Stuck in Time

I am not a time traveler. I am not a science-fiction buff. I am a normal (?) human being and I noticed something odd about myself. I am stuck in time!

Allow me to bring you up to speed. This is a true story of and about my life. There is nothing fictitious or fabricated in my words. This is 100 percent true and verifiable.

I am in constant bereavement mode. As it looks right now, I will remain that way with no end date in sight. From the time I wake up to start my day until the time I go to sleep, I can only think of my loved ones who are still near and dear to me who have passed on to another life. While sad it is to say, it is even sadder because it is true.

I know that, in our lives, we encounter deaths, many deaths, many til we reach our own end date. It is a sad fact, but it is true. We will all die at some point. How we live life until that point arrives is how we will define our life. For me, it started such a long gone time ago.

I used to be an altar boy way back in 1965. It was an activity I enjoyed because it helped keep my closer to my Catholic faith. But, like everything else, it had its ups and downs. While I was doing my chores in church and appearing at many functions within the church, I also had to serve funerals. I really had no idea of what a funeral entails. Up multilingual that point, I saw fictional murders on TV, watched Dracula more times than I can remember and I remember watching the JFK funeral on TV, but I never attended an actual funeral. In 1969, however, I ended up attending my first funeral.

She was a very close next door neighbor in my boyhood home. Her name was Alease Bradley. She was so close to us that when my parents had to go out or go to work, she often babysat my siblings and me. Even though I had a grandmother who lived on the northern part of town with my grandpa, she acted as a surrogate grandparent for us. She ended up passing away that January. Mom and I had to travel to Manhattan for the viewing. During my altar boy days, I have often seen caskets, but, until her death, I have never seen what was IN a casket. That night, I saw her face for the last time. It was scary in the sense that she nearly did not resemble the lady I knew before. She had what looked like a macabre smile and she was without her glasses that I remembered so well. She was a corpse, a lifeless individual. And that is the last memory that I always have of her.

For many years after that, I tried to get that image out of my mind. As you can clearly see by my writing, it is still with me.

When I started high school, one of my earliest friends lost his dad. As a show of support, I went to his viewing in the local funeral parlor, a building that I never entered before. It was a rather chilling event as I saw the body of a man who I never met as he lay in his burial box. Although I never met him before and I tried to console my friend, the only other thought I had was about being locked in this place with no means of escape. Again, I tried to avoid other funerals.

There was another very strange death event that still haunts me today. A family that my parents knew had a situation that I have never seen before. Three natural deaths occurred in the same day and place. It seems that the grandfather had a heart attack and died instantly. The son came home and saw his deceased dad, had a heart attack and died as well. The grandson discovered the bodies of his grandfather and father. You guessed it. He also had a heart attack and died as well. Three generations in the same family perished in the exact same fashion nearly at the same time period in the same evening. It was a natural death for all three of them. Nothing nefarious at all. Guess who made the trip to the same parlor as before. That’s right. That experience haunted me for months on end.

I was honestly doing fine until 1974. Some time during that Thanksgiving weekend—my first Thanksgiving in my freshman year—one of my best friends died in a horrific automobile accident. He was the passenger in his friend’s Dodge Charger. I never went to his viewing or funeral, but the results of his death still reverberate within me til this very day. As a result, that model of vehicle releases great angst within me. I even refuse to ride in one because of the nightmares it gives me

I also had to cope with the loss of my grandpa that April in 1975. He was a wonderful and cherished individual by everyone who knew him. He was simply loved by all. When he died, however, two things occurred within me. First, I had to deal with the loss of my favorite grandparent and second, I had to watch my own dad say goodbye to his dad. The second task was far more harder than the first. As I looked in the casket of my grandpa, a vibrant individual, I knew that this loss would be my toughest to date because this was a beloved member of my family who passed on to the next life. Reality had finally given me that well-deserved slap in the face that I sorely needed.

Try as I may, I went about life again. Over the years, I had to deal with many deaths including one of a close family friend and mentor to me in 1983 and then the loss of my private music teacher in 18985. This set the stage for my next big death, one that would hurt me more my mentor’s and music teacher’s deaths combined. It would be the death of my baby sister in 1987.

She was just 23 and a half years old when she took her final breath. When I was exactly the same age, I only had my Bachelors degree for just one year and beginning the second year of study for my Masters degree. Simply put, although she was the mother of a very jubilant and beautiful four-year-old, her life was done and her time on Earth was now over. Reality hit me again and I had no response. Out of all my family members, my baby sister was my best friend in the family. I was able to talk with her about everything even if I disagreed with her solutions for me. She was MY sister and my buddy. When she died, she took a huge chunk of my life with her. To this very day, I can still hear her dying words as she told me to remain strong for her so that she can leave the hospital. It was the last conversation we ever had. Four days later, we ended up burying her on my mom’s birthday.

Over the years, I thought that I would be immune to death. I remember my mom losing her only brother, my Uncle Gene, as well. I watched as she cried and cried. I was helpless. What could I do other than console her. I did my best. If I had the ability to bring him back to life, I would have done so along with the lives of my sister and others who I loved in this life, but it just wasn’t humanly possible.

In 2008, I lost the only lady that I could ever love in this life. She was gone as quickly as she came into my life. I lost the only chance I had to live as happily as I ever wanted.

In 2012, dad reunited with his dad. Cancer claimed his life and sent me barreling toward depression. I rarely celebrated my birthday or other events without my family. Now, I felt that those events were beginning to ring hollow for me. As he lay in hospice care, I watched intently as he took his last gasp for air. Then, in an instant, he was gone. The man who spent all of my life keeping me out of trouble, loving me, inspiring me and supporting me was now a memory. It was at that instant when I felt exactly what he felt when he last saw his dad’s face as grandpa lay in his casket. The emotions came back once again.

In 2015, the last death in my original family occurred when mom succumbed to cancer and diabetes. It was a tough battle, but it eventually won. Here was the woman, along with dad, who gave me life. She was devoid of her life. I remained in depression with no signs of any sort of remedy.

It is now just over four years after mom’s death. My life has changed drastically. I can’t seem to hold down a job. I get to be very argumentative. I am a loner. I bother no one. I even live alone. I did take a friend’s advice and joined a bereavement group in order to share the feelings that are within me, feelings that I cannot share with others. So far, I feel it working to help me as I talk with others who have faced similar events. I have even formulated a two part plan for myself. For one, I decided to get more active in more recreational activities like a church group I signed up for. The other is to just move far away so that I am free of the memories that make me sad and depressed 24/7. I think that is a sign of progress.

Until I get the opportunity to put my plans into full effect, I have to live in the same area and look at the same surroundings. I will always see my loved ones—family and numerous friends—all over the place. There is just one problem. They are not really there. I am merely thinking of them as they were and the happiness I always felt when they were around. I always assured myself that they would always be there and would never leave me no matter what. It was a period of my life that I wanted to encapsulate forever, but I now realize that such a wish was impossible to fulfill.

This is why I realized that until something for the better comes along, I will always be...

...stuck in time.