It all comes down to a singular moment, as the separation between before and after. On one side of the moment, a life full of routine and regularity exists. It contains all the things you thought you knew, the security you thought you had, the love you knew was there. Afterward, everything changes colors, knowledge disappears, so does that security, and nothing looks as right or easy.
The death of a parent is like a thunderbolt thrown by an angry Zeus. My childhood friend, my very first friend, Tim Bauer, lost his father last week. Getting ready for work, his dad Joe had a heart attack. He was 59.
I cannot imagine losing my dad at my age. I guess I can't really imagine losing my dad at any age. My parents just seem immortal because that's how I've always seen them. They'll be around forever I imagined. That harsh falsity came into crystal clear view as I said a prayer over Joe's peaceful embalmed body last night.
I hadn't seen Tim since high school, but we hadn't been as good of friends as we once were since junior high. I cast my grade school classmates away when I entered 9th grade. It's just what I needed at the time. It has been six years since I last saw any of the people I grew up with. I see one or two every now and then and we say hello, but I hadn't spent any time with any of them in that long, and that's what counts. Moving through life as if those years were unimportant or nonexistent was what I made normal. It's sad, now, because I wish I hadn't been so distant from all of them. In the process I cast off the people who knew me at my most innocent. Those people, it may be argued, know more of me than anyone. And look how I treated them. Well, I suppose it wouldn't have been so easy if they had held up their end. We both silently made this decision, me and the 32 others, to go our separate ways.
I had good times back then, and times I tried to forget. I only now feel comfortable again seeing them. Maybe it's because I was forced into it by the passing of a friend's father. Maybe I've felt this way for a while but didn't recognize it. Maybe I'm making this up as I go along.
Joe Bauer was a really great man. My father and he worked together in the seventies, and our families were good friends for a long time. He went to a seminary at one point in his life and though he left the "program," his attitude and spirit embodied the best of those lessons. In recent years, when he would call for my father, and I would answer the phone, he would rope me into conversation for a good twenty minutes. He would ask about me and tell me all about Tim, and it was really nice. I remember going sledding and tobaggoning, going to model train shows at LT, bastardizing a great people through Indian Guides, spending New Years Eve at the Bauers's, playing video games and eating Vienneta. My childhood memories are incomplete without Tim and his parents. It is very sad for such an elemental part of my youth to be gone. He will be missed, but not forgotten.
On a long-enough timeline, none of this will matter. We live, we die. There are great numbers of people before us and after us, and that's even without the dinosaurs. What matters most is how we live and operate on the shorter amount of time in which we have an affect. The Golden Rule. Doing what makes you happy. Being there for others. Listening. Talking. Enjoying what you have and not coveting what you don't. These are all things that make us the people that we are to the people that know us. My life is far from over, and in many ways it is just beginning. Here's to the future, and an evolution of life.
