Letting Go

I'm sitting here in Central Florida on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of February. Outside, it could not be more beautiful, it's balmy, the air is full of sunshine and breezes. The azaleas are blooming and the palm trees are as a high as an elephant's eye...It's the kind of weather Jimmy Buffet conjures up when he's 'wasting away in Margaritaville' or eating his 'cheeseburgers in paradise'. It's so damn perfect, it makes you blink.

And yet, I'm sitting inside here, and I'm trying to come to grips with the past. Trying to let go.

Something as seemingly innocuous as getting new carpets and I'm knee deep in a blue funk. Allow me to expound a bit. My current floor coverings would not look out of place in Bob and Emily's all mod-cons Chicago apartment from Season One of 'The Bob Newhart Show', we NEED new carpet. It's time, heck, it was time 20 years ago!

But new carpets mean emptying the closets.  Emptying bureaus, drawers...full of photos, books, old clothes, hmmm...a concert program that shows I saw Dwight Yoakam in 1993, 'I saw Dwight Yoakam?' In short my entire life.  And just like my life, it's overcrowded with memories.

Just as am I starting to obsess about becoming next week's subject of a whole new episode of Hoarders, it hits me hard. Grief. Once again, it jumps up and well, there's no other way to put it, bitch slaps me in the face. I find a photograph of me, and my grandparents and Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob died in December. Less the 48 hours later, my Grandma K. died.  It's a lot to absorb in such a small amount of time. You see, Uncle Bob was a big part of my life, he was the tangible link to my past. A great guy, you'd of liked him. Everybody did. He never met a stranger. You know those Saturday Night Car Shows, where folks drive their old Fords and Chevys' to Steak and Shake and everybody stands around and gawks? Well, there's always that old guy who speaks fluent Mopar, that old guy was probably my Uncle Bob. You want to know about stock colors, options, hemis, or mpg, he's your man.  He would reserve space in a fleabag of a motel a year in advance for Labor Day Car Shows as his summer vacation. That was my Uncle Bob, he never met an engine he didn't like. He was Wayne Carini on a budget.

He was the guy who told me that it really was like 'Happy Days' in the old days, a born racounteur who loved to talk about the good old days. 'Life really was that good,' he was forever telling me. A walking contradiction, a guy who stayed so locked in the past that he had his whole Florida mobile home decked out in 50's era photos with a jukebox and diner style napkins and straws on his 50's art-deco table, yet he loved the Clash, was a devotee of Craigslist and Ebay, and even had a Facebook account, I'm told.

I guess we have that in common Uncle Bob and I, that love of that past. The thing that makes it so hard to let go. You're afraid of losing the memories, because you feel you might forget the person or maybe who you are.

So I wrote this today sending it out into cyberspace, so I can let it go and the world will know he was here and I won't have to hoard some more junk I don't need so that I don't forget. 

I like to think he would like that. On this glorious Florida day he would have loved, probably at some car show or antique fair somewhere, I'm memoralizing him so I can let go.