Tonight, while watching a film full of people singspeaking their lines to one another, I grew a bit wiser.

Are we ever so self-assured that we see the changes in our parents when they lose their parents while raising us at the same time?

If I think “…if only my father was here right now to answer a question or make an observation or be available as an example of what [not] to be,” then didn’t my father and doesn’t my mother feel/think the same way?

I sit here in the comfort of a friend’s home — five bedrooms, six baths, game room, swimming pool, resident coyote in the neighbourhood, my feet warmed by a gas fire — and I wonder.

I am a spoiled man.

I do not sing or create lamenting ballads about loved ones lost in recent wars over the right to govern ourselves in our own subcultural image.

I am neither a troubadour nor a trooper, neither court reporter nor mass media journalist.

Tonight, I remember once again those who saved me from drunken stupors as a stupid drunk, preventing me from drowning in my vomitous sorrows — sister, friends and wife.

I am here now because of them, despite former wishes to the contrary in my darkest moments.

As far as I know, I rule the universe from this blog. Either that or God and I are telling each other a lifelong joke at the expense of my life.

As Kermit the frog said, “It’s not that easy being green,” and Stormin’ Norman “The Bear” Schwarzkopf is dead, the Memphis Blues is 100 years old and I drove on the W.C. Handy highway earlier today.

My father has featured in some of my dreams lately, showing me that should we find ourselves on the other side of the life/death dividing line, we’ll discover we’ve carried our physical/mental influences with us — the forgotten memories of Alzheimer’s disease are still forgotten but physical ailments are just/simply/merely memories in that dreamlike state, too, as important as we want them to be in comparison to our new states of being.

My thoughts drift in eddies of momentary sorrows, embracing the pain of sadness and loss like hugging my father for love and comfort when I was a child innocent of adult thoughts of worldly responsibilities.

What does my wife think now that all her nuclear family members are gone?

Who does she want to be now that she has no one from her formative years to answer to?

In a solar system where one form of sets of states of energy ism coalescing into a group ready to explore and settle other celestial spheres, where do I fit in?

Am I a Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield Jean Valjean or Javert?