I grew up going for a long time without people close to me passing, so death of loved ones was always this far fetched thing for me, but in the last 2 years I’ve lost two uncles, and an uncle’s wife, people who were all part of my growing up in some shape or form. Most people my age have lost someone close to them by now.
As I’ve watched my friends, cousins, parents deal with grief, thoughts about when it’ll be my turn are inevitable. For my uncles who passed, a sad thing I realized is that we the cousins weren’t as close as our parents were, so that one big extended family we grew up knowing is probably something that will fade out after our own generation.
I read something sobering on the internet about how once you move away from the same place your parents/loved ones live, you have only a finite number of times left to see them. If you’re in your 30s with parents are in their 60’s, then if you see them only once a year you realistically have only about 30-40 more times to spend with them, unless you changed your life a bit to get more time in. Crazy, huh.
When my grandpa passed, it filled me with so much regret. I’d always thought about how I’d go visit him and find out firsthand things I’d wondered about, like why and how he moved to Jos, what it was like living there as a foreigner for 70 years, what it was like fighting in a world war, and what the real scoop was with the man who turned from a monkey to a human being when shot. Yes, there’s allegedly people in parts of plateau state who can turn to animals for sport, but that’s a story for another day.
It’s dawned on me that as I get older, it will increasingly be our generation’s parents, uncles, who have reached their time to die. When that time comes for my loved ones, I never want to feel that regret of “I should have done this or that” again. So going forward I’ll ask my questions, say the things I want to, call more often, visit more often, and prioritize the people I love while we’re all still here.