Twenty-seven
years have passed since 1988, but I still wince whenever I read or hear that
year said. For example, I was watching a Phillies game recently and one of the
announcers referred to the 1988 team. That year, Harry Kalas, Rich Ashburn,
Andy Musser, and Chris Wheeler were in the TV booth. Mike Schmidt missed the
last six weeks with a torn rotator cuff. I remember because I’m very sensitive
to many of the bad things that happened that year.
In 1988 the Philadelphia Eagles went 10-6 and won the NFC
East championship under Buddy Ryan, with Randall Cunningham at the helm. On December
31 of that fateful year, the Eagles played the Chicago Bears, in Chicago, in
the division playoffs. An all-enveloping fog descended on the playing field. No
one could see much of anything. The Eagles lost. It was typical of that bizarre
year. 1988.
Veterans Stadium, where both the Phillies and Eagles
played back then, also hosted a number of notable outdoor concerts. One of my
son, Colin’s, favorite bands, Pink Floyd, played there on May 15, 1988. Colin
had died two days before that, killed by a drunk driver. Pink Floyd finished
the regular part of that concert with “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” and
the aptly chosen “Comfortably Numb.” Colin was 18. His ashes were being
scattered in the Pacific that week.
In 1988, the US President was Ronald Reagan; Michael Dell
launched Dell Computer Company; Michigan State won the Rose Bowl and the
Supreme Court ruled against Jerry Falwell in a defamation suit against Hustler
Magazine. On May 14, 1988, while I was still in Hawaii, attending to my son,
Colin’s, affairs, a different drunk driver rammed a converted school bus near
Carrollton, Kentucky and killed 27 members of a church youth group. The
Olympics were held in Seoul, South Korea that summer. In November of 1988 the
American actress Emma Stone was born. On December 21, Pan Am Flight 103 was
destroyed over Lockerbie, Scotland by an on-board bomb.
1988 is probably not mentioned or referred to more often
than say, 1987, or 2006. It’s just a typical year (as compared to 1776, 1941,
2001 and a few others). But when it is brought up, it has the power to
provoke me.
What I want to do, on the inside, is yell, pound the
table or sofa arm, or kick a rock. But what I have learned to do instead is to Flick
the Switch. Accept the jolt of adrenalin that stabs my heart while I switch my
mental TV to another channel. I do not dwell on my negative association. I do not
need to prove my love by viewing that twinge as an obligation to renew my mourning.
Or as an invitation to revive my memories. We all have our private associations
– whether good or bad – they are always there. We don’t have to act on the
negative ones.
More: our missing ones had beginning dates too. Though 1988
stings me more, 1969 waits at the other pole. During the first Moon Walk, July
21, 1969, my boy was safely tucked in his mother’s womb, in weightlessness,
tethered to Life Support – just like the astronauts as I watched them on TV. Colin
was due in seven weeks then. What a thrill it was to have a child coming to
full term when such wonderful things were happening in the world. The Age of
Aquarius had arrived. Colin was born a few weeks later, on September 10, 1969.
Here are some more 1969 things that register with me – some
pleasant, some ironic, some awful – Woodstock; the Manson Family rampage; Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; The Chicago Eight Trial; the first Gap store
opens in San Francisco; the “People’s Park” is formed in Berkeley; Jennifer
Aniston is born.
It’s a wonder we
all get along as well as we do, because each of us carries around our personal
associations with words and numbers we hear everyday, many of them carrying private
triggers. For all of the explosions we hear about in the daily news, I truly
believe we humans, somehow, luckily, are masters of restraint.
Written in memory today, Wednesday, May 13 2015, of my
son Colin’s passing on May 13, in 1988.
