Like most every morning for quite awhile now, upon waking I think of what is ahead not only this day, but in future days…
This morning, before putting my feet on the floor, I formed this sentence:
I CAN’T do this. I WILL put my feet to the floor. THESE are the terms. For the rest of my life.
At 9:20 am on this Sunday morning, I am still loosely organizing in my mind what I will tackle today and in what sequence. It always seems so fluid and changeable, since it feels like so much, that it doesn’t really matter what I do first…just do something.
Doing that something leads to the next something….
As I prepare myself to delve into those something(s)… I am a bit slow this morning.
Sitting at my computer, thinking, I wonder to myself:
What was the first day – the earliest recollection – of a day I woke up clearly thinking I CAN’T DO THIS?
Honestly, I’ve been pretty much, for the most part, a “CAN DO” person for most of my life.
Yes, I can make my own Barbie House from cardboard boxes.
Yes, I can make little upholstered furniture for my Barbies from cardboard and scrap fabrics.
Yes, I can get white and bright yellow yarn, in 5th grade, and crochet myself a poncho, like the girls on the bus have – ponchos their mother made them. And yes, I did that, with the help of a teacher and neighbor, who guided me somewhat, after an elementary school elective.
Yes, I can get scraps of yarn from my friend’s mother, who knits, and crochet a little blanket, in 4th grade, as a Christmas gift for my father.
But on May 12, 1979, maybe…just maybe, that was the first day I may have thought to myself…I CAN’T DO THIS.
Scheduled for that day was my father’s first viewing, at the Doherty-Wickersham Funeral Home on Milltown Road, in Delaware. My friends and their parents would be there. Neighbors and people who worked with my father would be there. I was socially awkward, to begin with…and I knew he was dead. I knew that when I entered that building, I would actually see my father, the person who mediated the weighty scenario with my mother.
I had been to one funeral previously, maybe two. My grandfather when I was in 4th grade, and my Uncle John, around 1977 or 1978, now that I think of it. I knew what I would see.
I would see the lifeless body of my father. In a casket. And, my mother had ordered a full autopsy – even of his brain – I had heard this on the telephone. I didn’t even know what that really meant, nor what I might see…actually, I saw nothing of this. Just my father’s familiar, still, waxen face, with makeup, and his silver hair, wearing a gray suit as I recall…laying…still…forever from my world here…
But somehow, I showed up.
And I’ve kept showing up for a number of things in my lifetime…sure, there were times I showed up a bit poorly, I am human, but, I showed up.
As I think on these things and the idea of “I can’t do this,” I realize the better question is, “Can I do this?”
Can I just do today?
Can I do today against the backdrop of so many weights and worries about tomorrow?
Yes, I think so…
Somehow, by God’s grace, I’ve done a lot of days now since that day in 1979…
Thank You For Reading
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