The Last Days of Summer

My brother, who was, for very many years my best friend is now gone. One late January day when everything just got too much, he took a gun and locked himself in the bathroom with a few photographs, and after who knows how long, put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, killing himself instantly.. He had with him a picture of our sister and brothers, and one photograph of he and I with our dog, Turkey, when all of us were young. A photo of a time when summer days stretched out before us and the light didn't fade until almost bedtime, and in those endless summer days, we found happiness. We were young and full of energy and hope and, perhaps because our family situation left much to be desired for reasons too complicated and truthfully, banal and ordinary to list here, we felt that anything was possible. Ironically, since our home life was so unpredictable, so chaotic, we had a certain freedom. As they say, 'When you've got nothing, you got nothing to lose."

Richard and I had the sense that anything was possible. When your life is stranger than fiction, the world opens up before you. You become a bounder, I guess. You get used to the unpredictable and learn not to care so much, to just 'be in the moment' as they say now. Be 'mindful'. This was years before yoga was the fashion and being 'still' was a way of being, but it came to us naturally. Chaos has a way of imposing a certain order - like a fractal, you draw closer, closer, before realizing that chaos is infinite. Living like this you have a choice: fight it and wind up tired, frustrated, beaten down, or be accepting and learn to adapt. So we were, as I said, bounders. We learned to adapt, and we lived in the moment, surrounded by chaos, we tried to find the calm in the eye of the storm. But what I mean to tell you is that, as disturbing and unnerving as chaos is, the not-knowing, the uncertainty, there is also something freeing about it. You learn to realize that things 'just happen', that sometimes there is no good reason, so this frees you of obligation; you can be and do anything, and if the previously thought unbelievable is possible (and if I wrote the book of our lives as we grew up no one would believe the story - stranger than fiction). But the truth is that in this freedom and chaos there is a thrill to be found. Just like spinning round and around on the beach with your arms outstretched like a helicopter, dizzying, the world is on full-tilt and you are disoriented. It was like that.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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