August 7, 2012

Family Matters

 Family Matters could be in the running for one of the Top 10 sit-coms of the late 80s and early 90s: better than Who's the Boss but not quite as good as Fresh Prince. This show has probably ended up consuming at least a good 150 hours of my life. Maybe 300. But you know what? I'm not a worse person because of it. Sit-coms in general, are a mindless escape from the busyness (and more frequently: the devastations) of the reality of life. And more often than not, this chill time  watching TV gave this kid a break from running around, tearing up the neighborhood, getting involved with all sorts of melarchyand gave me something to unwind with, focus on, and even laugh at a bit before doing any homework or having a bath or going to hockey practice or whatever else it is that us kids did back then.

Thinking back now though, Family Matters really had a lot of things going for it: a large and extended family constantly dealing with a wide range of real life problems that any white adolescent boy in Canada could would have no problem at all empathizing with (I mean, how long can a geeky guy go on trying to get with a total babe like Laura!). 

And now - maybe 20 years later - I am fully appreciating the fact that family does indeed matter. 

My family has been pretty tight-knit over the years. All 2 of us. And a total of 3 dogs in that time as well (<--- I would have a hyper link to my dog Lacey if she was "tagged in photos" like you see everything nowadays. Outside of me & Mom, Grandmas made up my family: Mom's mom, Mom's friend's Mom, dad's Mom, and a few other old ladies too. Well they're all gone now. Grandpas too. My aunts are nice enough. Mom's one sister has been especially supportive these past 2 years since the diagnosis. So has her sister-in-law. Her brother has been in North America for about half the past 40 years with work. So yeah. A small, close family, with noone really to count on besides each other. **note to self: pick  up dog food before the end of the week.

Tsunami Bomb wrote "count on nobody and nobody will let you down". I have embraced these lyrics for a large part of my life. Not giving too much of myself to anyone for anything. Either just "make do", "do without", or "do it yourself". DIY, mo#$fu*@a!! And now it's become more apparent that I will eventually have even one less person to count on in life. With at least 1 other person, life, I think, is manageable. Bills, groceries, conversation... just regular boring every day stuff. But ovarian cancer is not a disease a person survives. Treatments are available, and sometimes treatments are on-going and remission of the disease is prolonged. But it always comes back. It's an incredibly tragic disease this way, and seeing just cancer in general in the way it affects the people diagnosed with it as well as those families with loved ones fighting it... just. sadness.

So now I truly whole-heartedly consciously openly happily embrace and cherish my family. I don't know who I am without it and heaven knows I am afraid to find out. 

All I know for sure is that I can live with regrets of time, money, and effort spent on doing things for myself, with friends, at work, or on girls, but I cannot live with regrets of having time with my family wasted away.

  


     

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