Most parents keep a book of firsts. First steps, first words, first day of school, first lost tooth, first birthday. The milestones get photographed, captioned, sometimes scrapbooked into a thing you can hand back to your child decades later. They are easy to mark because you can see them coming.

I learned about another book years ago from Fr. Joe Kempf, sitting in a parish seminar I had to attend for my kids’ confirmation. He called it the book of lasts.

No one keeps this one. There is no template, no Hallmark version, no Instagram caption. The book of lasts is the record of every ordinary thing you did with your child for the final time, usually without realizing it was the final time.

The last time you carried them up the stairs after they fell asleep on the couch, the warm weight of them slumping into your shoulder. The last time you read them a bedtime story and they asked for one more chapter. The last time a small hand reached for yours crossing a parking lot, automatic, unthinking. The last time you pushed them on the swing until your arms got tired and they wanted you to keep on pushing for one more minute. The last time the morning drive to school turned into a real conversation instead of a phone screen and a goodbye at the curb.

You do not get a warning. You do not finish that bedtime story and think, that was the last one. The activity simply tapers off, or gets replaced by something else, or stops fitting the shape of who your child is becoming. By the time you notice the silence where the thing used to be, you cannot reach back for it.

My youngest turns twenty-five this year. I cannot carry him or any of my other kids to bed on my shoulder. The visual is funny when you say it out loud, but the truth underneath is not. Somewhere along the way there was a last time I did. The last time I climbed the stairs with one of them asleep against my shoulder. I would give a lot to remember which night it was. I do not. The same is true for a hundred other small rituals that ended quietly while I was busy with whatever felt urgent that week.

Imagine for a moment that you did know. That this morning’s drive was the last one of its kind. That the bedtime story tonight is the final one. You would probably sit inside the time differently. You would listen to the sound of their voice. Notice the way they hold the book. The smell of their hair on the pillow. That is what the book of lasts asks of every ordinary day, even though we never actually get the warning.

The book of lasts is not really about regret. It is about attention. It is the practice of looking at the ordinary thing happening in front of you and recognizing that the window for it is shorter than it feels. Not in a heavy way. Just in the way that makes you notice the moment you are in.

What makes this hard is that childhood is not a sequence of greeting card moments. It is also tantrums, broken curfews, slammed doors, school problems, and the kind of teenage seasons that test every reserve of patience a parent has. The temptation in those years is to count down rather than count up. To wait out the difficulty rather than be present inside it. The book of lasts asks for something quieter and harder: to stay attentive even on the days that are not easy, because some of those days contain a last too, and the difficulty does not exempt them from the count.

There is no method that catches every moment, and trying to catch every moment would probably ruin most of them. But presence is a skill, not an event. It can be practiced the way patience or listening can be practiced, slowly and only by returning to it. The most you can do day to day is keep the idea somewhere in the back of your mind, so that every so often it surfaces and you look up from whatever else you were doing.

The book of firsts ends on its own. The book of lasts is open right now, and the entries are being written whether you are paying attention or not.

So cherish the ordinary day with your kid. The drive, the meal, even the argument. Any of it might be an entry that you would give anything to do one last time.

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The book of lasts is Fr. Joe Kempf’s concept. He returned to it in a recent homily. The frame is his; the reflection here is mine.