Vincent called me last night.
Seeing his name appear on my phone screen, I gave him my usual greeting, ‘What’s goin’ on BIG MONEY?!’
Vincent is no where near ‘BIG MONEY’. He’s lucky if he has two wooden nickels to rub together, but he likes to pretend he is this ‘BIG MOB GUY’, so I indulge him.
His usual response to me is ‘F-U’ or ‘eat-me’ or something along those lines.
His favorite movie is Good Fellas’ and his favorite part in the movie is when Joe Pesci’s character unleashes a brutal beat-down on this guy at the bar for insulting his best friend played by Robert De Niro.
Vincent is MY Joe Pesci.
Anyway, I like giving him some jazz whenever he calls.
The call came about 3 o’clock on a hazy Sunday afternoon. Vincent was not illuminating his usual jovial pitch. In fact, he sounded like his dog had just died.
So I asked him, ‘What’s the matter with you man, you sound like your dog died.’
He said, ‘Not quite…, my step-father is in the hospital. They think he might last until Friday, if he’s lucky.’
I’m like, ‘Wow, sorry man.’
‘Eighty-eight years old, suffering from Alzheimer’s for the past two years, they knew it was coming’, he said, ‘but it still hurts having to finally here those words, ‘Friday, if he’s lucky.’
Vincent, now 58 years old, made a lot of money when he was younger, and not too long ago, he still earned a good bit of cash.
He just never believed that he would have any such need for something so ‘trivial’ as money, because, in his mind, he never believed in getting old, he would always be able to work and make more money if he ever needed more money.
Then again, he truly believed that if the time ever came where he was in some kind of financial dilemma, there would be someone there to rescue him, which someone somewhere always did, including me.
Whenever Vincent found himself in some kind of financial bind, I would always say to him, ‘Man, you need to get your sh*t together. You need to plan for the future.’
Vincent would always say, ‘I’m not worried. I’m like a cat, I always land on all fours.’
Well, today, Vincent called me, and I missed his call.
He left a message… ‘My sister just called. Pappy died at 10:58 this morning. Damn. Later.’
That’s all that was said.
When someone dies, especially when it is someone close to you or someone that you know, it should always give you pause.
Stop for a moment and take a good deep hard look at your own life and ask yourself, ‘Where am I in my life? What have I done with my life? What am I going to do with the rest of my life? Am I doing all that I can to make the people I care about happy?’
So many more questions, that only you can answer for yourself.
We all have a limited time on this earth…, for how long?, No one man knows.
What we all know for a fact is this, we are all going to die and when we are gone… we’re gone.
Here’s my advice…, everyday that you wake up, live as though it is the beginning of the rest of your life, because it is, and then decide, what will you do today to design the best life that you can?
