Thirty-three

Five Short of Thirty-Eight: A Letter to My Father on My Birthday

Here’s a question for you, Dad: fate or free will? Is everything preordained, written in the stars by some Master Force, and we’re all marionettes on strings, or is the script of life a constant unfolding of countless crossroads and decisions, crossroads and decisions that we all ultimately have control over? 

I wonder if they give you all the answers in The Afterlife. 

My feeling is that it’s an infinitely complex web of both. Of course, we can choose to eat salad or drink beer, read a book or scroll social media, help our neighbor or ignore their suffering. There’s so much we control about what we think, feel, and do. 

But why do horrible things happen to good people?

Why did cousins Thatcher or Skyler have to go so soon? Why did you have to die at thirty-eight and leave the rest of us to find our way through the aftermath? 

I’m thirty-three now, five short of your final earthly age. 

And I’m talking about you a lot these days.