Rationally, we’re able to understand nothing we can see or touch is permanent. We’ve all loved pets or grandparents, or worked at jobs and lived in homes we knew weren’t intended to last forever. I know some day I won’t have to rise before dawn to pack a school lunch and usher a son out the door. (That day will come, right?)
Yet ever since the eighth grade, I’ve been somewhere between challenged and enthralled with living in the midst of a denouement. Back then (1993, if you’re keeping score at home) it was because two things were ending simultaneously — junior high and “Cheers,” the latter of which I enjoyed significantly more than the former. But if nothing else, eighth grade was a devil I knew intimately. I mean, I didn’t hate it or anything, but it was no “Cheers.”
So there I am on some early April Thursday, going to first-period English and later plopped in front of the TV to spend time with Sam, Woody and Norm, trying to enjoy it and all the while being aware of the unavoidable, rapidly approaching terminus.
I survived, of course, and remain glad only one of those experiences is available in reruns. But then came the night four years later, sometime after winter break, when I temporarily lost the ability to sleep because I could not stop thinking about the fact that 12 months from that point, I’d be in a different room in a different state with a complete stranger and the same would be true of all of the people that made high school so enjoyable.
None of this makes me special, of course. Rare is the teenager who doesn’t spend time acutely aware of looming life changes. Parents are especially good at this, constantly making remarks such as “They grow up so fast!” and “Where does the time go?” (I will tell you where: washing dishes and folding laundry, that is where the time goes.)
I wrote all that so I could write this: My parents moved to their house in 1978, about 13 months before I was born. Not a lot has changed in the neighborhood, including many of the residents. But it will. About a month ago I was called over to the house next door to help sort out a problem with the cable box and the DVD player. The man who lives there — who’s lived in the same yellow house for four decades at least — is now by himself and sometimes needs help with a thing or two. I figure I owe him for all the baseballs I hit in his yard way back when, so I do what I can.
This visit was a bit different, in my brain, anyhow, because it came after he’d told us of his plans to move out. He’s agreed to sell the house to someone who almost certainly will tear it down to build from scratch. Nothing inside looks any different than it has for quite some time, and there was no visual indication of his plans to vacate. But there we stood, in the middle of a room that, sooner rather than later, is just going to be gone, along with any physical reminder of a life well lived under that roof.
Last Sunday, on my way out of church, I ran into one of our dearest friends and her daughter. The little one proudly announced she had just had her half birthday, a fact that never escapes me because she’s exactly six months older than one of our boys. It is not unusual for us to chat on Sunday mornings — the morning often feels incomplete if we don’t bump into each other.
The conversation lingered longer than it probably should have, given we both had busy afternoons. But we also both knew something that didn’t need to be acknowledged verbally: it was our last chance for one of these impromptu talks. Their family is moving to the Northwest in a few days. Their last Sunday will be full of hugs and teary goodbyes. Nothing is regular once you’ve committed to pack up and drive two time zones west, finishing up work while trying to sell a house and keep things as stable as possible for a kindergartener, but in that context it was the last thing approaching a regular Sunday. And the longer we talked and the more I felt I really needed to get to the grocery store with everyone else buying last-minute Super Bowl snacks, the less I wanted to leave because once I walked out the door I knew this life chapter would end.
I’m still working through what exactly I want this blog to become. My wife suggested maybe once a week I should expound on a favorite part of a day and tell a story beyond what I might share during dinner conversation, or in a Facebook post. And that’s more or less what I’ve done here, because those minutes of conversation were most clearly the highlight of that Sunday. It would have been a good talk even if it weren’t the last, but as demonstrated over the previous 800 words, I’ve got a thing for layering added significance onto a situation just because I’m stuck in my own head.
We know permanence is a myth. Fortunately, that doesn’t stop us from living and loving what we can while we can, then being open to adapting as life dictates. I try, anyway. So far, the effort has been richly rewarded.