A Big Day
When, Lord willing, I wake up on Sunday May 23rd, 2021 I will be 41 years 10 months and 27 days old.
It’s obviously not my birthday. It’s not the birthdays of either of my delightful children, nor of my beautiful wife.
It is not, to my knowledge, a significant day for anyone in my family. But it is a day I’ve been thinking about for most of the past year or so.
When I wake up tomorrow I will be one day older than my father lived to be.
Here’s the thing:
I expected it to be more dramatic. I thought there would be some kind of existential…moment. And there’s not.
Dad died when I was 15 years old. He had suffered terribly from multiple complications from AIDS and by the time he passed he was 92 pounds…down from a soft-at-the-belly but not unfit 220-ish that was his average for most of his adulthood. He suffered horribly because of ignorance and youth and because of a segment of society that sometimes still views AIDS as some kind of Righteous Punishment. His death was sickening and unfair and despite decades to process it I am still hurt by all of it.
My father had a coterie of wonderful friends who mourned him deeply, remember him warmly, and somehow still have new stories to share every time we meet. I am fortunate to be able to say I have a good relationship with his partner of 10+ years, one of his best friends has become one of mine, and I have learned to understand his absence even though I’ll likely never be totally at peace with it.
I’ll have a thought of “Dad would get a kick out of that” or wishing he could share my joys and frustrations as his grandchildren grew/grow up. And when my son turned 16 (almost seven years ago says my aching back) there was recognition that my time as a parent had decisively out-clocked his…although it was more of a shrug in passing than any kind of cathartic moment.
I wish he had been here. I’ve lived 2/3 of my live without him. I remember him being the life of every party. I remember him drunkenly trashing the living room during a fight with my mother. I remember drinking cheap beer on Castro Street on Halloween. I remember how angry I was when he didn’t make it to my 7th grade play and how guilty I felt when I found out it was because his health had finally failed and he was months-not-years from dying. I remember how shitty my family acted throughout his funeral and how I realized I would only ever again attend mass for the funerals and weddings.
I don’t know if my father and I would be friends, although I think we would. I don’t know how my father would have handled becoming a grandpa, but I’m sure he would have enjoyed the kids. I hope he’d be proud of me, but I’ve found mentors to give me the guidance and feedback I missed from him.
It’s been almost 30 years. I miss him even though I think I barely knew him.
Tomorrow I’ll be in uncharted waters again. All basis of comparison will slip into deeper irrelevance. None of us can outrun the bear (which, in this bad metaphor, is death itself), but I’ll have finally outrun dad.
That ‘uncharted waters’ thing is life, isn’t it? If you’re living at all you’re pushing boundaries and exploring new ideas all the time.
Hunter S. Thompson wrote:
“The Edge...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”
I’ve always liked that…pushing boundaries and finding your limits…although now it’s usually in the context of speech and thought, rather than wind-blind on a bike running 100mph down the PCH at 3AM. In my younger days there was more than one night that only ended when the booze ran out, the drugs wore off, and the adrenaline had finally started to fade. I don’t know if I would have fit Thompson’s definition of a werewolf loony, even in my twenties, but I do know that I’ve lived and I’ve bumped up against some guardrails that the quiet types never get to see.
Today will not involve guardrails or outrageous behavior. Today I’m going to clean my home office, smoke a cigar or two, and grill some burgers. Tomorrow I’ll walk the dogs, visit a sick friend, and check in with a few others. Sometime tonight a moment will pass when I become older than my dad. I’m grateful my family will be with me. They probably won’t know what the occasion is when I raise a glass of Johnny Blue and flip off the Waxing Gibbous moon.
Wish you were here.