This is a blog I wrote the other day. I felt like sharing it with you. I hope some of you can appreciate it.
I'm going to drop my guard for a moment. I'm going to pretend I'm a real human being again, and share something with you all – something that I have told very few people. I'm going to dig up memories that have been dormant and suppressed for many years now.
Yesterday, while I was at work, for the first time in years, I cried. It happened in public, and so I was instinctively compelled to hide it as best I could. It was a rush of emotion I hadn't felt in me for so long. It was bittersweet. Allow me to explain why I felt like writing about it.
When I was a youngster, playing with toy guns was forbidden in my household. In fact, anytime I expressed any interest in firearms would result in a severe lecturing from my mother. She had an extreme distaste for firearms. Anything even resembling a firearm, not even a toy proton pack (which only resembles a leaf blower at best). In my mother's mind, this restriction was justified by a great tragedy.
My mother had seven brothers, and many of them have had a very hard life. My uncle William fought in the Vietnam war, like so many other poor souls of his generation. He's also a sportsman, and enjoys hunting, just like many other people in this rube-infested state. However, Bill wasn't the only one among my mother's siblings to compete in death sports.
One of my other uncles was named Richard, and he also enjoyed hunting. Apart from that, he had a seemingly bright future ahead of him. He was an outstanding and brilliant student, as well as a formidable basketball player. He was full of life. He was strong, and to this day, I still count him among the most intelligent people I've ever known.
As you may have guessed by now, he was a victim of the unpredictable and devastating affects of firearms. What we sometimes forget is that killing you isn't the cruelest thing a bullet can do. When Richard was 17, he and his friends were out on yet another hunting expedition. While one of his friends was cleaning his rifle, he had neglected to remove its ammunition, and the weapon fired, and it hit Richard in the back. He survived the accident, but the bullet had shattered his spinal cord, and he was rendered a quadriplegic.
Needless to say, he had been permanently changed for the worse. He had to carry out the rest of his life completely disabled. His parents had to tend to his every need for the remainder of his life. He lived for 26 years after the accident, completely helpless, but he still managed to keep busy and contribute to society in any way he could. He worked out of the home as a technical consultant of some kind. I was too young at the time to understand enough to care about what he did for a living.
My grandmother built an extension on her home, which became Richard's new room. When I first saw his living space, I was astonished to see that every wall was hidden behind a fully-stocked book shelf. In the living room, the walls were covered with VHS cassettes. It was like his own personal library.
I remember so many days spent sitting in his lap as he read to me. I would help him turn the pages. We also watched movies together as well. He nurtured my interest in science fiction and fantasy. It was Richard that instilled my captivation with what some might call a shallow and boring form of entertainment.
His disability never allowed him to live in a way I'm sure he would've prefered to. All he had was his books, and his movies, and his mother, who loved him dearly. Even still, he made the best of it.
He was one of my few true role models. I cannot thank him enough for the way he impacted my life. I miss him so much, and I will always remember him with the most profound love and respect.
More importantly, Richard is my reminder of why we cannot take our lives for granted, and why we have to try to cherish what we have, and make the best of it. Some of us don't have a choice to live our lives exactly the way we want to, but we can still make the best of it with what we have. The world is a cruel place, full of chaos and unpredictable fates. We cannot squander the gift that is life. Richard never did that. I have done him a great dishonor, and to myself as well.
At some point in my life, I allowed myself to dwell on what luxuries in life I was denied. I locked myself away, and threw myself to despair, envy, and anger. Even still, I am capable of surviving this world, so long as I have people that are there to care for me, which I do, and for the longest time, I chose to deny this fact, because it wasn't quite the way I wanted it to be.
Remembering Richard helped me remember my desired purpose in life, or at least a goal, if anything. I won't get in to that now. I owe it to Richard, my family, and myself. My conscience is still not entirely clear, but I think now I'm finally starting to come to my senses.
Hey! You wanna know something really scary? Richard used to make VHS copies of movies we had watched. Do you wanna know what the first movie he copied for me was?
The answer to that question is right in front of you.