Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

It’s hard to hold on to people the older we get. Life looks different for everyone, and you have to keep choosing one another. You have to make a conscious effort to say, over and over again, “You.” Not everyone makes that choice. Not everyone can.

There is nothing more terrifying than lying in a hospital bed and knowing your mom can’t fix it. That she can’t make it better. That no amount of bargaining with any doctor will carry you—the both of you—to safety.

“I wish I would have known,” he said. “What?” “That it was finite for you.”

“But the thing is, Daphne. No one’s time is promised. Not yours. Not Mom’s. Not mine. Not Jake’s. It’s just the way it is. We are all dying. Every day. And at some point it becomes a choice. Which one are you going to do today? Are you living or are you dying?”

“And, honey,” he says. “All I wish for you, for any of us, is to do the living one. To do it to the fullest. For as long as it lasts.”

It’s life, all of it. The only way to get it wrong is to refuse to play.

We are powerful because we affect each other’s stories, all of us. We are here to impact each other, to knock into each other, to throw each other off-balance, sometimes even off track.