Petdad

I hope that wasn’t my last meal.

Irene and I toured many parts of Italy a number of years ago. We were with a touring group and it was fantastic. Everything was ‘included’ in the trip. Flight, accommodations, all meals, touring bus, and our very own tour guide, Dánte. We even had the same bus driver, Marco. The whole shebang, everything. We were showered in luxury, albeit we did pay k$’s for the entire trip. It was all worth every spent penny.

After eating her dinner one night one of our group’s tour guests said “I hope that wasn’t my last meal.” This meal was, as I recall, the only meal that someone did not enjoy. Understanding the statement in literal terms but in a different context than intended, I didn’t get the gist of what she had said until Irene interpreted it for me.

This woman’s statement was a declaration of dissatisfaction for what she had just eaten. She was thinking that if she were to die before her next meal, breakfast the following day, she hoped this meal experience was not her last. She did not want the meal’s unsatisfactory memory that she had just eaten to be on her mind. Morbidly humorous, who can blame her?

There is always a ‘last’ time for something we do, something we say, somewhere we go, someone we see. In retrospect, we should hold onto everything for its memory. There are sometimes moments in day and certainly in our life when we don’t have ‘the camera’ or the phone to take a pic. Irene tells me that those moments are not meant to be captured by an object for viewing at a later time. Those moments are for the mind, they are engraved in our memories and make us who we are.

We never know what lies before us or what our finite future will bring. We are simply mortal beings. Before we go, we should think twice about our words and our actions. Those, after all, are far more important than any meal we have consumed.