REFLECTING ON MORTALITY AFTER CATCHING COVID
I finally got Covid-19, which is lingering in my body the way a bad relationship does in your mind. You think you’ve over it but the damn thing keeps coming back. My father died of this virus, so I wonder how much of what I’m feeling, he felt. He got it before vaccines, variants and booters. Every time I cough I see his face and remember his struggle and hope the fear of death is enough to keep us all alive, but in a our culture today people use phrases like “herd immunity,’ being clinical in describing the potential deaths of millions, and to distance themselves from the stink and piss of mortality. As a grown ass man I find it increasingly important to face the facts — in the hour glass of life the grains of sand fall faster everyday.
You aren’t really a grown ass man until you have several friends die in the same year and it’s not from anything political, headline making like a choke hold, gun shot, or sports related. When you are a grown ass man, your friends die of heart attacks while on a conference call, are found in their apartment dead from pneumonia when they left a flu untreated, or when stress from trying to pay overdue bills causes a stroke. You are a grown ass man when your friends die of illnesses caused by their twenties lifestyle. The death’s I just mentioned were not random examples. They were real deaths from men who didn’t make it to sixty, men whose talent and hustle made them large sums of money (that they squandered) and saw them have access to high excess (that they dived into.)
It’s an immutable law of nature that the good times and poor decisions of your youth eventually manifest themselves in the aliments of your middle and elder years. You aren’t really a grown ass man until you attend a funeral and run into a woman you dated in your 30s who has a son as tall and you and a daughter who’s the mini-me of that same woman. Not only do you feel old, but you can loudly hear the ticking clock of your mortality as the minister intones the eulogy for your departed friend.
Much of our highly adolescent American culture is based on the idea that the reckless behavior of the young is romantic, fun, and even kind of commendable when reality is such a bummer. Instead, I’ve doscovered that the bad decisions of your 20s and ‘30s become debts you pay in your 50s and 60s. Whether it is a memory of violence, of abusing lovers or drugs, or being mean and arrogant when it was unnecessary and cruel, there is a weight from our youths that that grows heavier with each passing year. It can weigh so heavy that it causes physical and mental harm. So, living fast when you’re young – as exciting pop songs and Hollywood movies make it seen – is simply a method to break hearts, leave lasting scars, and make regret your middle-aged companion.
I could go and will — some other late night.
P.S. Good news. I tested negative today!