Frankly, I’membarrassed. It’s like I failed at what matters most. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Naturally, that’s what most think when in a similar position; however, in my case it really is true. I followed all the rules; never smoked, didn’t even try marijuana other than an accidental sniff of second-hand weed-smoke from a joint being passed around in a circle in 1981. I exercised more days of my life than not, lost a bunch of weight, and most importantly, I made sure I had awesome genes for parents. My only grandparent to die young was my paternal grandfather, but that was in a railroad accident. My paternal grandmother lived well into her 80’s, smoking into her seventies, losing a lung to cancer, enduring radiation and then living another ten years. My maternal grandparents both lived into their late eighties as did and do all my aunts and uncles, other than one uncle I never knew, Jimmy, who died at 7 from the influenza, and his sister, who died in her forties from breast cancer. I thought I was golden. I thought I would live at least a century in today’s age. I was wrong.
I’ve been close to death many times, so much so, against such odds at times that I’ve often thought that there must be some special purpose I was supposed to fulfill, which is why God saved me from what otherwise would have been certain death. I used to think back to certain things I did; like finding a cancer on a routine Army Reserve physical that would have otherwise been missed, saving that life; or, removing an appendix in a 13yo girl for what I thought was early appendicitis, but which could have also likely been managed with antibiotics, and finding a 1.8cm carcinoid tumor, incidentally noted, in the pathology report. Maybe that girl is the great-great-grandmother of the next Jesus. Maybe one of those things I did that seemed momentous, or something much subtler that didn’t even register, was my special purpose, and now I’m just superfluous to the world, of no particular significance. Was that it? I’d wonder after an occurrence of something seemingly significant. Am I done now? I always thought or at least would know that I’d done something special, made a difference, mattered. I don’t know that I did.
I’m literally surrounded by sick people, people who didn’t follow the rules, an morbidly obese relative whose concept of vegetables is pepperoni and mushroom, a constant stream of sickly patients; smokers, diabetics, end-stage kidney disease, pulmonary cripples, heart-attacks waiting to happen with ejection fractions of ten-percent, all older than I, and most, if not all, who will outlive me. Like I said, embarrassing, like I did something wrong.
I do ask one thing. I ask that I can survive my mother’s natural life without her ever knowing. She is the last surviving member of her family, and she has suffered much. I do not want to add to her burden. I would wish for at least that. She has a recurring dream she tells me about, the first occurrence more than forty-years ago when her father died. Two weeks after, she dreamt that grandpa was walking down a gently sloping grassy hill of wildflowers. He was holding my Aunt’s hand (who died of breast cancer) and carrying Jimmy, in his other arm. He was strong, healthy and without pain, his face filled with joy at seeing her. She has had the dream thereafter, years apart, each time, some time after the passing of her mother, a sibling, and with her last dream, down the grassy slope, silhouetted by a prairie-blue sky dotted with clouds, her entire family approached, smiling, holding hands, Jimmy running ahead, arms outspread.
I’ve not had the dream, or one similar; however, I’ve not lost any in my family yet and I don’t especially want to start the dream, but if I must, I will and I’ll do all in my power to make it happen. I’ll walk, sheepishly, down the grassy slope, a wry grin on my bearded face and will, in my self-deprecating way, mumble something like, “If you’re not first,you’re last,” as I enfold my mother in my arms.