SOMETIMES YOU CAN'T MAKE IT ON YOUR OWN

Tomorrow is my 36th birthday.  I don’t say that to try to get a comment or anything, its just to show you where I’m coming from.  

There have been a lot of times when I have been thinking about my biological father, and there’s been a number of recent instances that have brought him to mind.  One of which was an old friend of his coming up to my mom and me after church to say hello and tell me that I look just like him.  To say I was speechless was an understatement (especially considering we haven’t lived in our old neighborhood where we did when Dad died since 1989.  Dad died 30 years ago this December.).  Anyway, because of this there has been more than once when I’ve felt guilty that I’m not spending the same time on my step-dad, who died 4 years ago.  

I knew my step dad better than my dad.  I love them both very very much, but in different ways.  And yeah, there are probably more than one song that reminds my of my dad, but SYCMIOYO in a lot of ways, that one belongs to my step dad.  

We didn’t fight that much.  We had a few arguments at first, but I think that was more a getting to know you thing, and we always apologized…usually about ten minutes later…and it was usually me because I was the one in the wrong.  You know how with teenagers things can happen.  God bless him, he’d never dealt with girls before, so he was learning as he went.  Luckily most of this never happened when my mom was around.  

Tough, you think you've got the stuff

You're telling me and anyone

You're hard enough 

That was one thing about him, though.  He was so very stubborn.  In that case, he fit in well in my family because all of us are really (some more than others).  But really, the lines that really hit home in the song, that remind me of him when I hear it are these:

Let me take some of the punches

For you tonight

Listen to me now

I need to let you know

You don't have to go it alone

and then these:

And it's you that makes it hard to let go 

Sometimes you can't make it on your own

Sometimes you can't make it 

The best you can do is to fake it

Sometimes you can't make it on your own

See, he died in 2012 of a stroke at age 87, almost 88.  He just fell asleep in his chair before lunch.  Mom was in the kitchen making sandwiches, and I was sitting on the other side of him.  She called over to him to wake him up so we could eat, and he didn’t.  We kept trying to, but he wouldn’t wake up.  That’s when we called for an ambulance.  He spent over two weeks in the hospital, but he never woke up, and when they did a scan they found out there had been a number of small clots that had gotten to his brain at some point during the whole thing too, not just the initial stroke.  My mom is in the hospital every day.  I was there every day I could be there (there were some days I had to be at home because we had renovations that were being done that had been planned way before everything had happened.).  I hated seeing this man who never looked or acted his age lying there dying in a hospital bed, but I couldn’t not be there.  

There was another thing too…I’d never actually been in the room when someone died.  I won’t lie, that scared the crap out of me.  I don’t know why, I mean, I’ve dealt with and been around death before.  I mean, I’m Irish-I’ve been to more funerals than weddings in my life.  That being said, I had never been in the room when someone’s life had ended, especially someone that I loved.  But you know what?  It was peaceful, for him at least.  And I was able to say goodbye at the end.  

I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am if it wasn’t for my step dad.  I hope he knew how much I loved him.  My mom says he did.  I hope she’s right.  

KITE

 Back in 2005, when the Vertigo tour was was spreading its love across the world and leaving us all dizzy in the best way possible, Zootopia, or the Zoo as we affectionately call it (the U2 fan club forum for those whom don’t know) was a hot place to be.  I’ll admit, I tried to fit in with everyone, but once again, I learned that if I was just myself, it was better than if I tried to be who people wanted me to be.  

Anyway, one member of the forum decided to start a be creative contest of sorts, where they would pick a song, and you had to do something creative dealing with that song, be it visual, writing, etc.  The first one I participated in was for “Kite”.  The image above is what came to my head when I listened to the song, and I didn’t think much about it at the time, but I remember that I received a number of positive comments on it when I posted it.  Its only after the years have passed and I’ve looked at it have the symbolism behind it started to dawn on me.

See, my dad died when I was six years old.  I remember bits and pieces about him, but I don’t really remember much.  I know I have his hair, and his eyes, and his patience. I’ve asked questions about him since, to try to find out more about what I don’t know. I do remember that we were really close.  At first, with the picture, I wondered why I had put that tree there.  I had thought that it was just to balance it out.  I only recently realized it was because it is a simplified version of the hill he used to take my sister and I sledding down.  It was a tip of Fairmount Park in Philly that was right across the street from the Philadelphia Museum of Art where there was a small grouping of trees and then a big opening.    The child’s so young I supposed because I was tapping into my innocence from back then.  

Now here’s the story that kind of brings it all together, that I didn’t even remember.  My mom told me about this just recently, and when she said it, I was kind of taken aback and was once again reminded of me painting this.  Maybe it was stuck in my subconscious somewhere and came out, who knows.  It was 1984 or so, and our family, with my mom’s sister and her family were down The Shore (slang for South New Jersey beaches) and the adults (my parents, aunt and uncle and my dad’s brother, my Uncle John) thought it would be a great idea to fly kites off of the back deck of the house we were renting.  There were also six girls all under ten years old around and no one had any idea what they were doing.  Fun was had, but the kites didn’t have a chance as they flipped onto the roof (apparently among other places) and were lost.  

“In summer I can taste the salt in the sea

There's a kite blowing out of control on a breeze

I wonder what's gonna happen to you

You wonder what has happened to me”

Yeah.