As my journey down my yellow brick road gets closer and closer to its end, things look different than they did when I was a faired-haired youth decades ago. I have different dreams and different reasons for being. I am happy as I look out the window on the world. I teach, I’m raising a half million dollars for 1250 students in Taunggyi, Myanmar, and I have Ginger II. Trust me; my days are filled with purpose. A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a dream about One Moment in Time. In that essay, I asked you to listen to Dana Winner sing One Moment in Time. It is my lyrical autobiography.

I want success in the fundraising drive. My moment in time will be when I can leave my mark on 1250 young students in a developing country on the other side of the world from my window on the world. I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about my choice of my moment in time. However, I do care how those laptops will help those students reach their fullest ability academically. I want them to know, years after I am gone and when they are adults, that some guy cared about them.

As I was starting out in the world, two people made their mark upon me. Brooks Oakford and Louie Palmer saw value in me even though I didn’t see what they saw. A great deal of who I am today can be traced directly back to Brooks and Louie. If I accomplish my personal task, I will feel that I have done well. While I would like to live many more years and have more time with Ginger, but, if not, I won’t complain. At least from my perspective, I will have had a worthwhile life.

These 320-words could easily be the end of this article. Campbell fought the good fight and won his last battle. Period. However, this is where One Moment in Time and Rod Stewart’s Forever Young crash into each other. I have loved Forever Young for years. It was, from my perspective, a love song about two young kids parting ways. One of the kids wants the other one to know that the second one will be remembered as forever young.

Man, I missed that song’s message.

In reality, it explains my love, late in life, for my three grandchildren in Myanmar. I miss them due to living on the other side of the world from them. However, my mistake about the message of the song always lingers in the back of my head. I have a dismal past with interpersonal relationships. Some failures were because of me, some failures were because of others, and some failures due to both of us. My initial spin on what I first thought still haunts me.

Finally, the third song is Grace. It is a song about one moment in time and remembering a former relationship…on steroids. Grace is another love song about Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford.

Joseph Plunkett

Plunkett was involved in the 1916 Easter Rising or Easter Rebellion. Easter fell on April 22nd that year. Interestingly, he helped plan the rebellion but was in the hospital due to surgery on a gland in his neck. In spite of recovering from an operation, he left the hospital and went to aid the effort to gain independence from Great Britain. The attempt to start a revolution failed and the fifteen leaders including Plunkett were captured and were executed by the British.

Grace and Joseph

When everyone in Dublin knew that the leaders of Easter Rising would be executed, Grace Gifford bought a wedding ring and went to Kilmainham Gaol on May 3rd with her priest. The British allowed Plunkett and Gifford fifteen-minutes to get married. The next morning Plunkett was executed. Enter the third song. Talk about one moment in time.

I am haunted by the morphing of those three love songs not only in this essay. However, at a personal level, I can feel the pain, but I can also feel the sheer joy. All that I want is my moment in time….