5 ms·

I'm really lucky to where most of the people that I care a lot about are still alive, but I realize that that's a finite luxury. Sooner or later either I or on

I'm really lucky to where most of the people that I care a lot about are still alive, but I realize that that's a finite luxury. Sooner or later either I or one of those people are going to die, and it's going to be sad. I think I'm gonna call my mom.

rootusrootus 5y ago
Much of my adult life was the same way. We used to talk about how great our family had it -- we went for decades without losing anyone close. We knew eventually our turn would come, but I treasured the time we did have. But come it did, about 7 years ago. Since then I've lost two brothers, my dad, my grandparents, and my best friend. The trite "fuck cancer" statement comes to mind regularly. Another friend of mine has cancer, my mom has terminal cancer, my stepmother has cancer... > I think I'm gonna call my mom. Always a good plan, I highly recommend it. I think I will do the same. Treasure your loved ones, even when times are good it can change suddenly.
- adamredwoods 5y ago
  I've also lost several loved ones from cancer. Stopping the metastatic progression is key to survival, but wow do cancerous cells ever know how to survive. We need to win this.
- wnolens 5y ago
  The same has happened to me. It's been almost every 1-2 years for the past 10 that I experience another great loss. Most recently was my mother. That one was/still is tough.
- subsubzero 5y ago
  I was in the same boat. Never experienced a death in my family until my Grandmother died in '18, then my Brother dies a few months later, then my Grandfather in '19 and then an Aunt in 2019 and a uncle in 2020. Needless to say its been very rough and made me realize life is incredibly fragile and enjoy every minute of your time on this planet.
- loeg 5y ago
  Found out my buddy has brain cancer last week. Fuck cancer.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  >> I think I'm gonna call my mom. >>>Always a good plan, I highly recommend it. I think I will do the same. Treasure your loved ones, even when times are good it can change suddenly. Absolutely. Now, I hope this does not come across as trite but I lost my mum to cancer in 1997. I was 27 at the time. It was hard, very hard as you'd expect. Time does heal but it takes a lot of time. I can still call my mum and she sometimes responds. Not literally - that's mad. I can still remember her values and guidance. That won't be same for everyone because loss is personal and so is all experience. I've buried (in the loss sense, not mass murderer sense) quite a lot of relos and it is hard and part of life. Whatever happens, you can always call your mum and she'll always be there in some way.
  - javajosh 5y ago
    Same thing with my dad. I don't talk to him, but I can clearly see his face smiling at me, and hear his laugh, and it helps.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > I hope this does not come across as trite Not at all. I'm sorry for your loss, and thank you for sharing with us - who all have or will lose someone - a way to heal.
- lenkite 5y ago
  Sorry for your loss. Losing so many people in such a short time is devastating. People talk about to going to Mars or other planets as a stupendous achievement. And it is. But I believe what would be the greatest human achievement would be fully conquering these leading causes of death: cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease..and finally the biggest cause of death and the final frontier: dying of old age. Even an extension of human lifespan by a several decades in good health could transform civilisation. Yet, it seems that medical science has progressed only a few feet while industry/tech has sprinted miles. Life expectancy has plateaued and even declined across the world.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    TLDR - Before you cure cancer, you need to "cure" aging. > But I believe what would be the greatest human achievement would be fully conquering these leading causes of death: cancer, I dunno about the others, but with cancer I don't think it is possible to "cure" it. It's the result of a bad mutation when a cell reproduces (AIUI, it's to do with telomere lengths and statistically certain low-frequency events). Each cell that reproduces will do so imperfectly, and normally those random mutations aren't too bad. Statistically, one of those mutations will eventually be a mutation that causes the cell to reproduce without limits (normal cells don't reproduce very fast). Hence, the longer you live, the greater the chance of a bad mutation, i.e. cancer. The only way to "cure" cancer, then, will be to have cells reproduce perfectly, in which case you have effective immortality as long as no other disease or event kills you.
    - suifbwish 5y ago
      And yet there are species of animals that can live well over 500 years without aging much. If it just comes down to errors, perhaps we should focus on finding better error repair mechanisms. If half the money that went into building the ad platforms was put into senescence repair mechanisms, who knows where we would be. One sad thing about pointless high paying tech jobs is they often take brilliant minds and set them to work building a better bean counter in exchange for money. A good portion of work done every day by Silicon Valley will have no lasting benefit and will be completely thrown out. Humans are smart enough to understand this but not smart enough to break the meaningless cycle and work on goals that will benefit society over the next 1000 years.
bufordtwain 5y ago
You definitely should. My mom was in a bad car accident some years ago and barely survived. Since that time I call her twice a week without fail. At this point I feel much more at peace with whatever happens.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
I've lost both of my parents already (I'm 46), but if I ever lost my son I couldn't take it. Reading about anyone losing their kids is painful since I became a parent myself.
itake 5y ago
dads need love too!
godelmachine 5y ago
My mom is being treated for resistant schizophrenia and she’s in a rehab. I get to talk with her only when the Counsellor is on duty. When I visited my mom last month, she was complaining she doesn’t like 8 people ward coz of zero privacy and the need to share washrooms. She’s been brought up as a princess and was highly pampered, being everyone’s favorite, and finds it tough staying in such accommodations. She told me she wanted a single room to herself. I told her it’s not good staying alone, we will get you into a double occupancy room, so there’s someone in the room in case something untoward happens. Today, she called me via the Counsellor today after a week, and the call got disconnected in about a few seconds coz of bad network. I later called up the hospital but the Counsellor had left. However, I had her shifted from an 8 people ward to a 4 people ward today. It’s because the rehab administrator advised that we have 4 people ward as well if you wanna consider. I said ask mom and see what she like - 4 sharing or 2 sharing. The admin called up 10 min and said your mom was okay with 4 sharing, and we have moved her there. Tomorrow, I will call her to ensure she’s comfortable in 4 sharing and if she does not like, next month I move her to 2 sharing. Just a random post reading your comment.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Unfortunately, I have been involved with many, many people who have died, for my entire life. It hasn't been as bad as some folks have had it, but, pretty much every year, since I've been eighteen, at least a couple of people in my close circle have passed away, for numerous reasons. In the early 1990s, it was bad. I won't get into why; and it's bad, again, now, for different reasons. It's really rough, to be in his position. Even with all the wealth and resources at his disposal, he could not do much. I know others, who have had to deal with the same kind of thing. When parents lose children; even when the children are dealing with long-term illness, it is devastating.
tinyhouse 5y ago
My biggest fear in life. As I get older I worry more about the health of the people around me than my own health. I cannot see my life without them and I have no idea how I would cope.
sdo72 5y ago
I'm in the same boat. I remind myself everyday, I called my parents at least once or twice a week for the last 20 years. Every time I'm mad at my daughters in the morning before taking them to school, and I always have the thought what if I don't see them after that, then I forget about my anger, hug them tight, and would say I love them so much. I can't imagine the pain losing a child. Every time reading again about the Sandy Hook, I tear up. One of the dads couldn't bear the emotional pain, he ended his own life. Please be kind to others, we're all human and we happen to be on this same journey on earth.
swat535 5y ago
> I think I'm gonna call my mom. You really should, like right now. not in a few hours, not tomorrow, right now. I lost my mom years ago to cancer, I'm now in my mid 30s and would give up _everything_ I have to spend another minute with her. Without our mom and dad, we are just lost children.
- drukenemo 5y ago
  I’m sorry to hear that, it’s a sad story and it clearly hurts you to this day. I just don’t agree with the sentiment that for everyone without our parents we’re just lost children. That would imply that we never grow up. In reality, adults can ideally self-guide themselves and they do that on a daily basis. And then most of us have children which needed to be guided by us…
  - ovao 5y ago
    Key word there being ‘ideally’. People in general aren’t equipped to be fully independent, and often our relationships with ours parents are the most important (except, possibly, for our kids/spouses). Having kids does seem to be important, because it kinda migrates a person’s role from “child to a parent” to “parent of a child”. Still, complete independence is something I’ve never really seen.
    - drukenemo 5y ago
      Complete independence is almost unattainable in life, if at all. Between being co-dependent with others and becoming a lost child without your parents there’s a great gap.
  - Markoff 5y ago
    Agreed. I mean if you cut your parent(s) from your life, how much loss it's gonna be when they die? Let's not pretend all relationships are perfect. It's hard to miss something you don't have, many people in this discussion idealize the relationships.
keithnz 5y ago
I made it to 29 without any deaths close to me ( great aunts died that I didn't really know) and my close family felt secure, maybe even somehow we were special somehow, but then my dad died at 59 of a heart attack (in a palace in Paris at a conference on temperature standards of all places). Was a shock. Now I'm 50, most of the older generation of my family are dead. I think I have handled death quite well so far, but I know others who still struggle decades later. However, I'm really not sure how well I'd handle one of my kids dying.
yibg 5y ago
This is one of those dark realizations I've had as I'm approaching middle age. Yes there is the aspect of me getting older, fatter, balder etc, but mostly that there is going to be an increasing likelihood that people I care about will start dying. I think I'll go call my parents too...
crossroadsguy 5y ago
> I think I'm gonna call my mom. Please do that. I used to always backpack around, barely went to her or spent some time, always restless, always on the move, always angry (kinda still am), used to fight with her over little things. Though it seemed she always forgave me, or I just took it for granted. Joined work after college and I kept planning for the vacation I would take her to or the house I’ll help her build, and the gifts, for almost over a year but never actually did it or found time. And one day she was gone.
- drukenemo 5y ago
  Don’t know more about your life, of course, but maybe check if your annoyances with your mum were really an unjustifiable, one-side thing. Looking back with my own mother, I came to notice that she was also very difficult to deal with and whilst it would have been nice if I could have been milder in my reactions at times, I try to diminish my guilt, by also seeing myself as a victim of her demeanor.
  - tombert 5y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but I sympathize with this a bit. My grandmother is very conservative. I'm not talking "voted republican", I'm talking "call black people the N word" and spends all day on Infowars forums. I stopped talking to her when she started being extremely racist towards my wife (who is Mexican) in late 2016. The rest of my family (who don't suck) would just put up with her and roll their eyes at it, until March of last year, when she told my mother that she was a failure because my sister is gay. After that, no one in my family will communicate with my grandmother, and I suspect she's going to die sad and alone, with her only friends being OAN and The Daily Stormer. There's a part of me that feels guilty over that, because at some level I realize she's just a dumb person being dumb and she can't help that, and that maybe I should make an effort to extend the olive branch, but I can't shake the feeling that being nice and talking to her would be inconsiderate to my wife and sister. I don't know the correct path on this, and perhaps more depressingly I'm not 100% sure I'll miss her when she does eventually die.
    - 5y ago
eointierney 5y ago
Call your mother every day Hi, how's your day, what's for your dinner, are you ok for milk? Mom is where we come from
dghughes 5y ago
It seems like (hopefully) there's the golden period a time after grandma and grandpa die where mostly nobody dies. Your parents are OK, your siblings, any friends, co-workers. It's all good until late middle age then people in your life start to disappear. My dad died last year after a long illness on my birthday of all days. More than anything I find it amazing that a person can disappear. After they die there's this mandatory by law rush to bury them literally and figuratively. Delete all traces of them even their clothes and shoes are thrown away. Bit by bit things they touched disappear. I was sitting beside my Dad died as he was in a bed in a palliative care room. Rick Steve travel show on Rome was playing and it was 8:40pm when Dad stopped breathing. To me in my mind that's where Dad is. A grave has no meaning to me maybe it will someday. We all have to go through it but I think we assume it can't happen to use it's other people. If you're in that golden time right now be mindful of the gift you have now. Oh and take lots of pictures in this age of cellphone pics and videos - use it! And make sure it's not just Christmas and cakes in front of them for all the picture.
kingcharles 5y ago
Please do call her. Mine died while I was stuck in jail because I was too poor to pay the release fee. Even with the intervention of the British government, the jail would not grant her final dying wish, to have a brief video call with me so she could say goodbye.
cryptos 5y ago
I've lost my father some years ago. It was the saddest thing in my life. But it also changed my life, because I've never seen the world and what I really want so clearly.
archon810 5y ago
My mom is stuck in Ukraine's Kharkiv right now, getting bombed every day. I'm trying to get her out, and I don't know if I'll be able to. So yes, absolutely call your mom. You never know when it will be the last time you hear her voice.
pjmlp 5y ago
Please do, I have lost many relatives due to sudden death cases. Cherish what you have around and live each day as if it was the last and more important, never reschedule meetings with close ones if you can avoid it. The usual typical words, that so often feel like empty words, however time proves us how much wisdom they actually have in them.

rootusrootus 5y ago

Much of my adult life was the same way. We used to talk about how great our family had it -- we went for decades without losing anyone close. We knew eventually our turn would come, but I treasured the time we did have. But come it did, about 7 years ago. Since then I've lost two brothers, my dad, my grandparents, and my best friend. The trite "fuck cancer" statement comes to mind regularly. Another friend of mine has cancer, my mom has terminal cancer, my stepmother has cancer... > I think I'm gonna call my mom. Always a good plan, I highly recommend it. I think I will do the same. Treasure your loved ones, even when times are good it can change suddenly.

adamredwoods 5y ago
I've also lost several loved ones from cancer. Stopping the metastatic progression is key to survival, but wow do cancerous cells ever know how to survive. We need to win this.
wnolens 5y ago
The same has happened to me. It's been almost every 1-2 years for the past 10 that I experience another great loss. Most recently was my mother. That one was/still is tough.
subsubzero 5y ago
I was in the same boat. Never experienced a death in my family until my Grandmother died in '18, then my Brother dies a few months later, then my Grandfather in '19 and then an Aunt in 2019 and a uncle in 2020. Needless to say its been very rough and made me realize life is incredibly fragile and enjoy every minute of your time on this planet.
loeg 5y ago
Found out my buddy has brain cancer last week. Fuck cancer.
gerdesj 5y ago
>> I think I'm gonna call my mom. >>>Always a good plan, I highly recommend it. I think I will do the same. Treasure your loved ones, even when times are good it can change suddenly. Absolutely. Now, I hope this does not come across as trite but I lost my mum to cancer in 1997. I was 27 at the time. It was hard, very hard as you'd expect. Time does heal but it takes a lot of time. I can still call my mum and she sometimes responds. Not literally - that's mad. I can still remember her values and guidance. That won't be same for everyone because loss is personal and so is all experience. I've buried (in the loss sense, not mass murderer sense) quite a lot of relos and it is hard and part of life. Whatever happens, you can always call your mum and she'll always be there in some way.
- javajosh 5y ago
  Same thing with my dad. I don't talk to him, but I can clearly see his face smiling at me, and hear his laugh, and it helps.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > I hope this does not come across as trite Not at all. I'm sorry for your loss, and thank you for sharing with us - who all have or will lose someone - a way to heal.
lenkite 5y ago
Sorry for your loss. Losing so many people in such a short time is devastating. People talk about to going to Mars or other planets as a stupendous achievement. And it is. But I believe what would be the greatest human achievement would be fully conquering these leading causes of death: cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease..and finally the biggest cause of death and the final frontier: dying of old age. Even an extension of human lifespan by a several decades in good health could transform civilisation. Yet, it seems that medical science has progressed only a few feet while industry/tech has sprinted miles. Life expectancy has plateaued and even declined across the world.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  TLDR - Before you cure cancer, you need to "cure" aging. > But I believe what would be the greatest human achievement would be fully conquering these leading causes of death: cancer, I dunno about the others, but with cancer I don't think it is possible to "cure" it. It's the result of a bad mutation when a cell reproduces (AIUI, it's to do with telomere lengths and statistically certain low-frequency events). Each cell that reproduces will do so imperfectly, and normally those random mutations aren't too bad. Statistically, one of those mutations will eventually be a mutation that causes the cell to reproduce without limits (normal cells don't reproduce very fast). Hence, the longer you live, the greater the chance of a bad mutation, i.e. cancer. The only way to "cure" cancer, then, will be to have cells reproduce perfectly, in which case you have effective immortality as long as no other disease or event kills you.
  - suifbwish 5y ago
    And yet there are species of animals that can live well over 500 years without aging much. If it just comes down to errors, perhaps we should focus on finding better error repair mechanisms. If half the money that went into building the ad platforms was put into senescence repair mechanisms, who knows where we would be. One sad thing about pointless high paying tech jobs is they often take brilliant minds and set them to work building a better bean counter in exchange for money. A good portion of work done every day by Silicon Valley will have no lasting benefit and will be completely thrown out. Humans are smart enough to understand this but not smart enough to break the meaningless cycle and work on goals that will benefit society over the next 1000 years.

bufordtwain 5y ago

You definitely should. My mom was in a bad car accident some years ago and barely survived. Since that time I call her twice a week without fail. At this point I feel much more at peace with whatever happens.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

I've lost both of my parents already (I'm 46), but if I ever lost my son I couldn't take it. Reading about anyone losing their kids is painful since I became a parent myself.

itake 5y ago

dads need love too!

godelmachine 5y ago

My mom is being treated for resistant schizophrenia and she’s in a rehab. I get to talk with her only when the Counsellor is on duty. When I visited my mom last month, she was complaining she doesn’t like 8 people ward coz of zero privacy and the need to share washrooms. She’s been brought up as a princess and was highly pampered, being everyone’s favorite, and finds it tough staying in such accommodations. She told me she wanted a single room to herself. I told her it’s not good staying alone, we will get you into a double occupancy room, so there’s someone in the room in case something untoward happens. Today, she called me via the Counsellor today after a week, and the call got disconnected in about a few seconds coz of bad network. I later called up the hospital but the Counsellor had left. However, I had her shifted from an 8 people ward to a 4 people ward today. It’s because the rehab administrator advised that we have 4 people ward as well if you wanna consider. I said ask mom and see what she like - 4 sharing or 2 sharing. The admin called up 10 min and said your mom was okay with 4 sharing, and we have moved her there. Tomorrow, I will call her to ensure she’s comfortable in 4 sharing and if she does not like, next month I move her to 2 sharing. Just a random post reading your comment.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Unfortunately, I have been involved with many, many people who have died, for my entire life. It hasn't been as bad as some folks have had it, but, pretty much every year, since I've been eighteen, at least a couple of people in my close circle have passed away, for numerous reasons. In the early 1990s, it was bad. I won't get into why; and it's bad, again, now, for different reasons. It's really rough, to be in his position. Even with all the wealth and resources at his disposal, he could not do much. I know others, who have had to deal with the same kind of thing. When parents lose children; even when the children are dealing with long-term illness, it is devastating.

tinyhouse 5y ago

My biggest fear in life. As I get older I worry more about the health of the people around me than my own health. I cannot see my life without them and I have no idea how I would cope.

sdo72 5y ago

I'm in the same boat. I remind myself everyday, I called my parents at least once or twice a week for the last 20 years. Every time I'm mad at my daughters in the morning before taking them to school, and I always have the thought what if I don't see them after that, then I forget about my anger, hug them tight, and would say I love them so much. I can't imagine the pain losing a child. Every time reading again about the Sandy Hook, I tear up. One of the dads couldn't bear the emotional pain, he ended his own life. Please be kind to others, we're all human and we happen to be on this same journey on earth.

swat535 5y ago

> I think I'm gonna call my mom. You really should, like right now. not in a few hours, not tomorrow, right now. I lost my mom years ago to cancer, I'm now in my mid 30s and would give up _everything_ I have to spend another minute with her. Without our mom and dad, we are just lost children.

drukenemo 5y ago
I’m sorry to hear that, it’s a sad story and it clearly hurts you to this day. I just don’t agree with the sentiment that for everyone without our parents we’re just lost children. That would imply that we never grow up. In reality, adults can ideally self-guide themselves and they do that on a daily basis. And then most of us have children which needed to be guided by us…
- ovao 5y ago
  Key word there being ‘ideally’. People in general aren’t equipped to be fully independent, and often our relationships with ours parents are the most important (except, possibly, for our kids/spouses). Having kids does seem to be important, because it kinda migrates a person’s role from “child to a parent” to “parent of a child”. Still, complete independence is something I’ve never really seen.
  - drukenemo 5y ago
    Complete independence is almost unattainable in life, if at all. Between being co-dependent with others and becoming a lost child without your parents there’s a great gap.
- Markoff 5y ago
  Agreed. I mean if you cut your parent(s) from your life, how much loss it's gonna be when they die? Let's not pretend all relationships are perfect. It's hard to miss something you don't have, many people in this discussion idealize the relationships.

keithnz 5y ago

I made it to 29 without any deaths close to me ( great aunts died that I didn't really know) and my close family felt secure, maybe even somehow we were special somehow, but then my dad died at 59 of a heart attack (in a palace in Paris at a conference on temperature standards of all places). Was a shock. Now I'm 50, most of the older generation of my family are dead. I think I have handled death quite well so far, but I know others who still struggle decades later. However, I'm really not sure how well I'd handle one of my kids dying.

yibg 5y ago

This is one of those dark realizations I've had as I'm approaching middle age. Yes there is the aspect of me getting older, fatter, balder etc, but mostly that there is going to be an increasing likelihood that people I care about will start dying. I think I'll go call my parents too...

crossroadsguy 5y ago

> I think I'm gonna call my mom. Please do that. I used to always backpack around, barely went to her or spent some time, always restless, always on the move, always angry (kinda still am), used to fight with her over little things. Though it seemed she always forgave me, or I just took it for granted. Joined work after college and I kept planning for the vacation I would take her to or the house I’ll help her build, and the gifts, for almost over a year but never actually did it or found time. And one day she was gone.

drukenemo 5y ago
Don’t know more about your life, of course, but maybe check if your annoyances with your mum were really an unjustifiable, one-side thing. Looking back with my own mother, I came to notice that she was also very difficult to deal with and whilst it would have been nice if I could have been milder in my reactions at times, I try to diminish my guilt, by also seeing myself as a victim of her demeanor.
- tombert 5y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but I sympathize with this a bit. My grandmother is very conservative. I'm not talking "voted republican", I'm talking "call black people the N word" and spends all day on Infowars forums. I stopped talking to her when she started being extremely racist towards my wife (who is Mexican) in late 2016. The rest of my family (who don't suck) would just put up with her and roll their eyes at it, until March of last year, when she told my mother that she was a failure because my sister is gay. After that, no one in my family will communicate with my grandmother, and I suspect she's going to die sad and alone, with her only friends being OAN and The Daily Stormer. There's a part of me that feels guilty over that, because at some level I realize she's just a dumb person being dumb and she can't help that, and that maybe I should make an effort to extend the olive branch, but I can't shake the feeling that being nice and talking to her would be inconsiderate to my wife and sister. I don't know the correct path on this, and perhaps more depressingly I'm not 100% sure I'll miss her when she does eventually die.
  - 5y ago

eointierney 5y ago

Call your mother every day Hi, how's your day, what's for your dinner, are you ok for milk? Mom is where we come from

dghughes 5y ago

It seems like (hopefully) there's the golden period a time after grandma and grandpa die where mostly nobody dies. Your parents are OK, your siblings, any friends, co-workers. It's all good until late middle age then people in your life start to disappear. My dad died last year after a long illness on my birthday of all days. More than anything I find it amazing that a person can disappear. After they die there's this mandatory by law rush to bury them literally and figuratively. Delete all traces of them even their clothes and shoes are thrown away. Bit by bit things they touched disappear. I was sitting beside my Dad died as he was in a bed in a palliative care room. Rick Steve travel show on Rome was playing and it was 8:40pm when Dad stopped breathing. To me in my mind that's where Dad is. A grave has no meaning to me maybe it will someday. We all have to go through it but I think we assume it can't happen to use it's other people. If you're in that golden time right now be mindful of the gift you have now. Oh and take lots of pictures in this age of cellphone pics and videos - use it! And make sure it's not just Christmas and cakes in front of them for all the picture.

kingcharles 5y ago

Please do call her. Mine died while I was stuck in jail because I was too poor to pay the release fee. Even with the intervention of the British government, the jail would not grant her final dying wish, to have a brief video call with me so she could say goodbye.

cryptos 5y ago

I've lost my father some years ago. It was the saddest thing in my life. But it also changed my life, because I've never seen the world and what I really want so clearly.

archon810 5y ago

My mom is stuck in Ukraine's Kharkiv right now, getting bombed every day. I'm trying to get her out, and I don't know if I'll be able to. So yes, absolutely call your mom. You never know when it will be the last time you hear her voice.

pjmlp 5y ago

Please do, I have lost many relatives due to sudden death cases. Cherish what you have around and live each day as if it was the last and more important, never reschedule meetings with close ones if you can avoid it. The usual typical words, that so often feel like empty words, however time proves us how much wisdom they actually have in them.