The Last To Know

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My classmate whose wife died and will be buried today looked haggard last night. He will probably be more worn out today. The line of people waiting to offer their condolences was at least fifty deep and it went all the way up the tall stairs into the vestibule upstairs. The obituary stated that the family would receive visitors at the family home even after they left the church last night.

He was one of those people my father encouraged me to imitate in order to become a good person. I couldn't have done that if I wanted to. He lived in the same house from birth until he married the first time. That would have to have happened to me. It didn't. That's the way it was with my father too. I never understood how he expected me to follow that stable domestic path if he moved his family twelve times in two states previous to my going out on my own by joining the Navy.

It could appear to some that my father wanted for me to grow up having what he had for himself. I don't think he knew what he had going for himself that he didn't offer me. Like my classmate, he lived in the same home until he was near thirty years old. He used to tell me stories about how he grew with with a black neighbor's kid as his hunting buddy.

They had coon dogs and roamed all over the nearby Pascagoula River swamps at night with carbide lanterns mounted on their hats like coal miners and not come home for a week. As a teenager I never went anywhere at night without breaking his rules. I did it anyway, even though I knew I'd get a beating when I got home. Maybe that's why I developed a will not to take a beating to prove I'm a real man. I like to think I'm smarter than that. I try to never let confrontation come to that. Some people ain't willing to settle for less is more.

That's not to say I didn't compare my situation to my classmates including this one whose wife just died. One of my own reasons was that his birthday was the day after mine, so in high school I looked at him to see what I might be like by comparison. He didn't play sports, but the only reason I did was to please my father. My father desperately wanted me to prove I wasn't a sissy because he feared I was gonna turn out to be a homosexual, but I already knew that I could go either way. I didn't force myself to fit into any one sort of mold. I didn't know why. That would come later, much later.

All I really knew as a kid was that I was different. Not unusually different. I just didn't seem to fit in with the kids in my age group. It's terribly difficult to set goals if you don't know what kind of person you're cut out to be, and I sure didn't for a long time. I still don't. I like being in limbo.

This confusion caused me to try out a lotta different lifestyles to find out what I became a human for. I didn't have much choice when stable relationships were failing all around me due to women's lib. I wasn't a very good candidate for marriage in any case. I just happened to get married during a very active time for women's rights. Proving I was a male, chauvinistic pig was no problem at all.

Divorce forced me out to seek another lifestyle several times when I didn't want to. After my second marriage fell apart I wasn't willing to bomb out again. I sort of went through the motions with a couple of women, but there was too much baggage on both sides. That's how I found out my true lifestyle is hermit-like. I live alone, but I associate with people pleasantly enough. I no longer desire to wake up next to them the next morning. I don't keep pets either.


This seeking took a lotta time. I had to give the different ways I tried to fit in a fair chance time-wise in order to know for sure. None of the experiences I had when I was young (under thirty years old) got me over the hump with a particular path and let me define what I wanted to do about following any particular career path.

I was given lots of IQ tests and vocational tests to see what my potentials were. I made above average grades on practically all of them. I always made the lowest grades on clerical work and occupations that required a lotta math background, but even those test scores were above average and math would not have held me back if an opportunity had arisen.

The biggest surprise that came with all this testing happened when I joined the Navy. The highest aptitude grades I made were for a career in electronics or dentistry or an airplane pilot. This was a little off-putting because I only took one science course in high school, and only then because it was required to graduate and attend college. Of course, I didn't get to choose the courses I took in high school, my father did that, and so I never was allowed to discover any interest in that area on my own.

Stuff like that was why I was so desperate to get outta town and find myself. My parents were real control freaks although that term hadn't been invented yet. I did lackadaisically choose a job in the Navy that involved electronics, but only because I liked the looks of the term "sonar". It still didn't satisfy my deep need for my own identity. I had the third highest grades in the classroom, but I couldn't get it into my hands in the labs.

Seeking my own identity was the only-est goal I had throughout most of my entire life. Even the very peculiar events that happened to me out on the road nor my remembering vision didn't get me over the hump with who I was until the last decade or so, and I could easily walk away from the situation I find myself in now if push come to shove, but that's because I do know who I am is and what it came here for. Lordy, at last!

I sort of feel like a ghoul as far as my friend whose wife is getting buried today is concerned. I wonder how he'll survive after his wife of thirty four years died before he did. She's the second wife of a friend who has died suddenly and unexpectedly in the last year. The ex-husband of the first one seems more powerfully affected than he appears to let on, but who am I to know that?
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