Marching Forward

In two years and three-hundred forty-eight days, I will be alive longer than my father. He remains forty-two and I march towards forty. For those who haven’t lost a parent, I don’t have the words to explain what this declaration means. For everyone else who has experienced nature’s promise, you understand it.

The past few years, instead of enjoying my birthday, I’ve come to dread it. I’m turning forty in a couple of days. Saying the number scares me isn’t the whole truth. It’s also a lie. Unlike others who have or will be crossing this threshold, the big 4-0 isn’t life altering. It’s the next page ready for the ink and quill. This is how my conscious mind views my coming birthday. Then there is the subconscious and its good friend anxiety.

You’re fatter than ever.

It’s only two years and three-hundred forty-eight days away.

He died sixteen days before his forty-third birthday.

You’re fatter than he was.

You may not be diabetic like him, but like that matters.

Oh, feel those heart palpitations? That’s not me causing them. Oh no.

Is that really your acid-reflux?

Yes, I know you have C5-C7 degeneration and the weather this time of years flares it up, but….

It doesn’t help I was fourteen when he died. The sudden shock that followed can’t answer questions. These are bad enough. What’s worse is something fourteen-year-old me never conceived. To a fourteen-year-old, forty-two is old. They call turning forty going over the hill after all. Only when you reach thirty, thirty-five, and then the big 4-0 do you learn, forty-two is young. If nothing else, that is the life-altering experience. Forty isn’t old. You’re still young and that’s when anxiety jumps you, or it did me in any case.

There’s another side to this of course. One that sits apart from the melodramatic anxiety-driven show surrounding age. This side is far more insidious and doesn’t come around for a few years. You feel it when you see others with their parents. You hone on it whether you’re aware or not. It’s a little tickle in the back of your mind. They have both of their parents. You don’t. They’re lucky; you’re not. The jealousy and envy grow over time. In the age of Facebook, this chronic mental anguish has transformed into a near daily occurrence. I’ve had a lot longer time to nurture the bitterness. Much to my shame, when I read about someone’s parent dying, a part of me whispers “Now they’ll understand.” A comforting lie my darker nature tells but it knows the truth. They won’t understand. Their pain will be different. Why? They’ve had their whole life with said parent.

They have shared a life-time of laughter, love, tears, and arguments with their parent. Fourteen years is nothing compared to that. It isn’t enough time for a child to know their parent. Oh, bonds are made, a bond between a parent and their child. It isn’t the same as going home on a weekend after years of being on your own, cracking open a beer (or Diet Coke in my dad’s case) and enjoying the day as adults. There’s no impromptu phone calls or random texts. There’s no bonding over relatable experiences and struggles. You can’t have the benefit of the wisdom their years gave them. Instead, you have a gravestone or an urn to conduct a one-sided conversation with, hoping to hell the added narration you provide is what they would say back to you.

No doubt these macabre thoughts are shared by everyone. We all have to reach that day when we are older than our parents. Hopefully for most, they wait years. I have two years and three-hundred forty-eight days to go.