Why Wait

Posted by fheenix33 on May 29, 2009

I have a few friends and family members that send me those sappy e mails about love, friendship, angels, etc all the time.  They are annoying e mails that they send to everyone on their address list that contain sappy little versus accompanied by animated sparkly hearts and teddy bears.  Some of those e mails even let me know that if I don’t forward them to a certain amount of people by a certain amount of time I will have bad luck for the next year or I’ll wake up the next morning bald and toothless.  Please…spare me. 

Late last year a friend of mine had forwarded me one of those mass e mails that she had received.  I almost didn’t read it, but because I very seldom hear from this friend, I opened it and read it from beginning to end.  This e mail captivated me and, to this day, it has changed my life in a lot of ways. 

In a nutshell it was about a man going through his wife’s belongings after she had passed away suddenly.  This wasn’t something that he had done immediately after her passing, but a couple months after.  While going through her dresser drawers he had come across an elaborate gift box that he recognized instantly.  Inside, beneath the layers of delicate tissue paper, contained expensive lingerie that she had purchased while they had been on vacation.  He remembered that she had said she was going to save it for their next Anniversary.  The man had gently urged her to wear it before then, but she wanted to wait.  His wife passed away before their Anniversary and she never got the chance to wear it.

I leaned back in my chair after reading that e mail and felt the water works make their way down my face (darn allergies).  I immediately thought about some items that Lori and I have in our house that fall into that  “we’ll wait” category.  The more I thought about it, the more items came to mind.  I also thought about how many times we’ve waited to do something because there was no holiday or occasion to justify doing it. 

Shortly after having my “moment” I got up and made my way to the wine cabinet.  Beneath the bottles of wine there are several shelves.  I pulled out the elaborate wooden box that was home to a large set of expensive gold flatware.  It’s a beautiful $400 set that Lori had gotten a great deal on.  I remember a few years ago when she had brought it home and was so proud at the fact that we now had a set of expensive flatware to use on special occasions and holidays.  She had placed the box on the shelf and since then it has only collected dust.  I opened the box, reached in, took the flatware out and added it to our daily flatware collection in the kitchen.  We’ve been using it ever since.  Why wait?

I’ve made an effort to use the nice glasses, goblets and dinnerware that we have purchased over time that had orginally been put aside for special occassions and holidays.  Like the flatware, it had been sitting in the cabinets collecting dust.  I have also taken out all the candles that I had stashed away for future dates and displayed them around the house.   We no longer wait until birthdays to have sistacuzz over for “Girls Night.”  We make an effort to plan these often and ‘as needed.’ 

Little by little, since reading that e mail, I have eliminated the “we’ll wait” items and moments from our life and put them in the “why wait” category.  We now fire up the grill on cold winter days, eat off of expensive dinner plates, use our gold flatware to eat every day dinners, burn candles that we had once saved for special occasions, eat corn on the cob during winter months, have “Girls Night” sporadically throughout the year, use my more pricey perfume on a day to day basis, exchange ‘just because’ gifts every so often instead of waiting for birthdays or holidays, etc. 

Why wait?  Life is too short.  I don’t want to wake up one day and look at items in my house that had gone unused because we were determined to wait for a particular moment.  I want to be able to have memories attached to everything in my house…not dust or regrets.  For most of us, including myself, we get caught up in the rush of everyday life and it’s easy to forget the fact that none of us are immune to losing a loved one.  There might not always be tomorrow.  Make today count.  Break out that fine China and light those candles tonight at dinner.