Life is short. Live while you are living!

I know exactly where I was standing and what I was doing when I got that visceral feeling of life and its movement and how quick it passes.    

My Dad had just bought a new Lake House.    For Christmas, us kids as a collective bought him a brand new tackle box.  We also bought new hooks, lures, bobbers, all of the little fun stuff that goes in it.    

That spring, I was at the Lake House with my Dad’s old and his new tackle box.    I went through the old one, putting any lures and items that were usable into the new one.  I pull out a small blue plastic envelope. On the outside were the words, Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife.  I pull out a thin piece of paper that was folded.   I unfold it and there is writing.   The date written in was June 1981.    Dad’s name, and his signature were on the yellowing paper.   He had listed his height 6’1”, his weight, 175 and his age—52.  

I was holding that slip of paper, and I had just turned 52 years old!     

At that moment in time, I am the same age as my Dad.   We are exactly 30 years apart.   

As I hold his fishing license of 30 years previous, I picture him at his old lake house, my younger brothers are playing and spending summers there, the golden retriever Abby is having puppies.  My Dad is trying to fix the boat lift on the dock, he is using a long pole, and it activates, and he gets catapulted into the water.   

The boys are laughing and skiing in the middle of the lake and Abby swims a half mile out thinking they are in trouble.

Those 30 years ago are suddenly compressed, and here I am holding this piece of time, and I am the same age as he was then.    My mind comes to the present.  My Dad is now 82.   I was here this past winter at this lake house, as we were moving in.  Dad hanging every picture.   His hand shaking with his Parkenson’s, telling me to move the picture a little more to the right, to the left, a little higher, a little lower.   Hammering in each nail himself.   

I swallowed.   Suddenly 30 years seem to have gone by in a nanosecond.   

My next thirty years will go by just as fast as my own fathers.   

What will I do with it?   How can I make the most of my life?   What can I do to contribute during my life?   What will I be proud of?   Where can I be so that when I am 82 I will not feel any regrets?

It has been over 10 years passed since I was there in that moment at the Lake House switching out the old tackle box.  My Dad is now 92 and I am 62.  

Dad is still 30 years older than me.   I am thankful for that.

And here he was just the other day.  Out on his boat in Florida.   Fishing.