Tequila Shot Musings

3/25/22

The first time I encountered the idea of death was in some children’s book when I was around four years old. The book begins with scenes of a mother taking care of her infant child as she’s humming a tune whose chorus ends with an endearing yet somewhat morbid line: “As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.”

The story slowly progresses as the baby becomes a rowdy boy, later a moody teenager, and eventually a grown man. In each scene, you’d see the love and care the mother showers on her son, even as her hair grows whiter and her body, more frail.

By the end of the book, the mother is weakened and sickly, and it’s now the son holding the mother in his arms in the exact same way that she held him as an infant. By the time my mom would finish reading the story to me, she would be holding me tightly with tears in her eyes as four-year old me stewed in anxiety wondering what a world without my parents would even look like.

I hadn’t thought about this book for decades, but it was naturally something that came to mind when I was downing the first of many tequila shots with old friends during my recent trip to Miami. My college friends and I - some of whom I hadn’t seen in six years - were awash in destination wedding vibes when one of us wondered why we couldn’t just do this every year.

Despite all the liquid courage, I couldn’t help but think of all the reasons why we couldn’t. Obligations just increase over time. Getting married, having kids, and being strapped with a mortgage would all work in tandem to ensure I wouldn’t be able to go on trips out of state with friends in the future.

In that outdoor bar in Miami while sucking on a lime slice, I began to realize that life is a series of discrete, binary chunks. There’s a period in life when you’re able to attend destination weddings and a period when you can’t. There’s a time in your life when your parents are alive and a time when they’re dead.

Once we see our life as a series of different lives, we see how little time we truly do have in our current one. And to me, that’s what the children’s book was getting at.

Sure, at twenty-seven, I hopefully have many decades left in me. But how many years do I have left with my parents? And how many years do I have left before devoting myself wholly to raising another human being?

These questions scare the hell out of me, but they also provide a greater sense of urgency which is sort of the point. I’m not gonna wait for the next wedding to organize a large group trip to Vegas. And I’m not gonna wait for my parents to get old before taking them to the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe during the summertime.