Uh, NoNoNoNoNo

Sun., Mon., Tues., Wed., Thur.,
Nov. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 2008
Meters; 0,000.00
Time: 00:00.00
Strokes per minute: 00-00
Total Meters Rowed: 0,000.00 + 118,346 = 118,346

Well: No! NoNoNoNoNoNoNo! And, man, should I have seen this coming or what? I followed up my time-trial “triumph’ with five straight days of abject, not-quite-getting-to-it failure. Was going to Sunday before church (didn’t even have to get up early!). Then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Just couldn’t pull myself out of bed. Just couldn’t. Put the clothes out on the floor every night. Best of intentions. Just couldn’t. That this came in the wake of my first time trial and all that YesYesYes-ing and self-congratulationing … yeah, should of seen that coming. I DID see that coming. Of COURSE I blew it off. I DESERVED it.

And I shoulda got a row in on Monday if only because it was my 56th birthday, and I usually make a point of breaking one off on that day — especially now as each passing date pushes me futher and farther from Dad’s 50 years. Yes, I am keeping track. Of course I am.

So a few updates in the interim.

One very sad note I have been meaning to write down. In late October a woman in our development, this retirement community where we’re living in York, died when an electrical outlet shorted out in her bedroom. She was asleep. She required a walker. She never had a chance. The news sent a shudedr through this entire community. EVERYONE I saw for the next few days asked the same question: Did you hear? This is a retirement community for the completely ambulatory, the fully independent. Still this could have happened to anyone of them. (Anyone of US, I should say.) Mom lived her for six years. I can NOT imagine getting the call that this women’s children must have received. What we liked so much about this place for Mom was how much SHE liked it. How for the first four, maybe even five years, it was such a good fit. To have gotten a call like that — all the while thinking it was all working so well — I would have felt so cheated, so wronged. No, wait! A fire and she couldn’t get out and she never had a chance? After we went to such pains to get her in there in the first place, into a situation that worked so well. Yes, elderly parents die. It’s not supposed to happen like this.

Related topic: On November 8 my parents would have celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary. Would have. Geez, they didn’t even make it to 22. That’s what happen when the husband dies of a heart attack at 50 years of age. The rest of a life together doesn’t get lived. If only … I remember once Kathy and I talking about that, how Mom missed so many years with Dad. We couldn’t help can’t but wonder … if only he had lived. And Kathy started laughing. You know what, she said, even if he had lived, he’d still be dead by now. Meaning the cigarettes, the genetics, his penchant for driving himself in his job, it was going to get him sooner or later. It just turned out to be a lot sooner than even a little later.

All of which has got me thinking about Mom living without Dad. Specifically how in all those years (38, for those scoring) she never once– I mean NEVER ONCE — asked me to accomodate my life to hers. How she never, say, made my wanting to go off to Alaska after college, or when we later moved back East to Brooklyn (and not York) about how it (, well, OK, I) was leaving her alone. She always always always allowed me my own life. She never made me feel guilty.  And so subsequently I never did feel guilty. These words here written aren’t about me feeling guilty either. Honest. No, call it wistfullness. But I am realizing only now, living here, talking with all these retirees out walking their dogs, exactly what all it took for Mom to do that .. all the time. And only now am I realizing how much I should have appreciated that while she was still alive. It wouldn’t haver move me closer. But it would have moved me to tell her.