Adventures in missing the moment

It doesn't matter the location or the reason or the event:

• A brightly lit, well decorated, jovial chapel filled with loved family and friends that changes my life forever
• A quiet, dark, sad funeral home that makes death a hard reality
• A drab, flourescent lit doctor's office that changes my life again
• A screaming stadium of 44,000 people that causes me to lose my voice.

I usually miss the moment. I do not mean that I do not see or experience what happens. I have all my faculties and know full well what I am doing and what I just witnessed.

What I mean is, it doesn't sink in at that moment. It is usually a hour, day, or week later. Something is said to me, or I say something about it. Stops me in my tracks. The light bulb goes on. It's where I have my "holy crap" moment and I realize:

• I am forever married to my one true love. I will be her provider and protector and together we will start a new family and live happily ever after
• I've just lost my grandfather to a 3 year horrendous fight to cancer or one of my best high-school buds to a mortar shell he never saw coming
• I am going to be a dad. I will have a daughter or son to call my own, to hold in my arms and watch them grow up. What Michele and I started out on 3 years ago is growing
• The Detroit Tigers are going to the World Series for the first time in 22 years, on a walk-off 3-run homer by my favorite Tiger.

See, it doesn't matter. Life, marriage, death, new life, sports. I have many more examples but these 4 tell the story the best.

My wife is often disturbed by my apparent lack of excitement sometimes. She doesn't like that I am too even kiel unless I am upset or mad. I assure her over and over that my excitement is leaps and bounds above anything. I try to show her the best I can. I have made some great improvements here.

But, none the less, for whatever reason, the moment doesn't hold the same excitement and emotional high or low I feel sometime after that moment has taken place.

I do get caught up in it, I hoot and holler and cry and laugh and hug my wife and squeeze her hand. But for whatever reason I am not the guy you would find crying in the doctor's office, much less a baseball game. My reaction is usually right on par with whatever everyone else is doing. If it is high-fives outside the stadium or a firm handshake and a congratulations from the doctor, then that is me. If it is hugging my grandma and shedding a tear on each other's shoulders or dancing with my new wife in front of our loved ones, that is me.

But my "truer" emotions always take effect with me later. Like I said, after it has sunk in. Something is said to me or I read the Sports section or a birthday passes or I find an old yearbook or an old email, or I wake up early one morning and my pregnant wife is asleep next to me, breathing softly, off in never never land dreaming of the life I hope and pray I can give her.

Then -- I get the moment...