MY WAY

Since Paul Anka wrote Frank Sinatra’s great hit song, My Way, everyone now has done it “My Way”. I attend wedding receptions, karaoke nights, birthday parties, anniversary parties, and the never ending list gets bigger. What do I find but someone singing, My Way. I hate it! I hate the people that sing it! I resent the fact that in my lifetime it has never bee
My Way. Oh yes, like the words say, “The end is near”. I’m getting too old to do the things that I had dreamed I could accomplish as a young man growing up. Somehow, after dropping out of high school, joining the Army and serving in the Korean War, I got my education, dated, found a job, married, had children, faced my wife’s death, raised the children alone, remarried, had another child and later divorced leaving me to once again raise a child by myself to become a young adult—“So I face the final curtain”.

While all these others are so damm proud that they were able to do it My Way, I could not. In fact, it was always some other Way. Struggling from the early beginning in the marriage to get by, renting apartments. Trying to save a few dollars towards a down payment to buy a house, while I watched in shock as the price of the houses were increasing faster then I could save the down payment to buy the old priced house. The children, clothes, early school, and college—oh where did all that money I made go all those years? “Regrets”, oh yes. Does anyone give you any credit for all you have sacrificed for? “I planned each charted course”, no way. As I was trying to control my day to day life, life was doing what it wanted, when it wanted, and how it wanted. Did I, “bite off more tha
I could chew”? I did feel at times overwhelmed. I did doubt myself. I wondered was I doing enough for everyone? I’m not what I want to be. I never became that great successful man. I’m not that great friend who is always there when needed. I’m not everything a good husband should be. I’m not everything a good father should be. I’m not taking care of my Mother the way a good son would take care of his Mother. But how can I be all these things to all these people? What is wrong with me? Yes, “I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried”. But not because I did it, My Way, but because in spite of the hills, the valleys, the hidden traps, mine fields, so many disappointments and more than anyone’s share of life’s tragedies, I have not been beaten; maybe bruised and scarred, yes. “For what is a man” is a good question. I believe the true man is the one who continues even when it can’t be, My Way. When life keeps testing him. When he gets knocked down time and again and still continues to get up for more. “The record shows I took the blows”, yes, the record will show I took the blows, but I never did it, My Way. n