A Sunday

My uncle Harley had a lot to do with the way that I grew up.

He had it all. He was the smartest. He never had to try in school. He was the tallest and the most charismatic. He was the best athlete in his high school. The Mets tried to draft him straight out of high school to pitch, but my grandparents said he had to go to college first. He went to Santa Clara on a full ride for football.

He didn't finish a few credits so he could stay and play football for another year. He never finished. He had an amazing wife but his drinking drove her away. He ended up a truck driver who basically called the bar his home. If anyone didn't know where to find him, the first place to look was the Red Baron.

On my moms side, there's Charlie. Also a baseball player, smart and who could tell a story like no one else. When he was 20, he was hit by a car running a red light and he was completely paralyzed for life. For my mom, there was always such a sense of injustice when Charlie had no control over his life, that it was taken from him by no choice of his own, when someone like Harley who was given talents, looks, brains and opportunity simply chose to do nothing with it.

I think my parents were always terrified that even though I was getting it right, the grades, the sports, that I could always be a few choices away from being like Uncle Harley. I believe they told me that once when I wanted to quit some sport or another.

A few days ago, Harley shot himself.

It was surreal for me. I was never close with him. He got more and more distant from our family. It was always so hard for my parents to be around him; my dad because he'd already seen the effect of alcoholism on his dad and his grandpa and my mom because she experienced the same thing with her dad and it just made her feel like Charlie was so shorted.

It's been 364 days since I made my valedictory speech and yet these words ring truer today than they did even then. "As were the architects, contractors, and donors who generously built this school for us, we were expected to build something from nothing, and the relationships that we forged with each other allowed our efforts to be successful. These efforts were born from necessity, but by choosing what we each wanted to invest in our high school, we were, each of us, unknowingly developing the character that will ultimately shape our adult lives. As Sister Helen Prejean notes, or as Phil will tell you, the movie “Batman Begins” insists, “it’s what you do that defines you.”

Time and time again it shows again. The things that matter are your choices. You can be given all the talents and the gifts in the world, but if you choose to do nothing with them, the balance remains at zero. Even if ninety-nine precent of the factors that shape your life are not in your control, you get to choose your attitude in dealing with them.

Ultimately, I want to be proud of the person that I am. The thing I most focus on in life is asking myself, "What kind of person is this decision making me? Is this who I want to be for myself? Is this who I want to be to others?"

I have found that when I make decision for the kind of person that I want to be, the bigger person, the strong, independent, forgiving, understanding person that I want to be, those are truly the decisions that are the best for others as well.

I've seen it over and over. I'm sick of watching people regret. I have no room for regret in my life. It's such a wasted emotion. Instead, I commit to making it count the first time. I refuse to wait around and then look at all the time I've wasted doing things that don't help me grow or live in love. This decision empowers me. It makes my choices matter. It transforms past, present, and future into on contiguous movement toward that person I want to be. I am that I am.

What really moved me from this whole ordeal is watching my dad struggle. My dad is the silent but steady one in our extended family. No matter how stupid or lousy the things that they do, everyone trusts in Uncle Tom to help them out and keep his silence. And he does so unfailingly. But when he told me, it was the only time I'd actually seen him cry. And it shook me. It was the first time that I've really told my dad "I love you" without being perfunctory, in passing, in response. It just overwhelmed me. I love him.

He's normally so strong and stoic that it was so incredibly hurtful to see him hurting. But, if the rain must fall, I am grateful that it does because I feel like these moments, these twinges of agony, humanize me. They emphasize the brittle thread that is life and the even more tenuous bonds that hold us in families, in friendships, in love.

This summer has been pretty hard but I can say that today, I am who I want to be and I am making the things that I want in life possible with every decision I make. I surround myself with people who not only support these decision, but make them possible. And to them, I am forever grateful.