If you are among the happy campers who keep score of things using what you call “social proof” you’ll be happy to know I got a bunch of likes, a sad face and a couple of angry emoticons.
Granted I don’t care much about such things, if at all and I figure the important question to ask is “did you earn the angry emoticon?”
What is the point of getting into trouble if you didn’t have a good time?
If you are going to face consequences it ought to be measured by risk against reward.
So did I earn the angry emoticons?
Nah, not really but I only care about one of them and that is just sort of because I don’t think it was meant in a mean way.
Did that last line sound like a teenage girl talking to her friends or a woman talking to her friends?
The answer is both.
Yeah, I know some of you will call that sexist but I am in what some of you would call a mood and what I term as looking for trouble.
I am trying to take that edge off so that I can relax, but it is not happening as fast as I need it to.
Got to get some relief.
It starts here and then moves into me really belting it out.
That is what happens when you wrestle with some things. When you struggle to figure out where your equilibrium went and you want to put your arm through the wall up to your elbow because that worked really well when you were a teenager.
Confession: I am curious to see if I can still do it and if maybe this time I can get to my shoulder.
I won’t do it because it is not worth possibly getting hurt or the cost of repairs, but I am curious. That is really what drives this more than anything else.
A desire to figure out who I am becoming and what is left of me. A question of how long can I hold off time and maybe even beat it.
Because as silly as it may sound to you, maintaining my physical abilities is a big deal. I don’t have to be able to run as fast as I once did but the brute strength I have always had, well I can’t imagine not having it.
Did I mention I am trying to work on my flexibility so that as I age I will continue to be able to move without having to include sound effects every time I stand, sit or move in unusual ways.
Anyhoo, if the old man was here I’d tell him I am doing the best I can and that even though I may struggle a bit I am secure in my ability to manage it all.
It is like when I told a girl that if she kissed me there would always be sparks. That never changed because some chemistries never change.
A match can always start a fire and my confidence in my ability to manage this time is based upon having been through much tougher situations.
This is painful, but I have been doused in gasoline and danced in the fire so I’ll be good here.
Just give it time.
Some of you welcomed me to the club and said it is a special kind of pain and you were right.
I find myself wondering if it would feel different if dad had been in his nineties and wonder if people who lost their parents at ages much younger than dad look at me and say the same.
The guy who died at 54 instead of 74 is in a different class not that we ought to compare pain, but when you explore thoughts and ideas sometimes such things come up.
Given the entirety of the situation I come back to the same places and spaces where I look at my father’s life and smile.
Because he saw all of his children grow up, get married and met all of his grandchildren. He was a grandfather for more than 18 years and a father for almost 50.
Mom and him passed their 50th wedding anniversary in 2017 so he had a good long marriage on his list of accomplishments too.
That is a pretty good resume.
****
I’ll close with something I wrote in 2017 that I suspect people think I wrote today about my father. I came during a moment of frustration and introspection.
Came after I had slipped on icy stairs and dislocated my finger and the sense that it could have gone much worse. I could have broken my neck, but we’ll save that for a different day.
He was true to his word and never let us know when he had chosen to leave. One moment he was in our lives and the next he was gone.
He had become the shooting star he had always wanted to be.
For a brief moment in time he lit up the evening sky and filled the moments with magic and then just as quickly the sky was dark and the night was quiet.
Once we had asked him to reconsider but he shook just shook his head no and smiled.
****
And when the time came for the final goodbye and all of the excuses one could use to stop time just a moment longer were of no more use he shrugged his shoulders and gave us one last smile.
One last look lingered upon each of us and then the everlasting moment was done and so was he.
We never saw him again and though he had always said we’d meet again in this world or the next none could say for certain if that was so.
