Saving the Best for Last

My mum used to be a home help – going into the houses of the elderly or disabled to do housework, run errands, and chat to the lonely. One of her clients was a lady who was in her eighties called Mrs Brown. Mum once caught her wobbling on a stool outside the back door, trying to clean the gutters. She was a feisty lady who struggled with losing her independence.

One day while changing the bed linen, mum found a new pack of sheets and pillowcases in the cupboard. She was about to put them on the bed, but Mrs Brown stopped her before she could open the packet. “These are my death sheets,” she said. Apparently, she had bought them so she could be laid out in fine style. Instead, mum had to make the bed up with the old, worn set.

The irony is, Mrs Brown never got to use those sheets. She was taken ill, rushed into hospital, and died there some days later.

If you are from my generation, like me, you may have internalised lessons about the best things in life. They are never meant for everyday use. Instead, you can only wear that frock, or use that room on special occasions. If you were allowed to go into the “best room” (usually on a Sunday) you had to be perfect in your behaviour. You certainly couldn’t fling your legs up on the settee and stretch out to read a book. Horrors!

The best china only came out when we had visitors.

The best clothes were kept for church.

People would even keep their brand-new three-piece suite wrapped in its plastic or covered over with blankets, so it didn’t get dirty. That’s if they even bought something new. I know of too many people who refused to use their money to enhance their own comfort, because they wanted to leave an inheritance for their children.

I still find myself follow those unwritten rules today. I have a wardrobe of clothes that I hardly ever wear. My best stuff, that I use on cruises, hangs in splendour on the rail, while I put on the cheap jogging bottoms and faded stretched T-shirts instead.

I even have a pack of pretty knickers lying intact in my underwear drawer. I’m saving them for the day I get knocked over by a bus, because you shouldn’t have cheap baggy underwear on when you are rushed into A&E by ambulance!

I have some lovely bottles of wine in my wine rack, yet every weekend I pour a glass from the cheap boxed wine in the fridge because I leave the good stuff for some vague future celebration.

I always leave the best until last. Even the food on my plate is categorised so the crispiest roast potato, the cracker with extra butter, and that big spoonful of cream are the last things that go in my mouth.

You can imagine the fuss I made when someone swiped the chip I had been saving off my plate and ate it!

And like many stationary freaks, I have many gorgeous notebooks that I am waiting to use for something special.

The thing is those times may never happen. (I certainly hope the bus accident doesn’t!) There is a finite limit on the days of our lives. If I wait too long, I’ll miss out on the best and like Mrs Brown, will end up never getting to appreciate the lovely things I have been blessed with.

My beautiful clothes, expensive wines and gorgeous notebooks are going to be no comfort when I am gone. Instead of enjoying them myself, someone else will make use of them, and I will have missed out.

Every now and then I need a reminder about Mrs Brown’s sheets.

The chances are, I won’t be changing my eating habits, so if you see a tasty morsel on my plate near the end of a meal, keep your hands to yourself.

However, I am using my notebooks to write my manuscripts. Today, I am wearing a pretty top that has only been used once – and I’m not even expecting visitors! This weekend, I intend to open a bottle of excellent wine and savour it.

Is there anything you are saving for the right moment? A place you want to visit “one day”? Possessions kept back for best? Life is fragile and short. Don’t leave it for a vague moment in the future. Enjoy the things and the people in your life now, while you have breath in your body. Live in the now, not some future that may not even happen. Grab life with both hands and savour it.

If you’ll excuse me, I have a pack of pants to open.