Hold The Ones You Love...When You Can

Amazing. Thank you Mr. Hanks and thank you Thomas Horn and thank you Sandra Bullock.

Perhaps it is my connection to September 11 that I get this movie and enjoyed the chance to watch it again.  It came out nearly two years ago and maybe it is still working in EMS response and public safety that this movie speaks to me.

Tom Hanks again and again seems to make me understand complex issues better than I did.  This one makes me think of the times all the people we meet or who we know in our lives who we never say thank you to enough or I enjoy working with you or those nasty words: "I love you".

This movie reminds me that today is the day to say those "I love yous" and regardless of the critics, I give it five stars as a reminder that tomorrow is unpromised. Today is all you have and it would be best to use it to your ability.

I am not suggesting that days should be used for nothing, but personal recreation, but the commodity that can not be returned is time. Once it is spent, it does not return and time that can heal all wounds is terribly unforgiving. Missed baseball games will never be caught again. Missed third grade plays will never be played again and so this movie hopefully reminds us all that while we must move on from tragedy when it strikes, another use of our time might be to go searching for those people who we can connect with on the most human of levels.

We must let go of the need to say "if only" at the unexpected funerals that come suddenly from national or personal tragedy. Too many times I have attended funerals for victims of all kinds of calamity only to hear the wish lists rattled off like a Christmas list for God.

I do not want to wish. I want to go jump in rain puddles with my children. I want to protect them and tell them I love them today. I want go have an amazing meal with my wife and remind her why she is the girl I married so many years ago.

The movie's title is perfect. How loud do you have to be to understand love and be with your family while you can? How does the message get to you. Apparently for most of it, the message has to be extremely loud and incredibly close, but I got the message. Loud and clear.