chasing the next thing. In the car business, there was always another month to close, another sales goal to hit, another problem to solve, and another Saturday that needed to be bigger than the Saturday before. In radio, there's always another show to prepare, another newsletter deadline, another vehicle to review, another caller waiting on the line, and another week coming at me faster than the one before it.
I love that pace and probably always will. It's part of who I am.
But age has taught me something ambition never could: ordinary moments are often the ones we eventually miss the most.
Nobody lies awake at night wishing they had spent another hour answering emails. What we miss is sitting at the kitchen table with someone who isn't there anymore. We miss the sound of a voice we haven't heard in years, the family dog meeting us at the door, a child climbing into our lap who is now grown with children of their own, or an old friend calling at exactly the wrong time and talking far longer than we had planned.
We didn't recognize those moments as special because they happened all the time.
Until they didn't.
That's probably why I think differently today when somebody crosses my mind. I try to make the call. When somebody tells me something important, I try to listen instead of immediately thinking about what I need to do next. I'm certainly not perfect at any of this, and I still get too busy and let things slip just like everybody else, but I understand the stakes better than I did when I was younger.
The truth is, somewhere in your life right now there are things you do routinely that someday you'd give almost anything to do just one more time.
You don't know which ones they are.
Neither do I.
That's why maybe the goal isn't to live every day as though it were our last. I've always thought that sounded a little unrealistic anyway. We still have bills to pay, work to do, appointments to keep, lawns to mow, and all the ordinary responsibilities that don't disappear just because we've discovered perspective.
Maybe a better goal is simply to notice our lives while we're living them.
Stay at the table a little longer. Make the phone call you've been putting off. Listen to the story you've already heard twenty times because someday you'd give anything to hear that person tell it twenty-one.
We spend a lifetime celebrating firsts because we know when they're happening. The first steps, the first car, the first job, the wedding day, the first child, the first grandchild. We know enough to stop, take the picture, and understand that something important is happening.
Maybe we should occasionally do the same thing with an ordinary day.
Because every now and then, without warning, an ordinary day becomes a last.
And we didn't know it.
Straight Talk and Honest Answers — always.
-Jerry