Have you ever seen the play "Our Town"? There's a pivotal scene where Emily is at her own funeral and learns she can go back in her life for one day and experience the day all over again. Not as if she were living it, but as an observer. Those who had gone before warn against it, but she chose her 16th birthday thinking that it will be a special day. She found out that it's the little everyday things that people take for granted that are so achingly special when you can't live them anymore.
When I fixed my breakfast on a tray today, I slipped a knife under the back of my plate so the syrup would stay on the pancakes. I learned that trick from my grandfather. Sometimes he would have cereal for breakfast in a plate instead of a bowl and he would put a knife under the back so the milk would stay on the cereal. Do you think it ever occurred to him that 45 years later his granddaughter would remember that?
It never even occurred to me that I would miss that someday because I never thought the time would come when I wouldn't be able to eat breakfast with him. When he wouldn't be sitting at the head of the little red table in the kitchen.
How could I not have known he would not last forever?
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