The days are long and the years are short

A friend of mine writes an article in the paper each week about her adventures in parenting. This week she said something that really hit me hard................the days are long and the years are short.

They are. They really are.

Sometimes a single day will seem to drag on forever, and I cannot wait until bedtime. But when we look at time in terms of passing birthdays, it never goes as slowly as we'd like it to.

A few weeks ago, I started researching my family tree on ancestry.com. I watched an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" with Sarah Jessica Parker and I started to have a deep desire to find out just that. Who am I? Where did I come from? What am I supposed to do?

Well, I realize that the answer to the last question won't be found on a website while the rest of my family is asleep, but the other two? Maybe, just maybe, I would find something that I didn't think I needed to know.

So I started researching my family. As I went backwards in time, and added new names as fast as they popped up on my screen, I had to stop myself and really take a look at what was taking shape. All these names, all these people lived real lives. They woke up every morning, they fell in love, they had families, and then they were gone. They lived entire lifetimes, and their names were simple "leaves" on one larger map spanning time as far back as the early 1600s.

These people knew happiness, and devastation. They watched their children die before seeing even one birthday. They knew little or nothing of almost everything we take for granted each day from the moment we awake, until we go to sleep at night. They were here for such a brief moment in time and now they're gone.

Someday that will be me. Someday my name will simply be one leaf on a larger tree with a beginning and an end. Can I be more? AM I more? Generations from now, when all the pictures and last tangible reminders of my existence are gone, what will I be?

Will I be nothing?

Do we only exist as long as we are remembered?

If there is nothing left to prove we once existed, did we? Am I just a vessel in time, between then and what is to come? Just a stepping stone to what will be? Did all those people back through time feel the same way, and have the same questions? Did they realize how many lives generations beyond their own they would be responsible for creating? How can all of this really be possible?