Just reflecting on a busy summer and the changes that come with age, maturity, and the realization that you’ve already passed the midpoint. The last four years, since getting married, have been a blur. Watching a child grow up was compressed for me, given that my son was already ten when he arrived at JFK with his mom. Now he’s just entering high school—I’ve already watched him play in his first football scrimmage at that level.

My remaining grandfather, my mom’s dad, is still with us as I write, but he’s declined and isn’t the same man he once was. However, it was my mother’s heart attack just a month or so ago that served as a stark reminder of my own age. She’s doing well, for now, yet time has most certainly slipped by; the days turned into decades. Siblings grew up and left. Those old friendships came and went. And now, my focus and priorities have shifted to another generation—to the toddler daughter who runs with a smile on her face, turning a simple walk outside into a wonderful adventure.

All good things come to an end. The Slifer House was torn down despite my best efforts to rally against this historical vandalism. It is fairly clear that once Grandpa passes, even the family I thought was always so close will go separate ways. It’s just dawned on me how much of what was always there for me is now in the past tense: the farm, the fun times with cousins running around as a band of boys. Those days are over, and now we have our own lives.

I fought hard, following the terminal prognosis of Uriah and as the eldest of the grandsons, to keep us connected. But life is busy. I have changed, they have changed, and there are growing incompatibilities. I cannot trust those who cling to ideologies—despite all evidence—that could potentially put my own family at risk through the policies they support. Why keep clinging to relics of the past when they do nothing for my family’s future? I still go to reunions, for now.

We Can Never Go Home Again

It seems everything follows the same life cycle. With good fortune, you prosper until you’re surrounded by the fruit of success—and then it all fades away. I got myself back on track very late after years of struggle, and it is simply a fact that I’ve entered the latter half of my life. A second act or a decline into oblivion is all a matter of perspective. But I know all the things I cherished eventually slipped away and you can never go back; the future is built on the death of the past.

Even with my parents’ house still standing and my parents still living in it, even with siblings to reminisce with about our childhood, the moment was gone before I even had time to contemplate what it meant. I’m now much closer to the grave than to my early memories, and I have probably reached my full potential in many areas. I’ve had to leave so much behind to get here, and I can’t prepare my children for the time when the home I provide for them exists only as a memory.

As summer comes and goes too quickly for a fourteen-year-old boy—their days of swimming and fishing—the security of the past is forever falling forward into the present mix of change and uncertainty. Like the Garden of Eden, we’re expelled from the realm of our innocence, a place of nurture, our ideals, and an imagined future of endless possibilities, into a world that demands we perform or die. Time moved slowly then, as if it would never end—but now we see the end.