In the last few years, you started saying "no numbers" whenever the subject of your birthday came up. How old are you going to be again? "No numbers!" you would respond. I think you even stopped saying our ages (mine, Megan's, Marc's) because it made you feel old to have kids as old as us. It's the only time I ever noticed you really getting bothered about aging, and you dealt with it in typical Dempsey fashion, as in "if I don't acknowledge it, it won't happen."
A few years ago when we were walking down Court Street in Carroll Gardens, coming from the restaurant you and Mom liked to go to when you visited me, you had to stop and stretch your back on a sign post. The walk from the restaurant to my apartment is about a mile and a half, which I thought nothing of when I took you there. We are a family of walkers. This whole stopping to stretch business was new, and I didn't like it. Mom made a comment about how you couldn't walk that far anymore. You were the athlete, though, the one who was always playing tennis and biking. By this point you had moved on to mostly golf, though, and you weren't doing as much other exercise.
In any case, I didn't like this development. It was the first time I saw any signs of aging in you. I don't know if you noticed, I hope not, but over the past year or so I guess I was becoming increasingly concerned about you getting older (not about Mom, who still shows no signs of aging, really, and who I am fairly certain will live into her 90's, as her Mom did). I started quietly collecting data from you or Mom or Uncle John or Aunt Terry about how long other people in our family had lived - how old was your dad when he died? Mom's dad? And his dad? What about his mom? And I used this data as a buffer against worry - your dad was into his 80's when he died, Mom's dad at least very late 70's, and I'd think, okay, we have time. We have time here.
But, the data lied. We didn't have time.
The Oscars are on tonight. I was going to go to an Oscar party at Seth's apartment. Before the party, I went to my bar method class and towards the end of class I started thinking about watching the Oscars and I burst into tears. It's the first time in a few weeks that I've broken into sobs in public and couldn't pull it together. Luckily it was the end of class, and I ran into the bathroom and cried, dripping tears and snot all over the floor.
The Oscars? Why the hell were the Oscars such a trigger? And then I saw you, sitting there in your yellow recliner chair in the breakfast room, reading while Mom and I watched them on TV. I realized I would usually be out in Port Jeff Oscar weekend because it always fell right around your birthday. And we would have gone out to dinner last night and maybe I would have stayed Sunday night as well. And that's when we'd sit there together in that warm family room and watch this interminable award show. You would be reading, as I said, and you would claim not to know who anyone was when you occasionally looked up and watched. Such a simple scene, so regular. You would go to bed early, far before the show ended. And so it was your whole birthday weekend that we missed, Oscars and all.
And it's a birthday you should have lived to, had the data not lied. I won't use numbers, but I'll be thinking about how young you were this week. The week of your birthday, the week of no numbers.
love a
A few years ago when we were walking down Court Street in Carroll Gardens, coming from the restaurant you and Mom liked to go to when you visited me, you had to stop and stretch your back on a sign post. The walk from the restaurant to my apartment is about a mile and a half, which I thought nothing of when I took you there. We are a family of walkers. This whole stopping to stretch business was new, and I didn't like it. Mom made a comment about how you couldn't walk that far anymore. You were the athlete, though, the one who was always playing tennis and biking. By this point you had moved on to mostly golf, though, and you weren't doing as much other exercise.
In any case, I didn't like this development. It was the first time I saw any signs of aging in you. I don't know if you noticed, I hope not, but over the past year or so I guess I was becoming increasingly concerned about you getting older (not about Mom, who still shows no signs of aging, really, and who I am fairly certain will live into her 90's, as her Mom did). I started quietly collecting data from you or Mom or Uncle John or Aunt Terry about how long other people in our family had lived - how old was your dad when he died? Mom's dad? And his dad? What about his mom? And I used this data as a buffer against worry - your dad was into his 80's when he died, Mom's dad at least very late 70's, and I'd think, okay, we have time. We have time here.
But, the data lied. We didn't have time.
The Oscars are on tonight. I was going to go to an Oscar party at Seth's apartment. Before the party, I went to my bar method class and towards the end of class I started thinking about watching the Oscars and I burst into tears. It's the first time in a few weeks that I've broken into sobs in public and couldn't pull it together. Luckily it was the end of class, and I ran into the bathroom and cried, dripping tears and snot all over the floor.
The Oscars? Why the hell were the Oscars such a trigger? And then I saw you, sitting there in your yellow recliner chair in the breakfast room, reading while Mom and I watched them on TV. I realized I would usually be out in Port Jeff Oscar weekend because it always fell right around your birthday. And we would have gone out to dinner last night and maybe I would have stayed Sunday night as well. And that's when we'd sit there together in that warm family room and watch this interminable award show. You would be reading, as I said, and you would claim not to know who anyone was when you occasionally looked up and watched. Such a simple scene, so regular. You would go to bed early, far before the show ended. And so it was your whole birthday weekend that we missed, Oscars and all.
And it's a birthday you should have lived to, had the data not lied. I won't use numbers, but I'll be thinking about how young you were this week. The week of your birthday, the week of no numbers.
love a
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