A cousin of mine was looking for some home video footage of our Grandpa, Fritz Ellis, for a project he is working on. The footage in question is from the Ellis family Christmas in 1986, Grandpa’s last Christmas, as a heart attack took him June 1, 1987 at the age of 58.

I was 14-years old when Grandpa died, and I thought 58 seemed old, now, at 51, I realize that what a 14-year-old thinks is fairly limited in scope and accuracy. One doesn’t know, what one doesn’t know, and at 14, I knew very little beyond playing baseball, pushing a lawn mower, and ogling at girls. Not necessarily in that order.

Watching the shaky home video footage of their little yellow flat-roofed house in Lignite stuffed with clatter and chatter under a wafting and waning cloud of cigarette smoke, I became aware that that wasn’t only Grandpa Fritz’s last Christmas, but it was also the last Fritz and Helen Ellis family Christmas.

One is rarely aware of such finitude in the moment, endings that come and go without a hint in the moment of never coming again. So it goes. Can one become better aware of the end of such moments? Or, probably more accurately, aware of the possibility of the end of such moments?

The ancient Stoic philosophers believed so, and they practiced what they called “premeditation malorum”, or, “premeditation of evils” for us non-Greek speakers. It is also, a bit less ominously, referred to as “negative visualization”, and, as the name implies, it is the practice of visualizing the worst-case scenario that could occur in a moment, prior to engaging in that moment.

Some see this practice as a bit morbid and depressing, but others find that it helps them be more present in the moment, to savor moments more fully, and, in the end, experience a greater degree of gratitude and a much more vivid memory of the moment and those they shared the moment with.

Would I have approached that Christmas differently if I had engaged in negative visualization before loading into our 1977 Ford Econoline and making the half-block journey to Grandpa and Grandma Ellis’s? I’d like to think so, but again, I was a knucklehead 14-year-old, so who knows if there was space amongst my limited cognitive bandwidth for such contemplation?

Side note…back in the 80’s, although Grandpa and Grandma Ellis’s house was roughly two rock throws away from ours (two rock throws at 14-years old…12 rock throws and a doctor’s visit away now), it seems we never considered walking?

Perhaps premeditation malorum is a tool you may find useful in fostering a greater degree of gratitude for moments that may, or may not be, the last of such moments? It’s kind of like dragging your feet on the merry-go-round at recess when the big kids got it spinning a bit too fast.

Premeditation malorum seems to slow the whirling world a bit and bring the faces and moments blurrily flitting by back into some semblance of focus.