Shower The People You Love With Love

Shower The People You Love With Love

This weekend, at my baby shower, I experienced how it must feel to eavesdrop on my own memorial service.

While I sat in a rocking chair surrounded by a heap of exquisitely wrapped pink and green gifts, my mother passed around a toilet paper roll and told the women to tear off as much as they might need. I had played games like this before and guessed that the toilet paper was either going to span my stomach and the person closest to the correct circumference would win a prize or for every square of toilet paper the unlucky lady took, she was going to have to dispense baby advice. Surprisingly enough, neither of those things happened; instead, the women were simply asked to share how they knew me. My girlfriends from high school were there along with those who remembered when I was two years old and scrambling across a restaurant tabletop (some things never change), so the memories were as variegated as the people telling them.

As I continued to listen to these precious loved ones reveal how our lives had intertwined, I began to feel undeserving of such warmth and attention. This discomfort only increased as one young friend tore at her toilet paper pile and whispered that I was just so sweet. Don’t get me wrong, I was deeply touched by her sensitive spirit that overlooked all the times her older sister and I would make her feel unwelcome whenever she dared step foot in the room where we were listening to music while discussing the mystery surrounding the opposite sex. But I had to wonder: What if I would have invited that willowy teenager into my life back when she was a smiling, freckle-faced five-year-old? I could only swallow around my regret as I briefly imagined the deep relationship the two of us, a decade later, would now have.

Although listening to my friends’ kind words caused me to become painfully aware of the many times I have failed in keeping up with these friendships that have so enriched and even altered my life, I also realized what a blessing it was to hear their kind words while still alive. In our society, we do not often sit around and tell someone what he or she means to us until he or she is truly gone. We tell our spouses and our children that we love them, but we do not take the time to tell them why we love them; why he or she has so enriched and altered our lives. For all of our means of communication, sometimes our modern world does not communicate very clearly at all. We are so concerned with keeping up with our social media accounts that we fail to keep up with each other.

So, as I drove home through the fog with the backseat piled high with baby gifts, I vowed just like that old James Taylor song that I was going to shower the people I love with love and tell them why I love them; why they have so enriched and altered my life. For we never know when this life may leave us, and we do not want to wait until a memorial service to celebrate a life beautifully lived when the one who made that life so beautiful is already gone.

What event in your life — wedding, anniversary, birth, funeral — caused you to pause and reflect on the loved ones in your life and how much they mean to you?