Poignant Content Alert. At certain stages and points in your life it is difficult to not look back, selecting certain events, people, experiences, knowing that for good or bad, these are a part of what has made you, you. I know a few people who cavalierly say they never think of the past, and perhaps they don’t. I was teased a bit when I wanted the theme of this blog to be Living Forward, Looking Back, yet I think that for so many of us, that is the way we approach life. I leave in a couple of hours to fly back to Louisiana for my father’s 90th birthday, and it will be one of the moments where past, present, and future blend together. My father has now lived longer than any other member of his direct family, yet his memory is degrading. It’s still manageable, but for how long is difficult to say.

We are gathering as a family, my sister, brother, and their spouses – my hubby can’t be with us. We suspect this is the last time that we will all be together where we can celebrate in this manner, although there is the chance that my father will stabilize and the decline will achieve a somewhat steady state. That is not statistically likely, although it does happen. What we will be able to do is reminisce about those things that he wants to discuss and I will try to capture a number of the stories that he tells of his youth. Yes, it was a one-room school house in rural Arkansas and yes, they walked even though it wasn’t uphill both ways.

I don’t know if either of his younger brothers will come down – the oldest passed away a year and a half ago. My uncles may wait for a bit, so it can be “just the boys” together. I called my aunt on my mother’s side last night to let her know that we wouldn’t be driving down to visit as we usually do – my father already said he didn’t think he could do that as well as handle all the hub-bub of the birthday celebration planned for Saturday. That will be a fairly low-key event in the sense of we’re just doing cake and ice cream at the house, but with the extended family of four generations that will be present, that makes for around 30 people who will be in and out.

We will celebrate and laugh and no doubt bring up a few stories that some of us would rather forget – that little fire in the kitchen from a science experiment that was a very small, easily extinguished fire – and such things. It will be a good day and how many come after that, we can neither know, nor worry about. This will indeed be a time to “live in the present”.