BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE We seldom think we won’t be seeing our good friends tomorrow We take for granted they and we will meet again for sure But what when that is not the case, and all that’s left is sorrow Respect and love left unexpressed, regrets alone endure For everyone we know one final meeting has to be No matter how important they have been throughout our lives The dearest love, the oldest friend, the closest family If we outlive or lose our contact only memory survives And only then, too late, we bring our memories to bear Remember times when we first met, and know the gap they leave Recall their virtues, times of laughter, everything we’d share How sad we only do this after being left to grieve So often we would like just one more chance to meet and chat To express how much we miss them, say how much to them we owe But when that person’s gone and there is now no chance of that The ache of what we wish we’d said just never lets us go We all know this, and yet we trust that this time it won’t matter That we can say tomorrow what we might have said today They know they’re valued, loved or needed, no real need for patter We hope, expect there will be other times when we can say And really we could not go through our lives without this feeling We have to think there’ll be another day, another week So we just leave unsaid so much that we might be revealing Until one day we simply have run out of time to speak John (Pan)