Three Billion Seconds

My mom begins her journey into her hundredth year on Sunday. She has now breathed the air on this planet for over three billion seconds. Billion is a number that attaches to vast wealth, to the population of China, to far away galaxies and to national debt. But to a single life, how can that be?

 

What lives have been changed by her presence among us? For my sister and me, we owe her our every breath, every laugh, every tear, every sunrise and sunset. For my dad, she stole his heart and kept it tucked neatly against hers until the day he died. For her grandchildren, she is the sun.

 

For her sisters and brother, they were as one being, sharing each other's joys and pain as their own.  For their offspring, she was the glue holding us tightly together.

 

For her students, she taught lessons that went far beyond the reach of any classroom.

 

And for her friends, far too numerous to count, and each one seemingly the most important, she was always a person of substance and compassion to whom they could turn.

 

Emanating from each of the lives she has touched in her 99 years, the ripples have gone far and wide. Her beauty, grace, intelligence, warmth, strength and joy has impacted all who have entered her sphere. And in turn, all she is has radiated outward from each person changed by her very being.

 

So I suggest that my mom may have altered the course not of a few lives, but of thousands, millions or maybe even billions.

 

And thus billions is not such an overwhelming number after all. For, as big as it seems, it all actually starts as just one. My mom.