More on the Mid-Life Crisis Thing

In the past I’ve written about the “Mid-Life Crisis” thing, but never before has it hit as hard as it has this year. This year, so far, I’ve lost one family member, and one good friend, both died way too young. The first, my cousin Dave, David F. Hall, was killed outside a bar by a man who fired two shots into his chest. The other, my friend, Antoine “T-bone” Williams, was severely burned in a house fire; he died about two weeks later.

It’s this inevitable loss of friends and family that starts during the “crisis” years, and continues on till your dead, that makes you begin to see your own mortality. Two people I cared about, gone in less than half a year, I thought I’d never see them dead. Just like I never thought of dying myself until the “crisis” hit me. Now I do everything, well almost everything, with that in mind, the thought that I’m at the age where I can die in my sleep. In my sleep!! What?!

Now I want my book to be published, or at least I want to finish it, before I become the inevitable friend or cousin lost to someone else. Sometimes it feels like I’m racing against time, I know everybody feels that way, but that doesn’t take the pressure off. The pressure to finish a life’s work that you’ve thought of since childhood, or travel to a place, or in my case, as with many others, not to be forgotten. To be remembered for something you’ve created, other than children, which are the greatest accomplishments anyone can achieve, but something that came from your soul.

No one wants to be remembered as smelly old granddad or stinky Mr. so and so in the old folk’s home, at least I don’t. Nevertheless, most of us will be. What really scares me, on top of being forgotten over time, is that no matter what I do it will still happen. I’m sure there were millions of people throughout time who created something that they thought would last through the ages only to be forgotten. Maybe I’ll be one of those little known and very obscure Renaissance man who people will debate about. Who knows, only time will tell, and history can be cruel.