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One of the many things that comes with international travel is the almost predictable curse of insomnia.  You can set your watch to it.  Better yet, you can watch the hands of a clock tick around for every uncomfortable minute you are awake.  The second thing that tends to follow insomnia is the inability to find anything on local television in the form of some entertainment which may numb your overactive mind into a somewhat manageable sleep pattern.

Tonight’s 'insomniatic' prose comes from the ninth floor of the Hyatt in Dubai at 4:19AM.  I’ve been up for four hours, watching and thinking, wishing I could sleep to be prepared for tomorrow.  Wait. That’s today in six hours.

I did get two hours of restlessness sleep where I wrestled my overstuffed –hypo-allergenic pillows and one million thread count sheets.  Coming to from this ‘sleep,’ I woke to the TV spilling some movie I had a vague recollection of.  I knew the cast, roughly knew the plot, but took a quick moment via Google to figure out the name.  After that, there was no way to sleep.

I drifted into the flow of the movie as it had been playing about 30 minutes.  It was right as the plot started to speed forward.  And knowing what I know about the opening sequences that set up the story, being tired and away from family, I wouldn’t have fared well watching from the opening credits.  There’s something about traveling that I hope never gets easy for me.  It’s how I struggle with my loneliness away from my family.  I don’t have much family and the ones I do I am scared shitless of losing.  It’s an immense emotional challenge to walk out the door and head to the airport knowing that I’m leaving and what if.  I don’t travel to the friendliest of places.  But more importantly, you never know what moment is your last with them.  In my lifetime, I can only hope that I never have one of those ‘last moments.’  But, I attempt to cope with the reality that every day you leave your family’s company is an uptick on the probability that it could be the last moment you see them, talk to them, or worse, the last time you hug them.

The movie tonight is wrought with emotion, loss, and despair.  The troubled protagonist lost everything.  Everything that mattered.  Through the story, the protagonist’s best friend begins to realize why his friend finds solace in him.  He knows nothing of his life prior to 2001 and will not ask him hard questions about his family.  He begins to understand his friend is damaged and almost irreparable.  Trying to get him help, there’s a surrealistic moment where the main character breaks down to him.  The last time he spoke to his wife was over the phone while she was at the airport boarding her flight from Boston to LA.  They had argued about remodeling the kitchen of their apartment in NY.  She never made it to LA.  The plane, his wife, and his three daughters were on struck the World Trade Center.  His last conversation was an argument.  Over a kitchen.

You relive moments like this over and over in your head.  Things like this cause insomnia and insanity.  While this movie is fiction, it prompts me to think about the last things I’ve said to family. And if I have to relive something over and over, I only hope that I always leave my family with the feeling of knowing how much they mean to me.  Because if this is it, then well……

 

It hasn’t even been ten years since he left.  Not even ten years since we would have discuss the pros and cons of normal aspiration in internal combustion engines.  I think about our ‘last’ talk and I can’t remember it.  That’s my reality that I struggle with.  I guess it’s something I’ll never get over.  Not remembering the last talk we had or remembering the last time I told him I loved him.  My parents will say that he ‘knew’ all of this.  But never knowing when that ‘last’ moment is and not taking the initiative to capture and communicate your feelings to your loved ones can haunt you for years.  Maybe even an eternity.

What I do remember of nearly ten years ago were the voicemail messages I left.  The actual words I left on those messages are a little fuzzy but I do remember the context.  In retrospect, maybe I should’ve been more patient.  I had forgotten that he was heading to Portland with my Dad for a swap meet.  I called him the first time midweek to catch up as it had been a little while since we talked.  I wanted to give him a pep talk about his job.  The economy when he graduated from college hadn’t recovered from 9/11.  It was a few years later when things started to work out for him.  I left that first message excited to talk to him before the weekend.  I was thinking about leaving the company I was at, give him a boost on being OK with the nebulous that is the future, and summarize with what we always did and that was talk about music that touched us.

That first message was happy and insightful and forward looking.  The second message was a little different.  Two days passed and I was annoyed that he hadn’t called me back yet.  This message was more of annoyance although I hoped the tone didn’t ‘go there.’  But I’m not good at hiding how I feel.  So I left that message.  It was along the lines of “hey, what’s going on?  I haven’t heard from you.  I hope things are going well.   Give me a call.”  The shortness was obvious.  And now looking back, I can say that maybe that’s not the memory I wanted to cement in my head.

He never called me back.  He got home from Portland, went to work the following Monday, and died on the way home from work that same day.

I have many positive memories from the few years I had with him.  But my hurt comes the two where I didn’t know they were the ‘last.’  I guess I relate with the main character of the movie this early morning of insomnia.  That last moment, before you even know it’s the last, is something so special that you should pack every bit of emotion and compassion into it.  The curse of the lost moment far outweighs the time it takes to tell someone you love them or are proud of them.

I really hope that I’ve learned something from the loss.  And I think I have.  These days with my international travel, I really try to always be proactive in my communication with my family.  I’m not perfect, and I’ve had my setbacks.  There have been trips where I wasn’t communicative or a pain in the ass to family as we chatted on the phone, or even worse, at the airport when I was leaving.

But I’ve taken a lot of this to heart,  And watching this movie in the dark of a hotel room 8000 miles away from the only people and can fathom being around 99% of the time brings all of this full circle.  The film is bringing out of me the loss and the despair from 10 years ago.  The harshness of learning to move forward knowing that you can’t turn back, pick up the phone and tell them you love them.  The reality is no new memories with them.  It hurt to watch the protagonist go through his grief and almost get committed.  I didn’t have a horrific loss such as this and cannot even attempt to equate my despair to this account.  What I do know is how difficult it is to take the next step.  I was lost and suicidal and would’ve never made it without my wife and dog.

So now, I tell those boys that I love them as much as I can and I’m as affectionate as I can be with them.  I try to do the same with my wife.  She is uncomfortable with it and usually thinks I ‘want’ something.  Which sometimes isn’t too far from the truth. But more often than not, I recognize the moment we’re experiencing could in fact be the last.  I’m not being a Debbie downer in this regard but cherishing how beautifully broken life is.  I’ve been given and amazing family that’s a product of loss.  Both from my side and from my wife’s side.  We’ve been through it all, emerged on the other side, and are working toward being the best family we can be.  I want to make sure they know I love them and precisely how much.

I try to not let a day go by where I’m not appreciative for all that I’ve lost and gained.  It’s no harder than looking into either of my boys’ eyes.  Both of them have the soulful eyes of old souls.  I can only believe that something is their reminding me of what my wife and I lost.  But instead of the deep pools of pain in their eyes, I see hope.  Or at the very least I’m reminded to keep hope.

So is this blog about insomnia, loss, or hope?  At this point, I’m thousands of words in and don’t know.  I’d say it’s about art imitating life and being reminded that we all feel love and hurt.  How we use the emotion is the key.  I’ve never had a horrific loss like what occurred in 9/11 or what was depicted in the film.  I’d never try and say mine was better or worse as it would disrespect the feelings of those who have lost someone.  What I do know after all of this is that all of our losses are very different in a world full of sameness.  And that sameness is the lowest common denominator of hurt and grief.  We share this sameness in all of our losses.  From losing the big championship game to losing your best friend to losing your mother.  It hurts.  It’s just a varying degree of hurt.  But it hurts the same.  Sometimes we try and one up each other with our losses when we forget about compassion and hurt.  I really don’t believe it’s a game or a competition to get to the bottom of desperation.  It should be a competition to love each other more and more every day.  It should be a competition to ensure there is doubt in anyone’s heart how much they are needed or loved.  Maybe I’m a little idealistic.  But when you find the bottom, you realize EXACTLY what matters.