“People have an expiration date – we just don’t know when it is.”

I have been thinking about this line since I read it yesterday. It’s undeniably true, yet most of us like to ignore it and not think about it. I have always found it a bit odd that in medical reports it is quite common for the doctor to dictate that the patient “expired” at such and such a time. That is always what it made me think of, they expired, ran out of time, reached their “good by” (or goodbye) date.

Except with people, there is no sniffing the milk and figuring it’s still good for another day or two, or knowing that the expiration date is a “suggested” use by date. Food doesn’t go bad when the clock turns midnight on its expiration date. People, however, have no extra seconds past their expiration time. When it comes, it comes, and that’s that. No extensions.

I wonder if we knew people’s expiration dates if we would treat them better, love on them more, reach out more often. I wonder if we would take the time to tell them we love them, to make absolutely certain that they know what they mean to us. Memories are great and all, and a wonderful thing to share with others, with our children, to keep that person alive for them, as well as for us. But memories don’t do the person themselves one bit of good when they aren’t here to relive them and relish them with us.

Don’t wait until someone’s past their expiration date to tell them how you feel about them. You never know when that will be. It could be decades from now or 5 minutes from now. They could feel a bit under the weather, have a test, get a diagnosis, and be gone in a month, or in a heartbeat, all while you were making plans that included them for a year from now. Trust me, I know.

Tomorrow is never promised. There is only now, today, this moment.

Don’t waste it.

I try to always let people know how I feel about them, because I have learned from experience that you never know when the last thing you said to them will truly be the last thing you ever say to them. If I achieve nothing else in this life, I hope at the very least that every person I care about knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that I truly do care about them, what they mean to me, how very much I love them. I think that’s why it bothers me so terribly when people have shut me out, because I have no opportunity to tell them what’s in my heart, and I can only ever wonder what’s in theirs.

I hope that whenever my expiration date comes, be it today, tomorrow, or 30 years from now, I will leave no one wondering what I thought of them and especially how I felt about them. I hope the one thing they can be absolutely certain of when it comes to me is that

they. were. loved.

And I hope that knowledge stays with them, deep in their being, embedded in their bones. Always.