Love + Expiration Dates


I’m getting married, a girlfriend announces in her sweet-like-syrup drawl.

Congratulations! I gush. When? Who’s the guy?

Wedding is Wednesday, she replies. We only just met…last week.

Whoa.

There’s a good reason why it’s happening so fast, she adds. And why I’m calling you out of the blue.

I expect her to say she’s expecting.

Instead, she exhales a string of sentences that slay me:

Love-at-first-sight.

He comes with a terminal heart condition.

His second transplant is failing.

Needs a third.

May only survive a few years—or a few months.

I am stunned by her clear and present grasp of her future as caretaker, proxy, widow.

My question is this, she continues. If you’d known Alberto would die less than four years after he proposed, would you have still signed up for it?

My answer is unequivocal:

Yes.

Alberto was the man I was waiting for. The one I hoped was out there. I’d marry him all over again—even knowing his death would devastate me.

But.

If I could do it all over again, I would do those four years very differently.

I would’ve disappointed him less.

Surprised him more.

Chosen dinner with him over working late at the office.

Chosen dinner with him over too many drinks with girlfriends.

Chosen dinner with him over…everything.

I would’ve lived and loved him like he had an expiration date.

My voice breaks.

Recovers.

And instead of saying what my mind is thinking—you’re lucky, God, you’re so lucky—it says what she needs to hear:

Because you know what I didn’t, you won’t wish for the do-over.

You have the chance to make the right choices every day. There’s a purpose, a reason your lives intersected at this moment in time. Just take a macro-approach—tomorrow isn’t promised—to the micro-decisions, and you won’t have regrets.

But after, she whispers. What…then?

No short-cut through grief, baby, but the road with the least regret has fewer blind spots. Plus, we’ll take turns driving. I’ll guide you toward the rest stops—and the milemarkers.