When you are my age and the Doctor sends you to the Cardiologist, there are a lot of things that went through this mind. When the Cardiologist sends you downtown to get an angiogram and the possibility of even as much as bypass surgery anticipated, a lot more went on in this mind of mine. It all went well and nothing was found, and I am eternally grateful for that. I am also well aware of the existential aspects of my mindset over the last few months. As I found out this good news though, my wife found out that on the same day I had my procedure, an old but dear classmate and friend passed away from a massive heart attack.
The old ties were once again found still knotted up through time, and old friends reacquainted in one way or another. The ties to her past are some of mine as well through disparate inroads, so I felt it a bit too. This family of friends thing thing we all have, that shows up on the memories doorstep too infrequently is amazing in its ability to span lifetimes. I myself had well wishes from grade school friends and people I have not seen in twenty years, still fresh as if they were brought out like flowers from the florist itself. It was renewing and amazing in the fact I felt very well protected and watched over. Of course in my observations, I had to look at the fact that it took a dire situation, and a sorrowful death for people to get together once more. It is almost like showing up to your class reunions if only to see who would be the last ones there.
I have gone through more dire situations than my heart issue, I have been beat up by life and wanting to end it all many times before. Yet, those posts were ignored or scrolled past, they were not seen as something like a heart attack even though they did the same kinds of damage, left the same trails of destruction on my being. So it is with strange reluctance that I want to thank people for their well wishes and prayers, because it is kind of like congratulating someone on the shine their garbage cans have. I have other friends that are going through a bunch of things that could really use their classmates and that family of friends group. A little death that is happening right now, it may be an emotional hell or a real one with life handing out hand grenades, pin already pulled.
Big explosion, little one, fountain of sparks or a whistling pete. Those smoke balls and blooming flowers, they could all be used as a metaphor for the parts of life we go through. There are friends that are going through their own existential changes and parts of life once thought to be someone else’s problems. They are hard to get through and all of their friends are still busy with the minutiae of the smoke balls and flowers to notice the amazingly large booms happening in their vicinity. I don’t know what it is about that part of life that makes it completely obvious to me when others are going through it. Maybe it is one of those takes one to know one kind of things.
So on this Sunday morning, those people whom I know who are going through the crud of life in some way or another are thought of and a moment taken to reach out. I am not going to wait for another tragedy or near death experience to start the ball rolling in paying it forward in a manner of thought. As much as I must and do stay focused on today and the best I can do today. I won’t forget my past and those pieces of life and the people that live their lives like magical fireworks. The most beautiful things to behold yet last for such a painfully short period of time. Life and Fireworks.