- by Albert Berkshire
Three hundred eleven. It is the heaviest weight.
Unbeknownst to me, devoid of a method for verification, three hundred eleven is the weight I’ve carried for a long, very long, very heavy time. It has weighed me down for more time than I can remember. Longer than I realized. The weight of it has lingered, quietly, lurking like a vulture waiting for a hyena to finish a meal of my aging, surrendering corpse. Waiting, waiting, waiting for its moment to strip me of my remaining flesh and muscle and ligaments filled with flavour; strip me of my fading dignity, my desires, my hopes, my persona.
The lean, athletic, opportunistic, unbothered-by-time hyena accompanied by the omnipresent, gracefully vicious vulture. They mock me. They feed on me. They strip my bones of my tiring flesh, my heart of its slowing beat, my hopes of longevity, my list of things unfinished, those yet unaccomplished.
Three hundred eleven. What a horrible weight it has been. Nothing I do can slacken its hold. It can’t be reduced; not by a near-daily sprint along a familiar running route. Neither a long mountain bike ride, nor a hike into the mountains shakes it’s grip. It surrenders to no long and undulating traverse beside the ocean. There is no adventure, no change in diet, no abstinence of – anything – that can lift it off my back, my mind. It is there. Always there, always haunting my thoughts. Robbing me of mental levity.
In one sense, before I knew it by number, it shaped so many attitudes. It charted the course of a child-free life. No offspring would emerge from my partnership, no reconsideration of it from encouragement and influence of friends. Neither guilt, nor changing of the wind would plot for me an alternative route. Firm in my resolve to never have another live the life as I have lived – without the leadership, the guidance, the knowing reinsurance of a strong and experienced hand. Instead, nothing but unrealized fear.
Three hundred eleven. Indeed, more than weight, it is the number I have lived with, like an addict chasing the dragon. Maybe, just maybe, I can make it past.
Three hundred twelve. That is where I want to arrive. If not more, it alone will satisfy me.
Another trip around the sun complete, and today I am 57 years old. An otherwise insignificant age. No one celebrates the middle years. Not properly, anyway. Thirty was epic – complete with an evening ending in a snowy ditch. My friend Andy always said, “Go big or go home”. I went big on my way home. Forty happened twice because friends thought #39 was #40. Yay, me! (Actually, Yay! awesome partner) Fifty; that was something to remember. Three parties – two of which I was tricked into cooking for by my “what’s a kitchen?” partner; add to that all the messages, cards, and calls from all the important people. It was worth a party, or three. Half a century old. How wonderful and celebratory! But 57? Nothing to see here for the average mortal.
Fifty-Seven, however, it is – it was – to my long endured chagrin, the last birthday my late father was able to celebrate; the last birthday of his we celebrated as a family. It wasn’t by choice, it was by circumstance. There I was, a teenaged boy, lost in the dense wilderness of adolescence; the overgrowth of “who am I?”. A young man who lost his father some three hundred eleven days later. Fifty-eight would never arrive for that man, that father – my father. And nothing, despite all efforts of a remaining – and strong – family matriarch could have relived me of the elongated misery of wondering, “will I even live that long?”
Deep behind the near identical eyes I was given, unlike my father, knowingly – excitedly – begins a quest to three hundred twelve.
Albert Thomas Berkshire is a writer, director, producer. He measures quality of life through shared experiences rather than professional accomplishments; but since you’ve read this far, you get to know he has just finished the first draft of his second novel. About fucking time. Now begins the editing saga. Le Sigh…