upfromdysfunction.com

The anticipated debate between Carrie and myself regarding the appropriate time to leave for the airport ended in my favor. As such, four hours pre-flight we left for Hopkins International (and the wrong side of Florida).  Brother Bob was having a birthday.

Everything happens for a reason, I’ve concluded. And while they needn’t be, the reasons are often revealed over time. (Or so I think).

Something’s going on out there. There are no such things as coincidences. Or so I think.

Did not our father’s death at 59 compel me to grow up? Did not our mother’s outliving him two decades plus give Hal and I time to bind all ties? Indeed, did not the marathon of Aunt Helen — the years H and I nurtured her — did it not yield growth, context, and the greatest sense of community?

The landscape of my rear view mirror is broadening —

Have I not met exactly the right people at exactly the right moments through my years in recovery? FOR THAT MATTER: did I not meet Stuart and Walt and Alan and Bobby and Ermine and Arthur and so many others at precisely the right times in my life … permitting each to bond with me in the innocence of my youth and stay with me through this semblance of a renaissance?

Moreover, had Dick not travelled to Cleveland that specific 2012 weekend, had he not been seated directly across from me in that bulky party of eight, had he not been positioned right then and there to ask me for a post-breakfast ride down Chagrin to his mother’s — would he ever have thought of me with his sister?

I didn’t see it then but I see it now — in retrospect — how the fates played out.

(FINAL EDITOR’S NOTE / LITTLE KNOWN FACT: Carrie had absolutely refused to go out with me when her brother called her four years ago.  He urged her, nonetheless, to read this site before ruling me out. The rest, as my father would say, “is history”.

What though, if I’d never written? And she’d never read? And we’d never …

Ah, but something’s going on out there, and there’s peace in that knowledge. For too long I thought “seeing was believing”. ‘ Turns out it was just the opposite.

The lady at security smiled. “Perfect time to get here,” she told us some four hours ‘ere our return flight to Cleveland. Carrie’s eyes rolled as I reveled.  Most of all, however,  my gratitude for the richness of this world could have filled a six-foot chest of drawers — an armoire, let’s say! I’d tripped, stumbled, and fallen over time, but at some level, indeed, I was up from dysfunction.

       “…Hello, I must be going.
       I cannot stay,
       I came to say
       I must be going.
       I’m glad I came
       but just the same
       I must be going …”

(Groucho Marx)

Dear Dad,

Comes a time, I guess. Comes a time. Once again you were right!

“All good things,” you’d remind me, “Must come to an end.”

Comes a time.

Koufax and Jim Brown knew it, and they were the best. Me? Pedestrian as I am, I recall yet another of your admonitions: that certain people should leave “before the door hits them in the ass”.

So I’m going, and at some level I’ll miss this venture, but like I said: there comes a time.

Who’d have thought, though, that when first I wrote eight years ago, some 613 entries would follow. (Your father would have liked that number).

Fourteen years from wedlock was I then; (Ed. Note 1: sixteen from the separation). (Ed. Note 2: eighteen from exit of the bedroom). Grandchildless, arm/charmless, and overweight I was empowered by my readings on Stacycelia.com and began what for me has been, among other things, a therapeutic journey.

Sharing stories—from the sandlots of South Euclid to the naissance of adolescence… from coming of age in college to perhaps growing up in middle-age…

I’ve opened up, I think — not so much with a devotion to the past as a reverence for it. Not so much in worship of friends and family as love of them.

I embrace it all, Dad. I’ve been graced, and cherish I do both the loyalty of my clan and the purity of enduring friendships.

Blessed I’ve been to grow up in a true neighborhood —- where you knew all the players, and the players were all characters, and yet the characters had character….

Blessed more, I’ve been, to never in six decades/plus take one breath without well knowing full well that I had a mother, father, and brother (among others) that loved me.

Always.

From my core friends to my core existence my glass has never been less than half full. How consistently my cup has runneth over!

So I’m done, more or less. How many more times can I speak to the twinkle in your eye and your eternal wisdom? To Mom’s fealty? To Hal’s honor, wit, and sustenance?

To the treasure that is Carrie or the pride in my children and joy from their children?

How more often can I revel in Bobby and Stuart and Alan and Arthur and Walt and Ermine andthelistgoeson? Or the faces of Mt. Rushmore that I’ve met in recovery?

Even Aunt Helen called it quits. (Comes a time).

So, write you I will, but not from here. And speak to you I will, from my heart.

— Until once again I climb upon your knee,

Love,

Your Sonny Boy.