She knew it’d be the last time, lacing up her boots and securing her shinguards, she knew it wouldn’t happen again. She stepped out on the field with her best friends after almost a decade of playing together, after over 5 years since they last lost a game, and even though she was probably too focused to truly acknowledge it, she knew. This would be the last time.
Life is a long and winding series of firsts and lasts, it’s the middle bit that gets lost along the way.
I realized, after many conversations and a lot of pondering in the quiet moments my mind is allowed the space to drift off, to drift internal, that more than most things we are defined by the lasts. I recently wrote a bit about this, about the “tragedy of aging,” and how it’s the fact that we know that all things must end that causes so much of our suffering. The loss of constancy, the loss of familiarity. If you’d like to read more about it, it’s below.
When I have these weird epiphanies—that are probably only epiphanies to me in fairness—I tend to then fall deeper into them, I tend to get lost for awhile. This time, with this image of Sarah stepping out for the final time on some frosty October afternoon on some half-frozen soccer pitch fresh in my mind, I realized something bigger and immediately wanted to give myself the space to dive deeper into it, to fully investigate. I realized this:
There are three kinds of Lasts that we encounter in our lifetimes. There are the Lasts that we know are coming, that we see from miles off and try our best to prepare for—often fruitlessly—and are aware of all the while. There are the Lasts that we do not know at the time will be lasts, but still remember vividly now. Somehow, they stuck with us, somehow they burrowed into a place of permanency in our minds and never left. Finally, there are the Lasts that we didn’t know at all were the lasts, and now that we sit here removed and separated from them by the weight of years, cannot even recall. The memories we were so busy living that we failed to even notice they were over.
This is going to be a 3-Part Series on Lasts, an investigation into the way we process them, the way they sneak in and change us, the way we grieve, and I’m starting with the first kind.
These are the lasts we know are coming.
Of these, there are many. Sarah’s soccer game, her final time after 5 undefeated seasons playing with the exact same group of 15 of her best friends, resonates still. She knew before the first whistle that it’d be the last, that she’d never truly play again, not like that, and though she was both too young and too immediately invested in the game itself to allow the emotion to overwhelm, I am sure inside it did. I am sure it does, still.
I wrote about the final episode of The Grand Tour in the article I linked to above, about why that mattered, and I realized that our lives are peppered with thousands of instances of this. Shows we adore that are announced as coming to an end, books we read for the first time and as we feel the pages left grow thinner and thinner, begin to feel the weight of all we’ll miss once we close the cover.
There are lasts that carry so much more weight, too. There are the last moments we spend with a pet that gave us more joy than we had any right to expect, as they lay beside us and take their last breaths. These are those that stick the hardest, adhesive of some unearthly material that binds us forever. I remember thanking Hobbes, over and over and over I thanked her for saving my life, as I was helping her be rid of the pain she had endured just to keep me happy. I remember sobbing, endless heaving sobs that I thought wouldn’t end, I remember waking up in the middle of the night for weeks and weeks and struggling to understand the hole left in my life in the precise shape of her. I knew it was coming, I knew she’d been getting sick, but then it happened so fast, all at once, and as much as I wanted to prepare, I couldn’t. We never can.
I remember sitting in the darkness of the nursing home room with all of Sarah’s family as her grandmother took those brave steps into beginning again. I remember going round and round and speaking of songs that we loved that felt like relief. I remember knowing it was coming, for weeks and weeks we knew, and I remember the tangible feel of air floating out of the window when she finally passed. We knew, but still weren’t ready. I remember the understanding that my own grandparents were so nearly departed, the breathless wait for them to release, to evaporate, to return. I remember, because they were the lasts we saw coming, those we knew would be last and so marked prominently in our own minds—REMEMBER THIS said we to we, for it will not come again. And so we did.
There’s the last time my family drove across the country in our old maroon VW van. I can still feel my feet propped on an old cooler from the back seat, I can still see the country hurl by outside the sliding door and window. I can, if I close my eyes tight enough and tilt my head a bit to the left, hear the sounds of my Mom and sisters singing Dolly Parton and Amy Grant as we made our way through the desert south west, as we inched closer to home and the end of our wandering summers that had persisted since I was born.
I remember the last night before my older sister Rian went to college, the last night I knew we’d all be together as siblings living together in one home. I remember feeling the tangible weight of a shift that was nearing, knowing that every mile we drove the next morning towards dropping her off at college would be the closing of a hidden pair of scissors, the snipping of the tethers to the life I once knew.
I remember Henry’s last cross country meet, just this past October, and I remember chasing Sarah down the golf course in Missoula with tears in both our eyes as we knew he’d not be this again, not this boy, not this running boy flying down some chilly fairway with a grin on his face. I remember holding her as she knew that he was not the boy she knew, but something else, something new.
I remember holding her as she shook from a last she knew was a last, but could not prepare for after she said her final goodbyes to her soul mother, somewhere in a still frozen Colorado. I remember her understanding, her slow realization that it was as she knew it would be, the final time in such magical company.
There is a weight to these lasts, a brutish and merciless weight that we must carry. Train as we might, we cannot ever be ready, we cannot ever hold with our fragile human arms the titanic mass of the goodbye that must be said. These are those lasts.
These lasts bring up such strange thoughts, months and years after we’ve endured them. They ask of us, and so I ask of you, questions we know not the answers to. They ask us:
What if you could relive just one last time? Which would you pick, why would you pick it?
How do we truly prepare for a last moment we know is coming but have not the power to stop, to control, to delay?
Do we ever, can we ever, truly appreciate things until they are over, until they are through?
I do not know these answers, but the asking of them rattles round and round again inside my mind as I think, as I grieve, as I miss.
Perhaps it is the fact we can prepare that makes them so profound, perhaps it’s the little bit of foresight we’re afforded that makes them adhere to the pieces inside us that refuse so feverishly to let go.
I think the other lasts might have a more immediate punch to the gut, but I think these lasts somehow wiggle deepest, but maybe not. I’ve not let my mind wander into the other two lasts quite yet, I haven’t gone down those roads fully as I tend to actually travel down them at the precise time I’m writing the essays about them. What I think, what I discover about what I think, I do in real-time as I spill out the words that you’ll eventually read. I don’t edit those thoughts, I just let them come, journalistic in a way.
So, in the next two weeks, please do come back and look forward to the further exploration of Lasts, and then maybe at the end of the third, I’ll know. I will know which kind of last hurts the worst, which kind sticks around the longest, which kind presents as more than just a trauma, but a foundational shift. I don’t know yet, I’m not there, so stick with me.
What is a last that you knew was coming, that still stands out in your memory? Which last hit you hardest? If you feel comfortable, share it with us, and let us build towards some sort of understanding in the weeks to come.
For now, I want to think more about these lasts, these we can see on the horizons making their way slowly to us. I want to talk about them with you. Then, we’ll get to the lasts we don’t know are lasts at the time next week, so do stick around.
Part two next week, it’s not a last but a middle, but I’m still glad you have this warning to prepare yourselves. The one after that IS the last of this series, and I tell you now so you have plenty of time to brace.
It’s the least I can do.
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We see them coming
but will never feel prepared.
The lasts that we know.
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