Reflections on Life

Reflections on Life

 





Most people spend their lives running in circles never thinking about death unless it's to attend a funeral and then only for the time it takes to get through the ordeal.

 

I may think of death a little more than the average person on the street unless they are suicidal just because I have faced it on a few occasions during my first 50 years on this earth. I have experienced what it means to have Cancer, Heart problems, A severe bacteria infection(MRSA) and a couple of life threatening accidents. I have heard people make the statement, "Whatever doesn't kill you. makes you stronger and I am here to call B.S.". While experiencing heart ache, sickness and pain may make you a little more determined to do everything you can to stay alive, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I am not physically stronger than I was before I had my first heart attack or experienced my first heartbreak.

 

As I approach my 50th birthday, I am taking the time to reflect back on a life that while it may not have been the most glamorous has definitely been interesting. I traveled much of the country and had many love affairs in my twenties and early thirties while spending much of my thirties and early forties very deeply in love with the wrong woman. While having spent the latter part of my forties recovering from heart disease and heartbreak, I have found solace in the fact that I am experiencing this alone having had enough common sense to not marry and put a wife and family through all I have had to endure.

 

My father did not afford my mother the common courtesy of walking away when he found that he could not be faithful to just one woman and therefore his wife and three children experienced a life of broken promises and shattered dreams. While we loved my father he never loved us enough to be faithful to our mother nor did he have the nerve to walk away and let us live in peace. It is during times like this that I find myself reflecting not on my own life but on the life my father forced on us. There are things I have done and said that when I look back are a direct reflection of his influence. Things I can never write and only my dearest friends will ever know because of the shame associated with the acts and circumstances. There are many people in the same situation; and while we may suffer in silence I draw comfort in knowing I am not alone.

I think I hold on so tight to the past because it is such an integral part of who I am and I can't seem to let go without losing the memory of my father. People may think it weird and self defeating that on one hand I despise much of what my father stood for yet I have done many of the same things.

( This is going to be one of those post that will be updated periodically because there is so much to write about.)