Turning 42
For my 42nd birthday, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write. Sitting and thinking about it, 42 years is a long time. I can’t hardly believe that I’ve been around the sun that many times, the years I’ve lived and the things I’ve seen. I didn’t want to give a whole retrospective on my life, but rather a few snapshots of things from my past and some thoughts that still haunt me to this day.
I used to watch mama make flowers from tissues and twist ties for the decoration every year. (The Decoration was what we referred to the yearly family get together as; we decorated the graves of family members.) I never understood why, since we ran greenhouses, she never used anything we grew. I also never understood why she went through this every single year. It never seemed to make her happy to go to the graveyards, to see the places where her dead loved ones lay. I guess it was just one of those empty habits we find ourselves numbly practicing over and over through out our lives. I never liked the graveyards, always so full of people that I didn’t know come to pay their respects to those they had lost. But I liked the family picnic after, and getting to see my whole family together in one place, even if it was just for a few hours each year. It never once dawned on me that at some point in the future, I’d be standing in her place, looking at the graves of those I had lost. Only with me, the cycle was broken. I haven’t been back since their passing. I don’t care to, at least not alone. I know where they’re both buried (or ashes spread in his case) I just don’t wanna go back there. Graveyards are nice, I suppose, but always so drab and depressing. Sometimes they can be a little comforting; you have less to be afraid of from the dead than you do the living. I’d like to have some part of MY ashes spread where his are, I think, but I don’t feel I’ve earned the right.
I’ve been thinking about being back home a lot lately. I miss it. Warm summer mornings watching tv while mama canned food or made jelly; running barefoot through the yard and pretending to hide behind the hedge as cars drove by; Saturday mornings with a bowl of cereal and cartoons and not a care in the world. I don’t know if its my loneliness kicking in to high gear or if I really am having a very strange midlife crisis. The thoughts have gotten to the point that I’ve started buying things that we had at home to try to make the house I rent feel more like home and not just somewhere I live even though the attempts have all ended in failure. It just doesn’t seem to matter what I do to this place to try to make it a home - paint rooms, rearrange furniture, decorate - nothing makes this place feel like home; it’s just a house I rent. I hate it here.
Sometimes I feel that the old ways still try to talk to me like they used to when I was younger. Sometimes on my walks to and from work, it feels like the earth itself is trying to get my attention. I used to believe in aliens and ghosts, supernatural things and the occult and monsters. Now that I’m older I know that people are the real monsters and those imaginary monsters aren’t something to be afraid of. Ghosts and the rest of it aren’t real. Aliens might be simply because the universe is just so HUGE that I personally feel it’s impossible for us to be alone in all this. Maybe it was just the ignorance of youth that we all experience and now I’m faced with the cold, stark truth that comes with age and wisdom. Those affirmations and thoughts, pleasantries and convictions that you see plastered all over the internet these days are each and every one true in its own way, and sometimes those truths are very bitter. Perhaps it is just foolish folly for me to think that I rate high enough to be of any significance to the universe; I’m definitely not a Crono (points if you get the reference). Just a lowly citizen that will eventually be crushed under the heels of destruction, lost and forgotten to the passages of time.