Riiiiing....This is your 5 o'clock wake up call

It could have been worse. Much worse. I could now be one of those people that I used to pity from a distance without even the slightest comprehension of their position. I could now be among the ranks of other fatherless children, whose father was suddenly and inexplicably torn from their lives. But I'm not and I thank God for the extra time granted to my father.
However, the incident has driven home some important ideas.

Time is fleeting. This concept I had only understood in its limited faculty as a restrictor of the amount of things I could complete in a given amount of time. Now I understand that these limited encounters represent the rule rather than the exception and are the stencil for an overarching pattern. Not only are the minutes and hours flying by, but whole months, decades, and lifetimes are swiftly flowing through our fingers. My dad's life almost slipped through. It makes me want to hold on tighter, sealing any crack between my fingers through which a minute or year could slip virtually unnoticed.

Life is fragile. We are all walking a tight-rope and a simple misstep would end our show. We sit like a glass vase perched on the very edge of the table, waiting for God to accidently brush us as he passes by or for Him to inadvertently bump the table on His way to His bedroom after a long, tiring day of omniscience. When that happens our fragile glass bodies will be spent. This does not mean that we should peek over the edge and constantly worry about that inevitable fall, but it would be sheer stupidity to not, at least, acknowledge the existence of the drop-off.