If I Knew Then What I Know Now

The stealth and the speed with which the past can creep up and pounce at you,
and the lucidity it can lend each of your senses, is baffling.
In relation to retrospect, the present is blurred and muffled, 
but we are so used to it that when we are hit by a memory, the clarity is blinding.

Two weeks ago, a father of a close friend suffered his second heart attack in one year. When the news found its way back to me, I was instantly brought back to 
the first of his hospitalizations. When I saw him again, I couldn't believe he could
have any health concerns. He was in excellent shape, and his eyes and smile
glistened with a contented, calm vivacity. He was the visual opposite of my own father - while my friend's father became a dad much young than the average man, 
my own dad qualifies as an 'older father,' having been 32 when I was born. 
My friend's father has a charming laugh and a contagious smile. 
My father doesn't joke as much as he used to.
My friend's father wears t-shirts and sneakers.
My father opts for dress shirts and unkempt hair.

So I stared at him a while longer, head swimming with doubts, unsure if it would be
right to bring it up. Eventually he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and asked me how
school was going. The small talk bounced from party to party a while, and in an 
opportune moment of silence, I asked how he'd been.

An unspoken understanding grew between the two of us, and he gave me a not 
insignificant smile and nod. "I'm fine."

Hearing about his second cardiac, Iwas dragged backward in time to that awkward  conversation, and with the sobriety I now possessed, I could see things I didn't originally 
consider. He was a single parent, a widower, with a difficult kid. He was wealthy, but he was addicted to profits. Like a workaholic, he bought and sold in incessant 
repetition, desperate to add to an already sufficient empire. When not working,
every ounce of his time was put into pleasing a son who already had everything he needed.

My father was old but healthy, with a list of goals that he could reach, and die a happy man. My friend's father, beneath the jokes and smile, longed for things he would never 
obtain, and was trading his youth for these trivilaties. 

He was never going to accomplish his goals, and so his body wove the white flag. 

It was going to self-destruct. 
It was going to smother his heart. 
It would force him to slow down, or die trying.

I hate to look back and see things like that. Why couldn't I see them the first time, and
save myself the grueling learning process? I'm constantly thrown back into memories of
my grandfather: playing games, watching TV, learning and helping as best I could. I
enjoyed the time I spent with him like any little kid does, but I wish I would have
appreciated him more. I wish  I could have been the one child alive with
a considerable amount of foresight, so I might have pieced his fate together before it
claimed him.

Maybe, by some slight shift in the universe, I might have been able to change him.

Sometimes, on a motiveless whim so characteristic of children, I'd follow my grandfather
down to the basement, and watch him pack and roll his demise in neat little paper rolls.
He even taught me how the process was done, and I'd offer to help him roll each cancer
stick, while we chattered over those trivial things I found so interesting. I have to live
those moments in burning clarity, and resurface in the present tense with nothing more
than water in mylungs. It's everything I can do to remind myself that I was only a kid, 
and to just appreciate seeing him again, however painful the reunion.

reflecting

Human beings are mother nature's unwanted, bratty bastard children, and we will grey her hair and hollow her face and eventually, inevitably, be the death of her.

I have my flaws - an ever-absent accent, an honest sense of humour, my father's cynicism, my mother's skepticism, an imperfect complexion, sturdy ankles and expressive eyes. I'm volatile and my heart's too big. I can't focus well and I hum and sing too often. I use my brain a lot. My memory is selective and deceptive. 
Thanks for the reminder, but I haven't forgotten.

I've been bored. My mind's been wandering, and if I was preemptive, I would think to carry a notebook with me. At the most random times, I have moments of clarity or something like it, and I am inspired and my train of thought chugs along for hours if it's quiet enough. I think I'll remember every thought, but I never do. If I wrote them down, I could most definitely write a book (at least one); they're that golden.  It's unfortunate that I'm so careless when I'm thinking so vividly.

I learned last week that my great-grandfather did not, in fact, die of a heart attack. He put a bullet in his brain. As effective a death as any. His wife, my great-grandmother, lived to be 100. She went blind and saw snow, forgot the face of her son, and lived alone 364 days a year.

I plan on killing myself (dying happy) at the very first sign of senility.

With the right publicist, I could pass for average.