In movies, the death of a loved one usually leads to profound insights and observations by those left behind. Of course, it doesn't work that way in real life. Nothing in real life is as neat and compartmental as things are in the movies.

Life comes and goes in minutes and seconds. There, that's my big insight. That's all I've got. It's stupid and cliched and horribly unoriginal, but it's probably the best I'll ever come up with.

Life comes and goes in minutes and seconds.

My maternal grandfather is in his late 80's. He's been in bad health for years. My grandmother died after a fourth bout with cancer eight years ago, and now my grandfather is dying. He's been in and out of the hospital with kidney problems, vision problems, bad circulation, etc, for years now. Most recently, he came home from the hospital, under hospice care, last Friday. His doctors told the family that he might have a month to live. I was going to go visit him today, but he's in a deep morphine-induced sleep, and has been all day.

Today, his hospice nurse told my aunt "We don't have a month. We're down to a few days."

I live about five minutes away from my grandfather, I have for three years now. In that time, I think I've been to see him twice. There was always something else more important to do, or something that needed to be done.

There was always something I'd rather do. There was always another use for my minutes and seconds.

Last year... in fact, almost exactly a year ago... I got severely burned at work and had to spend a few nights in the hospital. On my second night there, my grandfather was checked into the room right beside mine. That night, I went over to his room and sat with him and we talked for about an hour. We talked about the same old stuff we always talked about on the rare occasions we saw each other since I've been an adult. We talked about God and uncles and aunts and cousins, and we talked about the paper-mill where I work, I told him about the burn I'd gotten there, and he told me to be careful.

My grandfather worked at the same paper-mill where I'm employed; the same paper-mill that has provided jobs for various other members of my family. When I was a teenager, I dreaded eventually being sucked into that mill and ending up doing nothing with my life; ending up as tired and beaten and short-sighted as everyone around me. I went to work in radio, instead. I spent eight years working at this radio station and then that one, living in different cities in the 150-or-so mile radius around home. For someone so hell-bent on getting away from this mud-puddle of a town, I always found myself coming home on the weekends, spending my time with the same old people in the same old places, doing the same old nothing.

I guess I was in my mid-twenties when I decided that the same-old-nothing was really what I wanted to do with my life.

My last job in radio was as a program director, saddled with more work and responsibility than my 19 thousand dollars a year really justified. The money was never the focus in radio. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, living two hours away from the only "nothing" I really cared about, unhappy and alone, drinking heavily and feeling sorry for myself, I could no longer remember what the focus ever had been.

In the early 90's, I decided that I wanted to move back home and go to work at the paper-mill. The same paper-mill that had employed three generations of my family and left them broken, tired, short-sighted men. I no longer saw it as a horrible fate to be avoided at all costs. Now, I saw it as my birthright. When I moved home, the paper-mill wasn't hiring. It took six years of waiting and working whatever job I could find before I'd finally get the job I'd once sworn I'd never want.

Be careful what you don't ask for. There's another big insight.

I got on at the mill, eventually bought a house five minutes from where I grew up, and fell into the shift-work routine. Basically, when you're not at work, you're at home asleep, or trying to sleep. You don't see as much of your wife and kids as you'd like to, and when you do, you're usually tired and sometimes short tempered, and it seems like you're always waiting to do something instead of actually doing anything.

Waiting to go to work. At work, waiting to go home. Waiting for my monthly four-day-break so maybe we can take a trip, and then waiting out the drive back home. Waiting in line at Wal-Mart to pay for groceries. Waiting with a sick kid at the doctor's office or waiting to see the doctor, myself. Waiting for weekends when I have visitation with my oldest. Waiting for the prescription to be filled. Waiting for the next pay-check.

But, I pay the bills and feed my family (and feed myself, too, and far too well), so I have been happy. I'm still happy. I've come to share my grandfather's "short-sighted" priorities. The paper-mill is important, but only to the extent that it enables me to provide for my family.

So, a year ago I got burned and spent a few nights in the hospital, and it was there that I had what I suppose will be my last long talk with my grandfather.

When I was a kid, of course, I thought the guy was a giant. When I was a kid, back when he worked at the mill, I thought he was indestructible. Then I was a teenager, and I thought he was a foolish old man. One year ago, I sat in his hospital room with him, looking at this frail old skeleton he'd become, realizing that his time was running out, realizing that there were things that hadn't been said yet, things that probably should be said, but unwilling to really think about that.

I've been unwilling to think about it ever since.... and, of course, I've been telling myself that I've been far too busy to go see him.

At least I had a few minutes and seconds for him that night in the hospital.

(Thank you, God, for letting me get burned that night at work. Thank you so, so much. I can't express how grateful I am for that right now. Having that burn scrubbed hurt like absolute hell, and I wish I could go through it a hundred more times. A thousand more times.)

Really, it's all just minutes and seconds.