LOSING THINGS ALONG THE WAY

These little stories of mine generally match my mood at the time they are posted. I have several that have been started at different times, all reflecting my mood at the time, and they will all go up sooner or later. But tonight my mood is indigo, and a melancholy that I have been keeping at bay has finally enveloped me, and what follows are disjointed outpourings of things that have been rattling around for a while, and have resurfaced recently.

On Saturday night, October 9th, 3 kids got in a car after midnight, and only two made it to morning. All three were good, decent kids. All three had parents, girlfriends, boyfriends, siblings, relatives. All three were in what should have been the springtime of their lives. Now two are dead, and the third wishes he was.

Saturday night, October 9th, parents went to bed expecting to see their children in the morning. Friends said goodbye anticipating the next time all would be together again. Boyfriends and girlfriends looked forward to the next intimate moment. Sunday morning, October 10th- all had lost something along the way.

Our lives are a finite trip to an ultimate destination. For the lucky ones it is a long, rewarding trip, full of warmth and happiness, and upon arriving at the ultimate destination the regrets and lost opportunities are overwhelmed by the moments of substance.

We take so much for granted- we expect to have another day, another chance, and very rarely do we take the time to reflect upon what really matters. We make decisions without a whole lot of thought, reacting to the moment, and not necessarily valuing the obvious things, because we expect them to be there always.

I am reminded pretty much every day that our days are numbered. I deal with it in a variety of ways, with humor, anger, pettiness, acceptance- pretty much the entire gamut, depending upon my mood. Yet even given my situation I am struck by how often I too fall into the same trap- thinking or acting as if a tomorrow was guaranteed me, when really all of our time is on loan, and can be taken away indiscriminately.

I realize how precious, how important, each moment is, and that every moment should be worth celebrating, yet I still can't seem to shake this melancholy from my bones. Sometimes, instead of rejoicing in the promise of what I have and what is to come, I spend far too much time chewing on what is denied me, or worrying about when things will come to me. I guess this is human nature, but I wish I could stop being haunted by the fear of things that I can't really control- the reality is I don't have a whole lot of influence on anything regarding my future, all I can do is deal with the present as best I can.

There is a song that has always given me pause, and I shall end with this, from Bruce Springsteen.

Last night I was out driving
Coming home at the end of a working day
I was driving alone through the drizzling rain
On a deserted stretch of a county two-lane
When I came upon a wreck on the highway

Now there was blood and glass all over
And there was nobody there but me
As the rain tumbled down hard and cold
I saw a young man lying by the side of the road
And he said "Mister, won't you help me please"

An ambulance finally came and took him to Riverside
I watched as they drove him away
And I thought of a girlfriend or a young wife
And a State Trooper knocking in the middle of the night
To say "Your baby died, in a wreck on the highway"

Sometimes I sit up in the darkness
And I watch my baby as she sleeps
Then I climb in bed and I hold her tight
I just lie there awake, in the middle of the night
Thinking about the wreck on the highway

Here's to hoping that I don't end up losing things, or of being lost, along the way.