Welcome, Ven a gozar!

He told me you buy some bibles, not expensive bibles, but bibles that could be expensive, if you do not look too close. Some bibles with red lettering, because red stands out, and looks more expensive. You follow the obituaries, and try to track down addresses. Once you have the address you put the name of the surviving spouse on the front of the bible in gold leaf. Then you wait until a few days after the funeral.

You show up in the evening when you are sure no other family members are around. That is when the real aloneness is setting in and grief is at a very high level. You knock on the door and when they answer you tell them the story about how their spouse had this very bible on lay away, and they were going to pick it up this week. You continue with how you happen to be reading something by the obituary section of the newspaper, and recognized the name.

You continue, now that you have their grief pouring out, and their need to touch anything that belonged to their beloved passed on spouse, and they had paid you half the money, and there still is a payment for the bible, and are they interested? Of course they are, they are desperate to bring their spouse back to life! You fill in the dead space telling them that the dead spouse was going to have an inscription written on the inside, so the bible would become a family heirloom. No you do not know where or what, only that they had mentioned it in passing, the day they put it on lay away.

Of course the surviving spouse thinking you are an angel in human form, pays you whatever amount you told mentioned was left to pay on the bible. They are overwhelmed with emotion - and you just took advantage of their grief, and took money away from them that you should not have taken. That is a really ugly, some might even say pathetic scam that used to be popular when there was less money flying around than there is today, and people were more trusting.

Today scammers are more suave. They set up internet sites, they send you snail mail, they stand on side walks, at intersections, and beg from the corner. They are making a fortune, and nobody seems to care. The better ones I have heard of are making more than the average income in the United States, and all they have to do is look poor and needy.

I watch them at intersections doing there scams. People, believing they are doing something good can’t dig into their pockets quickly enough. They give change, dollar bills, they give five dollar bills, and the people taking it are making a wonderful living. So good in fact, they work some corners in shifts because the money in their buckets gets too heavy and to obvious.

They also send mail, sometimes with little religious trinkets, and some story about how the mission they represent is helping to feed so many starving orphans somewhere. If you search on the internet they do not exist. If you expect more than one mailing form them, they do not exist. They are a quick, one stop shop. One stop shopping, into your wallet and out again.

No one likes to be seen as cold and uncaring, but everyone can donate responsibly if they only take time to think before they act on impulse. It is not that hard to give money to scammers. It is no harder to think before you do. If you never heard of them before, they probably won’t exist in a few weeks. If they want any amount of money from you right now, they are scamming you.

If you want to donate to a cause, donate through your church, the International Red Cross, or another well known organization. Do not be one of thousands who blindly give money to people who find stealing from you is easier than working for a living, and it pays better. There always will be a great need for charity in the world, but give wisely, not foolishly.

Comments (0) Jan 20 2008

I had a bag of fetishes, some of which I wanted to sell. I went out into to the desert where I knew a fetish buyer lived who may be interested in buying the fetishes. I drove for a few hours into the desert. When I arrived I had to go down a small slope, to where the family were living. The wife spotted me first and called out to the husband who was not in sight. She was agitated, and spoke louder than needed, like someone does who is surprised or nervous.

She told me to take a seat by a large flat rock and wait which I did, she did not speak in english, but I understood by her gestures. When the husband showed up he had a very wide face, and wild hair down to his shoulders. He was dressed in flannel and buckskin. He had the look of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun, but his face was not visible.

He had some small Cowrie seashells, or something that looked like Brazil nuts threaded in his hair hanging down over the front of his face. These shells or stones covered most of his face except one eye or the other, depending on which way he tilted his head. He looked like he had some sort of deformity. On his face there were two or three large tentacle like things under his skin. Like the octopus guy in the movie, only less of it and sideways, starting on each cheek and going across his face.

He was both friendly and pleasant, and asked what I was there for? I said to sell some fetishes. He repeated what I said to his wife to his wife. He asked what fetishes, and I poured out the bag on the rock surface. I set a stone lizard, and two long bones to the side, along with some stone carved animals. I showed him the very small fetishes I wanted to sell. They were the size of a finger nail tall, and were made out of some white and red type of rock. They were of people, never less than two and never more than four. They seemed to be struggling against something - maybe strong wind, by the way they were carved. I also had one small fish made out of brown stone, and some other small figures made of brown stone.

He looked at a few of the white fetishes, and told me they were finished roughly. He kept glancing towards my lizard, and I knew he was interested in it but never mentioned it. He took out a cigarette lighter shaped fetish made of antler. It had a rooster on the top. He showed me the carving on the sides, and told me it took him two years to make it. He put it away in his jacket, and told me really it was his son who sold and bought fetishes.

He called the boy and the boy showed up and sat by the rock. The boy was about five or six and had the same disfigurement as the father, but did not have anything covering his face. As the father and I talked about the fetishes, the son started playing around, either losing patience or having too much energy.

The man told the boy I was there to sell fetishes in whatever language they spoke, and showed the boy some of the fetishes, the pieces of two and three people. The boy kept playing around. The man mentioned the fetishes that were still a little rough. He said they were times in my life. I did not realize this and decided maybe I should not be trading them away.

The man then told me that the boy had no fetishes to sell, and apparently was not interested in the fetishes I had to sell. Then he looked at the lizard, and bones again. I realized he was very interested in the lizard and the bones. The boy was not interested in my other fetishes, so I placed them all back in the bag, thanked them, and left. I walked back up the hill, and started walking back to where I had come from.

Somewhere along the way I woke up….

Comments (0) Jan 19 2008

To see the way our minds shape our reality is really something to behold! I often wonder how many people really understand just how much we create and control our world around us? For many people, I think when something good happens they feel lucky. On the other hand when something bad happens they feel unlucky. In the more extreme cases a few people feel life or something in it is out to get them.

I remember many times when I was out walking the streets of places I had never been to before, where one or more people have told me after the fact, they would never walk down those streets by themselves because they are just too dangerous. For myself, I went out in those areas with the thought that the people living there were just like me, and they were trying to do the best they could for their own lives using what they had to work with.

In all my years of wandering in places where the more cautious would not go, I only had a problem once, and I brought that on myself. I have walked into some of the slums of south Chicago, Gary, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, Minneapolis, Munich, and Seoul, and never had a problem, even though I had been lost more than once into areas where I clearly did not fit in

In south Chicago, there were two men at my departure point. One said to the other, twenty he doesn’t, and the other said okay. I thought nothing of it as I completed my one mile walk to a place where a cab could find me. When I returned the same two men were there, and one was giving the other money. I asked what the money was for. The man told me it was a bet on whether or not I would be murdered before I made it to a cab….

It is a perfect example of how people in the same neighborhood can have completely different expectations about how their life is, and they can both be correct. In almost any city in the country, in any neighborhood, life for the most part is how the individual perceives it. When we choose only to see gangs and violence, that is what we see. When we choose to see a drug riddled neighborhood, that is what we find.

On the other hand, if we expect to find good people trying their best to live a good life, that is what we will find. If we believe we are alone, we find loneliness, if we see the world as a friendly helpful place, we find goodness. Of course there are places that are exceptions, because the world that exists there has been in place so long, and the peoples minds so beaten down, that no other type of thought can penetrate the thinking of the people in that area. Short of a major life altering event, their perceptions and existence will never change.

Our minds operate like this for us in all our states, both conscious, unconscious, awake, and asleep. We are the creators of our world, and whatever we choose to think, our mind goes to work to start creating that world for us. It happens in a way we never notice, but it happens just the same.

We create our own world around us, therefore we can also change our world any time we wish. Rarely does something happen without our allowing it too or even anticipating it happening. As an extreme example, think about someone addicted to drugs.

At some point in time earlier in their life, they had to make a decision about their world. An offer of trying a hard drug appeared in their life and they had to decide if that was a life change they wanted or not. At some level they decided they wanted to go down that path. We need to be good stewards of our own life and ensure the life we envision is the life we want to live. If there is conflict between our vision and our life, we can change it.

Comments (1) Jan 18 2008

I have thought we are reincarnated since I was a kid. There is just too much evidence including the Christian bible to think it is not a fact that we lived before, and we will live again. Unless someone is a practicing atheist and not a Christian hater in drag, it is rare to find too many major religions that do not have some kind of after life programming in their faith.

Along with reincarnation comes karma, they kind of slide across the horizon as a matched pair. Some people may reject the idea of reincarnation, but they hold onto karma. I read an interesting thought on karma a few years back, I wish I had the source so I could cite it.

The person who wrote it, was thinking about Christianity, reincarnation, and karma. They arrived at the idea that karma was visited upon us over the next three incarnations where we would reap what we had previously sown. After I thought about this, it was a pretty sobering thought. What if I was reaping in this life those things I sown in a recent past life? Whoa, serious stuff. I had to think about those possibilities for a number of days.

Of course after slicing, dicing, and deciding it may be a possibility Then there was the small matter of where does it fit into my own belief system? I found a place for it, and I thought I was done with it.  In the middle of one night, I woke up and felt like I had enough sleep. The only problem was there were still over three hours until the alarm went off.

I lay there, and my mind starting churning ideas like they tend to do when we can not sleep. What pops up except the recent thinking I did about reincarnation? One of the scariest or most exciting idea that came out of this late night thinking about this line of thinking about reincarnation is the later reaping of what you sow now portion.

I woke up with the alarm that morning thinking, as I did believing we are reincarnated or at the very least never die, I myself am reaping that which I planted was a pretty sobering thought. My mind was churning thinking about all those things which I have done with my life up until this moment, both good and bad. That brought me to an old Omni Magazine story I remembered where a man lived his life so neutrally that it was taking him hundreds of years to balance the good and the bad of his life.

What do I have to look forward to I wondered? Where was the list of the good verses the not so good I have done through out my lifetime? Of course our minds have a pretty skewed version of remembering things that comprise our life, so it really was a futile task to try. How could I wonder how my life would be weighed, when I saw it though colored glasses of my own making?

I started, over the next few days treating people differently than I had done up to that point. I payed attention to the idea that they were people and their life was no better nor worse than mine, but the were entitled to the same respect and care from me, that I give to myself. Once again that may not be saying much, because of the glasses we wear of our own making…

After some amount of time, the idea became second nature, as I had been living it most of my life, in my adaptation of the golden rule.  This was the golden rule with a twist though. A long reaching twist at that. Whether true or not, it has I suppose made me a more aware person, if not a better person. Once something is introduced as an idea, whether we accept it or reject it, it is always there, floating though our mind waiting to be recalled at the most inopportune time, like the middle of the night. I suppose on balance, a thought in the night is a lot better than the thief in the night.

Comments (1) Jan 17 2008

I was reading where someone was questioning about what if anything was going to happen in 2012? Some of the people had some rather colorful ideas of what the world was going to change into, and others thought everything would be about the same as it is now. On another web page, I read a short blip  where some younger people decided they were Indigo children because they share some personality traits that these special people are supposedly endowed with.

When I read of people writing these things I always ask myself do they even think? I mean, do they take ten seconds, and say to themselves, ‘I have this feeling, or this description fits me, does it sound resaonable?’ I am skipping right past the words real, and logical, and stopping at reasonable, because that is all the farther these thoughts need to be taken.

Looking at my own birthdays, or whatever important days I decide to mark on my calendar is a a good starting place to make my point about 2012. When my birthday rolls around I am not immediately a year older. The process does not happen because of a date on a calendar. Here is how a birthday year really happens. You mark a birthday on your calendar the day it occurs. For the next six months (approximately) you are closer to whatever age that your birthday was than you are to your next birthday. For the six months following that day or, the remaining six months until your next birthday, you move closer to the age you will be on the day you marked on your calendar.

For example, when I was twenty years old, and waiting for twenty-one years to happen, time did not happen in a vacuum. From the day of my twentieth birthday to six months later I am closer to twenty years old than I am to twenty-one years old. From six months and one day until the calendar day of my twenty first birthday, I am closer to twenty-one than I am to twenty years old.

For those who are excited about what is going to happen in 2012, it needs to be thought of the same way. The way the actual calendar in question was made, consists of periods or cycles of five hundred years. So by remembering from the birthday explanation, the effects of 2012 are already here. They actually started over two hundred years ago,and will continue for another two hundred and fifty some years until we are through the middle of this upcoming cycle and start moving towards the next one.

As to the Indigo children, they are the same idea, but a little different. I mentioned in one of my past posts, about Indigo children first being invented over one hundred years ago. To start with the personality traits of these children who are to usher in the new world that will operate on a higher frequency leave something, imo, to be desired. The personalities of these allegedly advanced children sound more like members of a motor cycle gang, than they do of a higher form of human life.

Dismissing my personal feelings, the Indigo child was invented by one person in the 1800’s who definately had an agenda for the world. Somewhere along the line that agenda was tied in with the Aztec calendar, and the Egyption pyramids. Putting this into perspective, there is no more evidence to support the changing of the world in the year 2012 than there is of the Christian version world ending in three minutes. If you think you think you know one of these Indigo children, think about how many of these children the world has produced in the last two hundred years alone. There is nothing special about them that has not been present in some children of every generation before ours for hundreds of generations.

If you are still not convinced, let’s think about right now, today, and global warming. Pretend for a moment Global Warming is real. The two biggest causes that we can do something about are cattle, and automobiles. If starting tomorrow, we took the keys and batteries from every car, and slaughtered every cow in the world, would global warming go away? Possibly the speed at which global warming happens may slow, but it will not go away just like that. If global warming will not go away, why is it more likely these other things will happen?

Comments (0) Jan 16 2008

Getting things done is almost impossible at times. Not the Getting Things Done people use as a self management system, but creating any kind of real change at any level, be it school, work, or home. No matter how big your sphere of influence, you rarely have enough influence to change anything that really makes a difference if it involves any sort of organized group.

For example, I was a computer tutor volunteer at one time for a specialized community center. I had six to eight ’students’ who would show up weekly for a two hour class. Most of them held job positions in their group, but knew little to nothing about computers except whatever their job was. So as the appointed volunteer in charge, it was my job to help them become computer literate. A simple task should not be difficult one would think?

I developed a schedule, and a training matrix of sorts, that would help them learn their way around Windows and eventually Office programs, but it was flexible enough that there was room to go over past lessons, and incorporate them into new learning. That is about the best any instructor can hope for. The classes went well for three or four sessions. Then the Director of Education for the group, decided that there should be some sort of testing at the end of each session so the progress of the folks in attendance could be evaluated. Would I mind making a simple test for each module completed?

A week after that the attendees were being referred to as students. As students, as long as I was now instructing them on using notepad and wordpad, couldn’t I add a little grammar instruction to my lessons? After all they were working with jokes and stories, and they were only practicing cutting and pasting to make the stories make sense, a little grammar should be easy enough to add.

The next week I was called into the Director of Education’s office. What nerve I had using that kind of language in this environment! I had to claim ignorance, as I was unaware of what sort of language I had used that was so offensive. I was handed a print out, with a highlighted word on it. It had been a joke that was to be cut and pasted until it made sense. Among the twelve or so lines of text, the word ‘crap’ was highlighted. I had to claim ignorance, as I did not know how such a highly offensive word could have possibly worked its way in a joke and exposed to a class of adults.

The next week, I had another meeting with the Director of Education. Wouldn’t it be possible, as long as people were showing up for class that I could take half the class time for formal instruction on English grammar, spelling, and basic math? I had to draw the line here for a couple of reasons. In the first place, the ’students’ were writing on a low elementary school level, and needed more instruction than I could provide. Secondly, I knew little about formal grammar myself, although my math was okay. I was over ruled and given a grammar book to make grammar lesson plans from.

There are miracles in the world, and I was lucky enough to experience one of them. I told the ’students’ that next week we would be doing half the session on formal grammar, and math. The next week I was an instructor in an empty room. The next week was exactly the same, empty. I went to the Director of Education and explained I had no students. I was told it was okay, if they wanted to learn to use a computer they were going to learn English and math also. After two more weeks, I resigned as computer instructor, English, spelling, and math teacher.

I thought this was a great example of trying to make a positive change gone wrong. Both the Director of Education, and I wanted to make a difference. The people who showed up for instruction had a willingness to learn to a point. Given enough time, they would have learned basic grammar, and spelling skills, and perhaps some basic math as their computer skills improved and they started exploring the internet. As it turned out, now computers are something other people use, and they have little use for.

At times we are like the Director of Education. We have the best intentions but we stifle any possibility of change before it even has a chance to start. Usually it is because of we do not do, but more often it is due to what we say, or do, because we try too hard and push people away. I think as people, we do not mind being slowly led, but we do not care much to be directed.

Comments (0) Jan 14 2008

I am always fascinated by the people who are so cemented in themselves, they end up in a repeating spiral of misery and frustration, trying to do something which they were not meant to do, and will never do acceptably no matter how hard they try and want to.

The one thing that is keeping them from becoming what they want is they were never meant for what they desire to start with. Everyone early in their lifetime should sit down and evaluate who they really are, and what their purpose in this life is. It really is not that difficult; if we are only truthful with ourselves it is quite easy.

For example, once I wanted to be a sprinter. I wanted to pound my way down the track and feel the wind rush by on my face. The best I ever did was a seven minute mile. At that speed there is nothing really rushing by you except the people who were built to be runners. The same end result occurred when I wanted to play in a band. I played an instrument for over a year, and never really should have been moved from the last and third chair. When the band director had a bad day, I made it to the first chair, for about fifteen minutes. I had about the same result with Art class, and Spanish class. There are some things I will never be.

I can accept this and move on. Someone else will sprint, make music, do impressive artful things, speak two or more languages, and so on - I won’t be one of them though. In the world of belief systems, I will never be world class either, but I can live with all my faults. I am what I am, and that is good enough for me. I see no need to torture myself over something I will never be or was never meant to be.

I am not advocating being a quitter, I am suggesting once you give something the best you have, and you do not make your own grade, rather than punishing yourself, perhaps it is time to think about what you are trying to accomplish? In all things, someone has to be first, and someone has to be last. Most of us end up somewhere in the middle. That is where I ended up with my skiing. I skied once in an official race, a downhill slalom to be exact, with real prizes. I was not last, but I also was a long away from being first.

I enjoy doing these things I mentioned, I did not get frustrated and whine because I am not the best. Perhaps I should have thrown some items away though. I remember an oil painting I did in art class. I brought it home, and my Mother asked me what it was? I said it was a waterfall, the one at a favorite river we used to trout fish at. She said, “Oh yes, of course”, and hung it on the wall upside down.

Whenever you find yourself trying too hard at a specific thing and not achieving the results you want, maybe it is time to stop and think about it. Only a very few are almost perfect at anything. Most of us are okay at many things. There are a few things we will never be any good at no matter what. If there is a dream you have wanted all your life, and you can not seem to achieve it, maybe it was intended to stay a dream? Maybe your example of giving it your best is all that was intended for you to do?

Accepting your faults is not quitting, it is being human. In many ways it is letting opportunity in, because once you have let something go, you open yourself up to possibility. Possibility may lead you to your true nature, where you will excel at what you were meant to be.

There will always be people waiting to tell you how bad you are. You do not have to join in with them them. Be your own cheering section! Focus on those things you are good at and be happy!

Comments (0) Jan 13 2008

Everywhere I look, I see someone who I know doesn’t have it going on like I think I do, yet they are doing it. They have arrived at a place I can not imagine, but I can see what they have once they get there. What is so odd is they are not brilliant, they are mostly average people. But they are at a point in their life when everything is going their way.

Like the woman who started making those trinkets that go on those nice spongy shoes, and later sold what became her company for an amazing amount of money. The immigrant families in the poorest part of my city, who now own their own business. They probably started selling in public places, struggling to keep their dream going.

Tunnel vision is my problem. It is tunnel vision that keeps me from seeing everything these people went through before success arrived at their doorstep. I never saw the times when they cried in frustration, or were harassed by the police, or slept in the cold because all their money was going into making their future. I never saw that part of their life back then, I just see where they are now.

I can not see what they saw a long time before. I never had that burning desire to run my own business no matter what obstacle got in my way. I was never interested in seeing if I could take something, add some value to it, and sell it to someone else who thinks they were getting a deal.

I was in Korea a number of years ago. There was a young couple there who made very pretty wooden boxes. They were not the most elegant, but they were made with care. They wanted fifty dollars for the one I wanted. I have no doubt it was worth fifty dollars, but it was not worth that much to me. I told the couple I would pay twenty dollars. I saw them at least once a week in the month I in Korea. Every time I saw them, they said fifty dollars. I said twenty, and they scoffed and spit as they said no. As I was getting on the bus for the last time before I left their country, they said twenty five. I said no, twenty was my offer, I would pay no more.

They cursed at me, spit, made faces at me, and sold me the box I had wanted for a month, for a mere twenty dollars. I almost felt guilty, because I knew the profit they would be making was not very large, perhaps only a dollar or two at most, and that would not cover their time in making it, polishing it, and making it look so pretty. Yet they sold that box to me. They knew if they did not sell it to me, they would have a very hard time finding another buyer with cash money. We only showed up in Korea in those numbers for one month out of the year.

That is a big difference between people who have their own business, and myself. I never would have sold that box to me. They knew they had too, to keep their business going another day. I would have lost my business to my ego, my pride, or my business ignorance. I bet they are wealthy store keepers by now. They are wealthy, savvy, and hard to do business with sort of people. They deserve it too, because all those years ago, they knew what they had to do to be survive another business day, and even though they hated me, and what they were forced into, they did it anyway.

They have business vision, and I have business myopia. If I met them again today, I would gladly give them the thirty more dollars they asked for all those years back. I understand now, and they helped me to understand that day at the bus stop. I really enjoy the homemade burritos, and specialties I come across now and then. I hope they are all successful with their vision, and I remain satisfied with mine.

Comments (0) Jan 12 2008

I was happy for vacation during Christmas, which was half of our holiday season. I was so busy enjoying Christmas for a change, I never had a chance to think about it. It’s behind me now, and it was nice as it lasted. If you read my blog you read some of my frustrations as well. What prompted my blog, is one of the things I am grateful this week.

When I was a child we would get rare phone calls during the holidays. Usually Christmas, New Years, and Easter were the big days. People from out of town would lay down a few dollars to call our house, extend holiday greetings, and do a quick catch up on life since the last phone call. That was back when a phone call like that was a few hours work by someone to pay for the talking.

As a teenager, it was great fun to pick up the telephone, and ask to be connected with an operator somewhere in the United States. Once connected I would make a few seconds of small talk, and then end the connection once they caught on to me. That was about as big as my world was at the time, somewhere in the States.

With computers, there are very fast connections to all over the world. I have spoken with people in Denmark, Germany, England, Malaysia, the Philippines, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, and Canada as easily as you are reading this. All it took was a little daring on my part, and a lot of patience on theirs. We traded thoughts, and hello’s, sometimes even simple conversation, even in their native languages! Written language seems to have commonalities that spoken language does not.

Now with blogging, my world is even a smaller place. No longer am I reading, and sharing one line messages, but reading and sharing complete thoughts, ideas, and concerns. I am grateful for this opportunity because every year more countries and people are online and sharing. When I read something that was written, I can focus on the ideas.

I have the opportunity to share ideas, and concerns in my life. When reading and posting, it does not matter how many areas of our lives are different, or how little we have in common, what happens is we start enjoying what we do have in common. We start to see and understand, that under all our layers, we are people. We want the same things for the most part.

I prefer a life that can be lived in peace. I want my family, and children to be safe. I want a comfortable life where I want for nothing important. I had always felt that deep down all people wanted the same basic things for their lives, but the internet has made it possible to know how alike we really are. It was odd at times when I would be trading messages with someone when their country, and mine were having problems, sometimes small, sometimes not so small. But both of us, one sentence at a time, reaffirmed to the other we wanted peace to prevail over all else. What a warming thought that was when it happened knowing that perhaps our country’s disagreed, but we were the same, and wished for the same things.

Which brings me to you. I am grateful you take the time to read this, and learn a little about me in the process. It does not really matter if you are down the block, or around the world. I am grateful you are here. Hopefully we share the same wants for ourselves, our family, the world.

Because others like you taken time with me, I have learned a lot about you too, and I enjoy the idea that such good people like you are out there. I hope we can continue to make the world smaller, and a better place for us all. Thank you for your time, for learning about me, and for being you!

Comments (2) Jan 11 2008

The gates of introspection were thrown open late the other night. It was a mistake, I was not thinking, but they opened all the same. The only public item that washed up was the death of my Mother. She died a few years ago, three days before Christmas.

I took off a month of work, left my family alone, travelled across country, and stayed at her home with her in October/November. I was there twenty four hours a day seven days a week. Or most of it any way. She had told me back in July, that as the time got closer, and it looked like she did not know what she was doing, she did know what she was doing, and it was okay.

Okay, I could understand that. My father in the weeks before he went, did everything he could (or so it seemed) to help me hate him. So my Mother saying this was not something that shocked me. When I was with my Mom, after about a week, I needed a few hours to myself, time away from reality. I asked my Mom if she was okay with me leaving the house for an evening, and she said yes, she would be okay.

It was close to freezing when I left. Less than two hours later I received a phone call from a neighbor that my Mom was outside laying on the ground. They called the ambulance, I raced to the hospital. About ten days later, there was a repeat, this time she was in the back yard, the weather was still freezing. Repeat the story, a few days in the hospital, and home she came. Some days I thought she was really there, and other days I was not sure who was home, if anybody.

One afternoon she wanted to go for a ride. I helped her in the car, started driving, and she started singing. Not a song from her childhood, or a song from the romantic days of her life, but another song. This song had one line, and the same rhythm. For over two hours I drove my Mom around listening to her one line song. I want to mention first that I rarely heard my Mom use any off color language in her life. On this day for over two hours, I listened to her sing, “Thanks for being a prick.” Over and over again. The fact that she was constantly grabbing at the steering wheel trying to turn the car into the ditch was minor compared to the song. She didn’t want to go home, fwiw, so we rode around the countryside, her singing her song, and grabbing at the steering wheel now and again.

A few days later she seemed to want to talk about her life. I asked her something about my Dad. “I don’t know why I married that son-of-a-bitch”, was the only thing she had to say about him. She told me some things about a Great Aunt I never knew I had. She talked a little bit about her Dad, Sisters, and Brothers, and that was about it. End of the end of my life conversation.

Because of all the problems with her body dying, it was impossible for her to come and live with me. I live at altitude, she could not survive without oxygen, and she kept pulling it off. Want to or not, it was time for me to pack up, and go back home. Over the next few weeks, there were some phone conversations, but they were not good, they were pretty ugly actually. She called me on the fifteenth to wish me a Merry Christmas. A week went by, and the phone call came. The hospital made the call as easy as they could, and I appreciated their effort.

It was a day of introspection for me, as I went over that month in my mind. Fortunately for most of us, each day is not our last, and there is time to fix the something we did, or at least acknowledge our faults. I can not guess if that month was really a month with my Mom, or with a shell. A month where things were said, and I never knew if they were true, or even thought about.

Of course it was an hours walk today with a cold stiff breeze, thinking about those last days with my Mom to realize it does not matter. She’s gone, and I am left to walk, and wonder.

Comments (2) Jan 10 2008