Rear View Mirrors

As the year ends, like every year end, we think about the year that just finished.  No year for me has ever been perfect, some better than others, but all of them zip by fast looking back; even when you had a crummy year.  As you look ahead, however, it seems the opposite; especially when you have upcoming tough challenges.  What teases my mind is “how am I ever going to get through all that?” At year end, however, you think about those hard moments that passed and they seem small compared to the good that actually happened. In early  2021 I just got a clean bill of health for Lymphoma, but I was then  told in January that I had esophageal cancer.  The only thing that came to my mind was “Fuck.” I told my oncologist Steve Newman, “Well, at least it isn’t COVID, that would be really bad.”  For once, he was at a loss for words.  To get prepped for the next round of treatment, I said to myself, “Well March and April will be shitty months”.  I didn’t realize I still had May, June, and July to crawl through.  Now that those months are behind me, I’m thinking it was bad at the time, but not any more.  I can think of a lot more dreadful periods of my life.  Probably the longest was in grade school every Sunday when my father would drag my brother Chris and I down to my grandmother Lawson’s house after church. We weren’t allowed to touch anything inside and instead had to listen to her gripe and complain about every person and topic on Earth for what seemed like dog years.  It was awful;  I felt like Vincent Price in “The Wax Museum” having body parts fall off of me every two minutes just sitting on the couch. My brother Mark renamed Grandma Lawson “Snatch” since according to him he learned in Catechism that was a nickname for Satan.  To end this madness,  Chris took matters in his own hands and unplugged her Philco TV thinking it would distract her complaining.  Unfortunately, she had an octopus of electrical cords all fed into one socket, so when Chris gave it a yank he got a massive shock that shot out a blue arc and dimmed the power in the whole house.  I thought for a moment I was going to have to face future Sundays all alone.  Lucky for me Chris got to live another day.  As I look back at 2021 I could easily start rattling off all of the pain and misery I experienced for most of the year, but I catch myself because I would sound like Snatch if I did.  Instead, I think with fondness about 2021’s timeline which included me turning 60, the birth of our grand daughter Quinn, Diane and I celebrating our 35th Anniversary, David and Tatiana getting engaged, and Dillon and Carly setting up together.  Without a doubt we raised plenty of toasts this Christmas together celebrating 2021.  Last January Matt Tormey asked me what was my New Year’s Resolution and I said without blinking, “To be around next year.”  I’ll sign up again for 2022 whatever gets thrown at me since every year end I see nothing but good looking back.  Slainte!