The Most Important Thing: A Final Article
But oddly enough, the most important thing I learned in high school had nothing to do with school at all, but rather, life. As cliché as it sounds , what I learned was that no matter how Gucci your flops are or how many beats per second you can twerk or how slim your waistline is or how lonely and overwhelmed you may feel right now, people ultimately will come to love you only for who you truly are, nothing more and nothing less, and that really, the only thing you owe anything to is yourself and to your family, who when it comes down to it, are the only few people who really will stay through it all for you, should you choose to let them. Family. The most important thing.
When I lost my grandfather on October 14th 2010, I knew the whole world had changed. I didn’t know how and neither did anyone else, and in fact, many didn’t seem to know the world had changed. I just wanted to stand up, grab someone by the shoulders and shake them over and over asking them how they could possibly go about their lives walking down the street shopping or ordering a skinny vanilla latte with skim or washing plates stoically at McDonalds when the entire world had changed in one stroke and would never be the same again. This was a before and after moment. This is a moment unchangable. This is a mistake. It can’t be my grandfather. But it is. It is flashbulb memory of a time and a feeling that lasts a lifetime. It is that view out the window, feeling numb. It is fall freshman year. It took a while to realize the true totality of the moment, and though I may hurt and cry all I want, your grandfather is dead and you have to live with it and you have school to go to right now get the hell out of bed, as my father told me the first day back from the funeral. There would be no time allowed to process, there would be no precious time squandered. I asked him if I could stay home on account of the memories. Of the slow silent sacred sad passing of an era. He said no. I went. And it hurt and hurt and hurt but I could not indulge in grief or sadness when there were others worse off than me and work to be done, so I suffered along the days alone, and for years I hated him for it. Everyday coming home and just sit with my mom in silence when everyone had gone to sleep and the whimpers died down and we could just sit together in silence and discuss my grandfather Friedrich and all he did for us until a year had passed and the time does its brutal work.
Then I began to act. Not finding an outlet for any of my feelings of sadness anger grief and rage, my grades began to slip as I became apathetic about everything. In an otherworldly haze I told my biology teacher where he could shove that hall citation, and I did plenty of other dumb and stupid things that let’s just say are not appearing in any autobiography. But with every action there is an equal or greater counter reaction in the words of Newton and the reaction on account of my mom was strict as it was harsh. In my house, nothing less than my best was accepted, and with my anger preventing me from accomplishing that best, no longer was I allowed simply to enjoy myself. And so I began to press my anger inwards, letting it stand between good relations between me and my mother, who really, was just worried. And increasingly, so was I, running around in cycles unable to see up above the track, with each run around the ring just getting more and more tired of the daunting challenge of keeping it all going.
But then something odd began to happen. I began to talk to my dad again. It had been a rough junior year at home by all accounts, fights, anger, hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and righteous rage on all sides. And then thoughts on college, lord help me. It was hard, and for the perceived lack of understanding, and emotional distance during my grandfather’s death (and life as well), it took me awhile to forgive and come to terms with him. I was prideful, and I would never talk to him after the perceived injustices that at the time could probably have filled yards of pages, but at the end of my junior year, I realized that time was almost up. Like a mountaineer seemingly reaching the peak that not too long ago seemed oh so far away, I realized I had left something really important, a really key piece of gear, had falling somewhere down the mountain, and that I had to go back to go any higher.
So, we began to talk outside of our usual agreed upon boundaries of the weather, the news, food, politics (only what we agreed on), the Bronx, law, science, the Yankees/Red Socks rivalry, and history (only what we agreed on). Indeed, I don’t think I can come up with a single meaningful conversation about anything other than these topics from freshman to early senior year, whereby beforehand while we did discuss all of these, there was really so much more. It was in the memory of those days that I decided to lay down my arms. The revolution had failed. The war was over. The resistance had been crushed, Moscow was not coming to my aid, and the dogs of war where in full retreat, with their tail firmly behind their legs. I put the Che Guevera mask back in the closet. From now on, this rebel would only fight with cause. But as I began to talk to my father, to open up to him about my hopes, fears, dreams, friends, passions and thoughts on life and meaning, something impossible happened. My father opened up back, and opened up his dreams, hopes, friends, passions, and thoughts on life and meaning from a rich delft of years that I hadn’t even touched the half of yet. And as we began to talk, looking towards the future more instead of the pure next morning and the inevitable apology, I began to realize that indeed, I was the only one standing in the way of my happiness during my high school years.
But I have a confession. As I write this I stop and stare at the screen. It sounds so preachy, so corny, so colloquial and familiar and cookie cutter and administration-ee, like something you put on a holiday card “be nice to your parents.” But all I have written has actually happen and is the truth from my heart written at a pace that will not let me slow down and mix up the fact and the feeling; please forgive me when I tell you that the last paragraph has yet to happen. I have put away the revolutionary banners long ago, and tonight is the night my dad tells me about his life. Tonight is the night I am rebuilding that connection. Tonight is the night I am taking my family back. Tonight is the night I am letting my dad back in, and I will not stop talking until he opens up and spills forth everything for nights and nights and days and days and the next 44 thousand years, until I die and you die and hell freezes over and the Cubs win a world series and I will listen to every word. I will leave you with just one last thought: you still have time, and time is precious, and though we will all grow up to become rappers and NBA stars and millionaires driving Maybachs and throwing hunnids up in the club of course, the thing we can never afford to waste is time, and ultimately, through whatever you gain in life, time and the gods and true happiness smile on us in direct relation to how we decide to treat our parents, our siblings, our families: the most important thing.
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