As I write, I have just finished watching an old favorite movie, one I had actually forgotten about, until I saw it in Blue-Ray and picked it up a few months ago. I was waiting for the proper mood to play it. "Chances Are" with Robert Downey Jr., Cybill Shepherd and Ryan O'Neill. It was made in 1989, twenty five years ago. O'Neill and Shepherd were still young. Downey was like 25 years old, if that. No sign of the ravages that would lead to rehab and recovery--leaving him a still handsome, but definitely weathered individual.
Ostensibly, it is about a man who is killed in the prime of life in a car accident as he is going to meet his bride of one year only to be reincarnated in the body of Downey, Jr. The bride was Cybill Shepherd, now old enough to be the Downey character's mother. Silly stuff? Yeah. And not.
All of this, the making of the movie and the movie itself, is about time moving on and about changes to which we are heir whether we like it or not. Somehow, the fictional story and the fact that these actors are frozen on screen in 1989 ties directly into my reveries tonight.
Obviously, if I am writing at 10:30 on December 31, 2014, I am not out and about for the ten second chant that marks the shift from one year to another. This is the first year in a long time. How it came about is a combination of accident, misunderstanding and choice. And alas, I forgot to do one thing I absolutely intended, to call a childhood friend in New York when the clock turned to 2015 in her neck of the woods. Well, not forgot exactly. Waited until it was too late. By the time I remembered it was after 1 a.m. in the Big Apple.
"Chances Are" it was all somehow meant. I have always been one to consider the passing of time, the reality of death and all that. But when you are young and reading poems about the philosophies of life and death, it really isn't built into your psyche fully that it is all so damn quick. And while I have sought and generally found meaning in my faith, something about the press of time begins to test that faith. Or rather makes me wonder how solid it is, when the pedal hits the metal.
I am on the event horizon of another year, so many years after the one in which I made my initial appearance. So many family members and a goodly number of friends if it comes to that are gone. And as I enter this New Year, I have fewer and fewer of them on whose presence I can rely. I think that is something that comes to all of us, this realization of there being no bulwark on this planet against the buffets that remain, and fewer with whom to share those transitory moments of joy.
What will I do with this New Year? Will I waste so much of it as I have wasted much of the years before, thinking I had an abundance of opportunity?
Funny how things you wouldn't expect make me so aware of need to seize moments I never have, and probably never will because I will fall out of the sense of urgency. This actor died. Edward Hermann. He was the dad on Gilmore Girls which I never watched. And he was a really well received portrayer of FDR, whom he actually resembled. He was also a Catholic convert. I didn't know him to chit chat, but I did see him often at Church. He died of brain cancer today in New York, on this last day of 2014. Less than a year ago, I was one of the lay ministers giving out ashes on Ash Wednesday, and he was one of the people in my line. Even from the step of the sanctuary I had to reach to his six foot five frame as I made the sign of the cross on his forehead, and said, "Remember Man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.". Maybe this goes back to the movie. I don't believe in reincarnation but I do believe that we are all connected, in life and in death. He is now one of the dead for whom we will pray, as one day I will be one of the dead for whom others will pray. (Please God).
The reader may say I am being morbid. But that is part of the point. I can't explain it exactly, but it isn't morbid. It's a little scary to know that one of these years you won't be getting to or finishing. No, it's more than a little scary. But aside from any philosophical or religious revelations in its considerations, I think it is supposed to be a wake up call, to get us out of habits and mind sets that get in the way of those really good moments that do come our way.
My particular betel noir is fear, a fear that has made me risk aversive to what others find enjoyable, and not particularly dangerous. I'll fly, but only after skewing up a lot of I won't call it courage, but trying to put aside how I hate being up in the air in a tin can. When I see accidents like the one that happened this week, I am ready to bolt the doors and never take a trip. But my fear extends to far more than that, and I wonder whether, if I haven't dealt with them in two thirds of my life, will I in the remaining third, should I be given one?
But I think as it now is only fifteen minutes until auld Lang sine (which I will be singing to my cats), I shall hold onto that thing with feathers, hope. Hope that I won't just say "Seize the Day!" but once and maybe more than once, do it!
And I pray that as you pass through the event horizon into the unknown New Year, you will find reason to hope for yourselves and the ones you love.
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