Introduction

Next month will be my 63rd birthday. It's hard to believe I've lived this long, it sure doesn't feel like it. Older people always say things like that, I heard my own grandmother say it and yet failed to understand what she meant when she looked so ancient with her white skin and white hair, polyester pants and shaky, creaky voice. Now I know just what she meant.

Time passes so slowly at first, a heavy train with churning wheels inching along, heaving to and snapping each loaded car that it's attached to into action, taking years to climb up out of the canyon of youth and finally gather a little speed toward goals and dreams in an unknown future and then hitting a level straight stretch in the middle years, cruising smoothly if one is lucky, hitting rough track or running out of track all together if one isn't. And then the slight decline, the train picking up speed, lighter now because much of the cargo has been spent on the journey, cars have dropped off as family members have gone ahead. This new lightness, while potentially refreshing, is also filled with nostalgia for all that has been experienced on the trip, all of the people, once so alive and loved, now gone, and the once exciting adventure that was set upon with so much hope and joy is now rushing toward the end of the line and who knows what will happen then?

This morning, upon waking, I thought of Stephen and imagined living a lifetime without him. There are no guarantees, I could be dead by the end of the day or last another 30 years or anything in between. That's the trick about life: you don't know how much you're going to get or if any of it will be good or even worth it. I'm at that nostalgia point where all the people I grew up with and loved are gone. All of them and now, so is Stephen. He's been gone almost 29 months. Friday was his third birthday without him and tomorrow will be the third memorial birthday party. I have to clean house today and bake a cake somehow. I have all day today and all day tomorrow. Plenty of time but no time to waste.

Off and on since Stephen died, I've pondered ways to join him. I've imagined jumping from a high place like he did and I've spent plenty of time scoping out likely spots. But I'm not a jumper (but then neither was Stephen and he managed it). Then yesterday I thought of driving my car up into the mountains and finding a nice cliff to drive off, my old car Sybil and me could go together. A few times, I've spoken of acquiring an aneurysm and just dropping dead one day but there's no way to create one of those, you just have to hope. I've also mentioned being first, jumping up and waving my hands yelling, "Pick me! Oh please pick me!", if a gunman walked in to shoot up a place where I happened to be doing business or eating. That seems heroic, like maybe I could save the lives of others if I threw myself on him and maybe even freak him out a little. That would make the news and not seem like a suicide at all. No one would know. Then this morning I thought of tying a plastic bag over my head. I would only be uncomfortable for a few minutes but that's only if I could stand to go through with it and not rip the bag off before I passed out.

The urge to keep living is so strong! Even when there's really nothing going on and every reason to get going, the life inside has a will of its own and insists that it must continue no matter what. Even when you can't imagine going another day without your child alive in this world, you do. You just keep breathing in and out, you keep eating meals and going about life as if there was a point to it all. You keep waking up and upon waking think, shit.

Don't worry, I only have those fleeting thoughts, I'm not going anywhere, at least not on purpose. I have decided to give meaning to my life by writing it all down and I can't go until I'm finished. There is so much to write! It may take me years and although this is the first of it, the beginning of the process, I'm hoping that the act of writing will give twofold benefits: 1) I'll have something the get up for each day, a reason, an excuse, really, for wandering around in my past. 2) I'll get to live it all again, feel it all again, view it all from a distant perspective where the confusion can clear and hidden meanings can be revealed. Maybe I'll begin to understand where I came from, who my people really were, what their motives were, why they were they way they were, why I made the choices I made and why so many events just seemed to befall me.

I can't make the train stop at this point but I can run to the caboose and look back and back and back and try to make sense of it all before the stupid thing falls into a ravine, exploding in a ball of fire. I don't have to watch that part. I can focus on what has gone before and let the train run wild and free. And why not?