popping perceptions

today's news like every other day's news for someone somewhere is totally and completely devastating. What rocks the living to its core is all too often not how we live the life we are given, but death whether it is our own, someone we are very close to or the perception we hold onto that either actually matters all that much. For so many me included, the best possible time to give our mortality the respect it will one day demand is when we are young and can make decisions that can enhance or shortchange the limited time we have.

Today it was a basketball legend and the world it seems sits up and takes notice for what will be the equivalent of a minute. What is more tragic than the death itself is that his young daughter died as well. But for what seems like an unimaginable loss to those who were fans but never met these people, for their families the word devastating is massively trite.

I feel like human beings have the values of life and death reversed. We tend to all come together at times of great loss and death and yet we find reasons all to often to ignore opportunities to be a part of the lives of those who we say we miss when they are gone. This may anger some people for me to say what I'm about to say but if it helps awaken a mind or two before it's too late then it will have been worth it. Regardless of the notoriety or lack thereof as in my case of the ones we lose, how many of the people who express great sadness do you think actually spoke to or took the time to go see who is no longer here?

This is where I tread on thin ice but oh well. My mom was one of the most generous and caring human beings God ever put on this earth. When she passed away 10 weeks ago there was a room full of people the night prior to her service at the memorial and then quite a number of people at her burial the next day and I can tell you the names of every person who was there and didn't have to be, and all the names of the people who were not there and should have been. Both those who took the time to come pay their respects to me and those who didn't come for either my mom or me because "I had to work and couldn't make it," to, "he doesn't like funerals," and even those who were there who had recently shown behavior in my mom's presence while she lay in her worst condition, an angry and selfish lack of concern for my mom's circumstances and thus my own, all of them used expressions of compassion, sympathy, and loss after my mom passed away. Those I can never forget are the ones who showed those feelings long before November 16 and I'll have to have God's help in forgetting those who only expressed them after that day.

The purpose of writing this isn't to shame anyone for being who they are. My purpose is to make those who may stumble on this blog to think about their own mortality and that of those they love and care about. The easy part of the death of someone special to you is to use nice words of love and sympathy and sadness. What is completely impossible to do is to hide the fact you couldn't find the time and in a couple of cases the dignity and respect to show those loving feelings in person while that someone was here and could feel it.

There are people as we speak that if taken out of your life will have you questioning whether or not life is truly worth living anymore. I know of what I speak. If this post forces you to take a good look at the issues you may have with one of them and patch things up, then great. My purpose was to express how it feels to have death instead of life bring people together and how those expressions after death reek of hypocrisy from where I sit today. If you truly love and care for someone in your life, the value of showing over saying it should be clear to you and more importantly to them. It's nice to hear I love you, but it's God's intention that you show it over saying it and you will have already been doing that long before you feel like you need to say something that will seem on the surface at least, to appear a bit disingenuous..             

In a world full of hypocrites and liars, we smile to blend in.

Even if the king has your back, in the end, you are on your own.

It's never been easy for me walking through a grocery store late at night buying for one. I doubt seriously anyone notices but I walk around thinking about how pathetically old and alone I must look! Wouldn't be near so bad if it wasn't true but at least I still have my 70's hair (some of it).  I'm glad eggs come in a half dozen carton but if that doesn't say, alone nothing does.

Swept the patio and ran mom's car for a while Sunday. It started right up. A 20-year-old Toyota with just 36 thousand miles it's practically still a new car and it was my mom's pride and joy. She loved that car. My sister in Tulsa needs a decent car and mom told me she wanted her to have it so I'm working on the overly complicated two-state / estate transfer / and then it will be hers.

I couldn't find much I felt like doing this weekend much like it wasn't a weekend at all just another couple days, but today after I looked for an email address for someone I began looking around at just how many hundreds of email addresses I have for people I haven't seen or heard from in years. A lot were work-related network producers, reporters, and surprisingly a lot of well-known people I had forgotten I had personal contact info for. So I started deleting a bunch of these addresses and the weirdest thing, I was really starting to enjoy it! Some of them, in particular, I REALLY enjoyed deleting and I started thinking, why hadn't I gotten rid of them a very long time ago? Dozens and dozens and the more I deleted the more fun it was..

 OK, so then I thought I'd take a look at my old iPhone 6's contact list and oh man did I find a ton of people there I wanted to get rid of too! I had cell phone numbers for some Maverick's players, Cowboys now retired, Rangers who no longer play for them anymore, music stars, tv stars, and many people some of which aren't even around anymore and away I went deleting like it was an addiction. Some of them got an extra heavy push from my finger SMASHING the delete button. No names but I think a lot of them would completely understand me pushing their memory from my mind and now my phone. I didn't even get close to finishing so I'll do more when I feel like I need a little purge uplift. If you need a little pick-me-up in your life that's easy and fun to do I highly recommend going through and deleting the crap out of names and numbers of the people who once took up space in your life that never should have in the first place. It's cathartic in a sadistic, legal kind of way..

"Even if the king has your back, in the end, you are on your own." -mwz (from firsthand life experience)

the caveat

Dear much much younger me,

Hey, it's much older me with few stories about the life ahead of you. It may not be all that helpful but maybe you can savor some of the good parts and not let them slip by unnoticed.

We're going to travel a very long way and skip over a ton of detail but when we're done I'll bring you right back where we began with perspective and appreciation you may have overlooked if not for the heads up. Fasten your seatbelt.

Before you were even born your mom will have been told that, "you will love this one more.." Before you ever experience joy or pain, loss or sorrow, you will be loved by this beautiful woman who will become the very life inside of you forever. This letter will hopefully serve as a reminder of what is really important to your life and help you to understand a lot of things you may have questions about and never seem to find answers for.

You are going to hope and dream about things that will seem out of reach for you. You are going to experience joy and excitement of loving and being loved back in return. There will be sadness and fear along with despair and pain and darkness where no light has ever been seen. There will be times in your life that you cannot believe how well you have done and how far you took success that no one except your mom ever thought you could achieve. There will also be years where deep and dark depression will overcome you and try to take your life. All of these things are ahead of you in no particular order but remember I will eventually bring you back right here where it all began.

In the span of just one lifetime, you are going to experience the most gracious unconditional love a human being on this earth has ever known. There will also be times when loss and sadness will fill your soul and create an empty chasm where your heart once lived in one piece. Do not be afraid, this is life and I will bring you back.

The unconditional love from your mother who will love you more than her own life, you will not fully comprehend until you are an old man filled with loss and sorrow. In the very end, you will have wasted so much time hoping and dreaming of things you will attain that will become completely useless to what life is really all about.

You will be sick and near death needing a kidney removed and you will survive that ordeal and be alright. The isolation from the kids who live across the street who never invited you in and leave you to play by yourself and learn how to be alone, this too shall pass and give you a lesson you will need much later in life. These early days of growing up will have you playing with your first friend a dog named Blackie on the front porch all by yourself and tossing a football up in the air to run under it and pretend to catch an incredible touchdown pass while listening to the school band playing down the street where all the lights are on Friday nights. The sadness you will feel over having to play by yourself while the neighborhood kids play across the street, those hard times you won't fully understand until one day those issues will seem like some of the best days of your life..

You will fight constantly with one of your sisters and eat brown sugar sandwiches and feel unbearable anxiety over changing schools when we move. Meeting new people and change will become your Achilles heel and when you finally find that thing you're really good at, that thing will be tennis! It will take the edge off all the awkwardness and you will play for the school team and you will lose your first human friend who thought he would be the one playing for the school. Being picked for the school tournaments will make your mom so proud but what she won't know is the behind the scenes jealousy and losing your only friend over it. Those will be tough days and great days and when you get very much older from now you will give anything to be able to trade your today and go back in time from the old man and circumstances you will find yourself in, to the young man you are growing into with those relatively minor issues in tow.

You will quit school long before you graduate and get married and have a son only to have that little family you create be blown to pieces probably by not having ever seen or experienced what it means to be a father, husband, friend or family man. The meddling of an old friend's wife in this already difficult situation will leave the girl you married feeling like she has no other choice but to file for divorce before either of you realize what marriage is about. You are 17 to 21 now and running your own Music store and creating a name for yourself in the business as a no-nonsense business-building success. But at home, you will be a confused and inexperienced kid who never had a father to show you how to be one. A kid who somehow has an innate ability to sustain and grow a business, but at home, you won't know how to function on any level. The toll that loss of your little family will have on you will destroy the fabric inside your soul that is needed later in life for becoming a confident, well-adjusted adult with a positive outlook and a determination to carry on and find happiness with a new beginning.

You will struggle for many years and come very close to ending it all before your time. Life will take many turns and go through unforgiving valleys that you yourself will be responsible for despite efforts by a mother who will suffer alongside you trying to love the problems away to no avail because you won't be ready.

Finally, you will find yourself in a place where you actually make a good decision for the rest of your life. You will decide that you are not willing to die on the living room floor in your apartment all alone where the mother who gave birth to you and loved you through all of the times you didn't deserve it might find you laying there dead. You are going to wake up the next morning which will be a miracle in itself and be unwilling to continue causing problems for yourself and those who love you and you will very simply stop the nonsense and self-destructive behavior you have been drowning yourself in and grow up. It will be long past time to listen to and care about a woman who would have given her life for yours at any moment and you will take away her greatest fears put there by you, and replace them with pride. Oh, my much younger self why would you have taken so long...

You will have several more decades after the troubled times where life seems to work out better spending time thinking of the things you want to accomplish instead of the next destructive habit. Setting goals and reaching them will replace destroying opportunities and living selfishly minute by minute. You will not re-marry or have any more children and that will be a part of your plan to become what you think you want to be which is financially independent, able to go and do and work for yourself and more importantly, be capable of taking care of your mom who will be getting older and needing your help.

No more will you be competing for jobs and trying to keep up, you are going to make it and do well and no one will be more surprised at your level of success than you, and no one will be more proud than your mom who stuck by you even while you were screwing up your life. You will begin to realize had you lived the life your mom always wanted for you, half of this letter would not be as embarrassing as it reads. 


The caveat. 

One day when you have worked for and achieved everything you ever dreamed of and more, your best and only true friend, your mentor, your heart and the embodiment of your soul and reason for life itself, will begin to get old and become frail very quickly. The realization of what that will all mean will come to you abruptly despite your attempts to ignore it and you will not be ready. You will have learned by this time that your beautiful loving mom was always the only human being on this earth who never once left your side and now it will be you who will never leave hers. You will become her primary caregiver doing things she can no longer do for herself and your roles will now reverse and you will become the one caring for her every need the rest of her life.

It's going to be hard and heartwarming at the same time. Your fears and worry will reach levels you will think are going to have your heart explode inside your chest and end your life. You will not completely understand what the doctors are telling you and think you will find answers and you will fix this. It's what you do you fix things. You will fail and keep trying. Things will get worse and you will try something new. Your mind in self-defense mode will refuse to wrap itself around what is actually happening but your mom will know and she will tell you and try to prepare you and you won't have any of it. You will begin to feel a depths of loneliness and despair that will be nothing like any of your younger life. Tears will flow at times uncontrollably and you will feel as if you might drown in them. The idea that your life may be passing in front of your own eyes through your mom will be shoved aside because there will be much to do and no time to feel sorry for yourself. That will come later when you're old and alone typing on a machine amongst all the memories that pound you in the chest where your heart used to be. You will reach out for help and be angrily surprised and shocked even, at the limitations of some you expected would be there one hundred percent but then an angel will appear at the door from what may seem an unlikely source and the caring for your mom will get more intense as she gets weaker by the day but you will no longer be on your own in the fight for the life of the greatest gift God has ever given to one who most likely never deserved it.   

One night at home after a lot of suffering and trips in and out of the hospital, one night your heart and your soul is going to take her last breath in your hands and God is going to reach down and take her out of your arms and into his and you will never again see or hear her sweet loving voice on this earth ever again. Your life will be forever changed. Everything you have ever felt throughout your entire memory of being alive is going to seem foreign like it was someone else's life, the pain and despair then now will seem insignificant and small by comparison.

Bringing you back where we began. 

People well-meaning as they are will offer you advice on how long it will take to feel anything again. Many will offer what they can and some will disappear completely. You are going to revert back to these younger days when you were left to do your own suffering alone like when you were on the porch by yourself watching the neighborhood kids playing across the street or losing your human friend to jealousy over a game and when your little family decided you were no longer needed as a part of theirs. You will begin to venture out only when it feels safe to do so and in your own time like when no one was around to watch you throw the football to yourself in the front yard.

When you are too old to start over, life is going to punch you in the mouth and it will seem as though you're right back where you began as a little kid alone and afraid and unsure of everything. You will cry out for your mother like you probably do now as a little boy only this time you will be very old and pathetic looking while you do it and there will be someone missing. That someone to console you and make you think it will all be OK in time, someone you could always count on and lean on will not be there for you to talk to and to hold onto.

Many years from now after all this life has gone by and your dreams and hopes have been realized and your mom has left and gone to heaven to be with Gran and Grandad and Dub, Toots and Peggy and the rest of your family, you are going to spend a lot of time sitting very quietly in a room by yourself surrounded by the reminders of all that was before and will never be again. All there will be left for you to do is to type out your feelings on a little machine to virtually no one. At this point in your life, you will have reached a lot of goals that will mean almost nothing in the end. Those things will not stop your regrets at not having lived a better life if not for yourself, for your mom for longer than you did. None of what you will have will seem important just sitting there without anyone special to share them with or be proud of you for. You will essentially be a walking reflection of who you were as a little boy when everything good was put in front of you by a mom who loved you more than herself and more than life. By the time this is realized you will no longer be that little boy you are today who has a solid foundation to lean on. You will be completely alone and facing the same fears many older people do who have no one to help them in times of need.

Conclusion before it's too late?

Enjoy your life, Mikey, while you have it my much younger self. Go on across the street and play with the other kids and get in trouble for it if you have to. Go to the football games down the street and make a friend you can throw the football to instead of throwing it to yourself. Don't spend a lot of time hoping and dreaming of things you may not have when all you ever need in your life is sitting right there next to you. You don't want to end up with everything you ever wanted and be old and left sitting alone pouring out your life on a little machine to yourself. Live life don't just dream about it. Be good instead of striving just to feel good. Listen to those few who show love for you instead of the many who will say they do.

Finally, honor your mom and continue to make her proud. When you lose her and get old, do not grieve inconsolably for the rest of your days. Find a way to live again. She will want that for you.

So long my younger self-                 

if only heaven had a phone

Mom's birthday was going to be today and she would have been 93yrs old. She was stunningly beautiful when she was young and became more so to me as she got older and needed help to get around and live on her own. The things I've learned having had to go through all the things she kept to herself are so heartwarming that I've had to stop many times and measure the time between the discovering and letting it all sink in. There isn't a family member or friend this beautiful soul did not love and care for with anything she had. How this woman raised two girls and me by herself working jobs that didn't pay very well and yet we always had food to eat, a warm bed to sleep in, at Christmas and birthdays we were celebrated and had presents and love. These kinds of people seem rare today but you'll more than likely find the ones who are left come from a much older generation than the ones who make the most noise and have the least to be proud of. My sweet precious mama even when she could no longer stand or walk, eat or drink without my help, this incredible soul never once complained or felt anything but compassion and concern not for herself, but for her caregivers and her baby boy.

There was a time in my life when I questioned if God really exists. Many years went by when I failed to live the life my mom wanted for me and she never one time not even for a second left my side. Always in my corner and prouder than I gave her reason to be. She always wrapped her arms around me even with what I put us both through in those days and was the guiding light that lead me away from an eternity in hell to one in heaven where our souls will once again be together.

Mom was a driving force in my life and at times I didn't realize it. As I continue to mark the time day by day since she passed from my arms to the arms of God I look back in my mind at all the times throughout my life when I thought I was making it all on my own. Since she's been gone it's become clearer every day that without her presence I would have found it hard to smile or laugh or to want to do anything worthwhile. I'm learning how important it was to do and achieve just to make her proud and proud she was. What to me were random photos I would take, to her were works of art she would want to be framed to show off to everyone. The jobs I had that to me were just to make a living and do well were to her achievements and something to be proud of.

Now since she is gone I've had to push myself just to get out of the house, to work or even go to the store. There is much for me to do to get back on my feet and acknowledge the faith that I have that my mom is still watching over me and wanting all the same things for and from me she ever did while she was here. What eventually gets me out of the chair is knowing it's what she would want from me. Clearly, it was always my mom who motivated me and it will continue to be that way until my time here runs out and my soul joins hers and I can be whole again. Mom made sure to write on the photo to the left that it was, "that darn wind," that had her showing leg. She was so beautiful and kind and she loved singing in the church.

I knew this day January 15 was coming and I wasn't sure what to do or how it would affect me so I think I'll make extra effort to stay busy today and maybe stop by the cemetery and take some pink roses and talk with her and God for a while. I'll handle it my way and I'll honor my mom in the process whatever I do today and however many tomorrows there may be.

 If you're reading this and you are blessed to have your mom still alive, call her today. Don't let a conversation end without her hearing how much she means to you. You may face time like I am when life will change for you in the blink of an eye and you will want everything to have been right before that happens. Live your life like your mama would want you to and honor her with all that you are and do. It's the best advice I can give to others and myself and I have a lot of work to do on that. This photo to the left is my sister's dad and my mom and now both of them have left this earth along with my own dad and gone to heaven. My sisters and I have different dads but we never really acted as though we were half related. We were brother and sisters, still are and I will always be my mama's baby boy. I know my mom's birthday will be celebrated in heaven by all those who have passed on that were a bigger part of my soul than I may have realized. Today I will remember them all and say a prayer that they wrap arms around each other and celebrate the birthdate of my angel, my heart and soul, my mom. I wish heaven had a phone- 

Music: My Only True Friend, -Gregg Allman
Music: Desperado, -Eagles

and the road goes on forever

Once again 3am came and I wide awake. Tonight's menu was a nice drive, a great dinner, and some clean comedy with Tim Hawkins as two months of Saturdays pass since life for me changed forever. A couple inches of snow up in Boyd was melting and a cold wind was blowing while I struggled with my old phone to get it to act the way it used to and get me home with voice over maps. Sometimes she talks to me, sometimes she won't. Sound familiar? As I got near TCU I pulled into the little store where I always got groceries for mom and the parking lot was totally empty. I thought they might even be closed but they were open but no customers inside on this cold night. I thought better of the experience and just pulled on by and went home. Being the only one in there might have caused a few of the ladies I know in there to ask about the sadness I can't seem to rinse off my face. This wasn't the right time for that so maybe I'll go today when there should be more going on in there.

Now it's six am and I've just been sitting here tv off and mind running from this place to another and listening to music on the computer that has taken me to all the places I've been, some I never wanted to be, and some I used to think I wanted to go and now probably don't. Thought I would close my eyes and sleep a little but the sound of the clocks in here fuel thoughts about time and what I'm going to do with what I have left. No answers have come but I'm hopeful maybe soon.

Today is Sunday and I'd like to go to church but the ordeal of going into a church by myself where people who mean well will ascend on me when all I really want to do is find a place to sit and listen and feel and do it all alone. I'm used to hiding behind my cameras whenever I would go out and now I have hidden those blinders in a packed case where I don't see them and I'm not reminded of lost passions. I'd like to get this mop of seventies hair cut off my head soon as I look like I live under a bridge but there is always that awkward time in the chair when the conversation involves asking me how or what I've been doing lately so I don't go and the mess on and in my head keeps growing.

This week mom would have been ninety-three and so there's that. I'm hungry again so I think I'll heat up some waffles and put on too much syrup and try to get them down before they get cold. The washer drain that goes outside at the other house is clogged so if I can stay awake today maybe I'll get to that and pack up some more things. I've been tossing around the idea of selling that house and just living here at moms. It's weird but I can't leave this house (mom's) sitting here without me in it at night. Feels like I need to be here to protect what is left of mom's memories here and that this is where she would want me to be. While I can't go in her bedroom for more than a few seconds it remains exactly how it was and it breaks my heart just to look in there when passing down the hall. Maybe one day it won't affect me that way, maybe it always will I don't know.

*** That up there was written very early this morning and I've been working in the house all day shredding old unneeded paperwork (my mom kept EVERYthing from so many years ago) and trying to organize two households. I came to realize that to stay in this perpetual state of despair and sadness would not be how mom would have wanted me to live and I'm not sure how much longer I could live this way so I need to get on with changing how I'm dealing with all of this as soon as possible. So I've been working on that today and I'll see if I can't continue on this road repair till I get someplace I can be proud of again. 

What lead me to this post was looking back on Gregg Allman's music and lyrics throughout my life and how I think I can say that my mom if she's listening to my thoughts like I think she is, Mom will know Gregg already and will be reminded of me listening to him sing about familiar times of my life from heaven.


Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLbnWr1-Qsc

Well, I've got to run to keep from hiding,
And I'm bound to keep on riding.
And I've got one more silver dollar,

But I'm not gonna let them catch me, no,
Not gonna let 'em catch the Midnight Rider.

And I don't own the clothes I'm wearing,
And the road goes on forever,
And I've got one more silver dollar,

But I'm not gonna let them catch me, no
Not gonna let 'em catch the Midnight Rider.

And I've gone by the point of caring,
Some old bed I'll soon be sharing,
And I've got one more silver dollar,

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the Midnight Rider.

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the Midnight Rider.

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the Midnight Rider.

keep the change

The thing that irks me about change is that no matter how much I detest it I can't escape it. Change to me is like a living breathing thing that sneaks up and takes a chunk out of me like a snake. I used to have these kinds of conversations with my mom where I would go on about all sorts of things like this that get under my skin and I'm not sure why I did that because my mom was far smarter than I could ever hope to be and these kinds of subjects have no answer to them other than deal with it.

Some changes I find good for me while others are like a chronic disease. For a long time, I used to be pretty active on social media platforms commenting and posting and getting into verbal tussles with people related to politics or finances and just life in general. It got to be exhausting realizing just how many people I actually know (and a lot I didn't and never will) that to be completely honest, are batsh*t crazy when it comes to basic, simple, common sense. This was hard for me to digest and I had to stop. That's a good change although I still read some of the lunacy, I stay out of it because I believe everyone has a God-given right to be stupid.

Then there are the important changes that happen if God gives you the time to be here for any length of time. For me right now most of those changes are difficult to deal with to say the least. Loss of a loved one will do that. Changes in health, and just deciding what to do on any given day anymore when you alone have to find a way to move your mind to a place you weren't prepared to be yet. Change is hard and it's here and it isn't going away just because I'm unfamiliar with how to do this by myself. Right now everything looks and feels different and not much of my memories about my old way of life are even recognizable anymore.

Thoughts about almost everything whether its work or what a future might look like, whether to sell a house or live in two, buy a new car even though I don't need one, so much of the time I just feel like I need to do something, anything, just something. I need pie.

"Time Takes it all away whether you want it to or not."
-Stephen King, The Green Mile

lunch for one

Went to a meeting yesterday to sign some paperwork and at some point as it always seems to do, the grieving process is brought up and all the how are you doing with that and so on. One of the pieces of advice I received was that I need to try to think about something else at those times when I start to get sentimental and feel weepy-eyed. That those times when I get that way is a choice and I can choose not to get that way or I can give in to it. It sounded interesting to me and it is one thing I haven't tried to do so let me think about that and I went on about my business.

It was almost lunchtime and that just means I was hungry, so I stopped into a sandwich place I've always gone to and went up to the counter and had to consciously order lunch for one. The sad reality was hitting me that for the past many years I have never just ordered for one and then I remembered, think of something else, realize that this is your new world now and just get your lunch and go. Well, that only seemed to work for a minute or so and getting in the car to go home it was, which home do I go to, and then it was just seven weeks ago my mom wasn't able to eat and here I was eating and here we go again-

There are a lot of people out there who aren't prepared even a little bit for what happens when you lose a giant part of your life and I'm not sure you can help them get that way ahead of time. It's a process you have to go through in order to figure out how to handle it. One thing I'm learning is that lots of people care about how you are but not many understand how complex the answer is at any given moment you're asked. There is the loss of the person who is huge in your life and that does its own damage, then there are the many secondary losses I'll call them, like for me ordering something to eat for just one to take home when I would have always ordered something for mom too. Going to the grocery store and walking down isles where her favorite things sit there on shelves screaming in my direction daring me not to look at them and be sad- Last night I was doing alright I thought and looked in the pantry for some crackers and there they were in that special way she would close the package and knowing her hands had put them there well..  The memories of the little things are all over the place and they just keep hitting me in the face and then someone will call or email asking, so how are you these days, you doing any better? 

There are the big battles everyone recognizes and there are the many smaller battles that go unseen and unfelt by those who wish you were doing better. I think it could be helpful to be able to redirect the mind sometimes and I think I'm already doing that without realizing it a hundred times a day or I'd be unable to function. This coming Saturday will be two months since mom was called home. Then her birthday on the fifteenth where she would have been 93. Then all the other reminders and there seems to be no lasting relief and no satisfying answer to those who want to know if things are getting better at all.

investing in success

Michael William Zukerman

@mwzukerman

Without question @realDonaldTrump will go down as the most HATED and most BRILLIANT leader this country and the world has ever seen. Making insane fools out of every detractor, every doubter, every fake accusor, every broadcast media outlet, and every professional politician on any side and in the middle, all while leading America into levels of prosperity and strength it has never seen and may never see again all at the same time. No one with any level of common sense would choose to trade this level of greatness for liberal democrat socialism. Pay VERY close attention to the names and positions of those who will choose politics and power over America's dramatic levels of success under the leadership of Donald Trump.

12:43 PM · Jan 8, 2020·Twitter Web App

God Will Take Care of You now.

You should probably tend to your health care needs long before you reach the age where being attracted to women half your age is considered weird but I didn't.. If after decades of health care neglect you aren't afflicted with some horrific issues, then the health insurance nightmare you've avoided all this time is going to make you sick. What a nightmare. Referrals, approvals, reference numbers for approvals, faxes, appointments, will take weeks even for something extremely serious. Dozens of exasperating phone calls, being forced to listen on hold to music that produces mindnumbing migraines to get transferred to who you should have been talking to in the first place and then the deductibles and the costs and the paperwork and if you weren't REALLY sick before, you are by the time you actually see a doctor. Today I begin to take care of some health issues I wish I had taken care of a long time ago and didn't for a variety of reasons not having much to do with me. I'm a bit apprehensive about it all but I know I've had to face some of the worst fears of my life lately and so I should be able to handle this.

Nothing interesting got done yesterday other than staying on the phone to get today setup. Being awake at 3am and thinking too much has become a daily ritual as I just can't sleep much anymore.

By now mom would have been asking me if we should take the little Christmas tree light down and put it away. I would always leave it out long past Christmas because I like seeing it there all lit up and she did too. It's going on eight weeks this Saturday since mom passed away and I miss her more every single day. I'm still having those partial moments almost daily when my mind tells me to call her to talk about something then reeling back quickly to the sad reality that I can't.

Six decades of this life and I've never gone more than a day without hearing her sweet voice. I have so many audio recordings and voice mails of her talking to me and I can't bear to even think about listening to any of them right now it's just way too raw and soon. I want to hear her voice so terribly bad but I know it will break me apart. Some day..

Mom's glass with melted ice and little baby spoon is still in the fridge with a small amount of water in it from the last time I was able to feed her some ice chips. Every time I open the refrigerator I see that glass with the spoon in it and I remember. It's too heartbreaking to remove it and I hate seeing the water in it evaporate little by little each day. I wish everyone could have known my mom. She had more love for everyone and everything than anyone I will ever know. My heart physically aches and I miss her.

God will take care of you now and I will see you again one day and it will be the happiest day of my life.      

14,668

The phone calls have diminished and the emails are down to normal levels. The people who were there all around me have gone back to their lives and that is how it should be, but it sure is quiet. I read some things today and went through some old photos and paced the floor a bit. I never went outside but I looked out there a few times through the windows and intended to find a place to go but never did. Tomorrow is already here at 3am and I will get outside and get some fresh air today as I have a few things I need to go do. I'll go get a pink rose and visit the cemetery and have some conversation with God and mom and maybe take a long drive and listen to some music and maybe get the car washed. 

I've never been very comfortable being surrounded by people even the people I care about because finding conversation and sharing experiences have always felt like a lot of work for me and therefore not genuine. But during the first couple of weeks after mom left this earth it was sort of nice in an unfamiliar way to have a few people around. Most of them are now back to living their own lives and I'm here to endure mine.

Some of those people were too persistent although caring, and clearly don't know me or what I need the way they think they do while others checked in from time to time without being pushy and a couple still do. I'm still here and still trying to find who I am now and looking for ways to avoid feeling that perhaps there is no longer a place for me anymore. I went through all that sort of thing when I was a kid and I never thought I'd feel that way when I got to be an old man. I'm certain I'm not alone in feeling alone. My conversations are no longer spoken aloud they are left to the written word that has taken its rightful place among all the very many who go unheard.

Isolation is its own torture chamber and its own reward but it's absolutely a choice one makes and I most assuredly have made that choice for myself. No one hears your anguish and you get to avoid that loathsome feeling that everyone you know and see ends up feeling sorry for you and your pain.

About a year or so ago I went through and deleted all of the content previously on this blog because of a feeling that life as I knew it was ending and it has and I didn't want to be reminded and now I miss it. The strange thing I notice is that this blog page was begun when I had learned of my father's death in California one day many years ago. We didn't really know each other having only met a couple of times but years later I began to wonder who my half brothers and sisters might be and where my father was buried. Those bits of info are not going to be known by me as I've done the research and come up with almost nothing. But that is what got me thinking I wish he had had a blog or some writings of some sort that I could look back on and get a read on who he was. And so this page was born in case someone one day might want to know who I was when I was alive and all this might give them some insight they wouldn't be able to know any other way. But almost every time I write I doubt that thesis more and more although 14,668 times someone has come to this page for reasons I would have no clue about.
       
These are the conversations that I have with myself and every one of them should probably be kept private but then I could eventually forget how to speak entirely if I were to just go into hiding and stop communicating altogether which I will probably do one day.

There are two people in this world who I hope will maybe want to know something about me and stumble on this blog. Maybe they will want to know how it felt to lose a mother who meant so much to my life in order to learn to make the most out of the time they have left with their own moms before it's too late. Those people and my need to have someplace to go to purge the thoughts that still fill my mind is what this page is for and there is no other reason.

seven turns

No matter how you align yourself to think, your life's history will teach you that forever is just a word that describes a feeling you may develop in your head. Human beings have this insatiable need to trick themselves into believing that forever actually exists when we learn almost daily throughout our lives that it clearly does not.

Forever is simply a word we use to describe a segment of time whose ins and outs and conditions have yet to be developed. As I got on with life I began to learn often painfully, that while forever is only a parcel of time, time itself is clearly not forever.

We know that "until death do us part," is a reference to "forever," but in reality is only a segment of time that more often than not runs out long before death comes. When I was a young kid my mom bought us an entire set of encyclopedias that came with a big heavy dictionary. She would often tell me when I wanted to know what something meant, go look it up in the dictionary and I'd go over and rifle through it learning how to spell in the process and eventually figuring it out. Now we Google things and end up with a litany of confusing results when trying to communicate in today's society that has decided that dismantling what we actually know, into a political soup of what some want us to think, is a good idea.

Some of my bad habits in the early parts of my life I thought I'd participate in forever. Thankfully that was just a segment of time that ran out. When I got married I had in my mind and our vows said so, that it was forever through good times and strife and that too ended up just being a set amount of time that eventually ran out. I have to believe that this time of loss for me that manifests itself into sadness and lack of direction will not go on "forever," because forever doesn't actually exist it's just a segment of time that I have to go through to get to the other side.

Jobs, passions, loves, even family, friendships, lifestyles, and so many other things we often think of as our own personal forevers, are simply a set amount of time until something changes and we learn once again that forever is only a concept that is born and dies in our minds often painfully.

Seven Turns VIDEO