100 Days

100 days

A. W. Kearney



         The other day I was thinking about my deceased father. He died about a year ago. It is not often that I think about him, I am as busy as ever and like it that way. But somehow I started considering the amount time we spent together after I finally moved out on my own. I remember having all these plans of things I would do with him: fishing trips, road trips, vacations, Holiday visits; an entire lifetime worth of days together.

I lost my dad when I was forty-two; not even halfway through my life and not nearly through his. I was thinking about all the days we did have and could not come up with nearly as many as I thought there should be. I believe there were several years when I did not see him at all. In all I could not come up with even a hundred days in twenty years. That just struck me as sad. Looking back I could see how I got so wrapped up in my own day-to-day life that I did not realize that he was not around. Even now that he is really gone, I do not realize it most of the time. I do not think about him and so I do not miss him unless I make a point of it. That is horribly sad.

         Then in my musing I extrapolated this situation to my relationship with my own children. As teenagers they moved to South Dakota to live with their mother. So, they are now seven hours away. One is recently married and the other in high school. I get to see the younger one for a couple weeks during the summer and then at Christmas or Thanksgiving. But how many days will we get? How could someone as close as your own children become such a peripheral part of your life? I guess it is just modern civilization forcing a distance between us. Families no longer live together in multi-generational groups or even stay in one location for generations. How many of us have an ancestral home? Or even hometown? It is only when your children are young and with you every day, that you really get time with them.

         Life forced me away from my children early. I have to admit that I missed most of their childhood. I was a working college student trying to make something of myself, supposedly for the childrens sake. Or, at least, that was one of my excuses. But now that I can look back from a more experienced vantage point, I am not so sure it was worth it. At that time in my life there was always tomorrow to look forward to. “Maybe next weekend I’ll take you to the park.” “Someday we’ll go to Disneyland.” I see now that that was all a self-delusion. There is no someday, only now. If you trade today for a someday, most of the time, you end up losing both.

         For me and my father the last five years consisted of the yearly 4th of July barbeques and the Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers and an occasional family game night, but these just did not add up to the amount of time I feel they should have. It is said that the road of life is paved with good intentions. I think it is more likely littered with good intentions, honest promises and plans unfulfilled. I do not think we made fake plans or empty promises. I had every intention of doing all of them, but at that moment the future was unlimited and empty of obligations, so there was always plenty of time for “someday”. But I have found that life abhors a vacuum and will fill every spare moment it can with obligations, responsibilities, crises and worries.

         Now that my life has slowed somewhat, I have time to reminisce through all my memories. But my reminiscing has revealed the gaps and illusions left by the unfulfilled plans and missed opportunities. I miss my children. I miss my father and all the memories I do not have, because we did not make them. And now it’s too late. All I can do now is try to make some plans and create some memories with my daughters before those days slip away and are gone.

         I spent my life looking to the future and not seeing the present until it was already the past. Honestly, I can not say for certain that I would change anything if given the chance. However, I would like to wish for more time. A wish for more than one hundred days with my children and maybe even some plans fulfilled before I pass on to yesterday. But unless either somehow ends up moving in with me or into the local vicinity I do not think I will ever see them more than 100 times in the rest of my life. I miss them.