A Nice Cup of Tea

Sometimes the best medicine is just a nice cup of Earl Grey

TEA TIME

I’ve had an off-kilter, wonky kind of day. Oh, I managed to get my laundry done and folded, and put away. But little else.

That last bit is usually a tall order. By the end of the folding process, this old man is ready to cry with the back pain.

Somehow I did it. Throw me a parade! Name a holiday after me! Or better yet, give me some money.

Waking up after a nap that made the timing perfect for missing a walk to the store for coffee and milk made tea this night’s drink. It is for the best.

It’s fine. Gives me some alone time with Earl and that’s not a thing to take lightly. But please, come in, have a cuppa, and let us talk.

Americans, that is to say, here in the United States, we never fail to undervalue tea, its healing powers, its seductive flavor and the inner warmth it gives, ensuring that you must have one more cup.

Being a child of English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Swedish and Danish ancestry, I suspect it runs in my blood: coffee and cold soft drinks are fine, good Scotch or Irish whiskey being a nice treat on the blue moon or something like that, but tea is the one thing we all have in common. Perhaps we agree on little else, but every region has a tea of preference or one which it can grow.

I do not favor green tea, Darjeeling, or Ceylon tea, but any will do in a pinch. Herbal teas are another matter.

I have a pot with a nice infuser. After adding 4 teaspoons of leaf tea (because tea dust is what’s swept up from the floor and put into tea bags which won’t complement the flavor), I add water from the kettle, put the tea towel over it and let it steep for five minutes. And Earl Grey is ready to enjoy. When hurting, or feeling a bit pensive, it’s best enjoyed in solitude. But sharing it with a friend is very easy to do and the conversation should be interesting. That’s why you’re here. Welcome!

It’s a horror to add milk to tea, but of them all, this is the worst choice for milk and sugar. A drop of lemon, and a half teaspoon of sugar is as far as I’ll go. Most of the time, Earl Grey needs no additive, but it’s your cup of tea, do what you like best. Because life is too short not to.

It’s also fun to try new things, and trust me, Lipton tea isn’t one of them. I favor two brands of leaf tea: Taylors of Harrogate and Twinings. Tea is the one thing the English always got right, and Yanks screwed up. The British seem to feel that all we do with tea is throw it into harbors. But at least they think we uncrate it first, thus giving striped bass a caffeine high.

I briefly mentioned King Henry VIII in a recent post. What a turd he was, yes? To avoid scandalous relationships, he broke with the Catholic Church and created what became protestant churches of England. He had no idea what he was doing with and to religion, and he knew less of women, and cared even less. What a dick.

But the English are still a fine, proud people. That Royal thing though, is that really necessary? It seems that all they ever to is engage in drama and in-family subterfuge, and mentioning Diana’s name gets you scowled at depending how you use it. Call her out as a whore, or praise her; one will get you your ass whipped and the other might get you a drink at the pub. Hope you like warm ale, good luck and cheery-o.

I’m serious. It’s a very divisive subject and if I found any link at all to British royalty in my family tree, I’d keep my mouth shut about it. I’d rather find the Lestranges in there. Finding Bellatrix would be more reason to brag than any royal.

I’m not taking shots here. Any country you hail from is home, always will be, and it’s in your blood. Take pride from that.

But that doesn’t mean much to other people. If you tell someone a Duke of Avondale was a great great great….cousin, you’re going to get a blank stare in return. I’m sorry, but that’s life.

And as I’ve said, life is short. Let’s enjoy what little we can, shall we?

THE CHRISTMAS CURSE

At this time of year, like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, I’m doomed to tell anyone who will pay heed about how short life really is.

We always have a way of thinking, that could never happen to me, but this is folly. Because yes, it can. And if it does, you’ll be really fucked-up for the rest of your life.

On Christmas Eve, 1994, I was preparing to spend my first Christmas away from my family. My wife kicked me out that spring and I couldn’t find any work except for delivering pizza. It isn’t glamorous in the least. It’s humiliating. You get to see people you hope will never order a pizza pie again. Once I was invited in where adults were all wearing underwear. Long underwear.

I don’t know how, or why, but this was creepy to the point where even the guy on Elton Street who answered the door in his robe would seem normal afterward. They gave me the flying shits, and I stood in the doorway, on the stoop, and even if they’d aimed a cannon at me, I was not going in there. I don’t even know what I was seeing. It was like something out of the movie Deliverance where the guy looks through a door and sees an old woman knitting beside an obvious, horrid example of inbred offspring. There was something I could feel, something unnatural, evil and hungry. The hungry part scared me the most. Fuck you, I’m not coming one step inside your sleazy abode.

On Christmas Eve we closed early, about sunset or a little after. I waited around for a while. Killing time, because I had an eye infection in one eye. It kept crusting over with white like the Pillsbury dough boy had swept in and taken a shit on my eye. I needed it treated. Having no doctor, I’d go to the hospital and I figured around 23:00 was good, because what hospital is crowded at that time on the night before Christmas?

I figured wrong. The waiting room was full, standing room only. I checked in and was advised it might take some time. On this frigid night, the darkness seemed peculiar for the parking lot of a major hospital’s ER.

I went further into the darkness to smoke, wary of security seeing me. I lit a cigarette and jumped a mile when a voice, soft, friendly, timid, asked for a light.

Even in darkness, he was darker. His face seemed highlighted by age, the ravages of a hard life and battles. Lots of them.

He lit his smoke. What a tragic man he was. In Baltimore, the streets were cruel even then. That they’re more so now puts me in a bad place.

He was trying to get committed. Back then, as now, it’s not so easy. He told me how he’d had a good job, a wife and children.

Two cars, a house and a boat. Everything a guy could want.

Until one say when his wife and children were killed in a traffic accident. He went in the bottle, and who can judge him? I never did. From there it must have gone quickly. He lost the boat. Then the job. Then the remaining car and finally the house. He had nowhere to go. He attacked when they tried to evict him. “Been in the bottle ever since,” he said. His voice held a sad quality until he said, “I just want my kids back.”

That line is always audible in my memory. It was so bleak, so full of despair that I wanted to hug him, but back then, it wasn’t done. Such a backward, hung up society, the United States.

What he said taught me a lesson. A big one, and since I had no money for gifts I had not planned on visiting my children for Christmas. Showing up empty-handed would hurt them and kill me inside. But my lesson had been delivered and I never forgot it. My daughter said on the phone next morning, “It’s okay, daddy, your gift can be that you love us.” And I went, and we had a nice visit. And I truly wish the story ended there. But happy endings are for fairy tales and massage parlors only. It turned out that my lesson was prophetic. My children are dead.

Yes, and my daughter left three children behind. She drowned on 4 July, 2012. My son and I grieved, but he was unable to shake his grief, or the burden put on him by his step-father that Elizabeth should have lived and he should have died. His step-father did a lot of damage and for years I wanted to kill him. He does not know to this day how many times he was close to death.

Christmas should be thought of as the time when people are kind, giving, sharing, and, if you are a Christian, of birth.

It is not like that for me. Nor will it ever be again. I think of heartbreak and death.

Christmas Day, 2017 was the last time I saw my son. He had taken something laced with fentanyl twice and both times ceased breathing, both times winding up in the CCU. The second time, I knew I was going to lose him. He felt a deep hunger for the drug. Since it basically killed him twice, I couldn’t understand what he’d gotten out of it. The doctor told him his liver and kidney functions were off. He either knew what that meant or didn’t. It does not matter. By Valentine’s Day 2018, he took his last dose of street Fenny and went off to meet his maker, taking whatever Elizabeth had left of my heart behind with him. My heart is an open wound. I’ve never fully allowed myself to grieve, because crying sucks. It fills my sinuses and gives me a headache. And always, always, there’s more and I’m not going to have more. I’m sick of it. I bear my burden the best I can. But I often tell others about it. I warn them that the pain of loss never ends.

But only once a year do I pass on the story of that poor, broken man who taught me a great lesson, giving me — giving us three — many years of love, adventure and memories together.

I cannot pass on this curse. It is mine to bear. To tell of a man whose battered soul got through my selfish and bitter, vain self and taught me to hold my family close.

What I am offering you is a simple warning. As your friend, because we’ve had tea together.

You must keep your loved ones safe. Give them the things they need. Show your love always, never being afraid of “wearing your heart on your sleeve”, because those who criticize you for it will never understand. Pity them. Pass on what you have learned here. Take nothing for granted. Because life isn’t fair, it harbors Death, a predator always on the prowl.

And know that no matter who you are or where you are, you are always welcome here for a nice cup of tea and a good chat. Remember: we are friends.

The Crime of the Ancient Asshole

Like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, doomed to tell of his thoughtless crime until he died, so here am I; skipping a year only made everything worse.

And, like the wedding guest in his epic poem “The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner” (It is an ancient Mariner, and he stoppeth one of three), I now stop you, dear reader, and grasp you by your arm. You are trapped, bound by fate to read my true story of Christmas, tragedy and loss, and of warnings concerning things not yet come, but which surely will. Sit back, and give me your attention.

It was Christmas Eve, 1994. I was recently separated from my wife, forced out of home, away from my children, Beth, age eleven, and Michael Jr., age seven. It was hard on them as well as myself; we were so close. I packed their lunches, took them to school, picked them up, made snacks and ran and played outside, I helped with homework, and read stories at bed time. You can’t be closer than that. And when you get pulled apart, there’s no pain like it. At least that’s what I thought.

How wrong I was would become clear.

That year, that first year, I did not want to see them for Christmas. I had no money for gifts, not anything at all to even resemble a gift. And so, after years of lighting up Christmas morning with toys, this year I wasn’t going to feel much like a daddy, and certainly not a man. It was cold that night and for some reason, darker than any night I had ever seen in desert or mountains. It could have been my perception, probably was, but my heart was equally dark. Black, lacking any of the sentiment or cheer I had felt when I was with them. I was not going to visit them.

I had an infection in my left eye. I would awake every morning, a Krispy Kreme glaze of white over my eye and eyelid, I’d steam it away, and have to repeat cleaning it several times in a day. I planned to go to the hospital, so after work at Papa John’s, I killed time so that I would get there very late and there wouldn’t be too many people in the Emergency Department waiting room.

Having Christmas tips, (enough that I indulged in a Wendy’s Triple for dinner), a friend told me about how my plan for avoiding my kids on Christmas sucked. He was young when his parents divorced, and he would visit his dad every Christmas. He said, “I didn’t care what he gave me, or if we sat and just watched TV. I just wanted to be with my dad”. That was the first lesson I would get that night.

I arrived at John’s Hopkins Bayview Hospital at eleven or a bit after. The waiting room was stuffed with sick people and, worse, many were children. I felt guilty as I signed in. Told that it would take time to be seen, I went outside to smoke. It was dark there in the parking lot, and this time not merely by my soulless perception. I lit a Winston and a soft but pathetic voice behind me made me jump: “Got a light?”

I could only barely see him, there in the dark. He lit the Bic I handed him, and in its glow, I saw something I have never forgotten: a black man, black as coal, the face being lined and aged as that of one who has been to Hell and only halfway come back. Part of him was still there. I was filled with pity. My fear of him was gone. Here was a man I wanted immediately to hug. I often wish that I had.

“I’m here trying to get committed,” he said, and the sadness poured from every word. Like the Mariner’s wedding guest, I would hear his story; I was helpless to do otherwise.

“I’ve been — I lost my family. I lost everything. I had a wife, two kids, great job, house, two cars, even a boat. One day…”

One day his wife and children were killed in a car accident. Three lives were ended so suddenly that no human on this planet could ever tell him again that God is real, that it was fate, or that any reason under the sun had a part or explanation in or for such a horror.

“I went into the bottle after that,” he said, “and I never came out. I lost my job. Then my boat. Then my car. When the sheriff came to get me out of the house, I swung on him.”

He had lived on the cruel and merciless streets of Baltimore ever since. And aged grievously. Here was a man so beaten down by tragedy that he was not living, but merely surviving. He was so tragic to me that I felt tears in my eyes. A security guard came out and yelled at him to get inside. He was supposed to be on suicide guard, and the guard had let him slip away. And was castigating him for it. Before he turned to leave me, he said the saddest thing of all: “I just want my kids back.”

Well. I never saw him again. Next morning, I called my ex. I said I had nothing to give the kids. I didn’t feel right visiting. She put my daughter on the line. Beth was far wiser and kinder than anyone I’ve ever met. She said, “It’s okay, daddy. Your gift can be that you love us.”

She melted my heart. Standing at a public payphone, I silently wept. And I remembered the two lessons given me the night before.

And so I crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, went to visit, and we did lots of hugs and talking and I never again looked back, except Christmas time, when I honored my teachers: a friend who taught me that no gift is equal to a father’s love for his children, nor is their love for him, and one very broken man who pulled his heart out and let me see the ghosts of Christmas Future.

I skipped this story last year, but this year I realized that I never told it for myself.

Because it does no good to me. I learned the lessons and I acted on them.

But that’s not the point of the story. Like the Ancient Mariner, I am bound by honor and fate to retell this shamefully selfish plan I had in 1994. The man whose face was blacker than a New Mexico night taught me about boundless love, unbearable loss, and how he just wished he could have another chance, how he wished his children could have another chance. I could not feel his grief, but he did make me feel guilt.

The story I tell is now identical to his. Although many Christmases and birthdays would pass after 1994, and we made great memories and and went on epic adventures, the times came for me to lose them both. And that is why I’m writing this.

I want you to think about this: you never know how much time you have with any loved one, be they family or friend, and now, especially now in these busy, frightening times, you should always put them first and spend every second you can with them. Because tomorrow, they may not be here anymore, nor ever again to pass our way. You will be heartbroken. Feel guilty. You will cry endlessly. And the holidays. Oh, the holidays! They bring a special pain, one you cannot escape. No amount of alcohol and no drug can deaden it. Can’t even moderate it. Substances merely make everything worse.

You may find yourself even hating this time of year, full of bitterness and unable to see any good in the world.

Beth died in 2012, Michael Junior in 2018. The last time I saw him was Christmas Day 2017. I spent years never being able to control my anger, my grief, my bitterness. When my son died, we had mourned Beth together. When he died, I was dropped into bewildered despair. I went crazy and I went to Hell. I started this blog afterward and tried to give an accounting of myself because I hated myself and I secretly wanted everyone else to hate me, too. I wrote terrible things. What I wrote was always true and as faithful to memory as I trusted them to be.

Now, after trying to reconcile with other family members, and in so doing help them to see that the hurtful things I said after Junior’s death were uttered or written by a man no longer sane, I’ve regained what little bit of honor I had before my children died. An apology when forced is difficult to utter; but one truly meant chokes up the throat and releases tears of guilt you never should have retained at all.

Yes, mental illness does play a part in this tragedy, but so do other things.

Things like remorse, pain, loneliness and emptiness. Regret. Guilt. Ever looking backwards, living the past again and again and again, a prisoner in my own mind.

But it does not do to trap yourself so, holding yourself hostage for terrible things for terrible reasons. You cannot live; you’re merely surviving.

It is far better to live as best you can, and, like I, finally climb a peak where the air is fresh, vision ahead is clear, and to my back there is only the best of what I left behind. The climb stripped me of regret, remorse and guilt. I am not on the highest mountain, but neither am I still in Hell.

I prefer to remember a time when I was younger, and I ran with my children under gray skies and blue, laughing every step of the way. We were so free.

Now, I have faith that they live in Heaven.

Still…this time of year…I do miss them.

And so, my story. And my fated mission. I hold it to be an honorable one: I never told it for me.

Dear friend, I tell it for you.

Every day, tell those you love how you feel. Hug and kiss them when they’re with you. Resist argument and bring the subject up: what if you didn’t have each other? There’s no time for fighting. No tomorrow. Nothing to take for granted. Remember that.

I release you, friend. Go in peace share this post, tell others how loss truly feels. Especially with things left unsaid. Life is like that. It knows how to be cruel.

May the season bring you joy, and a bit of peace. God bless; be well.

The Man Who Saw Yesterday

I was told about a man. He lives in the Bronx and his name is Charles. I’ve been told good things but have never met him. He can read a photograph. He is a medium, quite gifted.

I sent Maggie a picture, a selfiie. She gave it to him and he spent hours looking at it. Here’s what he told her:

I see a man who has been through a lot of suffering, pain, loss. He’s got a good, strong heart. He loves to help people. But he’s been very hurt. I see abuse, sexual abuse, his father, possibly his mother, but his father was an absolute demon in his life. He’s lost people too. I see three children and other, very strong people around him. He lost his children. I see two but there’s another I can’t see clearly. There are others, too, all around him, strong people helping him, trying to get him to do better, to stay strong.

He was never told anything about me, and he nailed me. I didn’t have 3 children, though. Except, I did. I can’t talk about it, nor do I ever want to again, but I did mention it once a couple of years ago. See my archives if you want to. I don’t remember the post, so stop along the way and read anything you might like. It’s my life, an open book, free for you. I never get a cent from any ads you see here, nor do I take donations. I just write.

Charles saw my kids behind me. He said they are at peace. They want to protect me. I want to believe it; I worry still if they’ve been given forgiveness by God. Sometimes I pray, “Lord, they suffered enough. Please have mercy on their souls, and if you must condemn anyone, let it be me. I failed them.”

You can only feel loss when you love someone more than yourself. Well, I feel loss. If they watch over me, they might really be in Heaven. They’re at peace.

Charles saw this. He saw ny pain, but strength that impressed him. He was struck by that.

He asked for another picture with my eyes open wider which hurts, but I did it. I’ll keep you posted.

I want to point out one thing. Christians sometimes see psychics as evil. They’re just people, with a very misunderstood talent. There’s always good and bad, and some act out of evil. Some psychics are outright fakes. Chip Coffey comes to mind along with Elizabeth Warren. Con artists.

But plenty of Godly people have talent, and use it for good. I’ve learned that lumping everyone in a group or race is definitely evil. Anything I’ve learned is constantly torn down by truth.

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” –Socrates

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)

I Hate Myself And Want To Die

Warning: This Post Deals With Suicide. If You or Someone You Know Is Suicidal, click here . Help Is Available 24 Hours A Day.

Another day, wasted. I did nothing. I could not cook. Couldn’t take a shower. Don’t remember the last time I was out. Had to ask a friend for cigarettes. It’s bad, really bad.

This is in fact worse than I felt the last time I overdosed in the effort to leave this shitty world behind.

It is 03:15 on the East coast. I slept maybe two hours.

I’ve had a couple of Marlboros but they didn’t help. I’m just starting on a cup of Colombian coffee but it is denying me the rush of brief euphoria from caffeine.

My left hand trembles, making it difficult to type. It does that a lot lately. More all the time. This time I seem able to work with it but usually it renders my left hand useless.

My back has a slipped or herniated disc. It fucking hurts and I’ve yet to get the X-rays. Worse, 43 years of lighting up has caught up with me. I’m out of breath after doing simple tasks. How stupid am I. A true asshole.

Everything done to me haunts me. If you can’t get that, good for you, you’re blessed. Be thankful.

I can’t get anything from the past outta my fucking head. It’s all there, every day. In my dreams I’m tormented. There is no comfort in anything these days. Shit like cigarettes and coffee are all that sustain me on some days. I can’t do jack shit.

Sometimes I’m amazed that I’ve managed to get up and piss in the proper place.

My heart is broken, has broken so many times that I wonder how much one man can take.

I miss my children so much. I would give anything just to have been able to say goodbye. If they had to go, why couldn’t I have just had a minute or two to tell them how much I loved them, how empty I’d feel when they left, and how sorry I truly was to have failed them so many times?

Because that’s not fair.

I take no comfort in my belief in God. I can’t pray. I can’t do anything but cry, write about my miserable life and smoke the cigarettes that nearly killed me over a decade ago and will finish the job soon enough. What the hell have I become?

Cry, you loser, you asshole. Every good thing you have had you fucked up. Every job you had, you failed. Go ahead. Cry like a baby, loser. You’ve been cursed by God or the Devil and you never had a destiny that was better than this. You were born to suffer. Go ahead, end it, you chickenshit. You aren’t like a real man. They all laugh at you. Everyone does. You’re a joke to them. Do it. Kill yourself and be done with it.

I hear myself say these words on nights like this. And I’m tempted. No one will find the body. I’ll be reported missing. Nobody will care. They’ll forget. I’m not worth remembering. I left Facebook. I’ll bet money everyone’s already forgotten me. I was never anything to them anyway.

I miss talking to my friend. We used to talk a lot on the phone. It got to where I was too sick to do it. Always so fucking miserable. I could barely hear her in the end. My mind was too broken. I was all pain. I would have brought her down at a time when she needed to be strong for her kids.

If this post is bringing you down, don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt myself. God cursed me with a hidden will to survive. Besides, I can’t avoid whatsoever is coming to me. I feel it creeping toward me.

Fear not; there are still stories to tell, and like the Ancient Mariner, I’m doomed to tell them. The bad…and the good, when I can remember good. Tonight, I can’t remember good.

I long for peace. For rest. God promised to wipe away my tears. I have to believe that; if I didn’t I would not still be here.

God, are you seeing this? I believe you. If suffering is your will for me, I’ve had enough. But I guess I can hang a little longer. You know my pain. Can’t you help me just a little?

The Icons Of America: Farewell To Helen Reddy (1941-2020)

Warning: this post contains triggers and graphic content that some will find disturbing. Please read carefully and feel free to stop any time.

I grew up with heroes, favorite celebrities and popular culture icons. Like you, I had my own favourites, and, like you, my own secret ones, the ones I couldn’t talk to anyone about.

I could talk about General George Patton. When the film came out, I had a lifelong hero and an interest in history.

George S. Patton was a true soldier, leader and a strict adherent to discipline and lots of cussing. He did not like his voice. His way of compensating was to swear his goddamn ass off. It worked. He was all but worshipped by his men, some of whom hated him but yet respected him above all leaders in World War Two. What happened during the battle of the Ardennes is the stuff of legend, but it is all true. Patton really did attack with three divisions after a forced march, adding critical pressure on the Germans. He really did order a chaplain to write a prayer for the weather to clear so fighter and reconnaissance aircraft could fly, and the prayer was passed out to the troops who followed orders and read it aloud. And yes, the fighters were up and flying in short order. The battle is still the single biggest and costliest ever fought by the United States of America and when it was over, the march to the Rhine was on while Soviet troops were attacking from the east. George Patton really did fulfill a promise to “piss in the Rhine” and cameras recorded the victorious show of superiority. He secretly admired the tenacity of the fighting men of Nazi Germany but couldn’t say it. He did say that they were fanatics.

Patton survived the war and died in the hospital after a traffic accident some say was suspicious. The man who believed he’d lived past lives was just gone after outliving his one true reason for being. Has he ever returned?

I don’t think much about reincarnation, but I can’t explain a little girl sitting at play while her parents watched a 15th anniversary special on the September 11th attacks, who looked up at the TV and said, “I died that day”, or why she later reacted to a video on the same subject by saying, “I don’t want to see this.”

And I can’t explain a little boy who watched the same thing with his parents and said he was there that day, he was a firefighter who tried to help people but was buried when the towers fell and that he was still buried beneath Ground Zero. Nor, more importantly, can I explain how that same boy, at about 6-years-old, was taken to a firehouse by his parents and was able to identify every single piece of equipment and in which compartments a fire engine carried them.

Perhaps George Patton will ride again. Who can say?

I have had lots of heroes. Tonight, we mourn the loss of Australian-American singer and actor Helen Reddy, who was born before Halloween of 1941, before Pearl Harbor. Before both countries she would claim were at war. To me, a guy growing up at a time when women were supposed to have dinner on the table at five or six and were also expected to be pregnant nine months out of every year, a time when men ruled America, Helen’s music and her fight for equality was unsettling. On the one hand it all made me insecure. Boys were just raised that way. But then again, I found her beautiful and sexy, alluring in ways I could not understand or shake. She made the braless formal evening gown look good. Acceptable, and a demonstration of feminine power and empowerment, and it was actually a thing back in ’71 and ’72, which to be honest was just one small step in our long fight for equality, a fight that isn’t even close to being over.

Helen sang wonderfully and was part of our history, and not only in the music world. Around the time she sang and charted Delta Dawn and Leave Me Alone, a cretin named Bobby Riggs either challenged or accepted a challenge from Billie Jean King. It was a tennis match billed as “The Battle of the Sexes” and Bobby Riggs lost it. You have no idea how hostile men were to both of them. They had to hear shit from wives and daughters for months. Girls had posters on their walls of King that said “Billie Jean Power” or something to that effect. That’s exactly what I heard from Laurie Lawrence as I walked ahead of her from the bus stop. God I hated her. She used to call me “Bambi” and yelling past me to a girl up the street was meant to insult me.

But it did not insult me at all, and I thought the attempt was kind of neat. Laurie was always reminding me of a goddamn Gemini, but after that, I really liked her. I took her insults as compliments. Whether she hated me, I can’t say. But she paid attention to me. Not a lot of people did. As for Helen Reddy, I couldn’t tell my buds I loved her.

I couldn’t say a lot of things. Like Gloria Steinem was not just beautiful but strong, and damned smart. I couldn’t say that women were generally smarter than men, which was what I had come to believe with the help of Robert Palmer.

Raised to be a racist and sexist, the abuse naturally made me question the righteousness of it all, and I found nothing righteous in any of it. The more I learned, the more I secretly loved people of color like singers and actors. I wasn’t–it wasn’t–typical in our house to have the TV tuned to Sanford and Son or Flip Wilson, who was genuinely funny, and whose time slot was taken over by, coincidentally, the Helen Reddy show.

My feelings caused confusion and conflict in me. But I was still young. Unable to work things out.

My father liked watching the title fights with Muhammad Ali. Why, I don’t know. In 1968, his racist phobia prompted him to clean and oil his piece of shit .22 revolver and declare that if any n***** stepped foot on his lawn, he would shoot the son of a bitch. The ’68 Baltimore riot never spilled into the suburbs. His fear was irrational based on his ignorance of the situation and my mother’s experience when he sent her into the city. I was with her and she told me to get down on the floorboard when some people shoved crates in front of the car to stop her. It scared her, but hearing abot it scared him more. He was irrational and hysterical. So naturally, I was too.

There was only one black girl in our school. We all gave her more than her share of hatred. I layed off but wasn’t above a cruel word or two. Years went by. Same girl pops out at me. I’m reading a local newspaper and her name is right there in one of the most graphic and terrible articles I’ve ever read. The following is disturbing.

She was babysitting. The baby would not stop crying. She prepared a bath for it. The water caused first degree burns. She sought to hide the burns with fingernail polish. The baby still cried. So she began putting out cigarettes on it. Realizing that those burns showed more than the scalding burns; more fingernail polish covered them, and the baby was rushed to the hospital as soon as her mother came home. But the baby would not survive and the sitter went to prison.

I thought back to second grade, on through sixth grade, and I knew that the hatred and abuse had taken a terrible, horrifying toll on the girl. I have never been able to forgive myself. Maybe, my quietness and gentle nature made the things I said more hurtful than those of the other kids who tormented her no end. That happens, you know? Hurtful things said by the people you’d least expect them from, they wound far more deeply than do those said by the ones you know to be assholes.

But I felt bad about long before I read that article. I always did, right after I had said them. It just wasn’t me. I was damaged and an asshole, but I couldn’t bear being a monster. Truth is, I never forgot her. She was on my conscience. Later I learned how much the words I’d said had mattered.

So black lives matter to me. Words matter. Black leaders are critical and always were. Always will be, because racism won’t go away. And that’s the ugly truth.

And those leaders are heroes, a blessing, and a treasure. Just this evening Trump refused to denounce white supremacists. This is the second election he’s failed to do that, and this time what he said was to call for them to get ready. That one moment did more damage than he’s capable of knowing. In the end, no matter how the election turns out, a monster such as he will reap the whirlwind. His entire family will as well.

The Years Go By So Fast

Over the years, I had lots of other people I admired. Vietnam veterans who came home scary as all hell. I began to learn what they had been through. My god, the evening news could not even touch what they endured. I asked questions. Some found me easy to talk to. I missed that war; to this day I feel guilty about it. To this day I wish I had been there, yet feel blessed that I was not.

Soldiers and marines and others were heroes to me. Still are. I met a man who was at Con Thien and whereas some rare sources do indicate that on patrols, an extensive network of bunkers and tunnels were found, all of them presumably NVA because the Vietcong were thought to be further south at the time, nothing is ever said about anything done to deal with the network. Well, the marine I met told me they brought in water trucks and attempted to flood the tunnels. He claimed that when it was over, the tunnel rats dragged a thousand bodies out.

An extraordinary claim, perhaps. But I’m inclined to believe it. The men and women who served in Vietnam never got their due. In fact we have never treated our veterans with anything near the respect or given them the help they have earned. Barack Obama’s another hero of mine. He used to meet the planes coming in bearing the bodies of our fallen. He saw it as a duty and a responsibility. He often made notable efforts to right the wrongs done to veterans and was most proud of decorating veterans with medals in touching ceremonies. After Sandy Hook, he flew up to the town with no press, no fanfare. He was there all night meeting separately with parents and the siblings of the victims. He was determined that, as president, it was his job to help, to offer support, to give heartfelt hugs, to help in any way he could. You won’t get that from Donald Trump, who allowed a non-response to the shocking news that Russia had put a bounty on American soldiers in Afghanistan and that killings had been done and money paid. Obama would have Putin too pissy-ass scared to do that. He loved our country and its soldiers, and those who didn’t listen to the lies about him loved him back.

Who we call heroes can tell a lot about us. I always loved our Apollo astronauts. In July 1969, wow. I consider that time a proud and exciting moment in history and despise the conspiracy theories that Stanley Kubric filmed it on a soundstage.

I loved the Beatles, the Stones, Melanie, Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas, Peter, Paul and Mary, but anyone who could move me with music I was always going to love. One hit wonders to Three Dog Night to McCartney and Wings to the Carpenters, I don’t care. I’ll always love them. During terrible times, music has given us salve for our wounds and allowed us to grieve, to dream, to spend a few minutes in our own cocoon to heal, escape.

As I grew older I found I had fewer heroes. Fewer people to idolize or even to love. I became bitter, stopped listening to music, lost interest in movies and went dark. I hated and was hated. I wounded and was wounded. I withdrew and people didn’t mind. I don’t know how long that was.

I met Jane, her mother Margaret and Pelauria, Kate, Lisa and so many other great women on MySpace in 2008. They changed me. I gained an interest in and an understanding of politics that have made me more open to learning and to the feelings and the plight of other people. Overcoming terrible losses and horrific ordeals, these extraordinary women taught me lessons in life, are still teaching me. They are my heroes.

They have also reinforced one thing I already knew. That the human spirit is resistant, resilient and indomitable. That the beauty of one’s soul can shine through anything. That trauma can be lived with and however difficult, can be a source of great strength, of growing wiser and accepting that life is a gift, but never very fair. That to live with one’s demons and to accept that death is inevitable is to truly become free. To begin to really live.

That kind of freedom doesn’t come cheap. You pay for it in blood and heartbreak. You have to learn to let go of the fear of being hurt, and love freely. Life means nothing without love. It’s empty and sad. It’s not really life at all.

On social media I’ve unfriended or blocked lots of people. Some because they were unreasonable. Some because I misunderstood some comment that was really a reflex to my fear of being hurt. I therefore am not, never have been and never will be a hero. I’m not particularly bothered by that; I accept it. I have regrets but not being a man of note isn’t one of them. At age 60, I’ll settle for just being a man. A survivor who has been saved from death dozens of times by something I can’t explain unless I include God.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a hero. A woman who could be a role model for anyone. We lost her this month. Growing old isn’t fun for me. My heroes are leaving us. People who shaped the nation which Donald Trump hates so much are all people we could not afford to lose. Without them, we lose part of ourselves. RBG, as she was affectionately called, leaves us all a bit sadder, weaker and yet she leaves behind a legacy, a life well lived, a path for us to follow.

Losing a very personal hero hurts. Last year we said goodbye to Elijah Cummings. Of all my heroes, nobody’s passing hurts so much as his. I can scarce believe it has been a year. I loved that man. His shouts of “We’re better than this!” made me proud that Maryland had such a man. He was speaking to the whole country when he said this several times. He reminded us that we were watching great injustice and not doing anything to stop it. You can’t ask a man to be more honest or patriotic than that.

Goodbye, Helen. How I loved you so. Rest in peace.

May your day be peaceful and see you in good health. Thanks for reading.