The thing about having kids is that it’s so fleeting. They grow up so fast, as we’ve said before. They are in a constant process of leaving you, leaving who they were. And scarier still, as the last few years have shown, is that life is unpredictable and even tragic.

No one is here forever. Things can change in a tragic instant.

So what do we do? Certainly not try to grip everything so tight, saying to fate or fortune that they’ll have to pry our happiness from our cold dead fingers. In fact, we should do the opposite. Let go a little. William Blake wrote beautifully of the infiniteness of the present moment many times, but he best expressed this idea in his poem Eternity:

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise

As we said recently, the fact that you have your family, this moment, is a wonderful gift. The fact that you’ve had this for some time? That’s something that can’t ever go away. So be grateful. In fact, be more gracious about what may happen in the future–because you are already so full of appreciation for what you did get, for the fact that you were lucky enough to have it all for all the time you did.

Yes, it’s terrifying that something, that anything could happen to the people you love. Let us hope it never happens. But in the meantime, let’s appreciate the gifts we have, that we’ve had. Let us accept everything good/bad that comes after as extra. Because it is.