Foolish

I've been foolish with my life during the last ten years. I'm slowly starting to regret some of the decisions that I made during that period, decisions that now seem foolish, decisions that do not show the diligence due to my/our circumstances. Back then I was lucky, failed to realize it and failed to act accordingly.

For example, after Natasha was born Marion wanted another child. But I had brought three child into the world, two with Marion, and I felt that enough was enough. To me our family felt complete. Dragging around four children seemed rather excessive. Also I have to admit that the circumstances were not good, of course. Kay was facing two years of chemotherapy, which taxed us, Marion mostly, to the limit on occasion. Also it took quite a while for the relationship stress to die down that a child with an acute sickness poses on a couple. And by the time it had died down we were all that much older.

But as I look at things now, not having another child was a big mistake. I never for a single minute thought that we would lose Kay. If you knew Kay, you would recognize what I mean: she was such a solid character, a fixed part of the world, of my world. She was THERE, a positive force in the world. Of course, I knew that leukemia can mean death. But that was for other people, not for Kay, our fighter, our winner. So having another child seemed excessive. Equally, we live in a crowded world and all this "green" thinking led me to feel that three children was my fair quota in this life and that was it. "An heir and a spare", so they say and as far as Marion & I went, this is what we had.

But now the "Heir and Spare" idea seems completely facile. We have lost Kay and there's a gaping hole left in our family. Just having Natasha left over from the Howe/van Gaal gene pool seems to be recklessly dangerous, we seem to be way too close to having nothing left at all. Should anything happen to Natasha... the consequences would be inconceivable. Judging by Marion's current state of mind, she would not survive losing Natasha.

This is what I mean by having been foolish, having acted without due diligence. I should have taken into consideration that a child with cancer can die. I should have thought about what would happen should that be the case. I should have understood that for us one child is not enough, that we're going to spend the rest of our lives feeling the horrific gap that Kay has left behind and that in the meantime we've become too old to do anything about it. 

This is another aspect of this situation that is sliding into my consciousness like The Subtle Knife, the fact that we have passed into a phase of life where our options are narrowing, where the world is no longer our oyster. I should have realized all those years ago that Marion & I were both on our second chance to build a family and that it was late in the day. I should have realized that we didn't have the time to take the long term view, to see how it went with Kay. If we had lost Kay 10 years ago, the option to do something about it would have been open. 

I've started to feel old as this realization sinks in. And foolish for not having thought of it before, for not having had another child to hug and cuddle and love when Nattie is not here. 

But I can already anticipate your comments on this subject. And I'm sure that some of you will offer very relevant remarks. But there's another side to this story that is equally, if not more, foolish.

Throughout my life I have always been striving for something, particularly during the last ten years. I have always felt that I had something, a lot in fact, to prove and I have spent most of my life trying to prove it. Every time I accomplished something I spent no time gaining any enjoyment or satisfaction from that thing, I was already moving on to the next thing, the next challenge, the next stage of proof. As a result I have been hurrying through life, without taking in the surroundings, without enjoying the moment, without living in the now. 

I even had the biggest indication of success ten years ago when I sold my previous business. But again I didn't truly appreciate that accomplishment for what it was or spend any time doing anything more than accepting it for what it appeared to be. I didn't stop to consider whether it was sufficient, whether I really needed to carry on pushing myself to achieve yet something else. I just moved on to the next challenge that I felt it necessary to pitch myself at. 

This has turned out to be a gross kind of foolishness. So many important and precious moments of my life have passed by that can never be recovered, not even by rearguard action. Those moments of Kay's life that I missed are gone forever and there's no more Kay around to me to try and make up for it. Those evenings when I didn't read to her can no longer be recovered, nor the time when I didn't play with her, didn't splash in the pool wit her, didn't hold her, give her a nite nite kiss. The chance to steep my memory in everything about Kay has gone. Those memories that I retain from the last ten years seem so thin, such poor things to represent the life of such a rich child, a beautiful daughter, a precious unique creature that was here and gone in such a short time.

I have been such an idiot. I failed to grok how fortunate I was, how rich was my world, how beautiful my family, my children. I failed to live in the NOW with them, to steep myself in the value of the moment, to wonder at the wonders, the perfect children that my life had produced.

Now I feel like an idiot, a complete fool. I'm not one to live in the past, but I find myself increasingly regretting much of what I have done, at least these last ten years. While I have been striving to prove myself, that proof has been all around me and I have not realized it. The proof was my children, our lives, love.