Stop This Train

In one of my earliest memories, I'm riding in the car with my dad. I have no idea where we're going or why we are going there, but I remember that it was night time and my dad was listening to the Bruce Springsteen song "Born In The USA" over and over on a cassette tape. There's nothing particularly significant about this memory, save for the fact that it involves someone I have very few memories of and that every time I hear that song, I'm right back in that car. I don't know if the occasion was a happy or sad one, but I always get the same feeling in my stomach I get when I'm on a boat or riding in the middle in the backseat of a car; mild nausea and a sense of anticipation.

This random memory doesn't have much to do with anything except to remind me that it's been a year and a half since my dad passed away and I'm no closer to understanding who he was or why he made the choices that he made. What I have realized is that life isn't a predictable scene in a movie where I dig around in some boxes in an attic for five minutes, find a journal, finally understand everything, and have full and instant closure. The fact is that I may never understand anything about my dad. The trick is learning to be okay with it.

Most days I can convince myself that it's impossible to miss something you never really had. Today was not one of those days.

Today I attended the funeral of a friend's dad. He was a great guy, warm and inviting and so enthusiastic about everything that you could always hear him talking from at least two rooms away. I only saw him a few times a year at summer barbeques and at Josh's fantasy football drafts, but he always greeted me with a big hug, like a long-lost friend that he was thrilled to see. He was one of those people that everyone liked; a person the world could use more, not fewer, of. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that he will be greatly missed.

Maybe it was because it was the first funeral I've been to since my dad's, but it ripped the delicately-placed band aid I cover up my grief with right off of me. As selfish as this may sound, I sat in the church unable to stop thinking about my own dad's funeral. I distinctly remember the weather was beautiful that day and I kept seeing all of these people walking around outside, and I couldn't stop thinking that it was just a normal, ordinary day for other people, but I was standing in a stuffy room with my dad's body feeling like the bottom had dropped out of my life. I recognized that same sentiment in the grief-stricken faces I saw today. The only difference between what the family was feeling today and what I felt a year and a half ago is that they were mourning a great man who was always there for them, and I was mourning a fleeting shadow, the fading strains of a Bruce Springsteen song, a person I never really knew and there's nothing I can ever do to fix that.

When I allow myself to really stop and think about it, it's scary that I'm getting to an age where my parents and my friend's parents are beginning to pass away. It seems surreal, and it also seems wrong. Those are the grown-ups, not us. We're all just playing house, but they're the real adults who really know what's going on, what advice to give, and how to make everything right. How are we supposed to carry on in a world without them? I can't imagine life without my mom, mother-in-law, and father-in-law. I hate thinking that it's a reality I'll have to face someday and I don't want any of my parents (birth or in-law) to ever doubt how much I love them. I don't want to make that mistake twice.

So as I stood there today with the snow falling lightly, watching a great man be laid to rest all I could think was this: We all go sometime and no one ever knows when. Don't squander your life. Holding a grudge isn't worth it. If someone wants to apologize to you, or love you, or even just talk to you, let them. Hear them out. You have nothing to lose by accepting people for who they are and not letting your pride get in the way. Take it from someone who turned their back on a person who wanted to offer them nothing more than an apology: It doesn't matter if you feel like it's too little, too late. I didn't hear my dad out and he died, and now I never can. My dad did terrible, hurtful things and I could only focus on that, instead of his regret. And now I'm the one with regret. Don't be me. Turn off your brain and turn on your heart. No one is perfect, stop expecting them to be. Let people love you. Because you might never get another chance.