I wasn’t planning to think about any of this tonight.
I was just sitting on my couch, scrolling through YouTube Shorts and some reels. The kind of thing you do when you just want your brain to switch off for a bit. And then this clip showed up… an old episode from Young Sheldon. The one where George, the dad, just walks out of the house one regular evening. Nothing dramatic. No goodbye. He just goes.
And then the family gets the news. He’s gone.
What stayed with me wasn’t even the grief part. It was Sheldon… just quietly falling apart over something so small. I could have said bye. I could have at least noticed him leaving. I could have said something. But I didn’t.
That just… stayed.
I live in the United States. My parents are in India.
There’s something about that distance that’s hard to explain. It’s not like a sharp pain. It’s more like this low, unsettling feeling that just sits with you. I’ve gone to sleep so many times worrying… what if something happens and I’m not there. What if I don’t make it in time. What if the last call we had was actually the last one, and I was tired, half there, not really present.
And it’s not just my parents. It’s siblings and relatives I haven’t called. Friends I keep meaning to visit. People I love who I keep telling myself I’ll reach out to when things slow down… not really realizing that things don’t slow down. And time doesn’t wait.
George didn’t get a big farewell scene. He just walked out a door on a regular evening. And I kept thinking… is this how it ends for all of us? A barely noticed message, a half-heard goodbye, an ordinary moment nobody thought to remember.
I was still sitting on my couch with all of this when something caught my eye.
There’s this vase I have. It’s shaped like a lady… but she has no head. And wherever the head should be, that’s where the flowers go. Tonight I had put in fresh purple tulips. And just that evening I had thrown out the old roses from last week… dried out, petals falling, done.
I don’t know exactly when the thought came but it did.
We are just like flowers.
Generation after generation… we bloom for a while. We fill up a space. People notice us, love us, build their lives a little around us. And then we’re gone. And new ones come.
My ancestors lived full lives I’ll never really know. They had their own ordinary evenings, their own worries, their own people they loved. They’re gone now. And one day I’ll be someone’s ancestor too. A photograph. A name that gets a little hazier each time.
The flowers in the vase don’t know any of this. They’re just being flowers… fully, for whatever time they have.
I look at them. I notice their color. When someone comes over I’ll probably point at them and say… look at these.
Somewhere between that Young Sheldon clip and the purple tulips, something shifted a little for me.
The worry isn’t going anywhere, I know that. And honestly I don’t think it should. Because the worry comes from love… it’s just love that doesn’t know where to go. The problem isn’t the caring. It’s when the caring pulls you so far into a future dread that you stop noticing what’s actually here.
And what’s here… is the calls. The slightly too long ones where my mom tells me things I already know. The voice notes my dad sends at odd hours. The video calls with bad connection where half the time we’re just saying can you hear me… yes, I can hear you.
Those moments aren’t a substitute for being there. Those moments are the flowers, in the time they have.
We say so many words that hurt each other without even knowing it. We have so many ordinary exits that nobody notices. So many regular evenings that are quietly, without announcement, the last of something.
None of us know when we’re in that moment. George didn’t. His family didn’t.
But maybe the real loss isn’t that we don’t know. Maybe it’s when we spend so long waiting for the right moment… the reunion we’re planning, the call we keep pushing, the proper goodbye we’re saving for later… that we miss the ordinary evening altogether.
The tulips on my table will be done in a week. I’ll throw them out and put new ones in.
But tonight they’re purple. Tonight they’re here.
And I’m looking at them.
If you’re far from someone you love… just call. Not when things slow down. Now. Even if it’s short. Even if the signal is bad. Even if all you say is, I just wanted to hear your voice. And when you’re with them… be a little more patient. A little more kind. Be truly present for them. Because we’re all just trying our best in the time we have.
That’s enough. That really is.