the long goodbye

Every one of us has examples of people in or around our lives that have been disappointing or turned out to be someone other than who we thought they were. This was a rare thing back in the day when I was growing up but not anymore. Before there was this connection to the entire world through the internet there were friends we actually knew and didn't want to hurt or disappoint. Back then you would have to pick up a telephone and dial a number you knew by heart to have a conversation with someone you would actually see and talk to in person at some point making civil behavior important. Not having a portal to the world kept most of us from knowing just how many levels of human scum there actually are and their names we would never know. 

With the onset of the internet, people can shout and scream about things they barely have scant knowledge of from sources with zero credibility and they can spew that ignorance to other people who they do not know and never will making the entire exercise of social media one of the most embarrassing wastes of time for all who participate including, by the way, me and this blog post.         

It was something, maybe a moment surrounded by a bad mistake I'd made, an epiphany, it was forty some odd years ago maybe during one of those rare unmedicated weekends that I discovered at least half of all people in this world actually suck. We didn't have headlines to inflame the rhetoric written by fake journalists or internet mobs. Anarchy and rioting only happened in 3rd world countries and would never have been tolerated even by a liberal political party here in the US. That's all changed now and there is no shame for those taking part in it here.   

I began this blog sometime after finding out that my father who I had only met a couple of times decades ago, had passed away. To this day after much research, I still do not know where he was laid to rest nor do I know the names of my half brothers and sisters that I would love to meet one day. But the information in cases like this often results in the same never-ending circles leading back to where I started. My intention was to give someone who is important to me but clearly doesn't realize it, a way to know more about me in the event of my passing than I know about my own father. While the exercise may well fall short of my goal, it's here just in case and I sure wish I had a way like this to "get to know," who my father was, the things he thought about and were important to him, just some stuff like that. 

One thing I DO know about my father and it's ironic I suppose is that he was a no-nonsense kind of guy. According to some of his shipmates on the USS Coral Sea where he served the country in Vietnam, he had a giant heart of gold, was the greatest friend, and would seriously get on your ass for being or doing something stupid that got you in a jam. He did not suffer fools well and when his crew on the ship got into trouble he would back them up to ten thousand percent, then take them aside and ream them out if they deserved it. One said you didn't want to get on his bad side.. Point is, my father would not have tolerated this newfound internet life most people fill their time with today. This all sounds very familiar to me and we could have had some pretty lively talks about it had we spent time together before he passed. But we'll see each other again one day and maybe we'll talk then. But I digress..        

I've deleted Twitter, stopped posting on Instagram, and the last to go is going to be Facebook where I have 5,000 "friends," and don't actually know even 1 of them. The back and forths some time ago on FB forced me into realizing even the people I had actually met and knew personally, I really didn't know much about at all.  I think there is such a thing as knowing too much about someone because the more I saw the more disappointed I became. So I deleted about 900 names on my FB "friend," list, then repopulated the list with those with similar interests only in photography, art, and the visual stuff that used to keep me upbeat and looking forward to brighter days before my mom passed away in November. I thought I could trick myself into finding those passions again that I used to have and maybe even find a new one but it hasn't really happened like that and Facebook will be the next and final "un-sociable media," platform to go when I'm certain my connection to other people in general just isn't in the cards for me. 

The quality of people's character cannot be assessed from a computer screen or the internet, and the likelihood of me ending up annoyed or pissed off increases exponentially with whatever time I spend on one. My conclusion is that in order to regain any meaningful connection to people in general, I'm going to have to find a way to go way back in time when folks actually met and knew each other on a personal level without a cell phone or constant connection to the internet. My definition of a friend comes from a time before the internet was ever thought about and the fact I can count my real friends on one hand assures me that those old traditional character requirements are still in place exactly where they should be. I'm in a place now where mistakes hardly even get close and I can attribute that to the fine art limiting my exposure to folks in general and realizing just how extremely short life actually is not wanting to waste any more of my time. 

There are some good people out there I'm certain there are, just as I am certain the longer one spends on the internet the less likely they are to find them.. My preference is to be completely alone instead of having thousands of fake friends on a computer and to just forge ahead to "be right and to do right," as mom told me just before she went to heaven. 

So the "long goodbye" that has been in progress since November 16, 2019, continues and if by chance the 3 or 4 actual friends I do have remain till the very end, I will consider myself to be the lucky one. And for those who won't be there till the end, I'm even luckier still by your absence.

May God keep his hand on your shoulder and guide you through your journey.

Warsh your hands.

Wear a mask.                

find peace instead

Are some things just unforgivable? There are all sorts of opinions and as many examples to back up every thought anyone has ever had on the subject. Google it and have at it. My life was turned upside down when mom died recently and whenever I think about how I feel about certain things and certain people, it's two lives I have to consider now in order to think it through. One is the life prior to losing my mom, and the other is the one I face now without her.

Forgiveness is one of those things I never struggled with much when my mom was here I just went with the fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me method and moved on. Betrayal, lying, stealing and their associated ilks for me has always been a deal-breaker and one time is all it takes and I'm done with you and not just for now, but forever.

My mom was never like that and she didn't teach me to be that way either. Was how I learned to deal with things and people "out there in the streets," where I spent too much of my time growing up since I was 15. I should have stayed home- But almost immediately after my mom passed away I noticed an unusual (for me) softer tone coming from me. I drove slower, looked at the clock less and turned down the radio and listened more to lyrics than I had before. I wasn't letting myself get rattled too much anymore, and at some point, I turned towards thinking about forgiving those in my life that had caused me grief. I think I was suffering from shock and maybe PTSD at the time. Grief to me had one meaning when my mom was here to take care of and was an entirely different level of despair once she was called home and left this earth.

It's been 14 weeks and I've been a wreck at times and OK some. All over the map and from one day to another and there is no way to predict how I'm going to be in an hour because the things left for me to do are many and all have the opportunity to trigger intense emotions.

Today I was thinking about those who were there when I needed them through my mom's last few months and those who were not. There was only one who dropped her life in another state and came to help without any conditions or limits on time and even stayed with me after mom passed away and basically saved me from a complete and total mental breakdown. Only God could have sensed how important it was for her to come and help care for mom, then me.

Then there were the others-

There isn't a way for me to adequately describe the worst of some experiences I had to endure with a couple of others who are "close," that I expected to be able to count on in a desperate time like this without exposing a vile, callous, and inhumane side of them that would be impossible for some to even believe. What family means to me is clearly something different to others and when "family," is just a word used for people when it feels good to hear yourself say it, I just don't see the value. Those who are one person to some, and an entirely different person during a life-changing event like this has caused me to question whether or not I am even capable of forgiveness in this situation. Among the vast number of things I've had to think about the past near 4 months since I had to lay my sweet mom to rest is this forgiveness thing that keeps coming up in my mind uninvited.

Those "family," members who didn't come to see my mom before she passed away that she loved so very much, and those who didn't come to her funeral, I think it may take more years than I have left to forgive you. The ones who I asked for help who fought me over every single minute they were asked to be there, after praying about it and speaking to my mom in prayer many times, I really don't think I'm going to get to a place where forgiveness is possible for that level of abandonment in this lifetime. I'm saddened by it all but it is what it is.





On a much happier note, my friends really did come through. I wasn't totally certain I actually had any friends at this level and I was reminded by their presence that I most assuredly do. Everyone's name, those who came through during the hardest time of my life, and those who selfishly and intentionally made it worse for me and my mom at the same time, and those who were too busy to acknowledge the magnitude of this loss both before it occurred and even at mom's funeral, your names and faces are forever etched in my mind.

I have put a lot of thought into forgiveness and like I said I have tapped on the shoulders of God to light the way to help me sort it out and I just don't think I'm ever going to get there for some.

The overriding thing that was going through my head today was that all of the things over my lifetime that I feared the most, that worried me and kept me awake in my worst of times, all of those things have now taken place. I have no more fear that one day I might lose the one person I ever let into my life. No longer will I have to worry that I'll be traveling somewhere and get a message that the only person in the world that never left my side and loved me unconditionally my entire life has fallen and broken a hip or worse, or gotten sick and is in the hospital and I can't get back here in the blink of an eye. The vile and unimaginable actions and inactions of some at the most vulnerable time of my life while my mom was dying, will never again hurt or cause me grief that is worse than I've experienced from you already. It's all been done. Never again will I suffer the realities of my worst fears of losing the only parent I ever knew, my foundation, my support system, my mom. She is now gone forever. 

I will continue on some level to try to find a pathway to forgive but for now, I am completely bulletproof from any pain or suffering caused by or related to an outside force that could even remotely come close to what has already taken place.

I've read a lot about this topic and if anyone else is suffering from it there is a ton of opinions that can be read on the subject all over the place. Take it all in and let it work for you on your terms and don't let a society pressure you to feel like you are less than strong if you decide some forgiveness isn't in the cards for you right now. May you, we, all, find peace in whatever form that takes instead.