My dad had a fall (at 87, you have to call it “a fall”; for some reason you can’t just say, “my dad fell,” which is what one does when they’re under 80). Having “a fall” seems like a shitty rite of passage in your eighth decade.

He’s been hospitalized and in rehab (the “get your body moving again” kind of rehab, not the place the celebrities go to de-coke-ify—in case clarification was needed) for the last two months.

I have learned a lot. And not just about Foley catheters (men everywhere just made this face: 😬).

I have been reminded of two crucial things:

1. We take the people we love for granted.
2. We take our own lives/ mobility/ ability to eat scrambled eggs off a tray without spilling on ourselves for granted.

“Don’t get old, Jo,” is what my dad has been advising me since he turned 80. I would nod in solemn agreement, sometimes pretending to take notes. When I visited him in Toronto a few weeks ago, he upped the ante on this advice and told me to “go home and put your birth certificate in the freezer”—as though I could keep my age frozen in time.

Back to my two observations, about how we coast through life until we realize what we’ve been taking for granted.

We take the people we love for granted.

My dad has been living on borrowed time, or “playing with house money” as the gambler in him likes to say, every year beyond 78, which is the average life expectancy for men. We all know there is an end in sight, and yet I have taken his existence for granted. His mom/ my grandma lived until 103 (YES THAT IS 5,356 MONDAYS… WHOOOO) and I’ve deluded myself into believing he’ll do something similar—or at least die trying at 96 or so.

But this little life snafu has put a wrinkle in the delusion.

His mortality seems more real now, and that has taken me aback.

I don’t want him to go. (Dad, when you are out of rehab-for-mobility-not-for-cocaine, you will read this and I want you to know that I see my time with you as more precious than ever before).

Are there people you’ve been taking for granted, assuming they’ll be there for the next family dinner?

Now, observation #2, about how we take our own lives and abilities for granted.

I have watched a lot of people struggle to walk in the last couple of months, having the opportunity to be in hospitals and facilities where people aren’t feeling so hot or able to move their limbs like they used to in their spry seventies. I have watched people struggle to speak. I have heard my dad’s “roommates” (other guys behind a curtain) struggle to get to the bathroom in time. I have watched my dad struggle to sit himself up for lunch. “Can you get up without using your arms for help, Jo?” my dad asked me last month. I bounced up out of my chair like a spring, no hands required. I am so obnoxious.

I am now acutely aware that I can stand up, lift my luggage into the overheard compartment, make a grilled cheese sandwich on my own, and pee without help. But I wasn’t tuned into this prior to “the fall.” I was walking through life unaware that walking was a luxury for so many others.

So in case the point isn’t abundantly clear, let’s call/ hug/ visit/ the people we love. Let’s tell them we love them.

Let’s appreciate the things in our life that are working… that we can still dance like an idiot when a song from the 80s comes on, that we can still remember what we had for dinner last night, that we can still drive to the grocery store, that we can still read the menu, that we are still here—breathing and being and doing and loving and laughing. And peeing.

Let’s book the hiking trip to Zion while our legs still let us climb. Let’s travel to Italy while we can still board the ferry to Capri. Let’s take the pottery class while we can still do whatever our hands need to do to make a bowl. Let’s learn how to speak French while our brains are still pointu (translation: sharp).

Dad, thanks for the reminder that time is ticking and it’s all for the taking, now—not later.