I feel like my life is changing, but it just can't get there. Like I just bowled a strike, if only that last pin would fall.  That last pin is 60 feet away and wobbling. I want to throw a 6 pound kids ball over hand at it, but that is against the rules and the management would likely throw me out.  For all I know, this was my first time up to the lane and most of my strikes are ahead of me, so all I can do is stand back and watch it wobble. It never falls.

I was really hoping that 2011 would be the year of no deaths.  My grandfather will be dead in less than six months.  Probably a lot less.  I don't even know how to feel.  My dad didn't even tell me. I found out from my brother. It is like I share my name with a bunch of strangers.  Shit, I have known strangers better.  I don't have a memory of ever spending any time alone with my grandfather.  Not one.  In the past 10 years the handful of times I have seen him I feel like he doesn't know my name.  He must.  It is silly to think that he didn't hear it a thousand times right after I was born.  Sadly, that is the only time I can think of that he would have definitely heard it.  I'm sure my mom said it over and over. I have shared my name with this man for almost 28 years and I couldn't fill of a lined piece of notebook paper with the things I know about him.  What little I do know about him I know second hand.  I would say it isn't right, but the only right I know is a direction.  There is no time to fix it. The cancer has arrived. Hospice has arrived. What does it matter if he knows my name?  Soon he'll be ash. Erased from the page. The only thing that will be left are little grey remnants waiting to be swept away carelessly with the back of a hand.  What will it matter then?