“I’ve seen good times come and go and I’ve seen bad times drag on”*
Posted on December 19, 2006 - Filed Under Uncategorized
*”Guitar Man Upstairs” by DBT.
I remember visiting my aunt in Baltimore some years ago. I don’t recall what year it was but I know John Paul II was Pope at the time because Christmas Mass was on the television and he was presiding. It feels as though I was a young boy but in doing the math, it becomes evident I must have been in college at the time. My aunt, her husband, and my cousin were living in a row house on Ramsey St.; they had a little dog whose name escapes me now. My cousin was just a little guy then, a baby I think. We saw much more of my aunt’s husband in those days; now, he seems to be almost completely absent due to work. I remember they had stairs between the living room and kitchen.
One night during that visit, my grandfather suffered some sort of medical emergency and had to be taken to the hospital. Well, it happened again tonight. While tonight’s episode was not nearly as serious—it seems to me that the previous incident was something related to his Parkinson’s and tonight was a simple fall from a standing position in which he most likely just bruised a rib—it nonetheless unleashed a dam of memories. I think he’ll be fine tonight and that the bruises will be felt more in his and my grandmother’s minds than anywhere on his physical body.
This thing of being human is wrought with pitfalls. Not only do we complicate it with all kinds of crap, but we also must endure the legitimately hard things. Someone who’s body insists on not playing along any longer must suffer the ins and outs of that; those who love that person must also see their way through all of the darkness surrounding such inevitabilities. It’s kind of like the saying regarding lies, ‘what a tangled web we weave…’ One needn’t tell lies to weave such a web; all of the emotions and raw experiences life presents often make for hard times.
I’m sorry if none of this makes much sense or seems to lack a distinct purpose. A little while ago when the paramedics left, followed by my aunt and grandmother, I found myself here in the house with my sleeping cousins, sensing there was something profound about the moment and wanted to make sure to capture it. Alas, I evidently cannot pinpoint the exact profundity. Obviously, it could be the slow evolution of life toward the most certain of outcomes or perhaps how memories fade only to be reinvigorated by similar circumstances or how we change as time passes, past forms of ourselves remaining only in the shadows of our mental caves. Addressing the first and last, I was a young boy the first time, young in mind and understanding, not close at all to the nature of living things. I don’t know if I’ve lessened the distance; I certainly hope so.
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