Riches By Dr. Juan Harrison

Today was the culmination of a couple of days of preparation for our Easter celebration at the house.  Church was great as usual with my stomach reminding me of the feast awaiting me.  Chicken and dressing, green bean bundles, taco salad, turkey slices, mac and cheese for the kids and way too many desserts to mention.

The little ones then hunted for eggs filled with candy or small cash.  The adults hunted for eggs with bigger cash.  The younger ones made some good memories and a few messy remains as they attacked one another with eggs filled with confetti.

All too soon our company departed with plates piled high covered with foil for the journey home to their ice boxes.  I say that as I’m reminded of my early youth in a two room shack with no running water or electricity. The ice man delivered ice blocks a couple of times a week to our wooden ice box.  Believe it or not, those are good memories of slower times.

As one of our guests was looking at a wall in the little living room, or den, as we used to say, she commented on the rows of pictures of the family on the canvas covered frames.  I told her those were our riches.  Pictures of us with our kids and grandkids.  Memories.  Like today’s family feast and Easter egg eggtravaganza.  Not the food, not the candy or money in the eggs, but the feeling of family and a moment of togetherness.  Remembering my wealthy husbandless, childless friend stopping by my office one day offhandedly asking me what I wanted to do with my doctor’s degree and superintendent’s certification.  I jokingly said, “I wanna be as rich as you.”  With a look I can’t describe she leaned across my desk, stared me in the eyes and said, “You Are Rich.”

Later that day I went home to give my wife the news.  It dawned on me how blessed I was with wife, kids, grandkids, all of us healthy, constantly interacting with one another.  Maybe I really was rich.  I was reminded of other friends and family members who had similar stories of financial prosperity but relational and emotional poverty.  Perspective.  It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

One of the blessings or curses of growing old is time to look back on our legacy, what differences we didn’t or did make in our family, in our community, in our world.  At that point there is no do-over.  We either is or we ain’t.  Almost like standing in front of Christ at the Judgement, there is no fooling.  Hopefully, somewhere on life’s journey we realized what really mattered in life.  Here’s praying it happened to you sooner rather than later.  You don’t wanna miss one of those grandbaby hugs.

 By Dr. Juan Harrison