Loving being dad, part 2

[chelidon]

Later today I'm going to take a break from work, take the tractor out and plow the road in anticipation of more snow (he said hopefully). I told my son yesterday that I'd pick him up from the school bus today in the tractor and we could drive back to the house together, which he adores.

My partner just called from the hospital where she works. She asked if I would make sure our son is belted in for the ride, and to give him an extra-big hug when I pick him up. One of her patients today is a 16-year-old boy who was skiing and hit a patch of ice, slammed into a tree, and suffered a massive head injury. He is physically alive, but she just had to tell the parents there's a good chance he'll never be right again, may never walk or talk or eat or go to the bathroom by himself.

That kind of thing happens in hospitals, of course. Working acute care, you get a skewed view of what life is like, what is likely or normal. At least a couple of times a week my partner has to be there to help someone die, or tell a patient and/or their family that their case is terminal, help them make decisions for themselves or a loved one who can't swallow or eat about whether to have a g-tube permanently inserted to do feedings, along with other invasive painful procedures, or whether it's time to just let go and say goodbye. Hard stuff. The hardest patients are the infants and small children, those who can't begin to understand why they're going through what they are, the pain and fear and confusion. Often the only medical staff who can deal with those cases are those who don't have children of their own -- it just strikes too close to home.

I worked Red Cross disaster relief for a number of years, for the largest jobs like hurricanes, earthquakes and regional floods, and in a similar way I got a somewhat skewed view of what is likely, what is normal. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, bad, sometimes incredibly bad things happen to you, to your neighbors, to your town and maybe to everyone you know. It makes me intensely grateful for the fact that my own life, so far, has really been pretty damn good. Gratitude is appropriate, I find. There is so much to be grateful for.

I've also had a number of very close friends die suddenly and young over the years, along with those who have fallen victim to disease, and the more typical aging process of older friends and relatives. Losing someone suddenly is the worst, I find. It's so very jarring, there's not even a moment to prepare, to say goodbye, to accommodate to the sudden massive hole in your life. Life is very precious, and it is far more fragile than we like to imagine.

All of these things continually remind me of one of the most important lessons I've learned. It's something of a cliche, but it is one of the truest things I know.

I have three things in my life -- I have my memories of the past, I have this precious golden moment right here and right now, and I have hopes and dreams for the future. But all I really have of the future are those hopes and dreams. There is no guarantee that any of them will come to pass, or that I will be here to see them if they do. So I deeply treasure my memories, and I exquisitely treasure this present moment.

And I treasure every person who I can choose to spend those moments with. Because there are no guarantees, except this. Sooner or later, every single one of us, you and I, will die. I don't dread getting older, or complain about it much, because I figure getting older is what happens to you if you're lucky. Being born, aging, dying, it's the price of being embodied, of having this incredibly precious gift of finite space and time in which to live. Every one of us will be left behind by our family and lovers and friends, until that point where we are the ones doing the leaving.

It inspires me not to depths of pathos, but to passionately seek the pure intense spark of ecstasy wherever it may be found, genuinely living and living genuinely, inhabiting with vigor and pure nowness the ever-present moment. To not, as Mary Oliver said, "...end up simply having visited this world." But to "..say all my life I was a bride married to amazement...the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." To not, as Thoreau put it, come to the end of life and discover only then that you have not truly lived. But to spend as absolutely many of the precious finite moments in this body in this life with people who matter, doing things that matter, living a life that matters.

And that matters. So I will belt in my son into the tractor, I will treasure the big happy grin I suspect he will have on his face, and I will hold him in a big ol' hug for a long time (as long as he will stand it). Because (I hope), I will have that moment with him. And maybe after that, even more moments (I hope). And maybe not. Now is what we have. Now is the time. Do it now.

--Chelidon

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"I like not being dead. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake. My undead cake of livingness."
--~Jhonen Vasquez

Comments

[draiguisge.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Since you've left it a public post, I've just realized I could make it easier by simply posting a link here to the appropriate entry in your LJ. :)