Peekaboo

It’s 4:29pm and I don’t know if I should be using the actual numbers when writing a book.  Nathaniel walks in asking “What are you doing home?  Wait, another viewing?”  Nathaniel is curious today, it makes me think.  I’ll explain.  I was expecting him.  He’s home before his mom and I heard the garage door.  It’s just I have to keep an eye on Nathaniel’s thinking.  It’s possible I set too much kindilling under that fire, he being the last child.  The book has to get done this time, in time to remind him, to find him.  If I can’t warn him with a finished book how will he handle reaching the logical conclusion on “why” too fast.  He’ll get there too fast, my fault.  He’ll taste it.  Suicide without the bitter after taste.  A choice best saved for later and it won’t be later for him if I don’t finish.  So it makes me think, write faster, finish first.  

The garage door lands stopping the noise from beyond the kitchen down six steps past the hall through the inlaw suite.     

“Did you wait to see the door go down?”  

“No.  Sorry.”

“Sounded like it stayed down.  You know one leaf hanging on a cobweb triggers that inferray safety-stop the door goes right back up.  You always have to wait and watch it stay down.”

“I know dad.”

“Doesn’t matter, sounded down.  Forget it, mom will notice if it’s open when she gets home anyway.”  I knock on this wood pub table hoping my luck holds up with that thirteen-ish year old loud garage door opener.  I hope it works for another three-ish.  It’s actually the newer one out of the two door openers we have but the other one opens and shuts the small door and runs quiet.  My wife Laura parks her Mini Copper on that side.  The louder newer one has to struggle each time with a door-and-a-half size old heavy wood door.  It’s the side I park my Audi A5.  It gets double the use too because we still use that door as a front door for every day.  The outside code box opens that door and it was better to have the kids memorize the code than remember a front door key to the house.

The opener with new inferray safety-stop was a must at the time, cause you couldn’t buy new without the safety feature, and we needed it.  Our neighbor’s son across the street jammed that heavy garage door open with a hockey stick as it was going down and broke the old old opener.  I think he was twelve, thirteen.  Eliot was around eleven.  Eliot is my oldest son and we had moved in over a year ago when it happened and both boys were still learning they were going to be friends.  Eliot was the underclassman by one year but the pecking order was confusing for them since he was already taller and weighed more.  One day I was walking down stairs from the kitchen smelling the cooked opener.  The working end of the hockey stick was holding that door up with one boy running home and one boy home already trying not to cry.  The door being open or shut became the test of power for the boys and the opener.  Our neighbors are great so it was easy for us dads to agree this will be funny when we remind the boys someday.  They offered to pay whatever it cost to fix, we said no.  They even wrote us a check after the constant asking and we finally told them we had to buy a new opener.  We graciously accepted the check, never cashed it.  They’re still great neighbors.  I can see their lights on as I write.  

It’s a good story about a garage door opener but now, it would be a bummer to spend even more money on the house right before we sell it.  Money is already going fast in big amounts by plan. We have these redos of the two upstairs bathrooms which are currently forty-five thousand.  We’re getting them redone now so we can enjoy them for the next three years before I retire from the Medical Board and we end up living year-around in the Sea Bright townhouse we’re buying as I write this book.  Adding a new garage door opener too breaks the camel’s back.  We should stay.  Kidding.

My son Nathaniel is nineteen.  There are plenty of times I’m sitting at this table in the sun room, dinner most nights, doing something on my laptop, watching television on our main 54” TV hanging here, he doesn’t say a word.   Laura and I will spend hours on the couch binge watching this television, when she’s home, and almost always when Nathaniel comes home he goes anywhere else in this five bedroom four full-bath house.  We don’t see him until dinner.  It makes me think, I have to write. There’s a problem though, another reason it might be too late. 

I had to stop to count in my head how many bedrooms and bathrooms before I wrote it.  That’s part of the problem.  Actually that is at least half the problem.  Or not.  It depends on whether I finish this book.  I don’t care otherwise.

You see my memory is getting worse.  I only remembered the garage door opener story because the noise reminds me to worry each time.  I have about four or five stories I can remember out of nearly sixty years now.  I still never remember to buy grease for the garage door.  I should just write a todo list instead of a book.  

My lack of memory started the reason I pepper my life with “I think”, “about”, “around”, “a few”, “yeah I remember that”.  It’s because I don’t remember that.  

I’ve struggled with remembering all my life, and I mean I can’t remember all my life.  I can’t remember places I’ve been, things I’ve done, except for one thing that happened, the first thing that happened fifty two years ago.  I remember how you’re going to die.  I promised then I’d wait, not saying a word, but now I’m thinking I should tell you.  Definitely tell Nathaniel.  It’s  getting way too late, time, memory, they are both almost all gone, but I’ll try.   

I shouldn’t just write that my memory is worse, or explain now how it’s harder to hide.  You will take it the wrong way without a spooky example.  It happened again a few weekends ago.  

I saw it in my brother James’s eyes.  He was spooked. He saw a slower, “Yeah I remember that.” response to his story about the TV crew filming my workout at our gym twenty thirty years ago.  No one else was filmed or interviewed, they came special for me.  My particular workout for chest, pectorals, was part of a health story about four unique ways to be in shape for either a local news or Public Broadcast.  Not sure which.  The amazement in his telling of the hours and angles it took to get an eight minute interview and my workout on TV was because he was there and couldn’t forget, then watched it again on TV.  I don’t know which made the biggest impression on him because I was distracted with the I don’t remember again.  I just said I did.  

After I said “Yeah I remember that.” I shut up.  I alway say it and shut up so the other person finishes whatever story and hopefully big parts come back to me.  The only thing I do remember at this moment was it took too long for any synapses to fire off any images for me to chime-in with anything else later to make James forget my losted look.  Even now I’m only remembering a camera on a tripod with me looking into a mirror lifting a dumbbell from my waist across to the opposite shoulder.  Forty five years of chest workouts once a week each with about seventy to a hundred reps a workout each pec, I’m not remembering those reps that day or any other day.  I’m living those quarter/half million reps.  Here’s the part that spooks me.  The only image I remembered by the end of James’s story was an image from behind the tripod.  It must have been an image from the TV show so I really don’t remember hours of filming it at all.  The spookier getting-worse part, writing about it now I can tell soon I won't remember James ever bringing up the story.  

James is my younger brother by three years.  I had three older brothers, one sister.  Stephen and Michele were dead before making it to 30-31 years old. Christopher survives his mid twenties with almost no memories worth keeping from before the accident.  Diane was first born, first to die, crib death.  Your death will obviously not be like hers.      

Your death may be spooky too to you because I’m writing about it now.  I’m writing about though because it might be the only way.  I’m going all in to save you a shit load of pain, but that could very much mean I get stuck.  It might still be smarter just to stop.  Choose another way.  Screw the book and let these first few pages whisper off into whatever cloud-file with what’s left of my memory.  All of it floating away, perhaps like it should without any chance of warning you.  It’s those thoughts too that should spook us both.  Away by choice, accident, or just failure.  Book or no book maybe it’s too late.  Those words I just used, and you, turning around to see what’s behind you as you run, we’ll both see what we see. 

It’s obvious to me I’m running out of time, soon you will see too it’s not good for either of us.  It’ll take a book to warn you.  My just telling you straight out wont work.  You won’t want to see it.  My saying it once isn’t enough, isn’t loud enough to reach you so far gone.  

If I find a way to get it all down in this book before I hide, before I die, I win.  It won’t be easy, even that last sentence was purposely in the wrong direction.  Not the “hide” word, I meant to write “before I hide”, not “before I die”.  Dying will be easy for me, it might hurt like hell, but that won't matter. If the only thing I ever remember is what I saw at the beginning, my dying will be the easiest.  The same for you? Dying easy for you?  Read every word, every way.     

It’s the word “win” that’s starting you on the long way.  It’s not the wrong way either, it’s the wrong direction.  It’s the wrong only way.   You need to get back to where you started so we can take the long wrong only way back to where you are.  

Thinking about starting the long way isn’t easy.  Most go the short way, it’s easy.  The short way is an easy choice to live with, so I need to write this book and you need to read it.  The short easy way is the wrong way to live and no way to die.   

You can think, you will wisely get anywhere taking the shortest way between two points your whole life.  You won’t.  You’ll get stuck in the middle and die the hard way.  

You’re figuratively stuck in the middle but you will literally die the hard way.  Also you were past the point of no return many years ago.  Keep reading.

I’ll keep writing only a little about this book because it’s way too soon to understand &SW.

It’s already time I write welcome back second time readers, yes that &SW was for you.  

One small dive into the timing of the book, then, I promise to get going to the beginning of where we have to go.  You promise to wait, don’t die for any reason before you finish the book.  No suicide.  No matter the reason, don’t die.  Reading every word will help you die easy yes but, there is a heavy cost. Please know now anything short of the path as we move forward will be a torturous middle ground wherever you stop.  Stop anywhere and I can’t help you.   You might think this is an exuberant halfcocked poorly written scare tactic to get you to read a book.  Agreed for now if that helps you.  It doesn’t change I have to save Lawson.  It also doesn’t change what I saw.  

If you can’t finish the book and you’re dying very soon even with the best medical care and you still want to know what I saw, please just finish reading this paragraph and not another word.  Stop praying.  Your prayers have been heard and more praying is a lack of faith.  Let your mind be.  Moan silently or out loud.  Let the vibrations of your moan reach the pain.  Watch whatever you want, accept help and pain medication.  If you can still see and talk, do it as little as possible.  Try to keep your eyes open and just watch.  A movie, a show, a waive, a wall, a person, a plant, a minute of a second hand, just watch anything and don’t worry about what you don’t see if you can.  Now don’t try to listen as much as possible, hear the vibrations as they reach you if you can, but let them be either way.  Don’t bother with listening if you can.  Don’t bother if you can’t.  Don’t bother about what I saw.  Now not another word. 

Chapter 2

If I think I can get there, I can’t.

If I think I can’t get there, I can’t. 

If I don’t think there I get where.  

Should have been you

Still reading, let’s proceed. 

Words.