This weekend I
attended my second funeral in about six months. The first was my oldest
brother’s. The second was for the mother of a college friend. Neither death was
caused by the pandemic but took place during it.
اضافة اعلان
As I departed
to Georgia from
Louisiana, as the plane cut a path through the clouds and came
to a cruise above them, it occurred to me that I was now fully entrenched in
the second phase of adulthood.
It is that time
of life when children begin to graduate from high school or college and leave
home. My own children have now all graduated from college, although the oldest
is now in medical school. They are grown-up now, apart from me, making their
own lives and their own decisions, and I now have to forge a different
relationship with them, an adult one.
This idea of
developing a friendship with your children is foreign, exhilarating, and
absolutely necessary. It is a form of releasing them to keep them, of elevating
them and respecting them.
It is that time
of life when some people’s first marriages die or new marriages are born. I
officiated the second marriage of one of my best friends last year. It
symbolized to me that rebirth is possible, that starting over is feasible, that
not giving up on love is essential.
But this time
of life is also the time when parents — yours and those of your friends and
relatives — grow older and slower, get sicker and begin to pass away. At the
funeral of my friend’s mother this weekend, he told me that the mother of
another of our college friends died a few days ago.
One of my
oldest friends is dealing with a father on the decline, in a nursing home, and
suffering through escalating phases of dementia. Last year one of my best
friends lost his mother.
This seemingly
sudden intrusion of death into your life changes you. At least it is changing
me. It reminds me that life is terribly fragile and short, that we are all just
passing through this plane, ever so briefly. And that has impressed upon me how
important it is to live boldly, bravely, and openly, to embrace every part of
me and celebrate it, to say and write the important things: the truth and my
truth.
I realize that,
according to the odds, my life is nearly two-thirds over, that I have more
summers behind me than in front of me. This doesn’t mean that I’ve grown
fatalistic or even that I feel particularly old. It is just a realization that
the math says what the math says. And as such, I have begun to make certain
adjustments, to change my perspective on my life.
I have started
to manage my regrets and to reduce them, to forgive myself for foolish mistakes
and reckless choices, to remember that we are all just human beings stumbling
through this life, trying to figure it out, falling down and getting back up
along the way. I have learned to cut myself some slack and get on with being a
better person.
I must say that
the pandemic may also be contributing to all this. I have fundamentally changed
during it, been changed by it, like many others I suppose. After I got over the
initial shock of it feeling like the world as I knew it was coming to an end, I
became incredibly introspective, and I didn’t like some of what I saw. So, I
changed it.
I decided to be
healthier, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and I decided that I needed
to make my mark on the world, the biggest, boldest mark I was destined to make,
while I still had time and energy, but also to be thankful for the road my life
had already taken.
I always
remember that I’m a poor kid from a tiny town in the
American South. I remember
the summer when I didn’t wear shoes, the Saturday afternoon trips to the
junkyard to scavenge for toys other children had thrown away, the house with
the leaky windows through which you could hear the wind howl.
As the
performer Dorian Corey expounded in the documentary “Paris Is Burning”:
“I always had
hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower.
Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world. Then you
think, you’ve made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few
people remember your name. Then you’ve left a mark. You don’t have to bend the
whole world. I think it’s better to just enjoy it.”
I have also
decided to just enjoy it. I have decided to be more intentional about managing
and maintaining my personal relationships, to watering those flowers.
When I am gone,
and people remember my name, I want some of them to smile.
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