From Dolphin to Whale & Back, Cont’d from November 27, 2009

The legacies left to a child of suicide (any parent will do) are an odd mélange of myths, legends & delusions, the most significant of which is the belief that life has an expiration date equal to the age & anniversary of the suicidal parent.

Too busy with crises, I hardly noticed when mine first expired. My friends & co-workers often called me “The Road Runner,” so swift & effortlessly were my tasks completed. Speedy Gonzales remained a favorite as well until this world became too PC. Never an elevator when the stairs were so much faster, most buildings in San Francisco were then under twenty floors & access more evenly distributed.

In spite of my father’s death-age limit looming over my head, I failed to register the information until my extension had at 38 elapsed, eclipsing my father’s death by three years. Yes, I actually turned 39 & stayed 39 for approximately three years before I realized it was too late for me to continue with the mantra of the 70s:

“Live hard, die young & leave a lovely corpse,” which was more than a philosophy, it was how I managed to survive long enough to raise & fully educate six children. If I had faced reality any earlier & acknowledged life as a series of decades each stacked with more misery than the present, I would have been too intolerant to last.

I would most certainly not have been courageous enough to divorce a misogynist & with six children under 10 years, earn a GED, commit to a double major at a local community college & earn a place on the dean’s list.

Nor would I have been brave enough to explore professional artistic opportunities in various disciplines, growing stronger with each success. I had somehow confused fate with my speed & outlived my father’s legacy. I then set a new expiration date for myself which coincided with the launching of the last child. I decided that my responsibilities as a caretaker would be considered complete & I could finally put an end to it all. Until then I sped through life in a blurry-eyed state of exhaustion from one job to another, some lasting only long enough to earn one paycheck.

Through the Rear-View Mirror of Morality: Like cigarettes, men should have a warning label attached.

On the cusp of an elapsed second chance, at 65 I paid a whole lot more attention & made drastic changes. On the re-set button: Time, no longer my enemy, is instead my best new friend.