“No,” he sighed, getting up from his football game on tv to head into the office. “I’ll take care of it right now.”
Kinda shot myself in the foot there. I was already set up at the desk in the office to spend the morning writing. My coffee cup was there, steamed to just the right temp, my computer glasses were ready at just the right distance from the mouse, and now I had nothing else to do but . . . wait for my husband to order his birthday gift on the computer we share.
I wandered around in circles for a few minutes trying to decide what to do, sat down at the other office desk, and did a little tidying up. Random papers out of the way, busted rubber band in the garbage can, move the coaster to the other side of the laptop. You know, important stuff while I waited.
The second desk is actually my desk. I’ve abandoned it in favor of our main computer while I write that book I’ve been working on for five years. But my antique desk is pretty. It’s a parade of framed photos of my family, inspiring words of encouragement, pretty candles, and a large photobook I left out to remind myself of another project that needs my attention.
Recently, for my sixtieth birthday, my daughter contacted almost sixty of my friends from over the years and asked them to write a note to me about our friendship. She found photos of many of those people, compiled all their letters and pictures into one beautiful collection, and gave it to me at my party so I could cry in front of all my birthday guests. It was the most touching gift I think I’ve ever received. It took me three days and two boxes of Kleenex to read through it. But many of the writers of those letters weren’t there to see me open it. Even the people who were at my party didn’t have time to read through it or find their own letters in print.
I decided I need to write thank you notes to each of those people. All fifty-something of them. A tall order for someone who hates to even send post cards anymore. After a couple of months of writer’s cramp, I stacked the first twenty thank you cards on top of the photo album on my antique desk and never looked at any of it again except to dust it all. But in my warped way of thinking, as long as the whole thing stays there in plain site, I believe I will someday finish the other forty thank-you’s and eventually mail them all out.
“Eventually.” It may be the saddest word ever included by Webster in his dictionary. Synonyms include someday, sooner or later, one day, finally, and the worst of all, in the end. More often than not, someday never comes. It’s a word for the future, not for today. We live in today, not in someday or eventually. I shuffled the stack of written and unwritten thank you cards around so they’d look a little neater where they sat abandoned on my desk, then I shuffled through them in curiosity. None of them had addresses on them—another bad habit I have. I do all this work, I thought, rebuking myself, lick the envelope and label it, but fail to find addresses or stamps and eventually, even if I sent the note out, the recipient will have forgotten the nice thing they did for me.
Halfway through my shuffling, the name on one of the envelopes made me pause. It was written to my friend of thirty-plus years, Debbie Alldredge. I dropped all the other cards, holding this one in my hands as tears of regret filled my eyes. She never got to read it because I never sent it. I thought about it for a few minutes, opened the envelope I will never send, and read the note I’d written to her. Then I looked up what she’d written to me in the photo album my daughter made and cried a little.
Debbie passed away this summer. The good-bye I said to her was supposed to be temporary. I’d see her when we returned from our vacation. Suddenly, everything from the last few hours I spent with her became etched into my mind as I listened to her husband tell me on the phone that she was gone. I’ve never lost a friend like that before. She was probably the funniest woman I’ve ever known. She was also wise. Patient. And the very embodiment of faith in her God. But honestly, the gift she kept giving me was her ability to make me laugh. I told her dozens of times to please write a book about her life—the world needs another Erma Bombeck.
I couldn’t take away the disease that was robbing her of her life. I didn’t have wise words to say. I wasn’t even the close friend I wish I’d been. But when we were together, Debbie told stories and we laughed. We laughed at her illness. We laughed at the fear. We laughed at frustrations. It was like making fun of the fearful disarmed it. So we laughed.
I wish to God I had mailed that note on time. I’d love to say I’ve learned my lesson and will never procrastinate again. That I’ll always be there for everyone I love when they’re hurting at exactly the right time so I’ll never have regrets. But I’m just a flawed person like everyone else. I lose my focus. I forget to pray even though I promise I will. I put off phone calls. I even—gasp—misplace my debit card sometimes.
But I learned something from Debbie. If you can laugh at life, you can get through anything. If she were here, she’d just laugh at the way I wrote out all those thank you’s and never mailed them. So, this morning I held up the note I wrote, open-faced in my hands, and I asked Jesus to show it to her. I know He will. And I’m pretty sure when He does, she’ll have a good laugh about it.
Life is too short to regret all our flaws. There are too many of them and, anyway, I kind of think we need them—fuel for the fire and all that.
It’s just a lot more fun to laugh. Debbie taught me that.
