Coloring in a Big Box

I have written what I have called a birthday letter on the anniversary of Miles' birthdays. I began writing them three years after his death. This is my tenth letter. I need to write them for my own renewed recognition of his life and have been grateful that they have helped others going through loss.
 
I have had some time recently to mull over time as I quickly approach my 65th birthday. Time for both a self-inventory of the time I have used, and the time left. Fortuitously, I read a NYT article by Tim Urban, "How Covid Stole Our Time and How We Can Get It Back". This February 25, 2022 article is a kind of encouragement to break out of narrow path we may have travelled the last couple of years. A path that narrowed the many choices in life that our optimistic, expansive selves were used to viewing and choosing.
 
Urban created the chart in the photo I've added. It is a helpful way of visualizing, in weeks, our life span if we reach 90. While it can be shocking if you’re around my age to see how much closer to the end we may be than from the beginning, it is also reassuring to think about how what we value can shape how we see each week. He wrote, "once you visualize the human life span, it becomes clear that so many parts of life we think of as 'countless' are in fact quite countable." He argues that as we see our life in this way, we can find motivation to jump start out of a complacency we may have based on the belief that we can or will do something about X tomorrow. Our tomorrow's have limits and our today's need our attention. Our ability to change and see the future choices instead of the lost choices from our past can be very freeing in creating new time for friends, and special schedules for valuable experiences.
 
One exercise I did was to look at the relationships I really value, and at the experiences that bring me joy or fulfilment. Then look back at how many days I spent with those people or experiences. For me, those days were almost always a smaller quantity than what they meant in my life. I believe I am like most people operating from the naive optimism that there will be more time later, so the prioritizing of time today isn't vital to my life. The article helped me focus on how to prioritize valuable relationships, valuable experiences like travel, and valuable values like volunteering. It served as a good reminder that the roles I value most like husband, father, brother, cousin, uncle, and friend should show up in the time I spend each day and week. It reminded me of a simple truth: you never regret the days appreciating relationships or the beauty in front of you.
 
I highlighted the weeks I have lived and stared at the approximation of weeks remaining until I turn 90. I could mark the awful weeks when my son Miles, my mother and father died. They could be marked with an acid that never would eliminate them. I could also mark weeks like the ones when my brother Robert received the then cutting-edge surgeries to replace his corneas, giving him vision throughout his adult life.
 
This, and other wonderful moments, would mark the chart with the expanding sense of how much they have brightened my weeks. High weeks would be the vacations with Miles and Tanner - memories I thought they would have later to recollect their times with me, instead of Tanner and me recollecting our times with Miles. My life with Penny brings a brightness to each week that I don't know how to show with a simple highlighter. There are these bad and good weeks in all our lives. Carrying these anniversaries in our heads helps us as landmarks reminding us of the lives we shared, while our goals and optimism leads us to the open future where our choices, hopes and efforts will be realized.
 
Regret over mistakes and bad choices in my past that has led me to today can be haunting. The risk can be that regret turns to paralysis and the foreboding sense that my choices today are trapped in a narrowed alley by my past. Instead, I try to choose to look at the memories that are written on my soul are written with the determination that they guide me to be a better me. I want to believe that these marks on my soul have brought me wisdom and greater courage to take the risks new choices bring to be a better me.
 
Aristotle wrote that "memory is the scribe of the soul" and I very much believe it. Our soul can be shaped by our experiences with a tempered optimism that continues to see the goodness of the future, or it can become burdened by a past that whispers the limits of our future. I believe my little weekly boxes are filled with weeks that have continued to shape my soul with hope and love. I've gotten up most days with gratitude. When I haven't, I've woken up with purpose. And I knew that this purpose would lead me back to gratitude. Cumulatively, the days with only the trust in purpose would amount to years on the chart. Individually those days and weeks have been easier to bear knowing that eventually gratitude would be my companion again.
 
An early and ongoing influence in my life is the play by Thornton Wilder, “Our Town". Simple and predictable, it was a staple of many high school play schedules; yet it has always been profound to me in focusing on the present and appreciation of today's beauty, and gifts.
 
Toward the end of the play, Emily has a view of her world from the afterlife. She looks at it with longing and a sense of the beauty in the little things she and others took for granted. She says, "I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed .  .  . Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it - every, every minute?" This last declaration by Emily that I first read as a teenager, gave me the words and vision to understand that I should see both the wonders and temporariness of life, embracing it with gratitude.
 
I miss Miles and that will never change. I miss his not living this life anymore and the joys he would have had. I miss the thought that he will never have a 64th year. This simple chart looking at my weeks has helped me see the specific time I had with both Tanner and Miles as they reached adulthood. Time that I knew needed to be appreciated and lived out as fully as possible. Time that is etched on my soul with much more love than tragedy.
 
Perhaps my greatest lesson in the weeks behind me is that to love is wonderful, and to be loved is sublime. This carries me forward to appreciate my time ahead as I live with a soul shaped by my past and pointing me forward - past turning 65 and hopeful for years of purpose and gratitude. I hope I have many years in front of me to experience life, appreciate my world, love and be loved.