Love is what lasts — long after the “lasts” are done.
The last lullaby. The last bedtime story. The last push on the playground swing.
Parenting is full of firsts. But we often lament the lasts, especially the moments that slipped away unnoticed. The last time you carried your sleeping child. The last time you held their hand as you crossed the street. The last time they came running to you with tears when they fell.
Living with kids is an ever-flowing stream. Even when we pause to take stock of where we are and how far we’ve come, the river keeps rushing. Time only moves in one direction. Especially in springtime, when another school year ends and graduations bring goodbyes, we often find ourselves longing at “the lasts.”
What if we looked to how Jesus handled his own “lasts”?
The last time he ate with his friends, the last time he gathered with the 12, and the last night before his death, Jesus gave himself completely to the disciples in word, action and example. Much like a parent, he fed those he loved — with the Eucharist. He showed them how to serve by washing feet. He shared the deepest truths he knew in the Last Supper discourse.
But like a parent, Jesus also knew that his work was not only for those in the room. His calling stretched to the whole world, even to those of us who seek him 2,000 years later. He left us love in the body: his own flesh and blood in bread and wine. What a profound truth for anyone who’s lamented how quickly time passes, how incomplete our efforts and how limited even our best intentions.
Yet the enduring presence of the Eucharist in our lives and the central place of the Last Supper in our faith remind us that every act of love lasts. In flesh and blood, our children will carry our love with them as they grow and go.
I can’t remember the last time my parents tucked me into bed, sang me a song, read me a bedtime story, or carried me inside when I fell asleep in the car. But the lasts matter far less than the countless times that came before: all the ordinary days and nights when they cared for me, when my whole self — body, mind, spirit and soul — learned that I was loved.
Exactly the gift I hope to offer my children, long after their little days are gone.
Our lives are woven from the warp and weft of the ordinary and extraordinary, the joys and griefs. Parenting makes this mix even more poignant, at times painful, as you see before your eyes each day the passage of time and the changes it brings.
To be sure, the heartaches that spring brings are life’s ordinary grief: The reminder that the ones we love are growing up and moving out into a wider world. Beneath the surface of so many families are buried losses much bigger and grief much deeper.
But we still need space to name and mourn the shadow side of life’s brightest moments. Every milestone marked leaves a season behind. Every graduation, wedding, or arrival of a child brings both gain and loss. What was once will not be again.
When the band plays “Pomp and Circumstance” or the wedding march begins, there’s barely a dry eye in the house. What’s coming next is longed for, hoped for, even fought for. But we also feel the poignant, pressing turning of time. The grief that we are not here for long and the gratitude that we got to be here at all.
The tender words that Jesus left his friends at his ascension — “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20) — speak of love that endures longer than any time could contain. Every echo of this greatest love, especially the gentle words and devoted deeds that we give to the children entrusted to our care, will remain long after we are gone.
Love is what lasts.
Fanucci, a member of St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove, is an author, speaker, and founder of Mothering Spirit, an online gathering place on parenting and spirituality at motheringspirit.com. Her latest book is “Living Easter: 50 Days to Practice Resurrection.”
