Firsts and lasts

Firsts are often easy to remember: The first kiss, those first steps, his first words, her first tooth.

They stand out because they leap out of the everyday and surprise us, painting themselves into memory forever.

But lasts ... lasts often slip by unnoticed, and it's only later that we realise what they were – if we're ever even able to pinpoint them at all.

It could be something trivial: The last chat with a friendly checkout operator before, months later, you realise you haven't seen them for ages and they must have moved on to another job. The last time you popped in to a familiar newsagent before it closed down and turned into a vape shop.

Or, one day, a little hand will slip into yours as you walk along the street, and it's so much a part of everyday life you'll hardly even notice it. The next day, the owner of that little hand might decide they're just too big now for all that babyish hand-holding stuff, and it's only later that you'll look back and realise that their hand never reaches for yours any more, and you're not quite sure when that changed.

Similarly, someone will ask for a bedtime story one night but not the next, and it's only many, many nights later that you finally notice that bedtime stories never seem to happen any more.

One day you'll have a healthy young dog at your side, keeping up with you, sometimes running ahead to inspect a fragrant lamppost or some suspicious litter. The next day, your canine companion might be lagging a little behind. Not so far as to be a worry. Not so far behind that you register, in that moment, that something irreversible has begun.

You might remember the last time you saw a friend or loved one, but without knowing at the time it was to be your final meeting, the conversation didn't lodge itself in your memory. What did you say, when you parted? What were their last words to you? They could have been trivial, silly, profound, or anything in between, but, too often, they're simply gone forever.

I remember being out with my dogs - both gone now - just before going on a trip to the USA when my brother called me on my mobile. We chatted about something or other and, as I led the dogs through the overgrown entrance to our favourite field, I told him I'd call him when I got back. He died while we were away, and I wish I could remember even a fragment of that last conversation.

Our lives are littered with lasts, most of which we don't even notice. Perhaps that's for the best. It leaves us free - at least whenever we remember to do it - to savour the now.