Heavy Thoughts On A Bright Day

Recently I saw a movie based on true events.  It's about a man married with two children and both children are dying from a disease. There is no cure for their disease and both children have a year to live. The turning point in the man's life is when he looks into the eyes of his daughter and sees her determination. She is a fighter.  At that moment he makes a choice. He decides he will do what ever it takes to find a cure. He quits his job, finds a doctor who's researching the disease, moves his family to be close to the doctor, and raises boatloads of dough. He and the doctor partner and they do the unimaginable, they find a cure.

That consumed my thoughts for a few days.  I asked myself, what decisions have I made lately that propelled me like a freight train barrelling down a track? What have I done to make the world a better place?  How have I contributed to the human experience? If I die in my sleep tonight, how will I be remembered? Will I be remembered? Does it matter?  No. It's my ego that gives two shits about that.  But, how I impact the world, that matters.

There is the school of thought that tells us the little things we do each day is what really matters. Perhaps the sad woman I sat with at the doctor's office was uplifted by my silly story about sagging breasts versus fake implants.  I made her laugh. Maybe her husband just died and she needed to laugh.  I'll never know.  What about the lady that I let go ahead of me in line at the grocery store.  She looked depressed.  If anyone needed a random act of kindness she did. She clutched her one item, a bottle of Advil pills, smiled and moved in front of me.  God, I hope she wasn't going to go home and take them all at once.  When I make a little choice to do something nice, I don't know the outcome.  I do know where I'm coming from.  I try to keep my ego out of my way and it's my goal to be a better person than I was the day before.
That's the best I have to offer today.

If I do happen to die in my sleep and one hundred years from now my great, great, great granddaughter looks me up on ancestry.com she's only going to find documents. She will find my birth certificate, my three marriage licenses, two divorce decrees, deeds to homes and my death certificate. She'll find out where I lived but she will not know how I lived, who I was or what mattered to me.  She will not find me the person who lived unless she looks into her own good nature.  She will find a web of physical, spiritual, and emotional data woven by those that came before her.  She may be the one who cures another incurable disease. I can live with that.

Where do we draw the line?

Is it right for my energy, (my soul for lack of a better word) to contact the soul of another?

I contacted you to beg, to coerce, to cajole, and to ask you to stay for your family and friends and then I went too far.

My energy did more, it found your spirit, enveloped it, and then anchored it to Earth. I felt your strength. I felt your spirit.

The feeling was wrong. I cut the tie, I let go and apologized. I apologized again.

I was wrong.

It is not my non-physical beings nature to control another, not at any level.

I will miss you if you stay and don't come back. Your family and friends will miss you if you choose to go.

We will all have to honor your choice. We will all have to let you go.

Will we see you when we get to where you're going?
I would like that.

What If?

What if the what ifs come true when we focus on the what ifs we don't want?
What we think of most will be. 
A boy without faith believed he would not pass math and have to go to summer school.
He believed that he would most likely flunk middle school and not make it to high school.
He did not flunk math.
He was told by the school counselor that he passed all his classes.
He was told to celebrate. He did not.
He was told that she was very proud of him. Disbelief was in his eyes.
The last day of school he skipped and did not take a final exam.
Because he chose to skip, the school would not allow him to take the exam and they did not pass him.
Self fulfilling failure.  Yes!
What power he has!
Top "A" students have the same power. They believe and they get what they believe in. 
Indeed, the optimist is right and the pessimist is right.

Uncovered Fears

Fear came from her eyes. It passed through each clouded lens. 
Her lower lids over flowed with warm tears that tipped over and rolled to moisten slight crepe-like aging flesh.
She is alone to melt in the sun light.
He is gone.
Numbness fills her body. Natures sweet elixir.  She blinks and she forgets.
She forces a smile, a laugh and then feels guilty for being--gulity for feeling a moment of joy.
Like an out of place daisy on a dark path, sunny moments sprout out of no where.
Today she saw a beautiful man drenched in sparkling pool water. Water dripping from his chest made her heart beat faster. Her face burned. Her heart felt heavy. She felt it thump, thump, thump.  Her belly felt warm.  Then she remembered--she is alone. 
She thinks of entering the empty house where his dresser drawers are neatly organized.  All the socks, shorts, shirts and underwear sit perfectly folded never be warn again, not by him-not by anyone. 
The sun turns her tears to salt.
She wipes away the grit under her eyes.
She is uncovered left naked.

My First Thoughts

It happened a few weeks ago. She died at 49.


I’m 49. I could die.

She died of liver disease. She was my high school pal and college roomie.

I could die of liver disease. Those were my first thoughts.

When she was diagnosed we talked on the phone. The doctor told her she had less than six months to live and her liver was functioning at less than 10%.

Her voice shook and I could hear her taking a deep inhalation before she spoke,

“Robyn, do you think it’s better to know that you are going to die at a certain time of a certain illness or do you think it would be better not to know?” The air was quiet between us on the phone line. She added, “I don’t know the answer; but, I’ve been thinking a lot about it.” Taking a deep breath I began, “Well, knowing is kind of a gift. You have time to say goodbye and to have conversations that you need to have. For example, I was really mad at you. You let me down and I didn’t understand why you blew me off the Friday before our reunion. Now, I understand. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I thought of me and how you let me down. I’m sorry I didn’t help you. I’m sorry I turned my back on you. You needed me. You needed help a long time ago. You reached out to me several times and I pushed you aside like you were a weak animal in the wild. I left you. I’m sorry I didn’t know how bad you were.” She said three words and meant every one of them, “I forgive you.”

“Thank you. I’m going to miss you. Hell, I do miss you. You’ve been gone for a long time already.” She started to cry and her voice pitched higher, “Yah, I have. I’m sorry.”

Linda and I spoke a few more times before she died. The last time we talked she told me what she looked like. I told her I was not going to come visit her. I couldn’t see her like that. I wanted to remember her young, alive, beautiful and sparkling. Again, I was being selfish.

Now that she is gone, I can’t help but think of her. Even when we weren’t in touch I thought of her and then I would get an email or a call out of the blue. A song would remind me of her, or I’d find an old photograph or a letter. She and I were held at gun point in the Bahamas when we were in a dingy close to a little island near Nassau. We were on stage with Willie Nelson and hung out with just him at a little bar at OSU when he finished his concert. I want to remember taking signs in Avon Lake one night that had the letter “L” on them. A group of us took as many as we could find from front yards all along Lake Road. We said we were “L” Friends. Life was exciting with Linda.

I can still hear her voice with its slur and the inhalation like it was hard for her to breathe and that’s not what I want to remember. I want to remember her thick blonde hair and how she bubbled over with life. “L” Friends forever, Linda.