It is an assumption by most people I know that they think they have time for everything they have planned in their life. Every so often, you get a rude reminder that time is the most precious thing in your life, and that maybe you don’t have that time you need.

I remember by grandson Trey being born. Poof, just like that, he’s 19 years old. Chloe wasn’t born that long ago was she? What, she’s a third grader now? Certainly Destiny is still a newborn, right? Nope, she just started Pre-K.

I won’t even start with the kids. One is over 40, one is approaching 40, several in their 30’s, and the youngest will be 30 next year.

I have had the unfortunate habit of thinking that there is plenty of time to do things, only to be reminded later that not all things work on Randy’s timeline.

My grandfather Arturo Rivera was a talented musician. I have been told that as a young man he was invited to perform with the Chihuahua symphony. He played all sorts of stringed instruments, from guitar to violin. When I was young my beloved grandfather asked if I wanted to learn to play the violin or guitar. My idiot young mind thought that was a waste of time so I said no. Ten years later or so, when I was 19, I reached out to see if he was still willing to teach me. Of course he was! He would take the bus from his house in Juarez twice a week to come to my house in El Paso for lessons. It was amazing. I was progressing like I didn’t think I could. Six weeks into the lesson, my “Papi” as we called him, suffered a stroke and passed away. I thought we had time.

My mother and father divorces when I was really young, about two years old. I never got to know my father, my pictures of him are nothing more that very faint memories and fuzzy, warm feelings. My father passed away when I was nine years old, and he had not been a part of my life for last seven years of my life. A few years ago I got a call from a phone number I didn’t recognize. It was my step-mother. She was my father’s first wife, and the woman he returned to after he left my mom. She was looking for my mother. She wanted to speak to her and apologize for my father’s actions in leaving my mom alone to raise kids by herself. After I explained to her that my mother had passed away several years earlier, she began to cry. This went on for a bit, and for some reason I decided to stay on the line with her.

She then proceeded to ask me what I knew about my father. I told her that I had almost no memory of him, other than a few pictures. She told me that she would like to spend some time talking to me about my father and letting me know that he wasn’t the jerk that I probably thought he was. (She was right, that is exactly what I thought.) We decided we would talk in a few days when we both had enough time to chat. I got busy, had to postpone a couple of times, and guess what? Yep. She had a stroke, and lived a couple of more years without the ability to communicate before passing away. I thought we had time.

What really brought this pattern to mind these last few days was the loss of another person that had started to share family stories with me. In 1998 I attended a family reunion in Utah and met a large part of the Carrasco/Aranda clan that I had not seen or even known about since I was a little kid. At that reunion I met a vibrant, funny, passionate man that was my mother’s cousin. His mother and my grandmother were sisters. He was one of my mom’s favorite cousins.

Of course he had to tell me the now familiar story that he had changed my diaper when I was a baby, but he also shared some stories about my grandmother and grandfather that I had never heard before. I didn’t get much of a chance to spend time with him that time, but we said we would keep in touch.

Fast forward a few years, and we had not kept in touch. My mother passed away a couple of years after the reunion, and I did not hear from my first cousin until we found each other on Facebook. Through him I got to meet, at least on Facebook, some of his children who I vaguely remember being at the reunion. We would message each other now and then and talk about my mom, my grandparents, his kids and grandkids, and often some words of encouragement and love when things were going rough with me.

We kept talking about visiting with him in San Francisco, possibly this year even, then COVID got in the way of traveling. Our last message to each other was that we would plan to get together as soon as COVID was over, and we would share an “abrazo” that we each needed.

COVID quickly took Mario away a couple of weeks ago. It was unexpected, and with his passing went a load of family history and stories that he had stored in his incredible mind. While I can’t compare my loss to my cousins Xan, Mario, Julian and others losing a father, I nonetheless felt a huge hole in my heart when my cousin Lily, his sister, called me on my way to work to tell me about his passing.

I though i had time.

So to my family and friends out there, I may become a nuisance, but I now realize that I don’t have an indefinite amount of time promised to me. I want my kids and grand-kids to know that side of my family. Somehow I need to make that happen.

To my friends here and elsewhere, let’s quit making excuses for getting together.

Do we have time?