On or about every March 15, I suppose I’ll have a little mix of angry, sad, resigned and resolved all in one, rattling my brain, for possibly forever.

Had Pat lived, she would have been a well-ripened 79. But, she never made it that far. Nope, she gave up the ghost, as the cliche runs, a while back. She didn’t even make it to 73, but she came close.

It makes me angry, and probably always will, because it seemed so avoidable. Maybe it wasn’t, though. Maybe she was sick deep in her body, which was telling her an inevitable truth that she was due to pass from the living. Or, maybe, she had stopped taking care of herself and generally giving a fuck so hadn’t bothered to take proper care.

I don’t understand why, but I wish a professional had made the call, not Pat herself. Even if it ended the same way, somehow there’d be a greater sense of closure. An epilogue, a coda to a life that was lived. In a teeny walled off corner of the neurons in my thinking brain space, I kind of regret we didn’t pursue an autopsy. Then again, I realize it makes no practical difference, and how I feel six years later is not how I felt then.

The sadness is just the uninteresting, inevitable, old-as-time-itself human longing for those who have gone. If Pat were here, I could introduce her to M. Maybe she’d notice we laugh and smile together and be happy.

If Pat were here, she could laughingly disapprove of my California life, my checkered employment, my hair, my weight, my clothes, my writing, my comedy, my world travels. She would worry about me, and maybe, secretly celebrate the things I have done, the woman that I am.

But the resignation and the resolve, actually have a strange brightness. They are what makes me try and do what I do now. I keep plugging at a life in which people compliment me or comment that I haven’t thrown in the towel to age. I can still get a little hope, a charge, complete and childish fun from stupid shit. Sheer unbridled goofiness is the antidote I have and the concession I won’t make in my own mortality.

At 44, I pimped my new ride with reflective stickers and scoot around town shouting “Whee” in my head at a whopping 15 miles/hour or less.

The funny thing is I learned that kind of play from Pat herself. She could throw her back into child-like fun, and she had that irrepressibly non-conformist streak that I came by genetically. Only, somewhere after being forced to retire, and some time after her life’s sorrows just made her life heavy and hard, Pat forgot about having fun. She still had a wicked wit and wore a crazy bright hat to warm her head, but she stopped saying “Wheeeeeee.”

So, this weekend, this week, have yourself a little Pat moment. Tell a joke. Tell a story. Play a prank. Make something fun. Paddle a ball. Laugh. And, most of all don’t not do something in order to avoid looking foolish. Go ahead. Look foolish. Rent Harold and Maude. Thumb your nose at hypocrites and modern-day Pharisees. Persevere with wit and elan.

Somewhere in the universe, an energy field still holds the Parkside Avenue paddle ball record. Everyone should leave behind such a memory.

Technorati Tags: comedy, death, life, Pat, women