Tomorrow Never Comes

The photo album doesn't lie about what you put off.

I have two or three thick photo albums that belonged to my Nana. The kind with the sticky pages you used to press pictures into, the kind that barely exist anymore. Some of the people in those photos I know. Plenty of them, I don't. There's no name on the back, or if there was, the ink has faded to nothing you can make out. Someone important enough to photograph, to keep, to pass down, and now they're just a face I'll never be able to place.

I had years to ask. I had her sitting right there, more than capable of telling me every name, every story behind every photo. I told myself I'd get to it. There was always another visit, another holiday, another version of tomorrow that felt close enough not to worry about.

That's the trap. Not laziness, not not caring. Just the quiet, reasonable-sounding belief that there will be more time. We put off the small things, a phone call, a question we've been meaning to ask. We put off the medium things, sitting down to really talk, pulling out the old albums together. We put off the large things too, the recordings, the conversations we know matter, telling someone what they meant to us while they can still hear it.

And for some people, tomorrow simply doesn't come. Not because we didn't care enough. Because we assumed we'd have more time than we did.

I can't go back and ask my Nana who's in those photographs. That chance is gone, permanently, and no amount of wishing brings it back. But I can tell you this: whatever you've been meaning to ask, whoever you've been meaning to record, today is the only day you're guaranteed to have.

The photo album doesn't lie about what you put off.