If I Only Have 20 Years to Live…?

Last weekend, I sat outside in 9 degree temps, wearing multiple layers, shivering, while watching the Green Bay Packers play the Vikings on Lambeau Field.???

I’ve always been a Packers fan, having grown up in Milwaukee, but not enough of a fan of either the Packers or football to sit outside when it’s?that?cold.??

Yet, I couldn’t have been happier.???

In March, I am celebrating a fairly significant birthday and for the past several years, I’ve been asking myself, “If I only have 20 more years to live…?” But this decision-making process isn’t related to my birthday or even the new-normal left behind in Covid’s wake.??It started when I attended my cousin, Robert’s funeral a few years ago.??

Rain pelted the tent, and the wind howled through 200-year-old cedars as a preacher droned on about Jesus and the better place where my cousin Robert was now. I was surrounded by family, as we laid him to rest on the Virginia farm he’d bought just five years ago, a place he’d dreamed of owning all his life. A place where he’d never actually lived.

He died less than eight months after his doctor said the word “cancer.”

Robert was only 70 years old.???

I stared at the taupe casket holding his body and wondered if he was looking down on us, imploring us to not wait to pursue our dreams, take that trip, marry our true love, kick that habit, end that deadbeat relationship, stop making excuses, change our diet, start exercising and stick with it, get that check-up, kickstart that business, try that hobby, take that risk, swallow our fear, quit that job, find that passion and, yes, buy that farm.??

But I’m fairly certain those are my thoughts and not his.??

Robert was a kind, gentle, soft-spoken man who loved to travel by car, careful to never exceed the speed limit.??He wore a fanny pack and pleats in his jeans. He was cautious, feared change and hated spending money; he never liked to throw anything away. His obituary read like a job board -- a listing of places, positions.??

Robert never had all those children he talked about when we were kids; he never married his girlfriend of 20 years, never traveled the world. Buying this farm was the first audacious, out-of-the-box thing he ever did.??

And now he was gone.

I stayed behind after everyone left to watch as his casket was lowered into the ground, accompanied only by the steady sound of the rain and the cawing of a lone crow high in the trees.??On a clear day, beyond this spot, beyond the pear trees, you can see the Blue Ridge Mountains. I imagined this was where Robert sat and sketched??his farmhouse, taking it from three bedrooms to four and back down to three again; where he dreamed of the crops he would plant, the types of fish he would stock in the pond, of what he would do with the old chicken coop and smokehouse.?

At least I hope he did.???

In my own life, it’s often been easier to play it safe or wait until it felt safer. But for most of my life, that safer feeling never came.??So, I constantly put things off, telling myself I’d do it later or "someday."??But what if, like Robert, my life's cut short and “someday” never came??

That’s why I found myself sitting in Lambeau Field, in 9 degree weather, watching the Packers.??I had never been to Lambeau Field, though it was something I had always wanted to do.??

If I only have 20 more years to live, what was I waiting for??

If my cousin’s death jumpstarted something in me, the people who knew him or even someone reading this, then his life and death were not wasted. I think that would make Robert happy.

At least I hope it would.????