October 30th.
You’d be 73 today.
Mom and I went to Bob Evans this morning, breakfast out–like you used to love. I wavered between an omelette and the country fried steak. Ultimately went with the latter…as you’d surely have encouraged me to, knowing how I like ’em when I have ’em.
It’s not–it wasn’t–the same, though. Not without you.
You’re still here in both of us.
In me.
I am who I am only because of you.
Last year we were in Zanesville, visiting with Aunts Janice, Becky, and Sue, the day before your birthday…but FOR your birthday.
And ON your birthday last year, I went to that first “draft” event for Flesh and Blood…driving across town to an unfamiliar shop to interact with people I’d never met before, for a game I’d never REALLY played before, etc.
Pulled that 1:96 packs card, AND that 1:960 packs card, and had a good experience with the game itself, the shop, and the guys there. And whatever else I left with, I left with that story OF those cards, that you would’ve been so fascinated with. If onlybecause it was something I went and did, out of MY comfort zone.
I know you’d’ve been glad to see me do that, even on your birthday, maybe BECAUSE of that.
As you always loved seeing me get out there and do things with others, try things, and so on.
And then it was just two years ago–hard to believe–that Saturday, October 30, 2021, the three of us went to Texas Roadhouse. And though we’d been there before, we’d been out before, and though it was your birthday, while for me much of it seemed like “just another time,” I always remember how you were just so keyed up after. I thought it was a bit exaggerated or over the top, how you kept going on about how great that afternoon was.
I tear up as I recall your insisting that it was the BEST birthday ever.
71…SURELY you’d had better. All those years, all the people throughout those years, all the experiences. And after the past few…
But you insisted.
And I recall pondering the years as well. Grandpa was only 69. And then there we were, you were 71. You were 71, and I was 40, and we still had each other, and we’d broken the mold. Another mold. Had we only had til you were 69 and I 39, we’d have kept in that 30-year-cycle.
None of us knew that just two months later…well, we know now.
So it’s been 22 months, too. Bittersweet, that.
Your birthday October 30th. And we lost you on a 30th.
And then tonight, the grief group.
It’s been over a year. And things hit differently now. Even the grief group feels different this time, more different than the previous sessions.
I don’t know what to even think on that, in the moment.
And these last few days, revisiting Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m not MUCH younger now than Stewart was when that began filming. He was–is–10 years older than you. Born in 1940.
But then, look at all these things that I’m now as old as YOU were, I have conscious memory of MYSELF at the time as I now am as old as you were then, and it’s prompted a whole other set of thoughts and feelings.
I think the “Return of Superman” 30th Anniversary Special comes out this week–tomorrow, technically–and I remember Superman #82, and Adventures of Superman #505, and Action Comics #692–that cover of Clark with the shirt ripped open–that you bought for me while we were out after delivering phone books. Some random “new” comic shop that doesn’t exist anymore, that probably didn’t even exist a year later, but was not Capp’s or Comics & Collectibles.
And of course, there’s the other day. That scene in The Lion King, that hit me as a kid even decades before I’d ever be able to so KNOW its feeling. That powerful, personal, deep scene. And now…
But evening wears on. Time wears on.
My thoughts continue to scatter.
“He lives in you.”
“You see…he lives…in you.”
I hope that despite my grief and my struggling in a world without you a simple phone call away, or in the other room, that whatever anyone sees of you…in me…
I hope they see the good.
I hope they see at least a small fraction of you, and realize the enormity of who you were, and what you meant and mean and are.
To me.
The Life of Walt 