One Day, Your Mother Will Stop Calling You Fat, and Then You Will Be Sad: An Essay on Last Times

So, here we are, here you are, back for more. Am I surprised? No. Am I disappointed? Maybe, but you do you.

So, are you aware that once, during your early childhood, your parents put you down on the floor and never picked you up again?

We tend to idealize the firsts and, at the same time, get surprised by the lasts. Think about it: you can probably return quite quickly to the first time you drove, got drunk, or fucked, but are you aware of your lasts with the same feeling of accountability?

Because once, I gave the hug of her life to a girl that I loved and wanted to marry and all that, and then some secrets were revealed, some lies exposed, and we ended up breaking up over the phone. And I never saw her again.

The person I loved never fully mixed with the person I broke up with. The person I loved never did the things the person I had the fight with clearly did, and hence, I ended up missing the first person for a long, long while.

Never imagined, when I gave her that hug, that kiss, that it was gonna be the last time.

And it was very, very painful.

Can you imagine how much life would improve if we had a little ball of light within our sight that signaled, "This is the last time," for whatever thing we were looking at?

Yeah, it wouldn't improve. It would go to shit quite fucking fast, come to think of it.

The paralyzing fear of endings is one complicated motherfucker of an emotion. Pay too much attention to it? You stop living. Pay too little? You stop living. And loving.

There's a secret quality to life that makes endings so important and so difficult. Think about your parents. We can split people into three groups: the first group consists of people who have no direct relationship with their parents, due to death in early childhood, entering the adoption system, or falling-outs during life. The second group consists of people who have a relationship with living parents. The third group consists of people who had a relationship with parents who are now dead.

People in group 2, like me, have to deal every day with the same thought: "I live in another city. It's been two days since I called my mother, but she insists on telling me I'm fat when I'm just starting to feel really strong, and I'm not fat, and what if I were fat? And she insists on telling me how to do things she doesn't know how to do! Like coding! Or demi-glace sauce! Or husky husbandry! But what if my mom died today and that was the last time we spoke? I sent her a pic in my underwear so she could appreciate the sexy beast she created (and also see for herself that I'm not fat). And she said I'm fat! I do have a little bit of a tummy, BUT I'M NOT FAT! I'm not calling that lady ever again, damn it!"

Two stories. One is the tragedy of ignorance. The other is the burden of awareness.

And then there's my dad. God bless my dad. I'm too old for daddy issues, but here we are. Maybe I should date a man 40 years my senior or something. I have a lot of love and admiration for my dad, the man who looks and acts as if he wasn't born, but cut from stainless steel and duralumin. The military salvage diver. The marine.

And don't even get me started on my grandfather. Capable of tipping a bull over by grabbing said bull by the ears and pulling.

And then... there's me. My grandfather was mostly granite and iron, my dad steel and duralumin, and me? I am a mix of engineering plastic, some carbon fiber, and a healthy dose of meringue. In the eyes of my father? I'm kind of weak. No, I'm kind of a sissy. Presses buttons all day, waits until midnight, and says he's tired? Yeah, no, my boy... He's a weakling, I tell you.

I've never, ever seen more disappointment in anyone's eyes than I saw in my father's the day I told him I never wanted to be a father and that I'd gotten the snip. Did he think it was a commentary on him? Maybe. Maybe it is. At least I never met his father, so he is not completely disappointed in me. Silver lining, people!

And that's the man I think about calling frequently but actually call far less often. We can express it like this:

And it eats at me because, hey, sure, I'm convinced Death is afraid of that rugged old man. But even steel breaks, doesn't it? And eventually, it will break, and our relationship will never be fixed. Every time we've tried to fix it, it has improved a little, but it has never become a different relationship.

And that's the quality of life I was talking about several paragraphs ago. You can accept that the ending is coming, you can fear it, you may want to avoid it, but while the ending is still a possibility, reality is... well, real. We are what we are, and reality refuses to bend just because a clock is ticking. We are imperfect, all of us, and we go into death just as imperfect.

I've seen people remove their oxygen cannula, smoke a cigarette, put it back on, and complain about being out of breath.

And that's the thing about last times: humans don't change unless they're becoming more and more of what they've always been. "I'm gonna change" is one very popular lie, and it's always a lie. You can change your behaviour, sure, but you can't change who you are. So, the thing about last times is that we need to be aware they're coming. All of them. Look around you. All your friends? Accomplices? Family? Teachers? They're all going away someday. If you give enough hugs, eventually one will end up being the last, and each last will hurt. Even if it shouldn't.

The universe doesn't offer you a little ball of light beside those two dodos that tells you, "If you shoot these two stupid-looking birds, some people will be trying to revive these guys by doing very weird stuff to a fucking pigeon." But we are what we are. We do what we do. And we bear the consequences. So maybe, next time you wanna shoot something that looks stupid, you can shoot yourself, hunter who ended the dodos.

Obsessing over last times will make every time feel exhausting. Repeat to yourself, "Death is real. It's coming. I face it and accept it, for me and everyone I know, and everyone I love," until you feel at peace, because reality shouldn't be scary. And if you face this fact, you can deal better with the upcoming last times, because if life is imperfect, why shouldn't death be?

And remember that your parents put you down on the floor one day and never picked you up again, and you will have to put them in the ground, in a hundred years from today, I hope. So maybe give your mom a call, switch to video, strip down to your boxers, and let her call you fat for a little bit or something. And call your dad and tell him about that beautiful axis you had a machine shop CNC-cut for your project.

Call your parents, is what I'm saying.

Now, people, Thursday! This is it, the weekend is coming! Time to do something crazy! And whatever you do, enjoy it like it's the last time! So spend a couple grand on fireworks and light them all at once or something. What am I, your dad?

Peace.