Friday, July 2, 2010

What's Done is Done

You know from my last few posts, I have been somewhat nostalgic lately, thinking about days gone by. That always happens to me around any holiday, especially Independence Day, because I remember the cook-outs, the times with family and friends, etc. Sometimes I guess I can get a little down, but certainly not as much as I used to. And every time a holiday passes, I always think “There goes another year” and wonder how many are left.


There is an interesting phenomenon in our family, it can best be described as the “Never let no wrong, whether real or perceived, be forgotten” axiom. We have a habit of holding grudges for a long, long time. I suppose this may be true for a lot of families, I don’t know, but I do know it seems to be prevalent in mine. You would think that the pain from something which happened thirty or forty years ago would eventually fade, but nope, not with us. And I admit, I can be just as guilty as anyone else; of course in my case my anger is certainly justified.

You see about 53 years ago, my family decided we would all spend the day at the lake. In those days the original camp was split between all the brothers and one sister, each getting it for two weeks each year. These were also the days of close families, we lived in one house, my Uncle and Aunt lived next door, my other Uncle and Aunt lived across the street and I think there were some other relatives around somewhere as well. Back to my missive. So everyone piled in the two cars and off they went to the lake. I say they, because your writer was left behind, tied to the porch, left for the squirrels and chip munks which plied the neighborhood.

Of course it wasn’t until sometime later my mother realized I was still there and she made my father turn the old 53 Chevy around to retrieve me. Now of course my mother and father always claimed that I was never in any danger and I wasn’t harmed, but I know this is not true. There are many emotional scars which I have carried for sometime. The worst part is they weren’t going to tell me. But then that’s just me I guess. There are other wrongs which are still brought up when the family gets together, which seemed to be quite serious at the time, a wedding gift here, a snub at a family function, a misplaced kitchen utensil, normal, functional families would have forgotten these things long ago. But not us.

But now, as I have aged and gotten wiser, I realize these things are not important. They are but mere oil drips on the highway of life, and other than the shear entertainment value, aren’t worth still stressing over. After all, what is important is family and friends. The good times, the love shared, and not whether so and so was seated next to someone else at a wedding, or whether Aunt Mary spent more on a gift than Aunt Flo. The day will come, and sooner than any of us would like to think when we will be all alone. Our friends and families will be gone, we will have nothing but the memories left. Shouldn’t we be left with good ones? Shouldn’t we let bygones be bygones and bury the hatchet and move on?

Well, of course I always keep my hatchet with me just in case I’m tied up and left for the squirrels again.

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