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A friend told me that she heard a news story that said you spend 93% of the time you’ll have with your kids before they leave high school. Or on the flip side, you only have 7% of the time you’ll have with your parents after you leave high school.

I couldn’t find this number online — Googling brought me answers ranging from 80% to 95% — but the message was still the same. You have very little time left with the people you love.

I spent the rest of the day obsessing over the number.

People don’t spend 24 hours together — work or sleep gets in the way. So working with the idea that we spend, on average, eight waking hours together, I multiplied it out to reach 52,560 (8 x 365 x 18). If 93% is correct, I get 56,516 waking hours with the kids. 3,956 hours spread out over my remaining years.

If I live another 40 years, it comes out to 99 hours per year, which averages 12 days per year (if we still go with 8 hours per day). Or 24 days per year if they live nearby and we spend 4-hour chunks together. A visit every other week. Or a week-long trip together and a handful of smaller visits. Or make a conscious decision to get more than my universe-allotted 99 hours.

Sad math.

Bed, Bath, and Beyond is closing. We had money on a gift card at the store, so I sent Josh and the twins to see if anything needed for college was still on the shelves an hour after the announcement came in the morning. They ended up with pillows, shampoo, and an empty gift card, so I’d call that a success. I tried for a spatula the next day, but it was too late. I’m a little bummed about that. I have a thing about spatulas. (Attitude: all the spatulas, all the time, all the colours.)

I am sad that it’s ending for the people who own and work in the stores. It has always been there when I needed it, and while it contained nothing I couldn’t get at another store, it held it all in one place. I’m just not good with endings.

The same week, our special restaurant announced it would be closing, too. Closing, too? It was too much. This restaurant was the site of our first date, my 30th birthday party, and many family dinners (including one memorable one when one of the twins stopped the conversation at the table to announce that while they knew how babies got into a woman’s body, they had no clue how they came out).

We will get takeaway one last time, but it’s hard to say goodbye to a good restaurant. Doubly hard to say goodbye to a good restaurant and store in the same week.

I read these profoundly true lines in a Substack: “Did you know that you can anticipate death for years and still feel shocked by it? It feels fake, like when midnight is a new year. Then it feels so real you cannot take a full breath.”

That perfectly captures all known endings. You see them coming. You know they are going to arrive. Even if you have the date somewhat penciled into the calendar, it is still shocking when it happens and doesn’t feel real.

This applies to some deaths, of course — the writer is talking about a death they knew was coming. But other endings, too. This is how I feel watching us hurtle through AP exams and prom on the way to graduation. We will race through summer, and then our unit will pull apart: Two heading to college. Two staying home.

I knew this was coming. I’ve been dreading it longer than I’ve been writing this blog. I’ve been writing about this moment for a long time. Now it’s here, and as I expected, I feel awful. I feel sad and overwhelmed. I am thrilled for them, proud of them, and excited for them. But I will miss them so much, and the reality is that our little unit will never go back to the same size and shape. It will change, pulling apart and expanding and sometimes crunching again. But so much of that is out of my hands.

I feel very lonely in this because people always meet my words by telling me about how great this next stage of life will be. That I have no clue how great it’s going to get. But it’s not what I need to hear. All it does is make me feel worse.

But finding those sentences above, even if they belong to a different situation, made me feel less alone.

A convergence of two ideas. I’m part of a Gamache read-along discussing Louise Penny’s series (one book per month). With each murder investigation, various town members will recount how they remember the deceased, and it usually goes on a predictable arc. Everyone remembers the deceased similarly (e.g., everyone describes them as the kindest person in Three Pines), and then they add caveats to their memory one by one as the book progresses. It’s the problem with obits in general: how do you sum up a person in a few sentences when people and relationships are complex and full of good and terrible moments?

Which is why I love the question on Grumpy Rumblings about how you want to be remembered. Do we have any say beyond doing the things that will get us remembered for those things? Without knowing how others will process our actions, we can make memories for others with broad strokes, but can we guide them to think something?

We all do things without knowing how others will perceive our actions. Even the most thoughtful questions can cut deeply, while the stingiest amount of attention may make someone feel amazing.

I hope I’m remembered well, but if Louise Penny has taught me anything, it’s that no one will ever be remembered one way.

The ChickieNob and Wolvog needed trifold boards for a presentation, so we swung by Staples, which meant ducking into the pen aisle because I LOVE pens. I use Pilot’s G-2s, though I am a sucker for an impulse pen purchase. A case in point: the Sharpie gel pens.

“Whoa, Sharpie gel pens. What do you think of them?” I asked.

“I think you have a pen you already know you like,” the ChickieNob said.

“But maybe I would like that pen even more. Maybe it will change my life.”

“It won’t. We’re getting G-2s because you’re holding them,” the Wolvog told me.

I bought them, and then the universe delivered AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE BEST PENS. Sometimes it’s okay that the algorithm knows your inner thoughts.

While I was happy that they acknowledged Pilot pens in multiple categories, there was no mention of the G-2, which is a superior pen. But Sharpie didn’t make the list at all. So there’s that. The twins saved me from pen disappointment.