Losing the Fight?

Every time I forget to keep it down and I speak in a normal voice, it hurts. My voice goes to a painful whisper.

I’m losing my battle.

Lately I sleep day and night. I’m exhausted. Depression weakens me further, takes my energy away and leaves me in helpless despair.

I don’t want you to pity me, I have no need for sympathy. I want you to look back on my archives (they go back to 2019) and learn from me. About mental illness. About heartbreak. Betrayal. Of my outrage at the state of my country (United States)and how we have alienated allies and trade partners by letting a president be a boob and a bully.

Looking back, you’ll see my brushes with real evil, something people like to refer to as “the supernatural,” which is really a part of our natural world that we can’t understand.

I don’t think we’re meant to understand everything. Sometimes, God wants us to trust him for help and guidance. Without God, this existence makes no sense, and I have yet to hear one argument by an atheist that was able to shake my faith, or, for that matter, make any sense.

I want you to read about mental illness from one who has endured it all his life. Learn where you can, what you can, and give me the benefit of the doubt. Don’t close the link too fast; there’s something here for everyone.

Humor, demonic encounters, being an Army “shitbird,” child abuse, great tragedy through loss, heartache at a life I should have lived, but never had a chance to, and more. I’ve done movie reviews, videogame reviews, talked about dumb criminals, and more.

I’d be honored to have you stop by and see me in my raw, unplanned posts that reveal my mental illnesses. Before I go, please take advantage of what I’ve been through and learn. If nothing else, at least see where I’ve been and the horror I’ve known. Please sign in and “like” (hit the little star at the bottom so I can know you were here. Share links. I’ll gain nothing but you may gain a crude understanding of what happens when children are beaten and raped by their own parents. See how I climbed out of the pit of racism, taught to me by my parents. How I had to choose to climb that ladder.

Most of all, see what smoking has done to me. I’ve killed myself.

My life wasn’t always a nightmare. There were good times when I know someone was praying for me, and God answered those prayers with miracles.

I’ve lived a hard and bitter life. I don’t want anyone to trace my steps. I don’t hate anyone enough to wish that on another.

And remember: hating someone poisons your soul, not theirs. Hate will drag you to Hell.

I’ve overreacted to the news lately. As I’ve said, it’s a trap, the figurative equivalent of quicksand. I said I hated someone. Left comments I regret. Ugly ones.

That’s the only way I can truly lose this fight.

The battle to save my body was over before I was aware that it was this bad.

The fight for my soul is another thing. I don’t plan on losing it.

I’m not losing the battle. No, I’m not going down there.

A Poem to Make You Think

“You lived next door to me for years;
We shared our dreams, our joys and tears.
A friend to me you were indeed,
A friend who helped me when in need.

My faith in you was strong and sure;
We had such trust as should endure,
No spats between us ever rose;
Our friends were like – and so, our foes.

What sadness, then my friend, to find,
That after all, you weren’t so kind,
The day my life on earth did end,
I found you weren’t a faithful friend.

For all those years we spent on earth,
You never talked of second birth.
You never spoke of my lost soul,
And of the Christ who’d make me whole!

I plead today from hell’s cruel fire,
And tell you now my least desire –
You cannot do a thing for me;
No words today my bonds will free.

But do not err, my friend, again –
Do all you can for souls of men.
Plead with them now quite earnestly,
Lest they be cast in hell with me!”

— John Masaitis

New York City Confidential: The Visit

Warning: The following contains graphic and disturbing material and it contains triggers. This is intended for mature readers only and must be read with caution.

Present Day

In a hospital somewhere in the Big Apple lies a young man near the end of his life.

It is just another day in the city that never sleeps: the patient will, without a miracle, die. And it will not matter, nor even be known, to any but the handful of doctors and nurses treating and tending to him.

And one earthly angel who knows how beautiful he truly is.

Because they adore him, these nurses. He is mostly silent, but despite his condition, despite his loneliness, his sadness, he is polite and warm.

And on any given hospital floor or ward, patients like him always seem to affect one nurse, perhaps more. In this case, more. He received no visitors.

There came no calls inquiring as to his condition or prognosis. No one cared. Nurses tend to feel at least some sorrow or anger over such things. For some, their necessity of a disconnect fails. No one should be left alone to face death.

And it did look bad; his kidneys had failed. His recovery from a coma was a great development, but the young man was in critical condition. He still is. He had HIV or AIDS before, but treatment had made the virus undetectable in his lab work. Then he contracted COVID-19 and the virus returned. Now, but for the Grace of God, he would already be dead.

But who knows? Perhaps God keeps the dying alive for a reason, because there remains a chance that they can find peace before death. And, just maybe, He plans on a miracle because He loves us all, equally, and does not want us to perish in the Pit.

I cannot say, but without speaking for God, I nevertheless have faith in His unfailing love and forgiveness.

If ever a young man needed a miracle, it’s surely this young man.

His story begins in Texas, where far too many horrible stories seem to start.

His father was the pastor of a church, and his mother was a nurse. Neither should have been so employed, for the father was far more evil than good, and the mother was his carbon copy.

His father the preacher man sodomized him while his mother held him down.

She held him down.

And there is more. When he came out as gay, his father called him a “faggot” and beat him. Whether he was kicked out or ran away is unclear but it does not matter.

Eventually the young man wound up in New York. In his ears it must have reverberated, his father, who routinely sodomized him, calling him a “faggot”. The damage was no doubt extensive. There is no reason given for his attraction to New York, but many gay men move there, most seeking acceptance and some type of human compassion.

But for him, if ever he found it, nothing good could last. Haunted by his past, he could not find lasting friendship nor any other relationship. At one point he wound up in a mental health facility. It is easy to see why. What is more difficult to see is that some part of him, despite loneliness and severe depression, wanted help, wanted to survive.

While he was there, a young woman was also a patient. She had clearly been through a hell of her own, and she was still in it. He decided to not only befriend her but to watch over her as well. And this he did, because his own broken heart hurt even more to see someone trying to fight back from a break, from loss, from addiction, from too much time spent hounded by demons.

The two bonded, improving over time, each very much a part of the other’s recovery. Then, she went home, and although they exchanged phone numbers, and did talk from time to time, the miracle girl he had watched over began getting very serious about finishing her recovery.

The system of replacement therapy is rigged, as I’ve said before. Rigged to keep you dependent on methadone so the clinic keeps getting funded. She emerged from a life-threatening breakdown to realize that the only way to regain her life and her soul was to fight the battle of a lifetime. And she argued with the clinic about stepping down her doses. They would alternatively encourage and discourage her and, with most, that strategy of manipulation works.

But the young woman was never going to be tricked again by the system that would not let her go.

Consulting a doctor not affiliated with the clinic, she did receive support, but also caution. Yet, in all his years of practice, he had never seen anyone so determined who might actually be able to do what she claimed she could, and would do.

Just like she said, exactly as she had said, she stepped down her doses rapidly. The clinic fought her but she was not having it. Finally she had had enough, and got her intake of methadone so low that despite her doctor’s concern, she ceased taking it. Silencing every critic and every rule of the system, what she did would not seem astounding to you or to me, but for her it was the drug equivalent of jumping from a second story window, landing as gracefully as a gymnast, and getting the winning score. And her doctor was astonished. What she had done, in the time in which she did it, with no lasting effects, was something he had never seen before. He was proud, but not of anything he had done; it was all her, she who possessed the fighting spirit of a tigress.

And that analogy is not off: a tigress is among the fiercest fighters in the animal kingdom, an apex predator with almost no fear of humans. The young woman had put up a fight, the like of which few have ever survived.

That fight was not short nor did it come without pain.

She continues to fight. Every day. But the entire time she was suffering, prayers came from all directions including her priest, who lit the tapirs and said the rosary in her behalf.

Her past was known to the priest. A violent multiple rape while a young teen. Comfort sought in hard drugs. Dysfunctional relationships that only lowered her closer to the abyss. Until death and shock and trauma piled upon trauma broke her and she met the lonely young man in the hospital.

She had lost her way. Lost everything she was, everything she thought she knew. The lonely man was there to help her get that back. These things are never chance meetings. God knows when two lost people need each other. He leads them to the quiet waters but never forces them to drink. That’s always up to them.

I always found in my worst stays in hospital that there was one person I could be comfortable around. It’s funny, that. And it always helps.

But as time went on, the young woman began grabbing her life back. An awesome man came into her life and a romance began. She made fast friends with his family and his friends. She had begun to live after decades of being a prisoner.

Then came a day when she found an unknown number on her phone. A number she did not recognize. Usually she would let such a thing go, but not this one. She felt strongly about it and knew she had to return the call.

It was the lonely man she had been watched over by in the hospital and he’d come out of a three-week coma and was very weak. It was difficult to speak because of the tube he had been sustained by, but she knew: he needed to see her and she needed to go to him.

Her boyfriend made a stop along the way, took her to the hospital, but because of covid protocols had to remain in the car.

Upstairs, the lonely man lay, withered, 60 pounds lighter, weak, fearing death. His friend walked up to the nurse’s station and one nurse smiled and said, “I’m so happy to see you. He’s had no one come in or even call and he’s so sweet.”

She went into the room, greeted him, and had to lean close to hear him. Clad in protective gloves, mask and gown, she listened.

He said he was happy that she was here. She gave him the stuffed unicorn she had bought on the way over. He loved it. Bending low she heard him say, “I’m scared of dying. I’m scared I’ll go to hell.”

She assured him that it wasn’t true. He would not go to hell. God knew the kindness of his heart, and would never allow such a kind soul to descend to the pit.

She asked him if he would like to talk to the priest they had both met before. He said yes, he would, and he seemed comforted by the suggestion. She said she would get the priest to come and see him.

After a few more moments that I will leave private, he thanked her for remembering him, for answering his call, and said, “I think I can sleep now.”

Before leaving home, someone had asked her why she had to go see this guy. “Because,” she said, “he’s my friend. He looked after me and protected me, and now he needs me.” It wasn’t about owing him or feeling obligated; it was love that drove this extraordinary woman to go. And nothing on this earth is more powerful than love.

This truly heartbreaking story is also a reminder to us all that no act of kindness, no show of friendship and loyalty ever goes unnoticed by God or under-appreciated by those we give the kindness to. We were given a command: love each other. When we fail, things happen that hurt. When we do it, the world is better for it. You and I may not feel it, but I know it’s the truth.

Have a great week, and God bless.

Father and Son

First, I want to thank you for being here with me to share in this inspired moment. I’m grateful for you.

Next, I’m going to set up a video I found. I’m back on Twitter because I needed to get information about things that I can’t otherwise see. I’ve been good, because I’ve learned so much. I can control myself and I have no wish to be cruel with words. Sure, I’m still angered by republican subterfuge and their undermining of our government, but I think everyone should be. We’re talking current events, but also about the future. I see nothing they’ve done as trivial or honorable, not in the least.

There was a post I saw with a question: in Assassin’s Creed games, what is your favorite Father and Son?

I was quick to answer, and no, the question did not trigger me; there’s some recovery behind me after all.

Two years after the photograph above was taken, I was talking on the phone with my son, and he described a game he was playing that involved assassins and Egypt and pyramids. I had, impossibly, never heard of Assassin’s Creed games. I had been out of the gaming loop because I was on disability and gaming was beyond my means; I had an original Xbox with a few good games, but that was it. We still played Serious Sam co-op and it was still fun, but I couldn’t afford any newer consoles.

He wanted my help on some places he was stuck, and I worried because his mother’s place was infested with roaches, and those buggers love electronics. I knew a guy who bought a used PC and brought it to our group home and sure enough, there was the devil to pay getting rid of those roaches. I’m not scared of bugs, mind you; but having roaches is a nightmare. E.G. Marshall played one of his final roles in Creepshow, an anthology film with Adrienne Barbaeu and Leslie Nielsen. In Marshall’s segment he was a real phobic, a hermit terrified of germs, insects and just about anything else. He sees one roach, abusively demands an exterminator, and, well…I guess you can see where this goes.

I’m hardly that character, but my ex was doing nothing about her roaches and I didn’t want them in my new place. If you are a fan of hindsight and regret, you understand why I’ve often wished I could change that decision.

My son was the one who got me into gaming. We found common ground there, where his autism and other issues vanished, leaving a boy whom I could talk to and who could talk to me. We laughed together, cussed together, threw Playstation controllers on the floor, and we were happy.

I took the time to answer his questions about life, about how to treat people, about how God is real and loves us, and some of it got through, and some did not. That’s how it always is with fathers and sons.

Another thing that held me back was that when he said “assassins”, I confused it with the “Hitman” series, games I didn’t like. I passed up an opportunity to play one of the greatest games ever made with him for stupid reasons. He was still trying to beat that game when drugs took his life. After the first stimulus check came, I bought a refurbished PS4 and by then knew what Assassin’s Creed games were. The latest one was Odyssey, but I wanted to start with Origins because I didn’t know the series went all the way back to 2007. I thought Origins was the beginning and I should start there.

I quickly realized that I was playing the same game my son had been playing. Oddly, it begins with Bayek of Siwa, a Medjay, or protector, returning from a year abroad tracking and killing one of the men who killed his son, Khemu. The death of Khemu has turned Bayek into an infuriated killer. Bayek still holds to his Medjay principles and is an honorable man with kindness still a part of his soul, but a cult still exists, those who kill the innocent. He has vowed to kill them all. During the game, he must find stone circles and use them to sight constellations. He had visited all of these with his son, and used their quiet time to gently answer questions the boy had. These flashbacks of those conversations are in the following video.

How odd that this game touched me so much. The question on Twitter did not trigger me. I didn’t cry. I watched the video above before posting the link, and I did not cry. But that’s my son, and me, in simpler, happier times.

One of my favorite YouTube personalities was Simon Whistler. One day he remarked that something was “about as relatable as an Assassin’s Creed game”. And I’ve not watched his videos since. He was talking down, in a way I found insensitive, to fans of his who played the Creed games. And I thought, what’s more relatable than a father losing a son? He’s never experienced loss, or he wouldn’t have said such a nasty, condescending thing. He’s also never played Origins, because the story premise alone is plainly about loss, something everyone must experience. Death is a part of life. Unnatural death should not be. Yet it is.

Father and Son. A title. A relationship. A bond that is sacred and must be nurtured. It cannot be left unattended or it begins to wither. Sometimes….too often….it cannot survive.

I’m out of time for looking back and blaming myself. God will judge what I’ve done right, and what I’ve done wrong. And though a violent video game is seldom considered a tool for learning, I did learn from it. I was reminded of the importance of honor and living up to the concept as best I could. I was forced to face memories of better days, and of the worst days–the days my children died.

Perhaps seeing the tweet helped me to turn a corner. I will still cry, and always grieve for my children. Khemu asked his father if they would be together in the afterlife.

I have to believe I will see them in Heaven, where we will run on green grass and laugh together again.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Revelation 21:4)

What Have I Become?

Disillusionment: I had a ninth grade English teacher who had the word on our vocabulary list, and gave us an example of the meaning. He’d worked in a church as a boy. Idolizing the pastor, he ran errands and did odds-and-ends jobs. One day he happened on the janitor showing the pastor a colorfully embroidered set of handkerchiefs, each depicting Snow White doing “different things” with each of the seven dwarfs. He was disillusioned.

I understood. I may have been the only one in the class who did.

I was already disillusioned and long past being damaged. Damaged beyond repair, as it turns out.

If only life were like movies, comic books and video games, I could have made a comeback. In the end, or at some point, I’d have gotten the love of my life. Made myself a success and had time for deep sea fishing, drinking beer and going to football games. I’d have raised kids who would still be alive.

Then I would retire to the mountains and write novels while snow fell outside and the fireplace had a crackling fire in it.

LEVEL UP!

In a video game, every birthday I would have leveled up. More XP. Stronger, wiser.

I’m close to leveling up for the 61st time. Level 61.

I will not be stronger. I will not be wiser. I’ll still be a loser, one year older, in more pain, still broken.

No repair, no recovery having been made, because life is just that way for losers.

At around level 61 in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the game sent a level 99 mercenary into the Greek Islands. I spent hours eluding him, but one day I had a bounty on my character and the merc who showed up first was the level 99 behemoth. Tired of having unfair shit thrown at me by the game, I took him on. I beat him easily. Again: life is no video game. If it were so, the many level 99s I’ve faced would have done no harm. I could be writing the great American novel right now, well into the night, looking forward to visiting my grandchildren after COVID-19.

Now, I look forward to nothing.

There is nothing that I can feel excited or enthusiastic about. I’m flat. No highs, no days when I can say I’m blessed to be here and really feel it. It is a fact. Nothing more.

What have I become?

This is mental illness at its most basic. I cannot easily socialize because my words are lies. I care and really want an answer when asking a neighbor how they feel. Faced with the same query, I lie: “Oh, I’m fine, thanks.” It’s the act of a liar, and I should feel shame, but instead I feel nothing.

This is how I felt the last time I tried to kill myself: I felt nothing.

The physical pain is there; a constant reminder that I must still be alive. On the inside, I’m dead.

Incapable of love, sympathy, righteousness. Everything good I thought I was, is gone. Was it ever there?

For a while I thought I was going to have a place in someone’s life. That I would be a part of something resembling a family.

That was stupid. A loser can never win. Once alone and unloved, love can never again fill one’s heart, and if it does, something will happen that will end it. When a woman began to be adversarial, I understood. She was going through too much. When I was called a disparaging name, it hurt. I didn’t immediately unplug, I tried the phone. I knew I’d get no answer.

That’s okay. I understood that, too. I guess I deserved it. Being an asshole, I’m sure I did. So I disconnected all those involved. Clearly, I was fucking up their lives. I do that. To everyone.

I will let you down.

I’ll hurt you.

And I just can’t hurt anyone else. I’ve done far too much of that.

I’ll disappoint or hurt you enough to chase you away. Sooner or later I do that to everyone. If I think they’re ambivalent or about to leave my life, I cut the ties first. It hurts less that way. At least that’s what I tell myself.

What have I become?

Because trauma, low self esteem and deep, long-cycle periods of depression have more power to take apart who I am and whatever talents or any good in me than I have to fight back.

To this fucking day people still tell me I have to move forward. It’s more insulting that the worst abuse I ever got from my father or my ex-wife. Don’t tell me to go forward. Don’t you think I wish I could? That it was that fucking easy?

Don’t tell anyone to go forward, move on or whatever else you think sounds good. It hurts. Because some of us can’t.

On these posts, any reader can see that I’ve been up and down but mainly down.

You know what I want to do? I want to talk about how openly stupid and deviant the Republican party in the United States is. How they throw themselves under a former president’s belly like mewling kittens looking for teats. And I want to discuss in front of the rest of the world how people who voted for him after he constantly lied, committed crimes against humanity, lied about those, bribed and brainwashed and lied more to get reelected are among the most stupid bastards on this planet.

I don’t have it in me to do it and give it justice. The United States is doomed if this trend toward fascism doesn’t stop. With our arsenal, everyone else in the world should be praying that Joe Biden is successful and gets reelected because that would mark eight years of a gradual recovery of sanity.

I can’t tell you that. It should be evident but I’m sorry, we of good conscience must always stand against evil. I want to talk about that.

I can’t.

What have I become?

I’m also unable this time to remain on social media. This time it is not because I can’t take the hate on there.

It is because I’ve hurt people…friends…

With my own words. Always so down that I could tell people were unfollowing me. Always such a downer…a sick man trapped by misfiring synapses and betrayed by his own brain, trapped in the past, chased by ghosts and in constant despair. Who would want me on their friends list in my current condition, I asked myself.

And this time for the good of others I left a post saying I’d shut down my account in a few days.

Some know that I stabbed mutual friends of theirs in the back. They’re no longer communicating. Can you blame them?

Others don’t want me to give up.

I’m grateful to them. More than words can say, I’m so very grateful. But if I stay, I run the risk of emotionally reacting, hurting any one of them. Words can do such great harm. I can’t risk it. I can’t be on social media. I can’t.

Level 61. Wow. Never thought I’d get this far. I know it isn’t fair, because while a loser like me goes on, good people with families have lost their own. Not fair. COVID-19 continues on and idiots refuse the chance to be vaccinated. They think a lower mortality rate means it’s over. They lost family too, and still won’t bother with two simple, free shots that could save themselves and save others from them. People have left us. Gone forever, leaving behind families and friends and jobs and bright futures.

And I sit here wondering why, why am I here, why someone else could be taken while I’m spared Death’s reach.

For all my years on this earth I have seen so much suffering and injustice that I am both thankful and feeling cursed by my sensitivity. Look at what is going on right now, and again I refer to COVID-19. In India, the infection rate is simply apocalyptic. I mean, they’re even out of oxygen.

People in news footage lie helter-skelter on pallets, mostly on the ground, any several of which you see will die or already have died. The strain of the virus doing this has already made it to the US, and the travel ban may be on, but we really need to help the rest of the world if we can.

India needs help now. We’re the ones who can give the help.

As I write this, Rachel Maddow is discussing the Biden administration’s proposal to lift patents for the vaccine to facilitate generic manufacture and distribution in order to provide an already sectioned 16 billion dollars in global aid.

It’s really complex and certainly will be strenuously fought by the corporations involved as well as Republicans. And there’s more involved than the manufacturing process. But helping India, and other countries with no vaccines, is the right thing to do.

When did it become okay for America to turn away from rendering help to other countries? The answer begins with Donald Trump. A man of no conscience, devoid of anything remotely human. A man worshipped by the power mongers of the Beltway and the abominable ones who come in the name of God or Jesus.

When, or if, I cycle out of this extended period of deep depression, I hope I’ll feel how blessed I am. Yesterday I received my second COVID-19 vaccine. The odds that I will survive to level up just got better.

I hope I can feel gratitude for it. I hope that by my level-up day, I’ll have picked up some powerups for extra stamina like in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Or that I’ll stumble upon some treasure. And live long enough to use it to help people.

But…

But…

Life is not a video game.

And I’m an asshole.

And I’ll hurt you.

I’ll bring you down.

I will regret it later…

But then, it won’t matter.

What have I become?

Death Is A Cruel Transient

It goes where it will, never resting, never needing sustenance except for the one thing it does to those left behind. Life is taken by Death; it is the one true constant in our world. Grieving souls feed its cruel appetite.

It loves the pain and after it takes away from us, we never forget that our time too will come.

I’ve written about death here, and it always hurts me. There is no value in keeping pain to oneself; doing so makes everything worse.

Yet letting it out has often led me to question the value it holds as well. Does anyone read, do they hear the words of the grief-stricken people left behind? Do the wails and sobs fall to deaf ears?

The true story is always going to end in tragedy. If we admit to being mortal, that is. Fictional heroes that never die are written about all the time and always have been. Those mighty men of old who did pass on always seemed to do it on their own terms, with courage and honor.

Literature does what it is intended to do; it distracts, entertains and allows us the occasional dream.

And if it is true that cheating Death is a staple of yarns old and new, I must point out that the opposite is also true. Death cannot, in the end, be avoided after all. We have long loved the sad tale too, the last words spoken, the final kiss, the closing of the eyes forever. To deny this is to deny our humanity. We love the comedic and the noble tale, but a good tragedy, yes, we open our arms and beg for them.

I can’t remember the grade I was in. Fourth or Fifth. An announcement over the PA system before the school secretary announced bus numbers assigned everyone at Bodkin Elementary to watch a made for TV film that night. We weren’t to be given marks on it, but the principal wanted us to watch it.

I didn’t know what I was in for. Brian’s Song was about the last two seasons of NFL football played by Brian Piccolo of the Chicago Bears. It was about his unlikely friendship with Gale Sayers, his roommate, who was African American. It was about their closeness and Piccolo’s diagnosis of cancer, the useless treatment that followed, and his death.

Although the main actors, James Caan and Billy Dee Williams, looked nothing like Piccolo and Sayers, the screenplay was well written and the entire cast knew what they were doing. The music and the acting combined to form a tear-jerker I’ve never been able to forget. I’d seen screen deaths before, but I cried my eyes dry that night. The saddest part was that I didn’t cry at all when real death struck a couple of years later. My paternal grandfather passed in 1976 from cancer. I wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral but even if I had, I may not have cried very much. Oh, I loved him. It just felt remote and he’d lived two states away. I’ll bet I could count the number of times we had visits on my fingers.

Over the years, Death crept closer. My grandmother was a harsh loss. I had adored her. Then I got married and had two children. Neither one lived to celebrate their 30th birthday. Death comes as it will, for whom it will. Angels and doctors cannot stop that.

COVID has given so many of us that harsh lesson. Death still stalks the world armed with it; vaccines and masks help, but the weapon remains deadly. How many have had to say their final farewell to an intubated loved one by a video connection? The meanest deaths accompanied by a cruel lingering vision the survivors are inflicted with.

Recently I’ve been as many people have been, out of the loop, unaware that certain parts of life had resumed, missing things that I’m either happy to have missed or very disappointed that I did.

I used to be a dedicated fan of the crime procedural NCIS, but when COVID hit, everything shut down. I wasn’t aware of the show going back into production.

I was aware of the story arc in which Tobias Fornell’s daughter had gotten into street drugs. This season, Emily died of an overdose. NCIS has never shied away from death. The team investigates death almost every week. Cast members have had their characters killed off since the end of season two. Sasha Alexander was first. Kate’s death is still complained about to this day. Mike Franks was killed by the Port-to-Port killer at the end of season eight. His ghost showed up a lot and even grew a beard, but that’s okay; the show had already jumped the Shark so many times that few people even noticed. Recurring characters get the worst of it, though. Director Jenny Shepherd was killed offscreen, opening the door for Leon Vance. But the recurring cast, sometimes their exits hurt us the most. The death of Fornell’s daughter Emily was occasioned by serious viewer outrage. They cried foul and called it unnecessary. Mainly because we had sort of watched Emily grow up and partly because earlier this season, ME Jimmy Palmer lost his wife Breena to COVID. Everyone loved Breena, beautiful, sentimental and strong, and during the continuing epidemic, we question why she had to go that way.

I’m glad I missed those episodes, but I know I eventually will have to see them. When Emily is found dead, Gibbs finds out by getting a phone call.

That is exactly how I learned of my son’s overdose and death: a bloody phone call.

That day, February 14, 2018, and the day my daughter was removed from life support, July 5, 2012 are the absolute worst days of my miserable life. Death had come for them and left behind something I don’t like when I look into a mirror. Not that I ever really liked myself much anyway. But since 2018, the mirror shows me the worst of humanity: a failure at everything, the worst of all being a parent. I was supposed to go way before them. They should be here. They should be here!

What’s left? What are we supposed to do now that those whom you and I loved so much are gone?

I’m glad that tragedy is dealt with in our culture, whether in literature, film, television or documentary. Without the tears we shed for others and ourselves, we would never be able to see, to learn, to grow stronger, to pass on what we know. As a species, we cope with loss the same way even if different religions and cultures have their boundaries and rules. We cry, we ache inside, we scream to the heavens that it isn’t fair, it isn’t right, and we demand to know what is the point of it all if Death steals away with our own children.

Death is a cruel transient, stalking, ever stalking. Seeking the weak and strong alike, and it makes no difference how good or bad a person is, or how old they are.

As I’ve been mentioning, I’m doing an epic playthrough of an epic game on the PS4: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. It could be the greatest game ever made. I’m over 400 hours into it, which would make hardcore gamers laugh at me. Nobody takes that long to finish a game, right?

But the story is indeed epic and there are two DLCs to add to it. They’re worth it. I didn’t buy the game because I wanted it to be over in a few days. I knew it was deep and that I’d want to wring everything out of it that I could.

It deals at times with untimely death, which the ancient world knew better than we do. A child is killed early in the game, and it did get to me. There are definitely triggers in Odyssey, but right now my character is stuck in the Underworld, in Hades. It’s a horrible place, rendered so well that suggestion makes you catch yourself having trouble breathing, as if hot ashes were really getting into your lungs.

The worst thing is that you constantly hear babies crying. Not in hunger or pain; every parent learns that there’s a difference. And those can be soothed and the crying made to cease. These cries are of terror and torment. I could tell when my kids were babies if they cried out of fear. They might have had a bad dream. They may have been scared by sensing that they were alone. But you learn the sound, and hours of cuddling later, they’re fine. These cries get to me. They distract, they trigger memories, they fill me with hopeless pity. Who the hell recorded this?

I don’t believe babies get sent to Hades, or Hell. Never could I believe anything so cruel and unjust as that.

Death makes us all think about an afterlife whether we want to admit it or not. In the end it just leaves us with broken hearts. Pain enough to last until our time comes.

We can console and we can pity the survivors, and we always should.

Those I pity the most, however, are all those who refuse to or are incapable of love. They cannot feel the sting of a broken heart. The pangs of first love. The horror of their baby crying in the night but refusing the teat or bottle. To know something is wrong but to be helpless before that something.

It isn’t our intelligence that makes us human. Grief, fear, the emptiness of loss…those are proof that we have loved freely. That is what truly defines us.

Goodbye, Rich. What A Helluva Friend You Were.

Somehow, during the COVID-19 pandemic that’s taken over a hundred thousand lives, and in the midst of the storm caused by the murder of George Floyd, death hit home with me one more time this morning. And it hit hard.

In July I would have lived next door to him for six years. He was a slight man, always on the thin side but vital for a man older than me by at least a decade. He used to help the community association with replacing light bulbs on all the front porch lights and setting the timers. He cleaned up the pet waste bags and replaced them. He was always walking around, always.

There was a neighbor close by. She was confined to a wheelchair, and she was a big woman with MS who had once been a ballerina, proof that life can be so pitiless. She often fell while trying to get on the toilet or in and out of bed. She’d call Rich, who had a key. If he could not help, she already had medics on the way because her Life Alert or similar device could detect a fall. The guys from Tower 10 often came too, as it took a bit of muscle to lift her up. Sometimes she got hurt in the fall and the medics took her. But Rich helped her with a lot of things because he was just that way.

When I first moved in, I had no cellphone or cable. Nothing to do at all. But Rich would bring over his copy of The Washington Post once he was finished, and that really helped me feel connected to the world. Last year at Thanksgiving, he and his wife brought my housemate and me a plate. Rich was always thinking about others. He was a kind, generous and honorable man. He was a true friend.

About two years ago, he went into intense abdominal pain. He’d had it before and he thought he knew what it was. He visited his gastroenterologist, who detected a blockage in his bowel, just like the first time. Only this time surgery was necessary because the blockage was severe. During surgery as the doctor removed the blocked section of bowel, a growth was spotted. At first it appeared to be something that another procedure could fix. But for good measure a sample was taken for a biopsy.

The bad news came back: cancer. The growth was malignant, but the oncologist thought it could be handled with chemotherapy and surgery. We both had the same gastroenterologist and oncologist, something we took a bit of bonding over.

After a short recovery, he seemed back to his old self. Except for his treatment days. But it usually didn’t stop him from doing the things that occupied his time in retirement. I got used to the soft sound of his footsteps. If he was close enough I could tell him by his silhouette. His walk. The way his hands always faced palm to the rear. Even one foggy day, with my cataracts and retinopathy and, at the time, a hematoma, I knew that was him coming towards me. You can get to know someone very well just by recognizing the sound of their footsteps. You can even estimate parts of their demeanor and personality. It’s amazing what you learn when you depend on other senses when one is failing.

A year ago he was given more bad news. He spent the holidays going through radiation therapy and more rounds of chemo, and the most aggressive things the doctors could throw at him. He once told me, “I’m going to fight this thing.” But I’d heard those exact words from someone else. When Rich said it, I knew he had little time left. When his stepson told me the cancer had spread to the lymphatic system, I knew it wouldn’t be much longer. I stayed positive, asking Rich how he felt, and he’d say, “Not too bad today,” I would say, “That’s what I like to hear!”

I felt like a fucking heel. A liar. I hate dishonesty. I knew he was dying, but I put on some act like the asshole I am. I should have shut up and let him keep talking.

He never spoke much in the first place.

Following the holidays, I saw him doing the same chores, driving to the supermarket, and his energy seemed level enough, but he was dropping serious weight. Day to day it might not look so dramatic, but I saw it because I could identify him by his silhouette. The man was dying. Fast.

Three weeks ago I saw him walking around. Then his stepson told me Rich was in the hospital. He said it wasn’t looking good.

Suddenly, he came back home. His stepson told me that there was nothing else the doctors could do. I knew what that meant. I never saw him alive again.

A few days ago they got him a hospital bed. But his stepson told me that Rich hadn’t eaten for several days, couldn’t even open his mouth except far enough to take his pain medication and a sip of water. He had stopped talking, too.

At about 02:30 hours, today, in the dark of night and during a thunderstorm, or between storms, I can’t remember, Rich began to talk. He was talking to his mother and some other relatives. All of them had long since passed. They were coming to help him not be scared when it happened.

St 02:32 hours, he died. I told my friend, his stepson, how very sorry I was. Those seem such empty words. It’s all I had. I waited outside for a few hours waiting for the undertaker to arrive. It’s bad enough that I can’t imagine the world without him in it; I had to say goodbye. I was glad of only one thing. I’d once told him, “I love you guys.” He said, “We love you, too.” One of the few times in my life those very important words were not left unsaid.

When they brought the body bag outside to the stretcher, I was shocked. I could not believe a body was in there. It looked like a rolled up canvas sheet. I had to ask which end his head was on. They told me.

I said the last words I will ever say to him. He couldn’t hear. His mom had taken him to a place where he was free of pain. He was finally free…

I said, “Goodbye, Rich. What a helluva friend you were.”

Then I cried.

The Worst Anniversary

I lost my son two years ago on this day. It was Valentine’s Day, 2018. He died almost immediately after taking a single dose of a street drug.

Here is an excellent list of the deadliest drugs. You need to read it, because at one time or another, chances are, you’ve been on or used them. Most are prescription drugs or even over the counter drugs. Easily obtained, most of them legal. Number one will shock you. I was surprised that I’m on or use more than four of them yet have never been warned by a doctor or pharmacist of how they can interact with horrible results.

But my son didn’t die from any of these. It was fentanyl, an opiate much more powerful than morphine. If the dose is too high, as the street version almost always is, especially mixed with heroin, the result is depression of respiratory function, quickly followed by pulmonary shutdown. If not found and quickly treated by CPR and Narcan, the victim dies; biological death doesn’t take very long.

When my son was checked on by his mother, he was already blue and had vomited just before going fully unconscious. At the time he would not have been able to speak. No cry for help. Just a suffocating death.

If you have heard of fentanyl but don’t seem to anymore, there’s some parents in Ohio you might want to consider. This sad and horrific story should break your heart.

My heart is broken. Has been so many times I’ve lost count. You begin to wonder how much a heart can take. I’ve often wondered how I’ve taken so much and lived. The deaths of my children have left me with a mind that avoids thinking about what happens after death; where they are. After his first fentanyl overdose my son was changed. He talked of seeing his sister in Heaven, of running and playing on lush grass with a happy heart. Months later I got the call from his grandmother. The call I’d known was coming but dreaded. My boy was gone.

Fentanyl simply kills. Patches for pain relief are serious business. First responders to a street version overdose wear hazmat gear. They have to. A few grains of powdered fentanyl are as strong as half a bottle of morphine. Merely touching it is extremely dangerous.

Narcan is essential to have on hand when you live with an opiate addict. Unfortunately, the death toll from fentanyl goes on.

In an instance where a user is unresponsive, administer the Narcan. Start CPR if necessary. Call 911; there’s no time for Poison Control. It’s life or death. Mostly its death. You can never stop it all. Addicts lie. They tell you they’re clean. Ask for money for McDonald’s or a pack of cigarettes. Next thing you know you’re standing beside a coffin in a fucking cemetery.

I can’t advise you. I’m sorry. All I can do is grieve with you.

John Frederick Thanos

It was April. The fifth, to be exact. At the Eastern Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in Westover, Maryland, the system failed and an inmate was out-processed eighteen months earlier than he should have been.

Now of course, these things happen. I can’t say how often; usually we read about a prisoner sentenced to eighteen months, yet still inside after twenty years. Prisoners released too early, however, as in the case of John Frederick Thanos, can bring trouble to the outside. In short order, the world would know that lesson all too well. John Patrick O’Donnell, clerk for the prison records, for whatever reason he had, asked his boss, Chief of Classification for the Maryland Department of Corrections, Warren R. Sparrow, about releasing prisoner John Thanos. And just like that, two men became, through sheer carelessness, responsible for turning a monster loose on the State of Maryland. He got a handgun.

You know where this is going.

It turned out that the man had some violent tendencies, so before I go any further, it has to be asked why a rapist served time at a medium-security prison at all. Rapists are treated far too lightly in Western culture, particularly in the United States. Youve heard the stories — convicted rapists sentenced to two years. Or six months, causing public outcry, and on an occasion or two, putting judges off the bench. On rare occasions, even being disbarred. Recently a judge and several politicians — Republicans — advised women to “keep their legs closed” and other vile things. The question must be answered, why this is so? Why the hell is it possible to send a rapist to light time at a prison not having maximum security? Why is America a rape culture?

And John Thanos was born to evil. It isn’t clear, decades later, what his psychological evaluation consisted of. His mother and sister would later maintain that he was so disturbed that he was incompetent to stand trial. That was immediately cast out as a defense because he was pronounced otherwise, although not without serious mental illnesses, one being borderline personality disorder. And people with that kind of learned behavior and mindset are very often highly dangerous. He had been severely abused by his father, who started out parenting by cutting the heads off animals or breaking their necks for fun in front of the little boy.

He was psychologically abused and sexually abused. His world must have been Hell on Earth. He was in trouble almost from the beginning. And the abuse, cited by his attorneys during trial, seemed to trigger him. He called them names and threw other verbal abuse at them. He was then treated as a “hostile defendant”, a term one does not hear every day. In fact, he was hostile to reporters who asked him questions from the other side of a chain-link fence as he was led from a transport vehicle to the back entrance of the courthouse. He said shocking, weird and crazy things, taunted reporters, and videotape, if I could find it, would truly disturb anyone who sees it for the first time. Thanos even taunted the judge and at one point even stated that he wanted to repeat the crimes. And those crimes…still haunt me.

Somewhere in Baltimore County, on dates I can’t pin down, he shot three people: Billy Winebrenner, Gregory Allen Taylor, and Melody Pistorio, who was only 14. Two killings took place together. Melody was working at or visiting a convenience store. Her parents later sued the DOC for prematurely releasing Thanos. Warren Sparrow got demoted.

By 1992, John Frederick Thanos was convicted and sentenced to Death by Lethal Injection. The first inmate in Maryland to be executed by that method; and the first prisoner executed since the death penalty had been reinstated. But that wasn’t exactly the whole story.

At the sentencing hearing, he rejected all efforts by his family to have his life spared. He said, “I’ve been convicted and I accept it.” And he had this to say when he had the opportunity to make a statement. “I don’t believe I could satisfy my thirst yet in this matter unless I was to be able to dig these brats’ bones up out of their graves right now and beat them into powder and urinate on them and then stir it into a murky yellowish elixir and serve it up to those loved ones,” he said, indicating the families of the victims. Those words will never die. The records all contain them, from sources such as The Washington Post clean across the Atlantic Ocean. Two years would pass. And John Frederick Thanos was put to death. I had mixed feelings about capital punishment before that case. But I thought, regarding a man who graduated from rape to shooting kids in the head — he literally walked up to them, icy cool, and raised the pistol and pulled the trigger — that the death warrant issued from the bench was fully justified. But for me, it never ended there. I never forgot him. And as it happened, later in the same month that Thanos was released from ECI, the prison gained a new inmate — my father.

If you know my story, you know this has to be awful for me. For a long time, I’ve thought ECI was a max prison. I would have thought he would be sent to Jessup, but no. If you don’t know my story, look at my archive. Then you’ll know. Because I remember John Frederick Thanos. And I know, under different circumstances….

There, but for the grace of God, was I.