Fifteen Minutes to Live

What would you do if you only had fifteen minutes to live? We all probably would want to see family and friends one last time; that’s a no brainer. I would want to pet our dogs and talk to our parrot one last time too. Of course, praying for forgiveness for any and all hurt I had caused in my life is also high on the list.

Perhaps calling distant relatives and friends would be in order, although I wouldn’t know what to say. After all I haven’t talked to them in years. What communications we have had have been e-mails. Come to think of it, I haven’t written a letter in a coon’s age. I’m not sure I could actually sit down and handwrite a letter to anyone. It would take forever and snail mail would even take longer. Besides, now I have only eleven minutes to live.

I have never been very good at saying goodbye to people in the first place, and in the second place, not that many people would miss me anyway. You could say that I have remained distant from many acquaintances simply because I didn’t want to go through the pain of them passing, let alone them suffering because of my passing. It’s selfish, I suppose, but true nonetheless. I used to be that way with pets too, but now I have suffered many times when our pets passed on and I understand that “This too shall pass.” Before too long we replace Fido with yet another pet. Our parrot, Pickles, will undoubtedly outlive all of us. I wonder if he will miss me. This, by the way, reminds me I have only seven minutes to live.

How do I tell my wife how much I love her? Words fail me with that task. I guess a simple “I love you” will suffice. The same holds true for my twin brother and children. An “I love you” will have to do. The only problem is that our Internet, cell phone and land line are down due to a power failure. There is no way to contact anyone…especially when you only have two minutes to live.

I have never felt so alone and isolated as right this minute. What did people do before the inventions that enabled instant communications? How did someone communicate their love of live and family with only one minute to live? I guess they just couldn’t. That is truly sad.

Wait a minute – the power just came back on! I hear the TV playing and my computer booting up. Thank you, God, we have Internet again! Just in the nick of time I, might add. I only had thirty seconds before I was going to throw the toaster in the bathtub full of water and jump in. Life is not worth living without Internet!

I’m just saying,

Mittster