Death and it’s casualties

I remember the day that death finally grasped me by the shoulders and sat me down, not unlike a wise old man laying down some heavy advice to his young prodginy.  It was the summer of 2002 and my sister had casually called me to let me know what was going on, and at that time I had spent so much energy to avoid knowing these things. I had spent months escaping any confines that predicated family. Disappearing from my house like a farts in the wind. I was a ghost who just happened to have a bed. I had never gone to the hospital, never asked a single question, really spent months subconsciously created a timeline without a mom. Some sort of planned attack on reality, guerilla warfare on the future. I created as many memories as I could never once checking the sky to see if it was truly falling. Ignorance can mask pain and stubbornness can delay it. I was a master at both, painting a smile on my face with creativity. So until that call I really had no idea, rather I had so many other ideas that death had been buried far below my vision. It was no different than having no idea a car accident was going to happen all the while driving the wrong way on some deserted road, fate was going to catch up.

The call from my sister, I was almost taken a back like, oh  the treatments weren’t helping? Why would she stop? Death is an option?  Questions I had not entertained because I never asked. Can’t talk about a book if ya never read it. Here I am like a pop quiz reading questions never taking time to understand the material. I remember it washing over me a cool wet wave on a breezy day, it has the ability to give you the chills twice, downing then icing every vein in your body. As reality crested over me, slowly breaking directly over my head, my body had time to brace for the impact. Words, lines, sentences flooded all over rightful punishment for  me as months of indecision culminated.  Yet I swam confidently, unaware of the dangers surrounding me, subservient to laws of nature that really only needed time for it to succeed. As I hung up, I felt safe. Like I had managed the lumps in my throat and pits in my stomach. But I was blissfully unaware of the undertow of her words and misjudged the very current of my own thoughts. At the time I wasn’t even sure why, but I knew I couldn’t be alone and at that moment in that house I was. As some sort of survival mechanism I set out to find a friend before finality would settle in before I get swept under. 

To the house I spent most of that summer, a safe zone from the realities not just for me but for many. I didn’t make a call, I didn’t check ahead I just drove. Drove blindly to a future where I knew someone would be on the other end. Few times in life are there such certainties, life is inherently inconsistent yet at that moment there would be someone there to hold my hand and hear me out. I said one sentence to her that’s all that year had added up to me. I summed up my mom existence in my mind with one phrase. “I think my moms gonna die” and just like that I was buried by that undertow. Forces of nature will always win in any physical match, and no amount of strength to close my eyes would seal in the very tears that needed to exist. Those tears was the very  acknowledgment I had been blinding myself to. No matter how much  I had “put the book down” eventually I had to read the end. All those months trickled down my face like baptismal waters.  Cleansing the soul I had ignored for months. Brazenly thinking I was outside of the impact zone that I could just continue to live a normal life. I needed that moment, I had to be self aware to the fact death causes a wake, ripples in life. Many of us think we are the lake and that pebble dropped in is their life creating waves  selfishly. But really our mortality is that lake and only death creates the waves, death Causes the lake to feel alive, those ripples alert us to the fact even calm waters will erode a rock. 

Understanding at those moments death was inevitable and understanding that her life was important as should her death. Awareness that death creates its own set of casualties and one of those should be our ignorance towards it. I spent a while with a warm friendly embrace and came to terms with my own mortality more than my mothers. I took solace in the fact my time left was undetermined at that point and should treat my life as such. Some would say maybe I forgive to easy, or say yes in moments that others would say no. Maybe looking on the bright side can be a bit annoying, or finding what is right versus what I want hard to follow. I don’t hold grudges and I let things go because the other thing that died that year was my ability to hold onto hate. Instead I look for the good and put myself in situations with this single thought of “if today was your last is this how you would want to feel?”

Also here’s a picture because everytime I post to my Facebook all
I get is a picture of teenage Tim humping my friends 😂

Sorry I took a hiatus from the blog I’ll be much more studious now to keeping it alive. Pun intended.