The Retrospective Writings

Chapter 2 The saying still rings true, I suppose, except now I’ve just given in; the “can’t” has come sooner than expected. My cynicism and disparagement in life comes with the territory. It started back when things were simpler, before the shakes and the seizures. The doctors told me that when they started, the alcohol was weakening my immune system. When paired with the chronic smoking, it all just gave me a greater chance to meet the reaper through the exact same hand my father had been dealt. Having never been that great at poker, I chanced my life with a bluff, and bet it all into the pot of gold that was part of the delusion that the disease reflected at the bottom of each bottle that I drank nightly and with each hourly cigarette. Eight years later, now at forty two years old, the doc handed me some papers with eyes that said, “I told you so.” I’d be dead within a year. My father, who had actually never smoked a day in his life, cursed God for the deceptiveness of the fort

Life In Death “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” -Norman Cousins Chapter One             My brother and I sat in the near-bare hospital room and watched my father breathe his last living breaths. Months before this moment, the doctors had told us all that there was nothing to stop the cancer now, that there were no more lung snippets to take without suffocating the man I had grown to respect. Weeks later, he made this hospital bed permanent, shrinking into it like a deflating blow-up doll. Minutes prior to his final living breath, my father spoke his last words, which were simply, “It’s about time.” We sat there now, waiting for the flat line, and the answer to our long awaited question.             It finally came, and the high-pitched tone of the machine was deafening. We bowed our heads in respect to this long-awaited outcome.             Then our father opened his eyes.             “Well?” my brother

Ohh the anxiety-ridden, all-knowing teenager  years. This is one of the first writings of a memory I wrote years ago.  Here, Have an Egg – Written 5/21/15             At the very beginning of my rebellious days as a teenager, one of the first acts of proving my solitude and the transition into manhood was learning to sneak out of the house, successfully. I was well into my first year of high school and my girlfriend at the time—let’s call her Liz—yearned to partake with me in this mischievous task so that we could both “hang out” more intimately. Not seeing any other way around it, and being the eager fifteen year old that I was, I succumbed to my pubescent urges and complied.             My parents were three years divorced, and at the time, lived in the same city still so that it would make it easier for my brother and I to travel back and forth from each of their houses week by week. My brother never seemed to mind it so much, mostly because he could drive, which in turn

V for Veiled – Written 7/7/16             Many of you who read these stories consistently know that I have mentioned that there are a lot of memories of mine that have been erased due to the many years of alcohol abuse that I have subjected my brain to, making it hard to recall most (if any) details about specific events in my life. The year that I spent living with one of my best friends, Kyle, produced many memorable moments (and many that I’ve tried to forget), most of which I’ve found difficult to fit into this semi-humorous collection due to their harsh and “real” nature, but that I still feel the need to map out on paper anyway. Some of them may someday fall into another collection with a more apt theme, but for now, there are still some that stick out to me as remember-worthy and that I think are appropriate to look back on at this point in my recovery. I try my hardest to look back and laugh at both the good and the bad while still learning from each experience and usi

On Smoking – Written 7/9/16             My earliest memory on the discovery of smoking was upon visiting my great aunt’s house as a kid. When I asked my father what that horrible smell was, he simply said, “That’s the smell of cancer, son. Cancer and cats.”             “And cancer is bad?” I asked.             “Yes, it’s bad. And cats. It’s caused by smoking on a death stick, of sorts. It kills you. You cough until you die.” As directly as it came, that was the end of it. It’s no wonder why I grew up a dog lover.             It was just a few years later that the anti-tobacco folks showed up at our grade school, throwing pictures of cancerous lungs and gums into our untainted minds, shattering all beliefs that the chain-smoking bad guy in James Bond was cool. They gave us all the facts: you’ll lose all your teeth; your fingers will turn yellow; you’ll burn a hole in your throat; you’re really smoking fiber glass in menthols; the word “light” is just a ploy to trick idiots into