'INVINCIBLE'

     I will live forever and death to me is nowhere in my thought pattern. I fear nothing because I don't know anybody that has died. Well, I know a few, but all of them were older and I really only knew some of them. My grandfathers' both of whom passed away when I was a little kid, and some long distant relative that I only knew through pictures and family conversation. My mother's father suffered from a long bout with cancer and my dad's father had a massive heart attack in his 50's. Those were the first times that I saw genuine emotion from my father. The loss of his father as well as the loss of his father-in-law whom he considered a father.  This is not a barrel of machismo like real men don't cry. It's just that I had never seen my father cry before. After these tragedies I still wasn't convinced that life is precious. I wasn't convinced that our body, our temple is as delicate as a flower. Let's take a long hard look at this situation. One grandfather had a terrible incurable disease and the other experienced an untimely death at an early age. Neither of these could happen to me because I was a kid for goodness sake. I was a kid that walked to school every day and never got abducted or hit by a car. The same kid that climbed on top of the porch and jumped 3 feet onto the garage and never fell off once. A kid that jumped off the roof into the the pool and never broke his neck. This same kid braved the deadly outdoor stairs at his former high school only equipped with a dirt bike and never flipped once. I was ‘invincible’. This level of invincibility continued on into my adolescent years and beyond. I went on to play sports and yes I did endure the occasional bumps and bruises like other kids. But before long I was back on the playing field and was as good as new. I think about the times I pushed the limits in nearly every aspect of my life because of this invincibility. Aside from running into oncoming traffic during rush hour I pretty much lived reckless as a teenager. Fortunately, I emerged pretty much unscathed with an arrogance that makes Adonis shy in the corner with envy. I was loved by nearly everyone and this was all I ever really wanted.


     Somewhere between adolescent and adulthood my father became extremely ill. That dreaded word "cancer" reared its ugly head again into our family. We did what families do and united as a strong group, but we all were preparing for the worst. What would I do without my father he was such an important and strong figure in my life? I didn't know what to think, after all I was 'invincible'. My father was invincible as far as I could tell. He only cried during the loss of his fathers' so many years ago. So where did that leave me? I was lost somewhere between the edge of sanity and a nervous breakdown. In reflection I don't think they are too far apart. No one knew what was going on probably because I kept mum about the situation. Whose business was it anyway? Besides they probably wouldn't understand if I told them about it. People only say what they are robotically trained to say under certain circumstances. "I am so sorry to hear that and we are praying for your family". Well that is not what I wanted to hear and there was no way in hell they knew how I felt. My father pulled through after a 3 million dollar surgery along with radiation with a heavy dose of chemo-therapy. So to me my father was invincible because he beat the odds and told the doctors to kiss his ass so to speak.
     It was not until I took a trip with family to a local water park that it hit me like a ton of bricks. As I climbed the ladder to the 90 foot slide that crashes down into a small puddle of water, I froze. "I can actually die on this ride", I was thinking to myself. My nephew is behind me with a happy face and I am standing there about to lose it. I had never had an issue with heights or anything else for that matter. I had done this a thousand times before but this time it was different. For the first time in my life I did not feel 'invincible'.