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My last two birthdays were great. Phenomenal in fact. Great things happened and I couldn't imagine being happier.
This year? Meh. Technically I don't KNOW what my birthday is going to be like this year since it's a few hours away yet. What I DO know is that I'm indeed feeling pretty meh about it. There's something very disconcerting about reaching the age at which your mother passed from this world. You know, had my Mom been 95 or something I don't think I'd mind it so much. 95, I'd sure as hell be happy and celebrating. But my Mom wasn't 95. She was 49. Forty-nine years, two months and twenty days to be exact. The next time I wake up, provided I'm blessed to do so, I too will be 49 years old. How did that happen? It snuck up on me. Partially in the way it sneaks up on most I imagine. For me though, there's the added element of being the age my mother was when all of a sudden, she wasn't. I've been dreading it for I don't know how long. It may even have started the day she died. I don't know. For all I know, you're probably already thinking I'm nuts and that being the same age as my mother was has nothing to do with anything. And you may well be right. That's because you are a normal person with rational thinking. Me? Not so much. I have irrational thinking. In this case, being that I'm the age my mother was, I need to "get my house in order" because I'm not long for this world. No shit. That's serious business. It's been incessant since last year. Thinking about this year. I've dreaded it so much that when asked about my age I've skipped 49 entirely and told people "I'm gonna be 50." Really? I'm going to age myself a year to avoid the year that is the age that my mother passed at? Who does that? Me. That's who. That's just one example of how deeply messed up I am. It's literally been incessant. I don't remember a time I wasn't at least partially thinking about it. It's also been a rough year in the real world. You know, the one where you rational thinking people live. I'm not even going to bore you or myself to tears detailing the particulars of 2014 being Murphy's Year; I'll just do a quick Wambulance run by: On my birthday I decided to open a business. Opened business. Kris' Mom got sick. Stuff broke. Extra kids in the house. My aunt (my Mom's only sister) gets sick. With Kris traveling to Racine regularly and me traveling to Appleton, money went flying out the windows. Lasted till fall. My aunt died. Kris Mom got better. Then worse. Then her Dad started having problems. Things were getting behind. Closed business. Took care of my aunt's funeral and probate. Blah, blah and blah-bitty blah. Worked, plotted, planned and fortunately got the windows closed on the money mobile. So I deal with that stuff on top of my irrational thinking and well, it's been a rough year. But, not without it's good moments that actually made the bad one's worth it. But the presumed 49 curse has continued to loom. Now all of a sudden it's here. 49. In all it's grim-reapery glory. I am an irrational thinker. Not an idiot. I know the odds of that are like 1 in some number we haven't even counted to yet. Tell that to an irrational mind. All year long the old "get your house in order" crap tormenting me. Especially while I was doing it. Oh yeah. I've been getting sh*t in order. Scaling things down, getting rid of things I didn't need, eliminating debt, making the budget manageable and all of it. Thinking of all the places I'd like to see, things I'd like to do, things I've done and would like to do again. 49 has paralyzed me. I can't find time to do anything, I avoid things that aren't important. I am aware of every single ache and pain and what it could be. Keep in mind, I don't have an irrational fear that 49'll get me in the same manner as my Mom. That's easy. I could just quit driving. Nope, I've got a preliminary list of, ah, two, three things based on different symptoms that I have experienced. It's reliable information. See, I use the Mayo Symptom Checker. Not WebMD. That's garbage. More ad's than information. Very poor platform their website is running on also. Nobody even knows who these people are. The guys that pop up and offer to chat about your ailment with the big banner that says "I'm a doctor, ask me a question!", yeah they mostly look like doctors, but so did Marcus Welby. If you want good, reliable information you have to go to the Mayo Symptom Checker. This is a class operation. Real medical facility. Rated quite well as a matter of fact. Nice campus too I might add. It starts off just like a doctor. What's the trouble? Well then it keeps getting symptoms from you until it narrows it down to one or two completely innocuous things it could be and maybe three or four "hey get your ass to a doctor" things it could be. Ok, now some will argue that 99% of the time it's only showing the serious stuff because you have one minor thing that could indicate that. That's rational thinking. Me? Nope. One symptom of anything that shows up under "could be deadly" and I'm a freakin' goner. Now guess what? 49 didn't do this to me. I've thought like this everyday of my life as long as I can remember and I swear it is maddening. So if 49 didn't do that maybe the rest is all BS too? Nah. That'd be rational thinking. Maybe I have been "getting my house in order" just because the older I get the less clutter I like? Maybe I'm just becoming simpler in what I need and want? Nah. That'd be rational thinking. I can't tell you how happy I was when my band played the other night and I had very little to haul. When we started 5 years ago I had a Suburban packed front to back with gear. A couple years later I could get it all in a mini-van. Then half a mini-van. I've been downsizing for years. Maybe I was subconsciously preparing to let myself take it easy as I get a bit older? Nah. That'd be rational thinking. Maybe the Mayo Symptom Checkers first guess is the right one? Gas. Nah. Then I'd have been scared to death of a fart. Maybe I just think too much? Nah. That'd be rational thinking. It occurs to me as I write that, life makes us think about death. Death makes us think about life. Maybe, just maybe, 49 is the place where those two schools of thought intersect for a moment in time. Nah. That'd be rational thinking. **UPDATE** My birthday went great, nice and low key just like I wanted. But that's not say there was nothing great or phenomenal. Indeed there was. I, me- the hack writer- entered a writing contest. That's my birthday present. I'll keep you posted.
I really didn't have an answer. I've asked myself the same question a thousand times and have never found an answer. I think the story I'm about to write may contain the answer. Generally I write about people, places & things that meant something to me and generally something that was experienced by others as well. For me, I know I like to write things to remember. But what's the point? I have my memories. I don't need to write them down or share them. But I do. One the one hand I think it may be just that I like to share my take on life's experiences. Many of which are kind of universal, some kind of unique. We all have them. Maybe reading my memories & idea's makes somebody remember theirs? Maybe somebody who was directly involved in my experiences have their stories and they like to remember but just don't feel comfortable writing or talking about things. I really have no idea, but there were a lot of people involved in this story who still live with it everyday. Especially today. Five years ago tonight my sister Toni lost her fight to recover from injuries she received in a very serious car accident five days prior. An accident that also took the life of her friend and co-worker Karen. The accident also took pieces of the lives of countless others. Not just Toni's family & friends and children and co-workers. All of Karen's too. Put the pieces weren't taken from just them either. The two truck drivers involved in the crash lost pieces of their lives. Their family and friends lost pieces of their lives. Even emergency personnel at the scene, the doctors and nurses who worked to save Toni and got to know her family during her time in the hospital lost little pieces of their lives. You cannot serve in that capacity and not develop a vested interest in the person you are trying to help. The children who spent their days at the day care center that Karen owned and Toni managed, lost pieces of their lives. For many of those children, Toni and Karen's deaths was their first firsthand experience with death. We all have that experience at some point and when it happens we all lose a big part of our lives. We lose the ability to live, completely unaware of our own mortality. It's a sad day for all of us, but I just see it being so much sadder the younger a person is when it happens. Regardless of when we become aware we're going to spend too much time worrying about what we have no control over anyway. Five years gone and I find myself reflecting differently than I have the past few years. The first couple years it was pretty angry crazy reflecting. Then mostly just sad and somber. This year I feel, I don't know. Ok? I know the people involved closest to me are all ok. We all have our moments, but we're ok. Life has went on. I have whole days I don't even think about the accident and Toni being gone. We all do. And most of us have tended to take this day sort of hard. Not just the day Toni died, but anyone close to us we've lost. You probably have somebody you lost and the day they passed is just difficult for you. Since it happens to all of us, obviously there is a place for it. There's something we get from it. How long should our loved ones last day on earth be a terrible memory for us that makes that day something to dread? Better yet, why should it be at all? There's really only one indisputable fact in this life. That is that it's going to end. For each and every person who ever gives life a spin. The end may come at one second old, it may come at a hundred and fifteen years old, but it's going to come. Whether the time, date and circumstances are all predestined or just happen as a matter of course doesn't really matter, since there's no way to know. But the end comes. Knowing that, wouldn't it be more logical for us to look at that day without dread? Without sadness for circumstances neither we nor our loved ones had control over? Wouldn't our loved ones, if they are aware of our continuing life, feel better seeing us happily and fondly remembering them than being sad and cursing the circumstances and people and things we had no control over? Many peoples funeral services contain words to the affect of "do not remember me in sadness but in joy for the life I lived and the moments I shared with you". Or something like that. Well, even though we get those instructions we sure don't live by them. At least not right away. But if we're lucky, if we're open to letting go of something we wish we had control over but didn't, we can ease up a bit on the harsh words and thoughts for those days we don't like. We can be ok again. There's no way to forget, and no reason to. But there's plenty of reason to remember our loved ones and our time with them with fondness and joy on that day rather than sadness and dread. And I think that's why today, I feel "ok". I'm not having bouts of anger, moments of uncontrollable emotion. Time moves on and thinking about it now, it seems that there always comes a time where it doesn't hurt as much, where it doesn't interfere with your life as much for each person that you lose. Over time you have more pleasant feelings and happy memories that day instead of focusing on what you didn't have control over in the first place. Wouldn't it be great if we could speed up getting to that point? Those we lost would probably be happier with us. If they get to have a chat with us about how much time we wasted feeling miserable about their passing and letting it affect our lives in bad ways, well, my Grandfather is going to have some words for me, and my brother will definitely be hearing it from my Mom. That won't happen though. We all go through, over, under or around losing those close to us in different ways at our own pace. But here's the thing: Part of that sadness and misery we bring upon ourselves because we feel like "that day" is supposed to bother us. We've trained ourselves to believe it's a sad day, a miserable day, a day we wish we didn't have to live through every year. Nobody told us that's to be a bad day forever and anon. It's not even in the Rule Book of Life which doesn't even exist. So, like a lot of other things we're not aware are choices, we have a choice whether to be miserable on "that day" or to remember a life that was part of ours and appreciate what we had. I will never forget what happened. At around this time in the evening every March 3rd for however long I'm aware of March 3rd's, I'll remember my sister Angie and I singing Toni to sleep through our tears while "Arms of an Angel" played through my little I-pod speaker. But the rest of the day I'll think about things like stealing each others records, calling her up at 2:30 in the morning like a raving lunatic and have her sit on the phone with me for who knows how long till I calmed down, wrestling in the basement and for some strange reason playing pool at our mutual friend Janines house in 7th grade. We thought Janines Dad was rich. There's so many memories like that. Too many to waste time reflecting too much on the couple of bad ones. Today isn't a memory of what was lost. It's remembrance of a life lived till it's unstoppable end. A life that intertwined with mine and many others. A life that took pieces of ours with it when it was over. While pieces of our lives left with Toni, many pieces of hers remain with us. And that's certainly a better way for me to feel about this day. If this day were not "that day" this day wouldn't even have a story for me and a lot of others. Hey Toni! Not only do I have the Bay City Rollers record, I also have the Dick Clark record and a record player now. Thanks for making that mean something to me. Thanks for all the pieces you left behind that day. **What this has to do with the answer to why I write these stories is this; I like to remember, but writing I think also helps me figure out where I am and how I got there. Why I let people read them is because maybe some of the leg work I've done on figuring out different life experiences can help someone else get to a better place with their own things. Ok, I'm BS-ing. I just write because I write. |
AuthorThe mad ramblings of a would be writer short on skills, but long on random. Archives
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