Many of you know by now that there will be times when I don’t do a hockey blog, when events that happen “in real life” overcome that which I would make a career out of if given the chance. This is going to be one of those months.
I didn’t do a blog last month, in spite of the Penguins making a lot of changes. I could write something about it, but the truth is I’m not sure where I’d start. I think the Penguins damaged their reputation around the league for handling Dan Bylsma the way that they did. I think they put Ray Shero’s firing through a staff of badly qualified Public Relations people, and hoped people would buy what they were selling. For the record, I always think the truth works best.
This isn’t going to be a conversation about that. No, this is going to be a conversation about self-realization and awaking mentally. As many of you know, we’re approaching the anniversary of the date that I lost my mother. I’m sure some of you feel I talk about it on here ad nauseam, and for those of you who do, I make no apologies. Like last year around this time, I find that my mind recalls memories a lot. Last year, it made me mess – those memories haunted me, even the good ones. That tends to happen when you lose somebody who was a big part of your life.
This year has been different. I had an aging family member who got pneumonia really bad at the end of May. Let me emphasize the word BAD. Bad as in they went to the hospital on a Friday morning with a small spot on one lung and by Sunday morning had to be rushed by ambulance to the hospital, with both lungs full of pneumonia and subsequently spent the next three weeks in Intensive Care. Fifteen of those days spent on a ventilator. In the attempt to eliminate the pneumonia, they did a number on the kidneys with the medications they were giving. That led to dialysis, at least temporarily. For the first time since my mother died, I thought I was going to lose somebody else that was close to me.
Thankfully today, that person is recovering in a facility where they’re getting care. Physical and speech therapy, since a lot of muscles suffered atrophy with them lying in bed in a state of rest for nearly three weeks. It’s worn on my entire family, but it’s better than the alternative – we all keep mentioning that. Not a moment goes by where we don’t all give thanks that this situation is improving.
For me, it served as a wake-up call. Since my mother passed, and since I beat my former place of employment in a hearing over unemployment, I’ve found it kind of difficult to will myself to do something with my life. A lot of my close friends will tell you that when I get the urge to do something, or learn something, I don’t half-ass it. I jump in head first, and come out with more knowledge than I probably should have. For the last year, I’ve missed that spark about myself.
The reminder that life is short reminds me that my mother wouldn’t approve of my “state of stasis.” She wouldn’t want me to live my life on hold, and I have hopes and dreams that I’d like to accomplish. And slowly, over the last 5 weeks, I’ve been clawing back to life. I’ve been handling things that have long needed handling, like replacing a stove that was over 25 years old that had an oven that no longer worked. I’ve been on a tear with services too – as if I’ve been writing past wrongs. Did a little house cleaning, something that’s not been done nearly enough since I’ve moved in.
That’s not to say I think I’ll be back to normal in just a short period of time, I know there is going to be a long list of things I need to sort through before I’m ready to declare that I’m good, if that ever happens. The point is that I found a pace, and I was reminded of what it is to live and love. So, using a bad euphemism – if you were looking at an EKG, my heart just had its first beat in nearly a year, a sign that I’m still here.
That’s not to say there haven’t been funny moments. My age detector is busted. I used to be able to pin-point a person’s age by looking at them to within 5 years. I was pretty good. Lately, I keep flirting with young ladies that I think are in their mid-to-late-twenties to early thirties, except they keep turning up 21 – and rather consistently. Go ahead and laugh, I already have – and it’s hard not to. Thankfully, I’ve not voiced that opinion to any of them, since I’m not sure they’d share my humor in it, after all, nobody wants to be thought of as older than they really are.
I’ve also got my friends figured out. For awhile after my mother died, I had friends coming out of the woodwork for support. That’s not uncommon, but I had a few that weren’t living up to that whole friend thing. I cut ties to one of my oldest friends because I couldn’t get a read on him anymore, and when I tried to, all I got was static. I don’t need my friends to be perfect. I’m flawed – I think it’s better to be a true friend and know someone’s flaws and not care. Whenever we’d hang out, he never talked about himself, only how much he didn’t like his job, and what was going on with his wife and kids. I don’t begrudge him for having a family, but friends should know each other – have similar interests, common goals – something that makes them friends, even if those interests change. I lost that with this person, and to be honest, I was okay with that, because having kids changes your priorities – as it should. However, don’t keep giving me the old college try when it comes to friendship. The truth was that he no longer understood where I was coming from, and I couldn’t find anything where I could relate to him anymore. I realized it, but I’m not sure that he did, or maybe he did and he just didn’t want to admit it. We still text once in a great while, but at least everybody seems to be on the same page again, which is to say we’re not pretending we’re the greatest of friends anymore, and I’m okay with that.
I’ll keep this short, since I don’t want to get redundant. I feel that I’m coming into my own. I’ve said that before, but I think for the first time I finally believe it. I mentioned earlier that I have hopes and dreams. I want to see those realized. I recently created a mental bucket list of things I want to do before I leave this mortal coil. There was a time not so long ago where I was ready to leave at a moment’s notice, that I thought I had done everything I wanted to do. I realized recently that’s not at all true.
I want to live a happy life, but not necessarily a really long one. I want to get up in the morning and go to work and do something that makes me happy – most of the time. I want to visit places that are awe inspiring. I want to meet people that are interesting. I want to be close to those family members who I consider my family, because there are enough of them that I don’t bother claiming. In short, I want what most people want – I’m not special in my desires. I want to get married at some point (and I hope she’s got buckets of patience because I know I’m a handful at best, and a pain in the @$$ at worst) and even though I’ve never wanted children, I won’t allow myself to blindly take having children off the table if it’s something we can agree upon. I want to be respected for being a good and honest person. I want to be remembered long after I’m gone for the good I did or tried to do. That’s the legacy I want to leave behind.
I want to wake up in the morning and take in the beauty of the day and be thankful that I’m still here, because I should be. Life is hard and cruel, and while I’m somewhat jaded to begin with, I don’t need to feed into that mindset. That’s what I’ve learned over these past five weeks, watching my family struggle with a loved one that wasn’t doing well, even if it bordered on bleak at some points, because they never quit and gave up, and neither should I. I was looking at my life and seeing the scars and the broken moments of things that I’ll never have, instead of focusing on the things I can still achieve.
So, to all of you, thank you. Thank you for reading, thank you for listening. Thank you for helping me and encouraging me. Be good to each other. To all of the brave men and women of our armed services, thank you, and if you see or know somebody who serves or has served, thank them this Independence Day – because if it wasn’t for them, people like me couldn’t talk about their emotional journey on a blog that’s usually used for hockey talk. Happy July 4th everyone!
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