In Memory of Jodi DiPietro Fitzgerald
- Uncategorized
There are conversations that arrive softly, but land with the weight of a lifetime.
I had one recently with my father, who will turn ninety next year. His voice was steady, but his eyes carried something heavier than age when he said, “I lost my last friend today.”
Then, with a pause long enough to feel like a silence inside my own chest, he added, “Being the last one alive is a lonely thought.”
There was no self-pity in his tone—only truth. The kind of truth you only earn by living long enough to outlast everyone who knew your stories, your mistakes, your small victories, and your shared jokes. The ones you could call without pretense, who remembered your hands before they shook, your stride before it slowed, and the person you were before the world weathered you.
When my father said, “Outliving your friends is not an achievement,” it felt like a thesis statement for a generation that understood relationships as oxygen, not options. He wasn’t mourning age; he was mourning the quiet rooms that follow it. The thinning of the circle. The absence of the people who witnessed your life in real time.
And then he said something I will never forget:
“We need to take care of our relationships while we’re living.”
Not someday. Not when things slow down. Not when life is finally “in order.”
Now. While people are still here to answer the phone. While we still get to say I love you.
It struck me that grief is often framed around death, but there is a quieter grief that comes long before it—the grief of time slipping, the grief of distance growing, the grief of letting life get in the way of the people we claim to treasure.
My father knows the sound of mortality differently now. He told me, “The clock is ticking louder today than it did in my fifties.” Not out of fear, but awareness. A humbling awareness that time is no longer abstract. None of us know how many pages we have left, but elders understand the book is thinner than it looks.
And then he said the most profound thing of all:
“You will never get more time in your life than you’re supposed to have.”
It wasn’t fatalistic. It was freeing. A reminder that our time is finite, and that the only control we have is how we fill the space between hello and goodbye.
So what do we do with a message like this?
We love our people deliberately.
We show up without waiting for the “perfect moment.”
We forgive where we can.
We reach out even when pride tells us not to.
We appreciate the elders who are still here, still offering wisdom, still reminding us what truly matters.
And we honor the friends who are gone by being better friends to the ones who remain.
As I listened to my father speak from a place of earned clarity, I realized that everything he shared was both a warning and a gift: Life is shorter than we think, lonelier than we admit, and more meaningful when we choose to stay connected to each other.
There is nothing glamorous about being the last one alive. But there is something deeply beautiful about using that perspective to teach others how to live better now.
In his nearly ninety years, my father has given me many lessons.
This one I will carry for the rest of my days.
Take care of your relationships while you’re living.
Because none of us get more time than we are meant to have.
Monica Lucia is the Author of The Final Chapter and a passionate advocate for those navigating grief and loss. She is the Founder of Widow’s Den and Sisterhood of LKN, dedicated to supporting families. In addition to her writing and community-building work, Monica is the Grief and Bereavement Counselor and End-of-Life Doula at EveryStory Partners, Charlotte, NC. [email protected]
Read More from Monica and Widow’s Den
