And so it has become with these pages. Do not misunderstand me. I still write many things that bring me to tears of laughter and joy but I also know that coming to these pages has also always been to some extent a place to hide. I will always have these pages and be able look back lovingly on every one of these entries and watch a frightened, insecure banker sleepwalking in sadness teach himself how to live a passionate life. A beautiful life he fleshed out through an amazing trial and error and more importantly—passion and faith—of the past ten years in arriving at the joyful comedian and writer he is still striving to be today.
I remember a chilly fall night—exactly like this one—when I was helping my mother take her potted plants inside for the winter. As mom directed me to each one, I came upon a plant without a single leaf on it in a rectangular pot that exactly resembled the naked trunk of a miniature palm tree. I picked it up curiously as my mother mentioned “I guess that one is dead Eugene… but take it in anyway.” Mom cared for those plants we moved into her flower room that night for the entire winter that was to be her last on this earth. Because while cancer took her strength to water and care for the two acres of garden was our house’s trademark in the neighborhood—it could not take her passion for living and giving life. So every morning while I sulked and deluded myself that what was happening wasn’t, she went into her flower room and watered her plants and lived her life. In this small fifteen by seven foot room filled with nothing but plants and windows—no computer, no TV, no I-pod, no Day Runner, no cell phone, nothing more than the plants she loved and the light of the world that was quickly leaving her she continued to do what she had always done—what we all must do. Live. And as her life slowly left her, she put it into these plants and reminded me that in every single moment we walk this earth—from moments of the greatest vitality to the hollows of our lowest depression and everything else between our first and last breath—we all have a life force which we give to others in selfless moments we just share what we have with this world—the people, the animals, the ideas, the emotions, the any and everything that we encounter that we can affect for the better. This is living. This is life. All those other fancy gadgets are the things that tend to distract us from that. When spring came Mom again called upon me to help her take these plants back outside. And as I picked up this plant that I had not seen for six months on this clear spring day, i was greeted by green fronds of palm everywhere. I looked at my mother and almost amazed said “Look mom, this one is alive.” I honestly did and my mother with her confident, proud smile looked at me and this plant saying, “I know. I guess you just can’t kill some things, Eugene.” And I tell you that she said these words more to that plant than to me as—in that moment—they both took a jab at death. A death that none of us can escape but we can defeat in every minute we choose life. This plant and my mother who cared for it had both survived a winter neither had been given any chance to and—as i still wonder today which needed the other more—i can only thank God for the beautiful gift of a clear and lucid mind as I tell you I could again be back in that flower room holding that plant and sharing that smile with her right now. I took that plant with me everywhere the over the past ten years—from Wilmington to Brooklyn and everywhere in between—and in that time I can tell you it flourished every bit as much as my pages in this journal. But this past spring, this plant’s leaves went from their firm and vivid green to a wilted and darkish purple. Within a week it was dead. I honestly didn’t try to save it any more than I tried to care for it. In fact, this is the first I’ve really given it any thought and now I realize that despite having it ten years, that whatever had been giving that plant life had certainly not nor ever been me. But whatever, whoever it was, she left quickly—before I could even realize.
Everything that is born into this world—from the most complex organisms to the most ridiculous ideas—and everyone and every thing in between by definition must die from this world as well. And one of these ridiculous ideas was the burden that was born into me the night that my mom passed away and was put there by no one other than myself. I make no excuses and have no regrets as i guess I needed this or I wouldn’t have held onto it so long and fed it so long. But when I was at my mother’s grave today I buried one more thing. This sadness. It has served its purpose. It has given me these pages. And that is why ten years after her passing these pages will come to an end. I have no fear that my writing will continue on my journals and other places of publication but for now, this ride is over. So I will close my final entry the same way I began my first attempt to record a moment of passionate living on paper. I leave you with words spoken solely to myself with the hope that they answer a need in your soul as i promise you one last thing. The beauty I feel in READING these pages pales only in comparison to the joy of LIVING them each day. Now I must look for the next ride. xoxo |
