CARLTON FLETCHER: Remind me to remember not to forget

So excuse me forgetting, but these things I do.

— Elton John

Dear God:

I know, I know. It’s the lamest excuse your creation has ever came up with. But I forgot.

Somehow, as time slipped away and I got farther and farther removed from the horror that consumed my life for a considerable amount of time, I forgot to be thankful. For every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

It’s been 10 years now since I was the recipient of what one of my heroes, Dr. Phillip Roberts, called a miracle. Ten years since my life was shaken beyond its foundation. Ten years since I thought my time was up.

Ten years.

In that time, I’ve seen my son become a successful businessman with a job that is so perfect it’s like his bosses asked what he liked to do and they created a job that fit his requirements. Ignoring the example set by his dad, he’s become the kind of man every father wants his son to be.

I got to see my older daughter, who was a pre-teen at the time, grow into a beautiful woman who went to Japan to get married and is headed back there this week to settle into big-girl life with a military man who shares her passion for adventure.

I’ve watched the 2-year-old that I was just getting to know grow into the smartest 12-year-old I’ve ever been around, a spirited, beautiful young lady on the verge of blossoming into a true force of nature.

In those 10 years, my son and his beautiful wife have granted me the privilege of being a granddad — call me Poppy — three times over. Distance and duties limit our time together, but that old saying about the joys of being a grandparent have certainly proved to be true.

Over the course of that decade, I’ve seen Pearl Jam, the White Stripes, Foo Fighters, Leon Russell, Eminem, Widespread Panic, the Allman Brothers, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, Robert Earl Keen, Jamey Johnson, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, the Who, Eric Clapton, Kid Rock, Lourde and dozens of other artists play live.

I’ve watched as local musicians Luke Bryan, Dallas Davidson and Phillip Phillips proved you don’t have to be from somewhere else to make it big-time, and I’ve sat on a tour bus with David Allan Coe. (Perhaps one of the most surreal experiences covering all the years I’ve been around.)

I’ve met some wonderful people in the last 10 years, shared some good times, bad times and moments of enlightenment that have helped carry me through some of those bad times.

And I’ve had the honor of sharing my life — such that it is — with one of the most talented, beautiful and amazing women who nurtured me when I barely had the strength to get out of bed and kicked my butt when I started to wallow in self-pity. All her friends tell her she could have done better, and they’re right. As a pretty smart guy I know once told me, one thing we guys have over the women we’re with is that we have much greater taste than they do.

All these things, and so many more, came in the last 10 years, years that have been an absolute gift. There may be 10 more years, or there may only be 10 more minutes or 10 more days. I will make it my duty to be thankful for them, no matter how many of them there are.

And, God, I’ll try not to let the trifles that I’m involved in on a daily basis keep me from remembering to thank you … for each and every moment.