Life's Too Short [not to be in love]

by Joe Pickles, via Quora.com

I came to a great realization about life at my grandfather's funeral.

Everyone was upset and crying except my grandmother; she was smiling.
I asked her why, she said "It's a lovely day for a funeral, the sun is shining, all my family and friends are here, and we get to say goodbye to a great man."
I asked her if she missed him, she said "We were married for 65 years, after 30 years I knew him as well as I know myself, we had long run out of things to say to each other, we were one, so he hasn't really gone."
"I suspected he was dying, he was going over our finances all week, I'm glad he died first, I've been the best wife I could be, and looked after him to the end." she said.
This horrified me at first, especially since I knew his cause of death was a heart attack, and the autopsy result said for an 86 year old man he was fighting fit, and minor bypass surgery would have kept him going for another decade.

Later that week, my Grandmother was excited and full of jubilation, that she would no longer have to cook and clean for him, and she was finally free to do as she wished. She wanted to continue learning Italian, and her computer studies (she was 82!) and could now play a more active role in her charity work. I could not understand this, so I asked her if she was covering her sadness up with activity.

She stopped, sighed, and sat me down and said to me, "How many times have you considered your own mortality?" I said "lots." "And you're only 22, how many times do you think we considered it?" she said.

"Your grandfather has sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren." "He survived a war, a shark attack, and two sunken fishing boats." "He spent 50 years fishing which was the job he loved, and 37 glorious years in retirement." " We spent a year traveling Australia, and still more fishing, and when we got home, we went again, four more times." "He did everything he ever wanted to do and then some, and he decided that his life was finished, probably some years ago."

I asked her "What about you?"
"I've got plenty to do yet, sonny" - and with that she got up and patted me on the head and left.

She's 87 now and hasn't finished ...

Everybody's lifespan is different, for some sadly it is incredibly short.
So make the most of everyday as if it were your last because it could be.
If you achieve everything you ever dreamed of you have won, no matter how long that may be.