Breaking Free

Once I was young and my biological imperative was to break free and to start my own life. And in those days my parents (while I was a teen) almost every weekend went out to the desert because my Dad loved the Desert. (He left his 28 foot Spartan Trailer at a friend's 2 1/2 acres in the desert so they always had a place to stay. Then when I was 20 in1968 he bought his own 2 1/2 acres to build his retirement house on there in the desert. And this he and I and Mom built weekends until he retired to it with Mom in 1980.
And then he died in 1985 because although he loved the desert a lot he wasn't made for retirement and  neither was Mom.

So tonight I realized that I bought my motorcycle last year because that is what I enjoyed most about the desert(riding off road motorcycles) but what I didn't realize was that I was trying to create those times with my parents still alive when we could all hang out together. My parents are both gone now and I miss them. I don't miss being a teenager and breaking free because that is always painful when you have good parents like I had. But I do miss my parents still being alive and not feeling like pieces of my life are now missing all the time. I used to wonder why folks older than about 50 had sort of a haunted look in their lives often. Now I know because sometimes I feel the same way. It is what you feel like with many of the most meaningful people in your life gone. I'm lucky. I still have my wife and my 14 year old daughter here at home. I'm not alone. But sometimes alone is a very relative term.