No, I’m not talkin’ about reincarnation. This is a one-&-done kind of existence in this universe. We do our best to try and do the right things in this life. Sometimes we’re successful… other times we make mistakes... we occasionally fall down... we get back up... and we move forward with a valuable learning experience tucked in our back pocket.
Sometimes we look back on our lives along the way. We contemplate choices we made. What if I went to this college instead of that university? What if I married (or didn’t marry) my childhood sweetheart? What if I made that career choice instead of this one? But these types of reflections don’t do you much good. The past is past. You can’t make any changes to what’s already happened. Yes, you can learn from your mistakes, gain wisdom from the aftereffects of decisions you’ve made along the way. But, these “woulda, coulda, shoulda’s” aren’t gonna get you where you need to go in life.
Now, when we look forward to the future… that’s where the potential lies. That’s where a myriad of choices take us down a multitude of directions. Possibilities are endless. We take stock of who we are and where we are, and we begin to formulate the various roadmaps of the rest of your life... you take in as much knowledge and information and advice as possible, and then ultimately choose the one map that’s right for you. And, it’s no guarantee that things will turn out perfectly or exactly as you hope or plan (they rarely do). But it’s the road you choose, and it’s the path you’re on.
Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we catch a glimmer - a tiny sliver of our potential future – which can be experienced almost as powerfully as any real life event. It happened to me a few months ago, when I least expected it. About three years prior, I lost my mom after a long illness. Being with my Dad and my siblings as we tended to her during the last weeks of her life was itself a profound and unforgettable experience. It was not only painful to witness, both mentally taxing and emotionally wringing… it was also spiritually powerful and moving. It’s something that will stay with each of us until our own last breaths.
Now, my mom is buried on the east coast. So I don’t get that much opportunity to not only visit family and friends, I also don’t get many opportunities to visit her grave site. So I made a decision that whenever Mother’s Day rolls along, if I’m not back in Philly at the time, I’ll instead visit a local cemetery wherever I was at. I buy a bouquet of flowers, and I begin to walk through a section of the cemetery, looking for any grave stone or marker which has the word “Mother” or “Mom” written on it. And if there aren’t any flowers there, I take one from my bouquet and I leave it there. And I continue doing this until I eventually run out of flowers. Then I say a prayer, walk to my car, and drive away.
This past Mother’s Day, I followed my self-imposed routine. I got back in my car, turned over the engine, and just sat there in silence… staring out in space, with the sun flickering through the trees. And suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I was witnessing myself doing this ritual some ten years into the future… walking through some unknown cemetery, placing a flower here and there. And then this little girl comes up to me and asks me, “Can I do this, too, Daddy?”
“Sure,” I say to her as I hand her one of the flowers.
And she takes the flower, and begins to walk around looking at various markers. Suddenly she stops. And she just stares at one marker, deep in thought… as though she were trying to make an important decision.
I walk up to her and ask her what the matter is.
“It doesn’t say ‘Mom’ or ‘Mother’ on this gravestone. And I was thinking… maybe she was a mom, but it’s just not written on the stone. Or, maybe she didn’t have children of her own, but she was like a second mom to everyone else’s kids… like your Aunt Carmela that you always tell me about,” she says.
And I say, “If you want to leave a flower here for this woman, you can do it. It’s okay.”
And she gives this expression on her face that she’s made up her mind. And she bends down to place the flower on the grave site. She blesses herself. And I do, too. And we continue to walk past the row of gravestones.
And then, suddenly… there I was, back in my car… in the present… the engine still running… the sun still shining through the trees… and moisture welling up in my eyes… blurring a glimmer of some distant possible future. And I wonder how the rest of my life will turn out. Will I remain single, like a number of my uncles had been? Will I one day marry, but soon after become widowed without ever having children of my own (like my Aunt Carmela)? Or will I be blessed to find that soul mate (something we all search for, whether consciously nor not), and one day… ten years from now… be walking hand-in-hand with my daughter. I don’t know. I don’t know what God has in store for me. Yet I try to make peace with whatever He has planned me.
And I have no idea why I just told this personal story to a bunch of strangers in cyberspace. I just had to, I guess.
I’m reminded of something one of my brothers once told me. He said that every time he hires a new employee he always tells them the same story, and he always asks them the same question.
“Have you ever heard the story of the three frogs?” he’d ask the newbie.
“Uhhh… no,” they say with an inquisitive look on their face.
“There are three frogs sitting on a log on a pond. One frog decides to jump in the pond. How many frogs are now on the log?” he inquires of the employee.
“Ummm… two!” they will always respond.
“No,” my brother would correct. “There are three frogs on the log. Just because you decide to do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually did it.”
The moral of the story: at some point, you have to take action.
I think I need to go skinny dipping in a pond! (HAH!)
Next up… Chapter 10.
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