Happy Birthday Dad

Happy Birthday, Dad.
When Mom sent me a text this morning reminding me it was going to be your 62nd birthday, I realized for the first time that you would have been 62 when I turn 26, which is in 16 days. 62 and 26. Crazy, or maybe not. Silly, who knows? I remember we were both Gemini’s too.
I remembered when your Dad was getting ready to pass over the to the other side to meet you, and I was there to hand him off. He was turning 88 on June 17th, and I was turning 22 on June 13th. 22 and 88. I realized I was almost exactly 1/4th as old as Pop. He was a Gemini too I remember. I remember he wound up passing on my birthday. We buried him on his. Crazy, maybe…
I guess I don’t know what all these little coincidences mean, or if they mean anything at all. I figure they might mean nothing, or they might mean something far beyond my capacity to comprehend, it wouldn’t matter anyways. Would it?
What I do know is that when I read the number 62 on my phone from Mom’s text at work today, I stopped dead in my tracks, and began to smile.
It was a special smile. Do you know the sort of smile I am talking about? It was one of those smiles that descends upon you, or erupts from inside you, seemingly out of no where, sparked by something tiny but intimate. Tiny but intimate to your own secret life story, you know? I’m talking about the level of brain chatter slightly below your conscious threshold, where your subconscious whispers to your conscious self who you think you are at any given moment in time. It was from somewhere in between there that this smile began. It was the kind of smile that doesn't stop at the corners of your mouth, but keeps going all the way back to the nape of your neck, and then radiates a tingling pulsation all the way down and up and out of your spine from there.

Well, I had one of those smiles, and in the space that immediately followed it I had a flood of wonderful memories of you come rushing in to fill me up. Memories that were joyful, memories I haven’t had anything to spark their remembrance of for too long now. The smile kept on going and began to turn into an emotional swell as I was swept along, the type of swell and sweeping the likes of which I may not have been having enough of recently. From the swell came a the cautious, pent up tears, and by the time I noticed my body again I realized I had just taken a small journey of some sort. A journey that started with a smile.
I became aware again that the smile on my face was still there. In fact, it was even deeper than that. I noted a hint of sacred humor mixed in with the whole numbers deal, and I was laughing a special laugh under the joy and sadness and irony of it all. I remembered what it used to feel like when you were around, and it was great. I remembered that there is a way to appreciate tragic beauty in life, and it begins and ends with a smile. I suppose it is your birthday so I should be looking for a way to give you a present, but I feel like you gave me one instead. I want to say thank for the smile and all that came with it when I realized the 26 / 62 correlation. You know 26 is a cosmic number for me. My friend Scott has just begun to pick up on it too.
Now I don't even know if it was really you there laughing with me today, and I don’t even know what it would really mean if you were, but if it was you I want to thank you for sending me that feeling again.
And if it wasn’t really you per say, if it really did all just come from within my own mind, my own self, then I am fine with that too, because in here is where I keep you now. Maybe those types of smiles come when you remember a part of your self you didn’t even realize you might have forgotten.

I am sitting on the top of a mountain looking over Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley where I live now, and I can’t help but smile again at the thought of you actually knowing where I am. You would love this place. You are the person who taught me to love the outdoors, to see the highest creations of Creation in nature, and to take the time to find joy in solace.
It has been sunny all morning, and now the afternoon thunderclouds are starting to roll in over the mountains. The wind is here, just enough to make you feel the entire surface of your skin when it blows by. Billowy white clouds and tall dark clouds, and brilliant, bright blue skies are laying on top of each other neck and neck. I am at the level of the lowest cloud. I can see the river winding down the valley from Independence Pass, and I can see the snowcapped mountains off in the distance where that water is coming from. This is what I can from where I am sitting at this moment in time.
It occurs to me now, as I remember yet another dusty memory of you, that one of the last things you said to me before the cancer consumed your body completely was, “I live vicariously through you, Cole. Go have fun.”
Well Dad, if you are here, if it really is more than just a memory of how it felt when you where around, then I hope you can take a peak at the world through my eyes for this moment. And if you can see all this beauty, the beauty you taught me to appreciate, then maybe I managed to give you some sort of birthday present after all.
I love you. I miss you.

High on a mountain top,
Cole