Beth’s dad died over the summer. We flew to Texas, of course, to attend the funeral and found ourselves thrust into the unfortunate yet inevitable ugly side of death—the estate wrangling.
Her dad didn’t have a lot, at least in terms of materials possessions. A house whose main value was serving as shade from the hot Texas sun. Whole rooms were emptied and closed off. A window air conditioner was the lone source of cool relief. Meals were served on a folding table and metal chairs. Still, there was haggling. Who would get the furniture? Who would get the house? How would what little money there was in his bank account be divided?
Beth didn’t care about any of it. Life is about people, she said, and death is about memories. The only thing she wanted was pictures.
Yesterday, I spent a bulk of the day scanning more than 150 of those pictures onto our computer, converting into the digital realm the black and white images of a life gone by. It was a fitting thing to do this time of year, I thought, because I spend as much time around New Year’s looking back and within as I do looking forward. This turning of the calendar always causes me to become introspective and aware about life and about time.
When I was a kid there was a beer commercial that boldly proclaimed, “You only go around once in life. Go with gusto.” For whatever reason, that always struck me. Not the beer part or the gusto part. That was marketing. It was the first part, the part about only getting one chance at life, that has haunted me and pushed me over my growing number of years.
Time, I’ve learned, is our most valuable asset and the great equalizer. We all get the same amount, relatively speaking, and there’s nothing we can do to go back and get more. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Money can’t buy you love, according to the Beatles. Nor can it buy you time. So it’s all in how we use it.
Knowing this, of course, can be a curse. While others are rocking around the clock on New Year’s Eve, I’m wondering if I managed to squeeze everything I could out of the year. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the beer part of the commercial. Oh well. If nothing else, an awareness of time at least helps us focus on spending it doing what’s important, because in the end that’s what people will remember about us.
At least that’s been my experience. While at the funeral, I found myself standing next to a woman. “How did you know him?” I asked. They were neighbors in an apartment building, she said. She was young, a recently divorced single mom and they had a lot in common: They were both dirt poor and struggling to get by.
One day there was a knock on the door. It was Beth’s dad.
“Does your son need a bed?” he asked. “My kids have grown, and I have an old one in storage he could have.”
Grateful, she said yes. They couldn’t afford a bed, so they were both sleeping on the floor. A few hours later, Beth’s dad returned and unloaded a frame, box spring, mattress and some sheets from the back of his pickup.
“It’s old,” he said, “but in pretty good shape.”
As she was making the bed, she was stunned by what she found: The price tags. He went out and bought the bed because his neighbor had less than he did.
The woman kept it a secret until the funeral. That was her memory of him.
It seems to me that if the beer commercial is right and we only go around once in life, than how we live it is important. Living it with gusto is fine. But living with character and love for others is even better. Living, in other words, so that people will want your pictures and not just your stuff.
