Decisions, decisions

Another milestone will be soon upon me, another marker on the trail to all the things never dreamt of under sheets of Crayola colored locomotives. Nostalgia has a way of permeating these days, a washed out backdrop to all significant biographical events. The sense of excitement and mystery brought about by the next stage is offset by lofty expectations and tired promises of progress. A survey of my life would hopefully indicate that the best is yet to come, but one never knows about such things.

Eighteen, twenty-two, twenty-seven, thirty, a job, a wife, kids, IRAs, graduations, grandkids, cancer, remission, Florida, cancer, revelation. You could put it on a poster and tack it to the door of a guidance counselor.

This is not to say that I am not looking forward to the rest of my life. I always do, but it's the leaving behind that always gets me, all the things to which you're forced to say goodbye. I find it the most difficult part of life - the burying of the years. Memories serve well for a quick revisit, but one can never relive the tales. And when the memories start to fade, it's as if they never happened. It's as if you were born into the present with no recollection of how you got there. The past, it seems, belongs to someone else - albeit someone familiar, a childhood friend or one-time enemy. It's all so blurry now.