Left to right: Christopher and Nico
December 5, 2014
I woke up at 4 am early Friday morning. It was the day after Thanksgiving and my stomach still had the overwhelming feeling of being full from a whole days worth of over eating. I thought due to that over eating my sudden awakening might have been brought on by indigestion. After all I did consume two meals, from two different households, about six hours a part. That led me to think about which house chef was at fault for my shitty nights sleep.
After mulling around in my mind, for around a half hour, about the different foods prepared from the different cooks in their respected homes, the faces of my family replaced the pictures of food that were floating around in my mind.
There was my sister’s face revolving around my memories of turkey and pies. Even though she didn’t peer much into the dining room while she prepared a thankful dinner, I still remembered seeing her glance up from her heavy cooking, while she made final preparations on her signature dishes that we long for an entire year. We made briefly made eye contact. I nodded my head accompanied by a smile and then looked away towards both my bothers. They were seated on the couch, not too far from me. Their conversation was lingering in the air and I could capture what they were saying. Just like my sense of smell could consume the cooking food from my sister’s kitchen.
My oldest brother had an eye on the football game between his conversations about politics and work. My second oldest brother was trying to avoid the game all together, which is the norm, as he tried to keep the talk about occupational therapy.
All of us our older now, in our 40’s, we’re a little grayer, less hair, a little extra weight and yet we still see us as the same kids who we grew up with. In theat respect, nothing has changed.
I remember us all around the Christmas tree, as children, looking through our gifts. It was a time we still believed in Santa Clause. Of course when we remember our youth now that we are older it all seemed simpler then. We didn’t know death or disease. We weren’t quite sure how the world worked. We were truly innocent in a world of pain and heartache.
My attention turned towards our parents. Divorced now for almost 40 years they still come together to celebrate the holidays with their kids. But now, on this day, they were the ones that seemed different.
My dad, a workaholic, seemed tired, withered and frail. My mom, looked the same in her older age, so I really didn’t put her looks into prospective until I added up her age.
There was a time they seemed invincible. That they were going to be around until the end of time. However, tonight, as I lay in bed and ponder, my thought process brought me to the sad realization, that like my grandparent’s, my parents will pass. My kids will mourn them as I did mine. I won’t have a mom and dad, like how my parents were then. And now my brothers and sister will age, as my parents did, and we will soon fill their shoes as grandparents, and one day they will mourn our loss. So it goes, the circle of life.
But damn that justification didn’t bring me any peace. It freaked me out. I still have the world at my feet. Just starting the prime of my life. I can do anything I put my mind to. But one day, I will be the older age of my parents (I’m sparing them the posting of their age since I would like to live a little longer). And there so many questions I have. Are they scared now more than ever about the ending of life? Not that I would ask them something that could sound so insensitive. Their age is up there; they avoided death all their life by not dying in a plane crash, car crash, war (Vietnam), sky diving, or drag racing, bearing children. But now, time and age, is catching up to them, this they can't survive, aging. But thankfully for them, they seem to be on the path of a long, fulfilling life. And in the grand scheme of things isn't that all anyone can ask for?
Do they worry like me? I’m anxious and I'm not close to their age. Is this a mid-life crisis? Maybe just anxious? I have always been bad when it came to anticipation. I hate not knowing. For instance I have to know the time and I can barely get through a YouTube video without anticipating the end of the video. How will I anticipate turning 60, 70, 80 as I close in on the end of an average life span?!
Laying here wide awake in bed, my mind delved deeper, beyond age, and the anitpation of death but I looked into death itself. Holy shit! I’m going to die. I will cease to exist. And life will go on without me. What’s beyond deaths door? Is death a deep sleep that will awaken us into another life? Is death just a series of endless dreams while I lie in blackness? Or will nothing happen at all. Just a black hole of blankness that I won’t even know is there? Like when I fall into a deep sleep at 9 P.M. open my eyes and suddenly it’s 5 A.M. Is that time in-between, eight hours, an example of death?
In this moment I’m alive but the fact remains that even if I can hide under these covers and not face the day, because the thought of dying numbs me with fear, is right about the time a damn plane could crash through the roof and take me out. And the iroic thing is, I don’t even live close to the airport! I guess “when it’s your time, it’s your time.”
Unknowns suck. Unknowns are only known after the fact and those people who are dead are in the know now. And only they can answers that question. The only thing good about a deep sleep is the experience of a quite peace. However, if there is life after death, where are the billions of people that died before my existence? Why hasn’t there been concrete evidence of a loved ones return? Damn, why am I over thinking at 4:23 A.M.
I only wish now I could release this indigestion revolving in my mind up into the heavens and maybe I could go back to sleep.
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