Camping with Guns and Keystone Light

As events have surfaced in recent months, I have come to realize that even the most complicated relationships flourish with the application of a little TLC once in a while. Case in point: My father and I.

For years now, my dad and I have been on a limited contact and conversation scale. We’ve seen one another on a rare bases, (meaning just holidays) and our discussion surrounds the obligatory; “How’s work?” and “What are the boys up too?” Up until three months ago, I didn’t see a real need to expand our self-restricted communication for fear I may have to explain my absence in his and my younger brother’s lives up to this point. Well, as “luck may have it” (for lack of any better of a point driver) our lives have intertwined again so that constant contact is necessary, if not now preferred. Dad was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer about three months ago and as things go, it’s an advanced case. When he told me, I was shocked but mostly, I just wanted to hold him. I completely forgot about the last 16 years and how painful our separation was or how hard it had been on me all this time. I just wanted to be there for him. No questions asked, no explanations needed. I just wanted to help him. I guess that’s what daddy’s little girl does when the chips are down. Bet the whole hand or go home. I’m all in ….my cards are face up, on the table and lying in the middle of the table is my heart. It’s the right thing to do….because it’s what my heart says is the right thing to do.

And if the cancer weren’t clue enough that family is a connection we should never take for granted, C’s dad was killed just three weeks ago in a terrible motor cycle accident. He was taken far too soon from C and C’s brother and C’s step-mom and step brothers, and cousins, nieces, nephews, and everyone in that small town that was mesmorized by this man’s shear heart and commanding presence; and you know what? He was taken from me and Kat (C’s brother’s girl) before we even got the chance to really know him. And what really makes me angry is that he was taken from my children, before they were even born, before they could even mutter “papa” to him. I am so sad for C but mostly I’m feeling helpless. What can I say to make it better? What does one do to console someone for a loss that is unexplainable and outright purposterous? I don’t know.

All I know now is; we have to recognize that life is a fleeting thing and that harboring a single negative thought or fostering a momentary passive judgement is in defiance of a life given to us from the heavens that can so easily be taken away. In a matter of seconds, our whole life, the perspective from which we were raised, our being and any emotion carried there-in can become irrelevant or can be changed to something unrecognizable. It’s up to us to value those in our lives, no matter how fleeting their role or how miniscule their appearance. I’m bound by a constant reminder that life is but a hand dealt to us from someone or something we cannot even comprehend and that our hand, whether it be illustrious or minimal, has to be played smarter and better than we even thought possible.

So thanks to C and my dad, I got one more weekend, one more history lesson, one more target practice to file into the memory file of my mind. Camping with Guns and Keystone Light is the best thing I’ve done in a really long time. Here’s praying for more great weekends. Even though it will never be enough, at least now I get it……