Last night, my nephew and his bridetobe served as center of attention while they opened gifts and answered questions during a “tool and gadget” party, one of several rituals leading up to their public proclamation of lifetime living together.

Parents and children of his youth and early adulthood attended the event.

So did new friends, college classmates and coworkers.

A culmination, affirmation, tribal gathering.

People with their own lives, who’ve performed roles as background for my nephew’s church-focused life – smiling faces, polite conversation, etc. – are probably seeing me and me seeing them for the last, or next-to-last, time.

For the first time, I learned the first name of a person I had assigned the label “Brett’s mom” ten or twenty years ago.

A pretty woman of whom I know only that her husband is a retired pilot. I seem to remember she might have been a flight attendant, lived on a farm with her retired husband and has a daughter older than my nephew’s friend, Brett.

In their midtwenties, my nephew and his friends are starting their families and will assign labels to acquaintances for easy meme recall.

At 49, I see my mother in-law at 93 as she attempts to accept her new life in a geriatric assisted living facility.

In other words, I’m looking 44 years into my future, a man without children, who, with or without his wife at that time, will depend on nephews and nieces to place me in a “home.”

Some futures I intentionally leave in the dark, waiting until another time to savour the flavour of emotionally-tinged moments.

In conversation with others last night, learning about family migration patterns and individual work habits, I saw the price I’ve paid for my independence, being a being on the margin of many subcultures as the hermit in a cabin in the woods.

Happiness is in us, not in objects.

Last night, many people verified their internal happiness through close proximity with others who shared approximately the same happy feelings/thoughts, mainly through stories of successful family ancestors/offspring.

Without children to represent my internal happiness, these words are the external clues to what I feel/think, happily or otherwise.

I am “these word’s author,” a meme to myself and perhaps others, the father of an imagined future rather than flesh-and-blood reality.

I can’t hug the future or teach it how to throw a baseball. The future won’t feed me when I’m helplessly drooling in old age.

Today, I admit happiness is relative – my childless independence hurts.

Pardon me while I have a selfish manly cry over the choices I made that led to this moment of sad childlessness.