“I would give anything if I could have  just one more minute…”

The above is something the bereaved often say. Personally, I have always found it to be a silly statement…after all, what good is a minute? Three of them pass in a commercial break, sixty in an hour, nearly fifteen hundred in a day. A minute is so fleeting, in fact, that forty-two million of them expire before a person reaches their eightieth birthday.  Clearly, a minute is nothing special.

“I would give anything if I could have  just one more minute…”

What a silly thing to say.

At least that’s what I used to think. Today I realize that, as quickly as a minute may pass, it can be the most valuable thing in the world.

Lately I have begun to fantasize about what it would be like to have one more minute with Madeline.  In my fantasy I imagine Heather and myself sitting on our couches as we do so much lately, absent-mindenly staring at our computer screens, when all of a sudden a few notes  echo from Maddie’s long silent little red piano. I look up and see Maddie pressing the keys as she flashes that brilliant smile of hers at me. Heather and I look at each other in disbelief, then throw our computers aside, leap to our feet, and wrap Maddie up in our arms. As we cover her little face in kisses Maddie giggles and says “Wow” in her sweet little voice. Tears soon stream down our faces as Heather and I kiss our baby all over…on her tiny hands, her cute belly, her pudgy little legs…and run our hands through her curly hair.  Finally, as the minute winds down to its final seconds, we tell her that we love her and kiss her one last time before she is gone once again.

As silly as it may sound, I would give anything…absolutely anything…to have that minute.