If You want to know, you had better ask now

That is a cryptic statement, but it occured to me the other day that it is an important statement which I probably should share with anyone who will listen.

How did this thought spring into the muddled musings of my aged brain? Well, my mind had slipped back into the days when I was 19 and living in Ft Worth during the early days of WW2. I was remembering the guys I had dated and what might have happened to them, and one young man in particular came into my mind.

I can't remember his name at all, but I had met him through my sister and an older lady whom my sister knew and ran around with some. My sister and this woman went to what we called "honkey-tonks" in those days (now called bars) with the men they happened to be dating at the time, and occasionally I would go "stag" with them.

ANyhow, one night the older lady brought her nephew along; he was 21 and very handsome and we started dating. And befoe long, he was sent overseas to Italy as a bombardier in a B17. He flew several missions and on one of them was shot down ------ and I couldn't remember what had happened to him. I was thinking that maybe he made it back home after the war, but I wasn't sure.

Now here is the point I'm trying (not very effectively) to make.
FOR JUST A NANOSECOND, I THOUGHT, "WELL, I'LL JUST CALL MY SISTER AND ASK HER!"

Now my sister has been dead for over thirteen years and I knew that! I was not going to be able to ask her anything about anybody and that knowledge brought tears to my eyes.

And there are a lot of things I wish I had asked her over the years. And I didn't. I'd like to know more about how my family lived before I was born, who my grandparents were, where did they come from, what life was really like during the Great Depression when I was just a child, how did they find strength to cope with what life threw at them while they were growing up.

Now I will never know.

So this truth: If you really want to know something, you had better ask now.