All That Glitters is Not Gold

If you haven't had a chance, haven't seen it or heard about it,
be among the first to check out a new daily blog called Ocean's Diamond.
It all started with Cowboy giving me the biggest diamond money could buy,
and now it's showing up every where.
Maybe it will be in your end of the world soon!  Ocean's Diamond

The View

I'll never be the same since  life took a radical left turn last year. 
Back then, I felt like I was going down and I wasn't quite sure how it was going to end, how it was going to change, or how I could keep going hoping for the best and seeing the worst.

God is mysterious and answers prayers under the most unlikely circumstances, in the oddest timing, with an awe inspiring  perfection that leaves me breathless.
Life is so much more now than I ever imagined it could be. He has taken me to places I was forgetting to dream about. I feel sure I'm becoming the best version of myself.

I don't know that I deserve it, but I desired it.
I doubt that many people know what to make of this latest journey, people who fear flying want you to stay grounded. People who don't like to travel want you to stay close. But people who don't know how to walk on water want to see how it's done.

I'm learning. All I can tell you about lately, is, the view from here is spectacular. Glad I took the risk, made the changes, met the people along the way and now I have a new life.
And it's just getting started.

Coffee With Dad

I poured myself a cup of Joe into the mug my dad brought back from Montana. I got the news this morning that a dear friend’s father had passed away. Although he had lived a long life, they were still enjoying him quite a lot. And of course,  grief is deep in situations like that.

Not so long ago, (I just realized it was 9 years ago) I drove up to see my dad after he had a heart attack and subsequent stroke, my daughter Samantha sat next to me. Our white Mercury Grand Marquis flew like a rocket to Akron, Ohio, where soon my sister and four brothers would converge.  Tears spilled out of my eyes, uncontrolled. I must have been a fright to Sam, between crying and laughing jags. Alternately I considered how deeply I would feel his absence, then suddenly old jokes my Dad once told seemed to pop in my head unbidden. I decided to tell her the jokes.

Somewhere along the hour and a half stretch, she was laughing and crying right along with me. Most of the jokes were the “you had to be there” kind, but one that sticks in my head is the time he and his wife were in a Mexican restaurant. The waitress arrived to take their order.

“My wife thinks this word is pronounced tor-tee-yah, but you and I know it’s tor-till-ah.” It got a laugh from everyone including the waitress.

It was one of his more endearing quirks that he had a long list of words he enjoyed intentionally mispronouncing. He held a running commentary on life around him always finding humor in even the darkest hours. I wondered what he would have said about his own imminent death.

“I wanted more time with him,” I said aloud in the car, more to God than Samantha.  At least I could tell she was listening. I hoped God was. “But you know what I’ve figured out? I always will. I love him and I’m selfish and I never want him to die. That’s unrealistic. There is never going to be a good time for him to die.” We agreed through our tears. “I’d like to have another five years with him. No, ten!”

I said this mostly because he seemed more frail every time we went to visit with him, a little slower, a little greyer, a little more tired. He got around fine in those days, he went to work, had a woodshop, he went to church twice a week, one Roman Catholic, the other a nondenominational. He planted a garden every year of which he alone took care to weed and prune and harvest. He accumulated books to read and more occasionally read them. That cold morning in March, he’d been in his woodshop.

He didn’t pass away that day, although it was touch and go at the time and for almost a week. He mysteriously rallied. He went to rehab, recovered and was released mostly intact.

He didn’t tell his jokes anymore. He became emotional at the slightest things. My sister, brothers and I made time to stop in and see him, talk with him and we counted our time as the most precious Indian Summer season.

Five years later to the day, he suffered another stroke on the way home from Mass. He’d fallen out of his truck and never regained consciousness. My sister and I drove up together to the hospital but he passed while we were parking the car.

We all felt like we were blessed to have the five years, to have the conversations we’d been withholding, to say the “I love you’s” we’d been saving for just the right occasion. We poured it all out, made time to visit because we just really never knew.  After his funeral was over, driving home, I thought about that day in the car with Samantha, and wish I had asked for ten more years first.

Anticipated vs. Unanticipated Loss

The following essay was written by my dear friend and fellow writer, Robert Blackwell. His heart often pours out poetry, but since gaining his well-earned freedom from the daily 9-5 grind, his writing has expanded to include this essay and most recently, a play. He lives with his wife and sons in Columbus, Ohio.

Which is easier – anticipated loss, where the ability to plan one’s goodbyes to a loved one is tempered by the painful anticipation of same; or unanticipated loss, which happens like the proverbial thief in the night, robbing us of that which might be precious but in so doing allowing a faster healing process in the ripping of Band-Aid from the skin of the heart?

I submit two examples from my life, both of which involve my most treasured sibling.

Unanticipated loss

I was the only child my parents had together, but I am the youngest of my mother’s two sons and my father’s five children (three sons, two daughters).  My maternal half-brother (hereafter referred to as my brother) took me completely under his wing, which is unusual for a teenager with a younger sibling, but he loved me and that’s how it was.  He made me his world, and I knew it.

I was born in 1960…the start of the era of love, but also of civil rights…and Vietnam.  My brother graduated from high school in 1966, and had to face the choice of where to perform his military service.  With the draft in full swing his only choices were to accept assignment to the Marine Corps or enlist in one of the other branches.  My father, an Army Air Force veteran from World War 2, steered my brother into the Air Force and off he went to the service.  I knew none of the dynamics of the situation; I knew only that one day he didn’t live in our house any more.  At six years old I couldn’t express how I felt about it, but I knew I missed him.  It felt like I was suddenly missing a limb.  (I’ve had amputees tell me that they can still feel the lost limb, and the feeling is part of the pain of it being gone.)  

Combined with my parents’ divorce, a family of four had contracted into two by the spring of 1967, and I keenly felt the emptiness of our house.  I felt so lonely, but I had only myself to rely on for my emotions; neither my mother nor my father ever asked me how I felt about these things.  From time to time, I would go to bed and he would be there when I woke up, home on leave.  I was happy to have him at home and would feel much better about life until I went to bed and he would be gone when I awakened.  I reasoned that going to sleep is what sent him away, so when he came home I’d fight sleep to keep him here.  Eventually my mother figured out that’s what I was doing, so when it came time for him to leave, they took me to the bus station and made me watch him get on the bus.  I couldn’t stop crying; I’d fought sleep just to keep him at home and it didn’t work anymore.  Once I knew that, I went to bed and slept with a broken heart.

My brother left the service in 1970, but did not come back to Columbus, Ohio to live, opting to stay in Denver, Colorado.  I saw him at home twice more after that: in 1973 my mother had major surgery, so he stayed for a month; and in 1978 he spent a couple of weeks with us to commemorate my high school graduation.  I eventually got used to his physical absence from my life because we remained emotionally close.

I learned the reasons he never came back home in 1987, during a phone conversation between us.  He’d begun a gay lifestyle while in the Air Force and my mother didn’t approve.  He also didn’t want to influence me in the same direction, so our contact was minimal all those years.  My heart shattered once again to realize what he sacrificed and what it had cost me; I wanted to reach through the phone, pull him back through it, and never stop embracing him.  I let him know, in no uncertain terms, that the distance between us did not lessen my love for him; it simply increased the hurt.  I also told him that I would not wait for our mother to die in order to try and have a relationship with him.  We unburdened our hearts to each other and in the process became the closest two people you’d ever find.

Anticipated loss

Our closeness lasted without being tested for 3 ½ years.  I surprised him with a Christmas visit in 1988, where my mother and I got to meet his partner and his partner’s family.  In 1990 he flew here to be a treasured part of my wedding party.  In March 1991 my mother gave me the news that my brother tested HIV-positive due to promiscuity with similarly infected partners.  I’d asked him before he died why he did such a reckless thing; he responded that he’d never wanted to live to age 50.  Receiving the news threw me into turmoil.  I was sad because my mother did not tell me for a week after she found out because I was out of town on business and she didn’t want to disturb me, hence she had to endure the burden alone for that time.  I was angry at my brother for being so reckless, all because he wanted to die young.  Finally, I was unhappy to learn my time with him would be short after all I had gone through to reach out to him as an adult.  I did a lot of praying and soul-searching before deciding to make the most of whatever time was left.  We saw each other three more times after his diagnosis, the final time three months before his death in 1997, when my wife and I flew out to spend Valentine’s Day weekend with him, bearing our then 8 ½-month-old son.  It was the only time my child would see his uncle.  As he wished, he died six weeks shy of his 50^th birthday.  To this day, I still don’t understand that sentiment.

Conclusion

I learned in both lessons that while anticipated losses allow you to plan your goodbyes better than unanticipated ones, in the end it remains a loss.  The real lesson I learned is the importance of making the most of your time with your loved ones, for your memories will be what’s left when they’re gone, for better or worse.

To The Wire

If you're like me, you keep wondering where I ran off to. Truth is, I've been working mostly on finishing the novel I started a while back.
My editor says I need to have it done by August. Everytime I look at it, seems it needs another bridging chapter. And I'm at the tail end. I think since I thought it was finished I added 25 more pages.

He's at the front of the book... well, not so much anymore. He's up to page 124.
I am currently on page 267 and still trying to tie it all together.

The photo is what 167 pages looks like on a ruler. and to be honest, it's all single spaced, one inch borders on regular stock.

Between this, work and cooking frenzies on Sunday I feel like I'm just barely keeping up with this blog. Truth is, I'm rethinking what my message is. But for now, it's full speed ahead! I am nearly finished with the book.

After that, it's all polish.