The last moments

I like to take lunch walks past my son’s primary school.

The roar of sound hits me five minutes before I reach the school fence, and as I walk the perimeter, I smile at the unabashed joy within. Kids are crazy, in all the right ways.

If I’m lucky, I’ll see my son. Like any parent, I can spot him at a great distance. Something about his posture and gait marks him as my boy as clearly as if he stood next to me.

He’s not quite at the age where I’m an embarrassment, so when I wave, I get a grin and a wave back. It’s perfect.

But in three months, he will leave for the bigger school, and I’ll never get to do this again. I won’t be able to watch him play, nor walk him to school, nor surprise him at 3pm to take him home.

I’ve been wrestling with how to approach this emotionally. My tendency has been to treat each moment with reverence, as there are not many left. But this has made me jaded. Each experience is tainted by the knowledge that it is among the last.

Recently, I’ve been trying a different approach. Rather than dwell on the inevitable, I have decided to let it shape my actions but not my feelings. I have committed to walk that path whenever I’m working from home, and to be entirely in the moment when I do so.

No dwelling on the future, merely enjoying the madness.

So far, it’s working well. I hope it lasts forever.