extreme nostalgia

you know i got to thinking today about beginnings and endings. my favorite song ever is called, The Last Dance, by sarah mclaughlin. oddly enough it is instrumental but it seems to touch my heart like no other song ever has. it is beautiful and wistful, dramatic and a bit sad. i loved the song before i ever heard its title yet the title intregues me. what is so romantic to me about firsts and lasts?

this simple thought is so complex when studied. i mean firsts and lasts often happen simultaneously, yet some are celebrated and some mourned. how does one choose which will be celebrated? take your child's first steps for instance. we praise them and encourage them in this new beginning as if we were not also celebrating an end. because when we watch a first step being tenatively taken we also wave good-bye to that little one's rambuncious crawl. a sad ending that no one takes account for in the wake of a new beginning.
and take funerals for example. . . shouldn't they be the most celebrated of all lasts? think of it . . . they paid their last bill, they were issued their last critism, they suffered their last loss, they felt their last paper cut and now they are free from it all! they have been ushered off to a place of new beginnings, yet this time we choose to mourn the end and not celebrate the noteworthy beginning. . . it seems as if there is no rhyme or reason behind it all.
graduation from high school is highly celebrated in our society yet i'm sure looking back,we would all agree, that we wish that simple time hadn't left us so quickly. why then do we usher it off with a party that makes it seem as if we are saying, "thank God you are done with that part kiddo--the best is yet to come." ? if i could go back i'm sure that this is one ending that i'd want to mourn instead of celebrate!
more and more i find that i am a bit morbidly facinated with "lasts". maybe i'm a strange person but sometimes during a rather meaningless task i'll pause, melodramatically and ask myself, "what if this is the last time i ever talk to this person, or see this sight or feel this way. what if. . . "
maybe i'm what you would call an extreme nostalgic but i find myself celebrating and mourning little lasts all throughout my life-- and even looking for meaningful lasts in the lives of others. when i hear of a tragedy in someone's life i wonder what their last words were to their spouse and children? when i read a good book i seal in my mind the last words printed on the last page. i guess i am just a little weird like that. but i cherish the beautiful finality that comes with each and every last. . . and somewhere inside i celebrate them as if they were firsts.