What we call “life” is made of moments.
Some good, some bad, some just maudlin ticking of a clock. My guess is that on average, probably ten percent of the moments in our lives are certifiably good, a similar ten percent are certifiably bad, and other eighty percent lie somewhere on the continuum in between.
Of course, how we live and with whom we interact influence changes in those percentages during different moments of our lives, but it is what we do with those moments that count.
I always remember the good moments in my life.
The first among many of those things is my girlfriend of five years who turned wife of forty-three years (as of this August).
I remember as clearly the day when I first saw Deborah Catherine Gates. Her freshman high school brown eyes pierced my soul. We connected for a very brief time, but my high school self was too busy covering up painful shyness and introversion with selfishness, arrogance, and insolence, so while I was desperate to date her, I was too stupid to do anything about it.
I grew up on a farm as an only child until I was eight and didn’t have the same social interaction a lot of kids had, so I buried myself in solo wandering through the wooded North Mississippi hills and a lot of reading, becoming a redneck nerd. I was a smart kid, but when I reached my senior year, I decided being popular was more important than academic success, so my grades did a nosedive during my last hurrah in high school (so much so, I entered college on academic probation).
I was so socially awkward I really was two different people – confident and outgoing around my friends, a complete basket case with new people. Meeting new people was not my thing – a serious complication when approaching girls. I simply had no idea how to act.
I finally mustered up the courage to ask Debbie out, pretty sure she would not agree – and I was not too sure how her parents would feel about their high school daughter dating a college age boy.
She said “yes”, and my life changed. Being together seemed so natural, I knew I never had to be anyone but myself for her – and even though we have been through the good and the bad, we have always been each other’s anchor (her more than me). We’ve reared three magnificent children, seen a bit of the world together, and built and rebuilt a lifetime commitment to each other.
For me, from that first day, it’s never not been her.
The worst moments for me rest in my relationships with my mom and dad.
My mom had Parkinson’s that came on around the time she turned 50. The drugs available at the time to manage the tremors clouded her mind and hid her mental decline. She needed around the clock care we couldn’t provide, so we decided a care home was the only course of action – shortly after she entered the home, I was offered a position out of state and left my hometown, and except for a year after that assignment, we never went back. My brother, a man more caring that I will ever be, took up the job of visiting and checking in on her until she passed in 2004 – and I wasn’t there.
My dad was unhappy, and I just never saw it until late one fall Saturday afternoon.
We got into an argument not long after Debbie and I finished college and moved back to our hometown to start our married life together. My dad just assumed that my time was his to use as he chose, and one fall day after pulling corn with him, I stopped at the house where Debbie and I were living because we had plans that night – our family dog was always my dog, so she followed me home and my dad, upset that I didn’t follow him to help unload the corn, stopped to get the dog and she didn’t want to leave – so while he was whipping her to force her into his truck, my wife walked out on the porch to stop him. He satisfied his anger with me by taking it out on Debbie. I heard the yelling and walked out as he turned to leave and told him to never talk to my wife like that again – and he didn’t. We spoke thrice in the ensuing thirty years before his death in 2012.
It wasn’t too long after that incident that he had an affair, divorced my mom, and left my mom (I think that accelerated her illness) while my brother was still a sophomore in high school. I never forgave him for any of that. I went to see him after he had a heart attack about ten years after our argument and he asked to see my children, whom he never met, and I was still so angry that I never allowed it. He died while we were living in Scotland and I heard I wasn’t welcome at his funeral, so I wasn’t there.
My dad wasn’t a bad man, he just was going through some things that families like ours didn’t talk about. We buried them deep down and let them eat us up from inside and at that time, he was really struggling. He was successful in business, but I think he felt trapped and didn’t know how to deal with those feelings.
And neither did I, by the time I figured it out, it was too late.
As long as I live, I will regret everything I did and didn’t do when it came to how I treated my parents. I carry that guilt to this day.
Those moments changed me. I made a personal vow to never become my dad and to never ignore my children. Those experiences made my relationships with my wife and my kids much different than they might have been, and I hope they feel the unconditional love I have for them.
It’s all about moments.
Never miss a chance to live in them.
That is, was a heavy load to carry. Old saying, Too soon old too late smart.
I guess forgiveness and a true expression of love is mostly the answer.
At 88YRO I am still seeking wisdom too, no doubt it will never end.
I have never understood the kind of people who say they'd never have changed a thing about their lives, and have no regrets. With age supposedly comes wisdom, and it seems to me anyone with even a tiny bit of wisdom could look back and see things they could've done differently. However, at the time, we didn't know what we didn't know, so, to me, regrets are gained wisdom and forgiving yourself for what you didn't know is crucial.