Last night, while occupying my bed and chasing sleep, I listened to them.  This morning, while attempting to ready myself for vacating the house, they droned in the background.  And when I open the door . . . any door, it really doesn’t matter where . . . they grow louder.  As a matter of fact, the volume has increased on a daily basis; if it continues at this rate we’ll soon have to yell at each other just to be heard.

Of course I’m talking about the cicadas, those lovely creatures which have escaped their underground prisons and inhabited the planet at a ratio of 600 bugs to every one adult (I really think that’s closer to a million . . .).  But one of these days, when we’ve grown so accustomed to their incessant singing that we don’t even notice it anymore, they will stop.  Quiet will descend upon the world and suddenly something won’t seem right.  It may take a while to put our collective fingers on it, but the quiet that follows the weeks of humming will seem strange.  Despite the fact that everyone complains about it now, we will miss it when it’s gone.  Maybe not for very long, but we will miss it because we have grown used to hearing it.

People can be equally annoying with their irritating habits.  If they aren’t snoring the night away, they’re hogging the covers every time they turn or leaving the toilet seat in an unacceptable position and the top off the toothpaste.  Perhaps they ask too many questions . . . or not enough.  Aging parents may tell us the same story for the thirty-seventh time or call every day, interrupting whatever life requires of us at that moment.  Children will tug at our sleeves or scream for our attention or just generally make a mess wherever they are.  But someday the phone will quit ringing.  The snoring will cease.  We can leave the toilet seat wherever we like or complete a task without interruption or walk through an uncluttered house.  And when those times come, we will miss what once was.  Those annoying habits, those distractions calculated to arrive at the most inopportune time, tell us that those we love are still with us.  They can still afflict us with their imperfections, they can still annoy us with their incessant interruptions, but the day will come when that will no longer be the case and we will realize that, no matter how irritating those things were, we would give almost anything to experience them one more time.

Several years ago a friend of mine sent me a link to a video in which a wife eulogizes her husband.  She begins by telling everyone that she is not going to sing his praises or talk about what a good man he was—others had fulfilled that task.  She was going to make them uncomfortable by talking about his faults.  His horrible snoring.  His tendency to generate “wind action” (in her words) while still asleep.  And she continues by telling them that, as funny as these things may be, they told her that he was still with her.  Two of my co-workers and I watched the video and when it ended, there was absolute silence.  They slowly walked back to their desks and I simply sat there, my eyes filled with tears and my nose glowing bright red.  Her closing words to her children were “I hope someday you find life partners who are as beautifully imperfect as your father was to me”.  That statement rings true no matter the relationship.  Spouse or parent, sibling or child, it really doesn’t matter.   Everyone in our lives is beautifully imperfect and it is those imperfections we will miss when they are gone.

The post Beautifully Imperfect appeared first on Shackelford Funeral Directors | Blog.