No one gets out of here alive. Are you having any fun in this world?
10 November 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
A year ago I went to a swinging Christmas party thrown by a pair of twin brothers my age who still live in my old Wonder Years growing-up neighborhood. Out of all the original Lost Boys the twins were the only ones who stuck it out and stayed in the hood when everyone else struck out in different directionsonce a year they send out a clarion call to the old neighborhood boys to reassemble at the original house where the twins were raised. Someone said, You cant go home again. And that is profoundly true for me. I was raised 5-miles away from the twins yet cannot bring myself to drive by the house my mother and father custom built in 1952. Yet I do bring myself to go to the wild twins house neither married though both are intelligent and hip beyond anything you could imagine. Bob is an exquisite visual artist whos pen and ink work has been shown in galleries nationwideI have four of his works hung proudly in my home. Bob divides his time between doing custom carpentry work for the ubber-rich folks in Potomac (the people with the copper roofs on their mansions) for whom he builds massive dinning room tables and glass room additions. He constructs custom cabinetry with exotic woods selected by finicky clients. Now near sixty, this hippie artist is an expert skier who once served as Hunter Thompsons artist-in-residence back in Aspen during Docs barely unsuccessful Freak Power bid to become sheriff. Bob and Russell have an eclectic group of friends and at the X-Mas bash one moment you can be talking to some Old School crazy person and the next moment with some terribly proper heart surgeon.
Bob splits his time: six months of the year he works his wood and renovation magic for the rich and famous and six months of the year he lives in seclusion on the River Ranch, his customized funky house on a raging portion of the Salmon River in rural Idaho. I call him the River Buddha. He sits on his deck overlooking the jet-stream flow of this powerhouse river as it eternally rips left to right with seasonal increases and decreases in the degrees of ferocity. He likes to drink wine, smoke a cigar and draw while watching and listening to the river. This is right up my alley and I like to visit him and fish for giant steelhead off the second deck he constructed down at the waters edge. Last year at the X-Mas bash Bob introduced to a successful electrician from the old neighborhood: the electrician was a guy that I should have known; when he and I talked at the X-mas party we ran down an endless list of mutual acquaintances. He fit and vibrant and looked 15-years younger than his chronological reality. He had made a few bucks and had a few toys and this day was showing off his Dodge Viper. I was down with that as I love hot cars. The monster 10-cylinder had 500-horsepower and was black on black. We examine the car and drank strong, sweet Irish whiskey. We ate wild boar stew that Bob had made from a boar hed shot on his last trip west. The River Buddha is a gourmet cook in addition to his other talents. The Viper Man went over the brute in detaila serious tour of a serious auto tweaked-out by a serious auto affectionado. The culmination was his letting me drive the beast around backstreets I knew better than my own naked body. A good time was had by all. Imagine my surprise when Russell, Bobs twin called two weeks later and said that the athletic, vibrant viper-man had had a cerebral hemorrhage on his way to his Ocean City condo and diedBam! Just like that. Hed have been the last guy at the party Id have picked to die of natural causes.
Fast forward to October of 2005 and Pavel Tsatsouline and I were sitting on a bench in front of a nice hotel in Richmond the day before the AAU world push/pull championships. Were sitting and talking when out of the lobby strode Barbara: 50-ish, fit and the meet director, I directed a wise-guy comment in her direction and she heard and laughed and walked over and talked with us for a good 30-minutes; her southern twang was lyrical and smooth as honey and I mentioned that I wanted to talk with her about a project I had in mind. She promised shed make time, pecked me on the cheek and went on her way. I saw her all day everyday for the next two days. Not only was she the director of this competition she was lifting as well. On Saturday she put aside her officiating and administering and competed: she bench pressed and deadlifted and set records in her weight class and age-division. Her extended family was in attendance and it appeared that there were four generations on hand. She was triumphant that weekend: shed put on a terrific competition that bought kudos from all, she competed herself and set records. Imagine my surprise when a month later Zeb John informed me Barbara had keeled over dead from a cerebral hemorrhage while training for the world championships this coming January. If someone had asked me to point out a person whod be dead within a month of natural causes at that competition, Barbara would have most certainly been at the bottom of that list. This gal was holding back the hands of time on all fronts and physically and psychologically she was decades younger then her chronological reality.
In both instances I feel confident in saying the deceased lived life to the fullest; both were vibrant and active and were doing things they enjoyed right to the end. As the old saying goes, no one gets out of here alive and sooner or later we all encounter oblivion. Personally, Id prefer to live large and keel over quick rather than lead a safe-as-milk life and end up in a nursing home clinging to a slender thread of life despite the quality of that life being horrid. I got a call from a friend of Iron Vics last night reminding me that it was just a year ago that that vibrant man died suddenly and unexpectedly. Ditto for Vic: youd be hard pressed to find a fitter man for his age. How well I remember him (at age 63) calling and telling me how hed just done 600 free-hand squats in 45-minutes. He was a cardio and lifting machine. Whats the point? We can get struck down anytime so lets not have a bunch of regrets about things we could have, would have, should have done when the reaper shows up and taps us on the shoulder. Live a little and lets not put off every pleasure and enjoyment to some future day that may or may not ever arrive.
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