I’m not going to tell you the details, but it’s been a month, and at the point of writing this it’s still that month…

There are things in life that seem like they’ve always been there, and then they’re not, and it’s a shock when they go. My neighbour has this year experienced her husband’s passing, and no matter how ready she might have thought she was for it I’m sure it was still a shock. I was shocked when I divorced in 2018 and I thought I was ready because I really wanted a better life. It was a shock when my brother passed in 2022, it still is a couple of years later each time I realise we’ve had our last ever conversation.

This is something people talk about, the realisation of the last time, after the fact, knowing now that they didn’t know at the time it would be the final time. Jimmy Carr talks of living like you only have 6 months and the attitude you might adopt of things being precious or rubble, because living would come into focus, things would seem more immediate. We never get used to things ending, maybe we wouldn’t love them so hard in the first place if we knew some day they would. We cultivate the attitude toward things that we believe they will never cease, maybe it seems better for the self to treat people and stuff that way, yet, it is of course an illusion.

The older I get the more I desire some sort of stability, the more the lack of stability I realise I have, and the more jittery I become about change. The best attitude to take would be to be as a leaf on the wind, realising that most of what happens is out of our control, but that’s not the human impetus. Shocks, even the minor ones are major. It’s a little one I’m going to relay to you now, a triviality in the grand scheme of things, a thing of no consequence at all. The last Indiana Jones movie..

Now you may laugh, you likely thought I started out this piece on a sombre note, and I suppose I did, but I wasn’t trying to fool you. I turn fifty soon, and for all the years I have been alive and watching movies I have been accompanied by (IMHO) the greatest fictional character of all, Professor Henry Jones Jr (Indiana). Top Academic, swashbuckler, flawed romantic, courageous archaeologist, myth sceptic, and at times a clowning foolish figure getting his ass royally kicked (by Pat Roach many times). This guy, this character, has been with me since I was a nine year old child and watched the brilliant opening scene of Raiders, where his silhouette seemed to whip the gun out of his would be assassin’s hand.

“It’s not the years, it’s the mileage” – Indiana Jones (character)

Things end, such is life, but we should never act like they will. That would lead to giving up, not seeing the point. If I set out to realise the futility of everything I may do then I might realise that I was the only point of my endeavours, and that might make me lazy. I play the guitar rather badly, certainly not in any sort of way where I might want anyone to listen. I also sing, and although I am in tune (I think), I wouldn’t wish that on anyone either. What I’m saying is that there is no point, the machinery involved is a waste of money, the time I use to repeat scales, learn arpeggios and try to commit songs to my memory has no purpose other than to me.

Some people say you die twice, once when you die, and again when the living memory of you dies and is lost to only the church records and family trees. When I go I will likely leave no great book, no painting, no sculpture or movie. Nobody will keep my photographs beyond the lifetime of those that know me. My possessions will become trash or antiques I suppose. I will end and what I do now will be futility in a hundred years, but Indiana may live on in some form. I hope so.

Paul S Wilson