How to live forever

I have no memory of this day. The shot was probably taken somewhere in Italy, when I was between Kindergarten and the second grade. I have no memory, yet I know it was a good time in my life. I know it because you can see it on my face. And I know it because my parents provided a good life for my brother and me. We were not rich. Far from it. Our father was a Navy man. Mom a legal secretary, I think, but that was probably much later in life. We never had the big house on the corner or the fanciest car in the driveway.

We had so much more.

We had a mother who loved us more than any person could. And a father who wanted nothing more than to provide a better life for his children than he had known as a child. It’s a time when I was probably as close as I could be to my true authentic self. I am sure I felt loved, safe, and secure.

I have no memory of this day and very few real memories of even that part of my life although I can feel them inside me. Deep inside. Just out of sight. I can see the shapes and colors. I can feel the memories but there are no details. Maybe a little like my vision today in a dimly lit room.

For so much of my life I lost touch with the young boy in that picture. Life has a way of changing you. Without notice it seems, gone are the days when you feel so safe and secure. Not a care in the world. A complete sense that everything will be fine. They are replaced with a desire, a need, to prove something to your parents, to your friends, to yourself. You change maybe for the better. Maybe for the worse. Who knows, but by the time you are an adult you’ve changed. I think that happens to us all, doesn’t it? Hopefully that’s not just my paranoia speaking.

I think of my children. They had a good childhood. Their mother and I were not perfect parents, but we loved them with all our hearts. I tried to be there for them when I could and to provide a good life for them. Hopefully just a little better than I did as a child. Their mother adored them. They were the center of her life.

I imagine they felt safe. Secure. Like the little boy in the picture.

When they were 14 and 11, it ended abruptly. I will remember for the rest of my life the day we told them we were getting a divorce. My daughter literally laughed. She thought it was a joke. After all, her father was always saying crazy things. No way their world could be coming apart so suddenly. To this day, the memory of her laugh brings a flood of tears to my eyes.

I look at the picture of me as a young boy. I see how safe and how happy that little boy feels. I remember that look in my own children’s eyes right up until that day. Then I think, maybe I wasn’t able to do what my parents did for me after all; provide a better life than they had known. I have worried about how I may have screwed up their lives, sent them on a tangent that would completely derail their future.

What I can see today, is that try as I might, I wasn’t able to. Oh, I am sure they have ghosts in their closet just like all of us. They will have their own self-discovery time in their lives when they will look to reconnect with that young boy or girl buried deep down inside them. Perhaps it won’t be as deep, and they will get there much faster than their father even started looking.

I am so proud of Jonathan and Jen. Their father threw a serious monkey wrench in their lives, yet they are such remarkable young adults. I love them with all my heart.

I hope the day comes when I will be able to meet their children. To see at least a little bit of what their lives will be like. How their parents have provided a life, maybe just a little bit better, than theirs; probably a lot better.

I can’t help but reflect on how hard my father’s life was as a child. I can’t imagine. And all he wanted to do was provide a better life for his children.

Perhaps, in some way, that is what immortality is.