Exit, Pursued By a Bird

Hey. Wake up. Enjoy this while you still can. You know where you are and you know what’s happening. Facts-you haven’t got much time left. Hospice beds ain’t often occupied by folks with rosy prospects. Sorry but it’s true.

Ah there you are, looking my way at least, can you hear me? Just blink yes, no need to alarm your gathered relations. Can’t speak too well anyway, right?

Yeah I know, animals can’t talk and even if some could it wouldn’t be a seagull. Not to mention we’re on opposite sides of a decently thick pane of hospital glass yet you still hear me loud and clear. Right? Good, thanks for blinking. Don’t worry about that. The how doesn’t matter, in fact neither does the why. I’m here, you’re here, and this is what’s happening. I might be a hallucination, I might be a messenger from God/the gods/The Others/etc, I might be an AI-drone hybrid gone wrong or a thousand other things, who cares? We’re here and this is happening.

I know this sucks, it sucks for everyone but especially a guy like you, active and strong and boisterous and cliché-be-damned as full of life as you. And you really were up until not all that long ago, impressive for your age. Maybe I can help with that. Maybe that’s why I’m here.

Everything and everyone gets some version of this eventually.

This isn’t “This Is Your Life!”, I know you like that old black-and-white movie but you’re not George Bailey and I’m definitely not Clarence, although I do have kind of an odd body.

Get it? Cause I’m a seagull and even among the weird-bird subgenre of living things that shouldn’t exist me and mine still stand out as prime don’t-let-this-happen-to-yous? Nothing, not even a light chuckle? I thought it was funny. What, do I have to start bleating “Mine?” like that idiotic fish movie? Whatever.

Anyway forget the big moments, the milestones. Everyone has them, some more than others, some more impressive, but that’s not what anyone’s life is really about. Birth, graduation, marriage, various accomplishments, your “legacy”, forget that. It’s the tiny moments, unique to only glorious you, that make up a life. You’ve had some good ones, Coach.

Remember when you were small and your mother made you a cake every night? Nobody ever believes that but it’s true. Oh right, sorry, not every night-on Fridays she made you a pie.

Remember when you were a lifeguard at that summer camp and you saved that little kid’s life? Damn fool got all tangled in the rope separating the deep end from the shallow, shouldn’t have been in the pool at all, and would’ve drowned for sure if you hadn’t been so Johnny-on-the-spot. If this were a movie I’d tell you who that boy grew up to become and it would be super impressive but I know you know that’s beside the point. You’re good like that. You get shit.

Did you love Jimmy Buffett before you uprooted your black-and-gold-drenched Steel City life to settle in Florida, back when it was still wild and untamed in the good way, or did that happen as a result? Did you ever think, even if you’d never dream of saying it aloud and without the barest shred of irony, you actually found the real Margaritaville? You might have.

Not many folks, even of your generation, have the strength to unabashedly love “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and that Marty Robbins tune about the ranger with the big iron on his hip like you. That’s a quiet kind of bravery right there, and I hope you know how many people would, in the fullness of time, realize how fully correct you were, and admire you for it.

Not many folks of any age could declare, with absolute metaphysical certitude, the single greatest song ever was The Temptations’ “My Girl” but you could and did and when you named this sonic boon from Heaven Itself no one ever tried disagreeing. Not just because of your confidence either, you were in fact correct. Truth.

Sorry for that brief pause, I was distracted. Some kid is eating a jumbo pretzel down below and NOT paying enough attention to it.

I’m always hungry. Also, it's a secret so keep it DL, all seagulls genuinely love fucking with people.

It’s one thing to step on someone when you’re walking through the dark in an unfamiliar place, even when it’s a passed-out reveler sleeping on a hardwood floor after going way too hard at the party you arrived at several hours too late, even if you step right on the aforementioned bacchanalian’s goddamned head. But it’s something else entirely when the head in question belongs to Pat “The Great Prince of Santini Tides” Conroy, especially if twenty years later, when he’s one of the most famous writers alive and hasn’t seen you since, still immediately remembers you're “the son of a bitch who stepped on my head.”

Most everyone watched Apollo 11's moonshot liftoff but you did it on a surfboard floating above the Atlantic.

All this is but the tiniest fraction of a percent of eighty-four years. Hell of a life, Coach.

Apologies but I don’t know what’s coming next, for you or me or anything.

I’m here, you’re here and this is all there is, everything ever. This is it.

Your wife is with you, and your first wife is thinking of you. To paraphrase St. Jimmy, she still manages a smile, just took a while.

Your sisters, your nephews and nieces, their kids. Everyone you met, loved, touched, redeemed, blessed, instructed, made laugh cry strive think FEEL.

It’s time, Coach. I know it’s hard, it sucks, but it’s time to let go. Let fly. Soar.

Get that pretzel. Godspeed.

What's that? What about me? What am I soaring after?

Mine.