Dear Diary, Time is Fleeting

If you think back through your life, you’ll quickly realize that some of your greatest memories take up the smallest fraction of your time here on this earth. I’m a numbers gal, so let me slide some facts your way…

· There are 24 hours in a day. 7 days in a week. 52 weeks in a year.

· The average person lives to be about 79 years old. If you’re lucky to get to that age, that means you'll have 28,835 days on this earth, or 692,040 hours.

· Most people work 40 hours a week at their job, so you'll spend 2,080 hours at work each year.

· A human should get 6-8 hours of sleep a night (*insert eye roll cuz I’m more at 5*). This means if you’re putting in 7 hours of ZZZ’s each night, you’re dedicating 2,548 hours each year to give your body some rest.

I don’t know about you, but to see the number of hours I probably have left on this earth put to paper (or computer screen?) makes me a little anxious. ESPECIALLY since I’m wasting 2,080 hours of them yearly at work (just kidding I love my job)! But seriously, I’m 28 years old; a third of my life has been lived and yet, it feels like just yesterday I was in elementary school. Where has all this time gone?! What have I been doing all these years?!? TIME. IS. FLEETING. PEOPLE! It’s short-lived. It’s brief. It’s momentary. It flashes before your eyes. The craziest part is, we never know when our time will be up either.

So, my question to you is, what are you doing with your time that you have left here? I’ll tell you what Wes and I wanted to do. And yes, I know this for a fact because my Type A ass had us make a bucket list (because nothing satisfies me more than checking a box).

· Wes wanted to travel. We wanted to go to New York to see a Yankees game. We wanted to go to Boston to see the Celtics play. We wanted to go to California to see the beaches on the West Coast. We wanted to go back to Hawaii and explore the place we fell in love with even more. We wanted to go hiking at the national parks out west (my idea) and stop by Vegas on the way home to hit the casinos (his idea). We wanted to go to New Orleans to visit Bourbon Street. We wanted to go to Puerto Rico to get in touch with my Hispanic roots. We just wanted to see everything this cool world had to offer, and we wanted to do it together.

· Wes wanted to be a dad. I really wish I could have seen him in that role, even though I am still shocked I considered being a mother for him. His fatherly instincts far outweighed my motherly ones. He was excited about the opportunity to start a family and build traditions together. He couldn’t wait to see his parents and my parents spoil the grand-kids we would provide them. Wes was so damn great he even immediately said yes when I told him my dream was to foster or adopt one day. He just wanted a family; which is no shock considering how much our families meant to us.

· Wes wanted to experience once in a lifetime things. He wanted to go back to Hawaii to climb the Stairway to Heaven. He wanted to go backpacking with me through the Blue Ridge Mountains. He wanted to go sky-diving (it’s a no from me dog). When we’d go new places, he’d want to try all the local cuisine. He wanted to meet new people and learn new cultures. He just loved being present and soaking up what the moment had to offer.

There’s more specifics on that bucket list but here’s the thing…you can keep adding and adding to that bucket list all you want, but if you don’t check a single thing off, are you living your 28,835 days to the fullest? This whole idea of fleeting time was brought to my attention when the sweet and wildly talented, Sarah Yarborough (of Sarah E Photography…please go to her for all of your photo needs), presented me with an idea for a shoot she’d been wanting to do. She told me that she had an idea to take a photo of someone holding a clock that appears to be dissolving in mid-air and title it “Fleeting Time”. She wanted to capture the idea that life is short but beautiful, and thought that my story would be the perfect thing to pair her concept with (Check out the photos below to see how freaking great they turned out).

Her message behind the photo got me to think about my life, and mine and Wes’s journey. As messy as my life seems now, there IS a lot of beauty to be found. There’s beauty in the support I’ve received from family, friends, and strangers. There’s beauty in the compassion and love I’ve felt from others. There’s beauty in the weakness I’ve felt that has pushed me closer to God. There’s beauty in the new relationships I’ve formed through this tragedy. There’s beauty in the tears I’ve cried because I miss the love Wes and I shared THAT much. There’s beauty in the vulnerability I’ve become much more open to sharing. There’s beauty in this new woman I’m becoming, even though I know there's still a long road ahead of me. There’s even more beauty in those pieces of my life’s clock, that represent moments of time that have dissolved away. They’re not moments that I’ll get back, but I will hold them near and dear to my heart forever: there’s the moment Wes and I had our first date to San Jose, the moment that Wes and I signed our life away to purchase our first home, the moment we went to a Luke Bryan concert in Clemson together, the moment we made our first fort in our living room and watched movies together all night, the moment we went to our first Panthers game together, the moment I cried to him because I knew I wanted to quit teaching but didn’t know what was in store for me next, the moment I saw him crying as I walked down the aisle at our wedding, the moment I saw him pitch his last collegiate game, the moment we took our first flight together to Philadelphia, the moments I'd come home from work and we'd nap together on the couch, the moment when Sheridan, Wes, and I got stuck in a snow storm in my VW Bug, the moments we brought home Addie, Nala, and Remy, and the moment we said our last “I Love You”.

My man Ben Franklin said it best, “Lost time is never found again.” Because of this obvious but often overlooked statement, my plea to everyone is to please take advantage of all those pieces of your life’s clock before it’s too late. Make the most of all the seconds, minutes, and days you have before your clock dissolves away. Share moments with family and friends that mean the most. Take the trips you’ve always dreamed of. Shoot for landing your dream job. Go out on a limb and create something you’ve been brainstorming. Tell people how much they mean to you. These will be the moments you look back on and remember most even though they make up the tiniest pieces of life's crazy puzzle. And I know as much as Wes loves that I have all these great moments of us together, he’d want me to keep making memories. So, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll live a full life to honor the guy who has impacted so many moments of my beautiful and fleeting life.

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Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12

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