Sitting at a much-too-small table (well, much-too-small for my purse, laptop, legal pad, phone, hotspot device, and steam induced coffee), in a coffeeshop in the heart of DeLand, Florida; a quaint not-so-little city about an hour NE of Orlando and about 20 min SW of New Smyrna Beach. The place is called Boston Coffee House, and according to my dad and sister, Mercy, Mom loved it. And now I know why…
Oldies play in the background –Frank Sinatra, Michael Buble, and the currently playing White Cliffs of Dover by Louis Prima. It’s odd to me that as well as I thought I knew her, I didn’t so much. Otherwise, I’d had known we had this music in common. Music is the great connector. From wherever she is, hopefully looking over my shoulder right now, I feel closer to her, sitting here, in this café that I know she loved to come to whenever she and my dad would come up to visit my sister, Mercy, and her husband, Ross.
With two well-into-their-70’s guys sitting next to me, as I listen to their “chisme” (gossip, in Spanish) about why someone got kicked out of something for who knows what. I had to put in my earbuds and connect to the music on my cell phone just so I’m not tempted to continue listening to the riveting local gossip. No, I’m serious, I really want to know why so-and-so got kicked out of God-knows-where for God-knows-what. I don’t have enough details and I want them.
So, I did the responsible thing and put in my earbuds because I’ve work to do and a world to conquer.
Thanks, Mom. As I jam out to Louis Prima’s “Just a Gigolo,” a new artist (for me, anyway) that I am instantly obsessed with, I feel you. I miss you. I love you. I’m sorry that I didn’t take the time to really get to know you, not just know you, when you were here. Piece by piece, I’m getting to know you now. And the lessons you’re teaching me, in addition to all of the lessons you taught me in the 23 years that you were in my life, are, once again, invaluable.
And the lesson is this: live now. Life is really over in a minute. Take the time to know, really know, the people you love. They are so much more than the limited version you make of them in your mind – if you actually take the time to get to know them.
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