in remembrance of the Bee Gees......

 


 
 
It's almost one week into the new year...how many of your resolutions have you kept thus far? The stores are just full of diet products, exercise products and promises of that "get thin quick" scheme.
What about regrets? Those usually occur by February when we realize we have been sold a guilt trip for at least  another year!

 I am referring, though, to regrets that we realize we are aging, whether we want to or not. And maybe this is why the products I mentioned above sell so much: we do not want to admit it...but we are slowly dying, even as you read this. We look for immortality and no one has found it yet. Maybe it would be better for us to leave memories instead of trying to look like the latest fashion model.
I know of a young gal who watched her mother slowly die from drug use and abuse. Just one Christmas ago, when her mother asked her to come for a visit, this gal turned her down. Not one week later, her mother died from an overdose. And this gal lives with the regrets that she did not answer her mother's invitation.
I watched a biopic of the Bee Gees yesterday which made me cry. Of the four brothers...only one, Barry, survives what was one of the greatest singing groups of all time. In 1988, Andy died at the tender age of thirty of a cocaine and alcohol combination overdose. Brother Maurice recounted that only three days before Andy died, he tried tough love on him, telling him in a phone conversation to shape up or that he'd have nothing to do with him. That was the last time he spoke to him. Of course, his brother ignored the admonition. Maurice said he lived with the regret every day that he didn't just GO over there and try to make sense with him instead of rebuking him. Ten years ago this month, Maurice also died unexpectedly of a heart attack during abdominal surgery. He had his own issues with alcohol, for which he sought rehabilitation. Oldest brother Barry said he wasn't going to make the same mistake with Mo, as he called him, as he did with Andy. He and younger brother Robin rallied around him, waiting for him to sober up. Six months later, they were once again writing songs and touring. Sadly, Robin died just seven months ago from cancer.
I watched this biopic with tears and a lump in my throat. This group inspired so many other singers, musicians and groups to become what they are and what they wanted to be. And now, at the end of  his legacy, Barry, the only brother, looks back over his life. He feels complete, yet empty. He knows he has done "enough," yet feels he could have done more.

As we go through our own lives...take time to look back at where you have been. Are you now where you wanted to be...? with the people, places and things you had set store by? What can you do differently? You only get one chance to live....why mess it up with choices that may haunt you forever? Leave a legacy instead that touches so many other lives.