By Sarah Sanchez

I’ve experienced a lot of deaths of friends and family members in the last few years, but the hardest death I’ve had to deal with was when my grandma passed away recently. I was very close with my grandma and saw her every week for the last few years. She was admitted to the hospital right before she passed. It seemed as though she had signs of dementia, and she would scream, yell, and not recognize me when I visited her. It was hard to see her that way.

We were told that she was getting better and that she should be okay, but a few days later she passed away. After her passing, my aunt told me that on the second-to-last day of my grandma’s life, my grandma kept calling out my name. Not only did she remember me, but she was asking where I was. I wasn’t at the hospital on the day she was asking for me because I was “too busy” to visit her that day. Now that she’s gone, there is nothing that could’ve been more important than to be with her that day. There is nothing that could’ve been more important than to say “I’m here grandma.”

How many times have we used the words “too busy” when someone asked us to do something? Maybe you were too busy to hang out with your kids. Maybe you were too busy to listen to your spouse’s story. Maybe you were too busy to visit your parents. Or maybe you were too busy to just spend time with your family, phone free.

My grandma’s passing changed my perspective about being “too busy”. When my family decided to hold a last minute brunch to celebrate my grandpa’s 80^th birthday and my other grandma’s 70^th birthday, there were plenty of excuses to keep me from going. For example, I had to go to work, I had errands to do that day, I didn’t have a gift, I was an hour away, and I still needed to get gas. It seemed like I was just “too busy”. But still, I decided that I needed to be there. So I rearranged my schedule, picked up a card, got gas, drove the hour to Long Beach in the middle of the day, and spent time with my family. Lo and behold, it ended up being the best decision I made all day.

There are 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, but we can’t make time for our families? Work will always be there, errands can wait a day, but our loved ones will not be alive forever. So next time you have an opportunity to be with your family, rearrange your schedule, do everything you can to be there, and then cherish that time you have with them… because we should never say we are “too busy” for our families.