10

We mark the passage of time in years...that become decades...scores.
It's just what we do, we mark the time...about many things.

We mark the time until things happen.
We mark the time since things happened.

Today is the 10th year I've marked this day.

It's not that I've marked it by writing something. 
I mark this day because this day has marked me, has marked my family.
Like a healed broken bone that aches before a dramatic change in the weather, this day makes a healed broken heart ache.

The scars where once there was an open wound are a bit more sensitive to the touch on days like today.  Anytime you see a scar, you know there's a story--be it falling off your bike, to surviving an accident, to wrestling with the Divine through the night, to being nailed to a cross--our scars say something. 

We all lost much 10 years ago when Jimmy died.
And whatever peace I found since then, I'll never come to peace with a 34 year old going to sleep and not waking up.  That shit sucks.  And it always will (by the way, my blog, you don't my language, move on).

I'm a different man than I was then.  10 years ago I was a few months from being 40 and living in the existential angst of that milestone, consumed with showing outwardly that I belonged while inwardly uncertain what that meant immersed in hiding me for fear of rejection. 

Now a few months from 50...truthfully, I've never been more content with what I don't know.  I'm comfortable living the journey of "I don't know, but let's see what we can discover, together."

I'm healthier than I've been since I was 25, physically.
I'm healthier than I've been spiritually, ever.

Over the years to come I'll continue to mark the time of this day.  I'll always lament a relationship that was never allowed to season....for words never spoken that should have been.

As it happens, the family will be gathering this weekend. It's Easter.  It's also Confirmation day.  My youngest, Jack, is being confirmed.  We'll all be together to mark a right of passage for another of the family...including another one we're just hearing about this week (stay tuned).

And when together, something will be said, a look or a facial expression seen, and someone will say, "you know who that looks like, sounds like?"  
  
It's been a decade.  Gosh, that's a long time.