patricky

I think, perhaps, that I spend my life walking without leaving footprints, and that I cast no shadow to show where I'm going, or to mark my passing.

My childhood friends are just memories for me, and I doubt that I'm even that for them; for all that I remember them in fleeting moments - when I take stock of who I am, and the things I've done - I'm struck with the feeling that I'm an invisible spot in their remembrances, recalled only as a few words, or a faceless presence that hovers on the edge of reminiscence.

My work is well received, and then put aside. I don't know anymore if it's even used, or enjoyed; I don't even know if anyone would notice if I stopped, or care if they did.

And there is no place that's mine, no time that's mine. My friends and my family take the center, and I stand at the edges looking in. Those I meet become my loved one's friends, and my acquaintences; I'm the path, and not the destination.

I think that I occupy space in life, but I don't fill it. I'm acknowledged as existing, but not in a way that commands attention, or later recollection.

I know my father as more than my father, though he died when I was very young. He was a man to remember, and a man many remember, some fondly, and some not - but they remember. When he died, the plant he worked at closed, for the first time in history, and 1,200 men and women came together to remember him, and to speak of him, and to show my mother and I that he was more than just a presence, that his life carried weight, and that his shadow and his footprints still remained.

I look in the mirror now, and I see my face becoming his. I look behind me, and I still see his footprints marked in time. He's long gone, but his shadow remains. I'm here now, but I'm the one who's unseen.

Patrick Y., writing out loud to himself, September 26, 2005