The Bloody Doors Off

Trading cards.

I remember collecting trading cards. But not baseball, no that was my brother Wayne’s pastime. I was into comics and comic book movies. You believed a man could fly. And a lone figure who struck fear in the underworld by dressing as a bat.

I was into the 1989 Batman movie starring Michael Keaton. I collected their trading cards. If you got them all and flipped them over, it made one large picture. I even had a full, sealed box of the trading cards. I was convinced it was a good investment, that it would appreciate in time.

I think I made $50. Which, it turns out, was the right call.

But those baseball cards my brother collected. There might’ve been a few gems hidden in those binders.

I’ve been having these vivid memory recalls lately.

Not exactly reliving them. But these are thoughts going back three, four decades. I have to remind myself sometimes what I had for lunch that day. Or, like today, didn’t have.

My grandmother developed Alzheimer’s in her mid-90s.

My mum died in her 70s but was sharp as a tack.

I wonder. If things had been different, if she survived the heart attack. Would the disease have been passed down? And would it be harder to lose a piece of her each day, or the more immediate, massive coronary in a laundromat.

My wife reminded me recently that we need to talk burial plots and wills.

I’m feeling my mortality today. Can you tell?