Michael F. DuBois

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of money. What it means, why it means what it means, and why it is in our lives. Going to an art school and having a wonderful, hardworking family that supports me, I get the lucky and rare opportunity of being taught how to make art work that makes me happy, rather than just having to worry about making money. However, I realize that this is a very rare case in our country and in our world, and so it has caused me to think. Our world is run by money. Living in Boston, I am reminded every day of what happens to people that don’t have money, of what my life could be like if I don’t work hard enough or end up having a lot of misfortunes during my days. It is something that is on everybody’s mind today. How will they pay their bills, how will they support their families, and in some cases, how will they get their next meal? It’s all a part of life now, all of those questions, all of those thoughts, and I am starting to become more aware of this with every second that I grow up. With all of these worries however, I am reminded again that hope works in mysterious ways.

My Grandmother.

My Grandmother  is older, she has finished up all her days of living independently and is now in a nursing home. Luckily, she loves it there. As we go through life, we are taught lessons that we are supposed to carry with us throughout our days. If there is one lesson I will remember while lying on my deathbed some day far from now, it will be the one she has taught me.

One evening, after driving her back to the nursing home from our family Christmas party, I was getting her settled into her room. All of the normal things, I took her coat, hung it up, made sure she was comfortable and had everything she needed. But as I was leaving she turned to me, held my hands, and looked straight into my eyes. She had a look in her eyes, one that I will never forget. Not a look of a woman who was old, or confused, or even tired, but the look of woman who was about to tell me the truth. She looked at me, and said “I love you so much”. That’s it. That is all she needed to say, and I understood. Those simple five words explained to me everything that I had wondered about for so long, and everything that I would need to know in years to come.

She lives in a nursing home. After all her years of working, supporting her family, struggling, worrying, and wishing, just as all people do, she was here. She doesn’t have to think about her money, doesn’t need to worry about cooking or cleaning or anything of that matter. All that matters to her, all that she needs to think about, is her family. When we leave this life, when we die and pass on, nothing that we own, nothing that we have bought, will travel on with us. On that day when we finally pass, when its our time, the only thing that is going to matter is what we did to the people we loved while we were alive. Now I hope that I will have a long productive life, but the truth is, I may die tomorrow. We all may die tomorrow. We really don’t know when our time is, and in the end, no matter how much we are worth or how much we own, nobody can hide from death. What does matter, is that while we are alive, right now, we can affect what happens on the day that we do finally pass. By opening up your heart, by allowing yourself to let other people love you, even in the hardest of times, we can all be rich, no matter how much money we have. And on the day we die, when our final thoughts quickly flow through our heads and through our hearts, we will be able to relax and smile, knowing that our presence in this world has made a positive impact on thousands, maybe even millions of people.

Although we may not have the power to make millions of dollars, although many of us will struggle to make the next pay check, and although that may never change, we still have the power to open our hearts, as long as we allow them to open. Without my Grandmother’s love, I may not have been able to realize this and share it with all of you, and all of you may not have been able to share it the ones you love as well, and so on. Just by opening her heart, my Grandmother may have positively affected all of you, and all the ones you love, and all of the ones they love as well.

It’s nice to know, that in the end, love does still win.