The Mind Has Mountains

Well over twenty years ago, I made a mistake. It wasn't my first, and it certainly wasn't my last. This one, like so many others, was well-intentioned. It also resides completely within my own heart and mind. It is something which has been part of my psyche since the late-nineties, but today it envelopes my thoughts to a fairly large degree.

Allow me to explain.

My dad died twenty-six years ago today. He knew he was sick for almost the last year of his life. During that time, I would visit with him, in an attempt to finally connect with him on a deeper level. It didn't really happen, and there was a lot of anger and resentment on my part about it for a long time, but now I'm glad to have at least made the effort.

The mistake? On one occasion, while at my grandma Callie's house on a Saturday, there with my dad, his wife, Denice, and their son, Dillon, I decided to make a concerted effort to emblazon upon my brain  a particular moment in time. I knew that Lewis likely wouldn't survive the year, and that I would, for the first time in my existence, be in a world where my dad was no longer living.

So I took it upon myself to make a point to remember him, to take special note that, in that moment, he was there, and that the moment wouldn't come again. I was sitting on grandma's living room floor. Dad was laying on the couch. Dillon, then two-years-old, was busy pulling Lewis's socks off his feet. Dillon  was giggling with delight about it. Dad smiled, faintly, while watching him. I began to consciously take-in the moment.

I studied Lewis's bare feet once the socks were off: the veins, the toes, the shape of his foot. I watched his face, took note of his every twitch, movement, and facial expression. I looked at his hair, his eyes, his ears. It was imperative that I recognized that Lewis was living then, because I knew, sooner rather than later, he wouldn't be, and it was important to appreciate that reality.

Now, years later, it's obvious that was all a mistake, though perhaps that isn't the right word? Misguided, maybe? I dunno. What's obvious now is that the moment, like pretty much every other moment in my life, is now just another memory. I knew Lewis for twenty-one years. He's now been gone for twenty-six years. All he is, is a memory. That's all any of us will be at some point. Like the old Scottish proverb goes, "... you're a long time dead."

What fully makes me realize how naive I was back then is that it isn't even a memory that I recall very often. Indeed, it only weighs heavily with me today because of it being dad's death anniversary. It is simply one of a myriad of echoes that are collected in my consciousness. The memories that most frequently come to mind about dad are of the bicycle rides he and I used to take together on warm summer evenings; of watching TV with him and my mom in our living room at the Draper St. house; of the time he tried to have us do a father/son bonding outing with the Cub Scouts, and I threw a fit about it and we went home; of the occasion when I showed him a drawing I'd done, and he crumpled it up and tossed it aside because I'd had the temerity to place it in front of the TV Guide he was reading; and, of course, the many times he disciplined me and I was scared of him.

Looking at him one Saturday while he was dying of cancer barely registers in the collection of memories my mind has accrued about him.

So, I guess it was a mistake? It was certainly misguided to think it possible to will a moment into importance. It either is or it isn't. Our own psyche will decide that for us. It's something I've learned over the years, that is both a hard life lesson and also a reassuring realization: Our lives are what they are. A lot of what ends up being important to us will become clear as time goes on, and as our minds create new vaults of stored recollections. It is a hubris-induced mistake to think we can determine the priority of what those remembrances will be.