This Tuesday will mark five years since I posted “Make A Hole” on Facebook. It came after a post where I said it was time to make like Barry Allen, who some of you will recognize as being the name of The Flash.
Five years since mom told me the docs weren’t sure if my father would live through the night. I remember taking the call in the car, outside of a Kroger in Southlake and then racing home.
I remember staring at flights trying to decide if it made more sense to spend $600 or $800 on a last minute ticket. It was hard trying to decide just how fast I could get to the airport and whether I would make the flight.
Thought about some of this because Facebook memories have been rolling out the comments I made way back when while I tried to process all that was going on and because I received two emails notifying me of my maternal grandfather and my dad’s yarhtzeits.
They fall within a couple of days of each other and given they are buried in the same cemetery I’ll probably visit them both on the same day.
The younger Mr. Wilner and I talked about the last time he saw his grandfather and I remembered again how they said goodbye to each other.
Won’t ever forget that moment and so we come to the place where I think about recent conversations with people in which we ask the question of who we are today versus who we were.
Conversations I Need To Have
I told the younger Mr. Wilner about various friends who have gotten divorced and others including myself who have been through major life changes.
“Sometimes in your early twenties you look at the adults around you and think they know exactly who they are and what they want out of life.
But what you don’t know is sometimes we aren’t certain either. Sometimes we look back and try to remember who we were at 25 or 27 and what we thought we wanted. We look and try to figure out if we took the right path and or whether we ought to make changes.
It is not always clear.”
And I thought again of conversations with his grandfather and shook my head because he would be so proud of who his grand kids have become. He would be impressed to see their accomplishments and to look upon some of the challenges they have overcome.
I thought about the very honest conversations we had and how I told him about plans for some important conversations I intended to have.
Some of those have happened and some will happen.
I remember him talking about timing and circumstances with him and his assuring me that I would figure some things out.
“There aren’t any other options are there.”
He smiled and told me that sometimes life requires us to do hard things. He was right.
What Comes Next
There were a couple of moments today that I wish I could write about in detail but there are boundaries in blogging.
Told the younger Mr. Wilner about one of them and he laughed and told me that he wouldn’t ever bet against my in this particular situation.
I said I never forget there are people who are smarter and more clever than I am and he gave me a solid reply.
“Smarter and cleverer don’t mean you won’t get outplayed and outmaneuvered.”
Somewhere his grandfather is smiling. There are all sorts of things moving now, going to be very interesting to see how it all turns out.
