Tomorrow

If there is anything I have learned from my mother’s passing, it’s that there isn’t “Always Tomorrow”. Tomorrow isn’t a human right, tomorrow is a gift. Everybody doesn’t have a tomorrow. Right now, someone just took their last breath, and tomorrow isn’t going to come for them. But you know who tomorrow will come for? The loved ones who have to mourn that death. The loved ones who have to wake up with a pain in their heart and an emptiness in their chest. The loved ones who were waiting for tomorrow to say, “I love you” or “I’m sorry”. Do you ever think about what those people lying on their death beds wish they hadn’t always put off until tomorrow and never actually got around to doing? It makes me sick to think of all of the things my mom wanted to do that she never had the chance to. There was always something more important that had to be done today and she put off other things until tomorrow, which turned into the next day, and next week, and then next year, and then “one day”. To some, tomorrow is a day to reinvent themselves. It is a chance to wake up and say, “today I will do better. I will be better.” And to others, it’s another day to keep hiding. Hiding from who they really are or who they have the potential to be. Tomorrow is scary. Tomorrow, some people are going to have to get up and try to figure out where their next meal is going to come from, and tomorrow, a mother is going to have to tell her children that their father won’t be home for Christmas. Tomorrow a boy is going to get pushed in the hallway for the last time and he’s going to go home and kill himself because he just can’t bear to face another tomorrow. Tomorrow, a girl is going to be called fat or ugly by her peers and she will decide she is going to start starving herself to win the admiration of others. Tomorrow, it’s only a day away. Right?