I called my father this morning after riding the cityscape for an early couple hours, trying to reset my brain and think a bit. The morning air is perfect, the sky perfect, the roads perfect. And the early morning weekend traffic seems more calm than usual. Quite excellent riding.
My dad sounds better; he says he is feeling much better. I'm trying to get him to come back with me and promise him I'll return him back to California whenever he likes, but he wants more time. He says it's going to take him a few weeks to get ready for a road trip, to feel 100% up to it. I reluctantly understand.
It can't be easy at his age, although I'm only 35 years from being there myself. That time will fly by... it already has been flying by.
Everybody chooses how they go.
My mom, however, is torn between the life she used to have (when she actually felt alive and joyful) and this life of obsoleteness that she is living now, stagnating her days away as my brother's live-in bank account. Her purpose, her reason for living, is and was always outside of her, external to her, her whole life. Even now she clings to any outside purpose she can, and my brother gives her purpose by having her pay for everything. With the years she has left, she could make changes. She could re-invent herself. But mom is vehemently refusing to invest in herself that way, to develop a new purpose - a real *inside* reason to exist and feel alive again. Again, I understand. It's tough to make changes when your life's patterns have been cut so deep.
Everybody chooses how they go.
Seeing the two of them, both my parents and both from the same start and being the same age, yet so different in their outlooks and outcomes... it really fuels me to live each day to the absolute fullest, to maximize my friendships and my partnership with my wife... to really just live this life in the most positive way possible.
Really live it.
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