There’s a particular ache that comes from realizing you’re experiencing something for the “last time.”
When we’re young, “last times” are often experienced as something like the last walk home from school, the last time hanging out at a friend’s house, or the last summer before everyone goes of to college.
In my novel, Into the Night and Gone, three friends understand – almost all at once – that life is pulling them in different directions. One to Oregon. One to Seattle. One to California.
And suddenly, the paths they’ve walked for years becomes sacred.
One of my favorite songs is Rocky Votolato’s White Daisy Passing; and it captures that “last time” feeling beautifully – in melody, music, and lyrics. A snippet of the song reads as:
There's a secret magic past world,
That you only notice when you're looking back at it,
What a beautiful way of capturing the fact that we don’t always know what’s important while we’re living it. We only know when we’re losing it.