I'm going to borrow the title of that famous Bee-Gees song
for my column this week, and I'll tell you why in a moment.
By the calendar and the clock, I should not be here. Sometime last year I should have run out of
time, yet here I am, still kicking and enjoying life. I have a reason for believing that negative scenario and you may
call it superstition, but I call it the natural order of things.
Modern medicine has kept me going far longer than I have any
right to stay on the green side of the grass.
There have been several close calls in the past few years, but good old
Doctor Clark has performed his miracles on me and, like that Timex commercial
used to say, (and my wife echoes it) I... "take a lickin' and keep on
tickin'."
The calendar/clock reference above is to the fact that I
lost my oldest brother in 2003, my brother-in-law in 2006 and my other brother
in 2009. Hmmm, every three years one of
us kicks off. Since I'm the next oldest
of the family I should be next to go, and the cycle of three years should
apply. I feel like I'm living on borrowed time.
When I took my solo car trip to the northwest in 2009, I was
convinced that it would be my last long road trip, and I tried to do as much as
possible while I was out there. Heck,
I've taken ten road trips since then and I'm already locked and loaded for
another one this month. I keep thinking
"this is my last," but then time keeps passing and I get to go on another one.
Along the way I've crossed off a lot of my "bucket
list" items, but I have also added a few to make life more
interesting. One that we'll accomplish
in June is to ride on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. That one has been on there for almost twenty
years, and I sure hope I finally get to do it.
You might be justified to ask what happens if I "meet
my maker" while on the road.
Well, I've thought about that, and I think the solution is
cremation. Judy can transport my ashes
back to Georgia, or she can take me wherever she wants to inter me. You may recall that when I took my trip to
the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my friend, Tom, we transported his
father's ashes to Wisconsin. Hence, I
titled the trip "Urban's Ashes."
I prefer my ashes to be interred in the nice Bellevue
Memorial Gardens right across the road from our subdivision, but I won't be
around to protest if Judy chooses another location. Of course, she could take the easy way out and just scatter them
along the road to commemorate our many road trips.
