The days of my life…

are boring.  But besides that, I don’t have a lot of time but I figured I should update this thing.

Know all that save the world stuff, all that activist stuff, all that Rock Texas stuff and stuff like that stuff?  Well, fuck that.  I give up.  And if you don’t like people who give up tough shit.  I figure it is just stupid to keep banging into walls all the time.  I could list all the walls I’ve  hit over the  years but you’d just be bored and not believe me anyway.  It all comes down to money and attitude.  I was a good guy with pats on the back as long as I could offer rock bands something.  Once they figured out they would have to actually do something themselves they blew it off.  So, with the exception of a few good bands, fuck’m.

I shall express my unadulterated contempt for two bands who I trusted, who were the inspiration of Rock Texas, and who ultimately blew me off.  May they live in fucked up anonymity as they so truly deserve.  They were good bands but lousy people… a curse of the music profession I’m told.  I would not cross the street to piss on them if they were on fire.  Oh, the bands names… Downfall Rising and Inura.  Got that?  So, yeah, I’m pissed.  But fuck’m.  No need to let jackasses ruin your day, right?

More recently…

Summer is over.  Kids are back in school.  Damn it’s quiet around here.  I’d really like to escape some now but no fuckin’ way I’ll get to do that any time soon.

My plants died.  All those cute little plants in the other post, they grew up and then died.  I think it is our horrible water.  Central Water sucks.  I have some test strips ordered so I can see how fucked up the water is and try to figure out how to fix it so maybe something will live in my garden past plant puberty.  I want some tomatoes!  Damn!

Today was the first day of school, you know.  My family is off having their lives and I’m stuck here without one.  I redid my shop.  Needed to do that for a long time.  By the end of the week I’ll be all ready for a winter I sure hope gets here soon.  Well, I’ll probably have to wait to get the stove pipe but I’ll have the wood stove up in there.  It’ll be my daily escape.

I’m not much on the computer these days.  (See, I’m not here now! haha!)  Actually I spend most of my days outside.  I don’t mind the heat.  Getting to like it, almost.  Almost!  Sitting on this damn computer sure is boring.  What’s there to do?  Virtual schmirtual, it’s boring.  I want a real person friend to keep me company.  How the hell do I find that?  People have their misconceptions, preconceptions, judgements, attitudes, all that.  Is there not one wild and crazy bohemian minded person anywhere within short driving distance of this horrid town?

I suppose not.

So, it’s, you know, darkness and gnashing of teeth time.

I need a smoke.  And a big, strong drink.  The smoke I got.  The drink I’m shit out of  luck for.  I think I’ll run something over the scales in a few days and get some dough so I can get myself a nice big, huge bottle of alcoholic entertainment.

If you have a bottle bring it over, we’ll have some jolly good fun, maybe.

OK, so I have to go get the kids from school.  And fix dinner of some kind.  I so do not like being a homemaker.

Sigh.

Aspiring Buddhist Seeks Same

Sounds like a personal add, huh?

All Alone.

It’s been almost a week since mom died. I just don’t know how I feel. Numb, I guess… as expected.

My world is filled with little reminders, very close reminders, of mom’s life with us. There’s food on our shelves and in our freezer and refrigerator, some she bought and some that came from her house. The catfish she loves so much that I bought to fix for her is still waiting for the fryer. There’s little nic-nac’s all over. There’s even a box of medications we’ve not disposed of yet (some of which I really want to know why she was given!). And, of course, there’s that house three miles away from where I sit brimming with Mom Stuff.

I have her rocker/recliner here now. We brought a few other little things from her house, practical items and quaint reminders of her. Other family members took a few things she’d promised to them or that will remind them of her. She didn’t leave much of a will, just a letter that said to sell the house and divide the money. We looked around her house with lumps in our throat reaching for things that we shared with her. It’s just stuff with memories attached. That’s all.

Life is so fleeting, so short, so impermanent. What is eighty six years in the span of the universe? Less than a blink. When it’s over all that is left are memories and stuff. A hundred years from now even the stuff and the memories will be gone. Nobody will remember my mom. Nobody living will have known her. She’ll be an old picture on a wall or maybe just a name on a stone in an old cemetery. Maybe not even that.

What’s it all about? Why are we here? Will we ever know? Are Christians right in believing there’s a “heaven” somewhere with Jesus and open arms waiting for the sacred few? Are Buddhists right, are we cycled through life after life, cranking out Karma, hoping for the enlightenment that will end our cycle and blend us in with the great all knowing? I hope that’s not right either. I’m stuck with not knowing. What lies beyond we don’t know. It doesn’t really matter all that much. Those who remain have only memories and stuff in place of that life we held so precious but never really did right by. What ever kind of place it is, mom is there. We’re not.

There is one part of her “stuff” I didn’t know existed. She wrote a journal. The last notebook she wrote in begins thus:

I was born 8-22 to Rebeca & Emory Self 8 miles from Murfreesboro…

She writes a few pages of her life history and then segues into an account of the days that were passing. I don’t know when she started this volume. We found another notebook, a little older, with more writing, dates and times and simple events. In it mom noted each day, how she felt, and entered the temperature for the day. She kept up. Her days were important. She writes almost exclusively of her kids, we who failed to recognize how important every single day was while she was still here. We spent too much time in our world and not enough in hers.

That final notebook does sound like mom. Here’s her last entry:

August the 12, Tues, the nurse called the doctor. The amb. came after me. I was there 9 days. Bob and Donna came. Vickie and Rusty all came. Bob brought me home the 19. They stayed until the 21. I have cancer. I start the treatment the 4th of Sept. They went home yesterday. I am all alone.

Shortly after she wrote that she was in and out of the hospital, mostly in, until the last time when she was transferred to hospice. We got her home for a day and then she was back at hospice for her remaining few hours.

Even as I know she preferred being alone in her house to being with us in ours I feel a deep sadness as I recognize the depth of loneliness she sometimes felt. I know, too, that even if we’d moved in with her she would have felt that loneliness, that longing for family who left this world long ago, for Dad who was her companion for more than 50 years, for old friends who had passed or were unable to visit any longer because of their health. I know dad felt that loneliness deep within his heart once his only brother died and all his family was gone. Even though his brother was 300 miles away and he rarely got to visit it’s still not the same as him being gone.

The sum of our lives is the people we know and love. Everything else is just “stuff.” As our days pass by and those we’ve cared for disappear into the past we all begin to feel the loneliness so poignantly expressed in mom’s last words: “I am all alone.”

There are those who claim to “feel the presence” of loved ones. They say they can walk through a house, grasp a belonging, sit quietly in the woods, and “sense” someone who has died. Maybe they can. I never could. When dad died I worried about that for the longest. Why can’t I “feel” him here on this land where I live which he loved to wander about on? Why wasn’t his presence felt in the boards and timbers of that cabin I lived in back then, the one he helped build? Why did I never feel him when I visited mom? I never have felt dad nearby.

I can’t sense mom, either. Not walking through that old house she held so dear to her heart and not sitting in the chair she spent so much time in can I “feel” mom with me. Maybe it would help. Or maybe it would just make me more sad. Either way, I really wish I could sense her nearby. I wish.

None of us really know or comprehend where she has gone. We all believe she is not alone and will never be alone. We believe the part that was her, the mom we knew, has become something different, a spirit free from a body riddled with pain. I believe that too even though my concept of the “Undiscovered Country” is not that of my Christian siblings. Though I cannot and most likely never will sense her near me I believe with all my being that she lives and she is not alone. Her final entry, were it penned from over there, would be, “I am with those who have gone before. I am no longer alone.” I’m quite sure it would be that.

We, however, are still here. We’re stuck with memories and stuff. For the rest of our days we’ll live without her blessed smile, her love, all those wonderful looks she always gave us. Each of us will forever grasp at memories and hold her stuff and think, “where did you go, mom?” We’ll look into the void of the unknown with tremendous longing and we’ll say, “we love you mom. We miss you! We are so alone!”