May 29, 2006

Memorial Day


I think the state of our nation this Memorial Day is like the flag in this image. I did the collage not long after 9/11/01. The country was bruised, a bit tattered, and angry. This was before the retaliation wars. Before Afghanistan, and before Iraq.

Four and a half years later, it is the middle and working class citizens of this country who are feeling battered, bruised and angry. What are we so pissed off about? We're pissed off about being lied to, used to make others rich, and for making us ashamed to be American in the eyes of our fellow citizens in the world. I'm pissed off about those things and I know many others who are as well.

A war wages, people - Americans, Brits, Iraqis - are being killed for something that never happened, while people like Dick Chaney, the Bushes, and some others get rich off a war with no purpose and no end. CEOs, arrogant and priveledged, are stealing hard earned pensions from the working class, and they may or may not go to jail for their crimes. Lobbyists buy off our elected representives, who scramble to maximize their income from a job that pays $100,000 a year, selling America to the highest bidder and selling out their constituents.

So this Memorial Day, while I mentally honor and pray for those individuals who sacrificed their time, energy, innocense, youth, and in some cases, their lives to defend this country, I also honor those Americans who get up everyday and try to live decent, quiet, caring lives. I honor those Americans who wade through knee deep corruption and despair to go to work, pay their taxes, and try to find a moment in their day when they can love their families and friends. I honor those Americans who will wake up on November 6, 2006 and make arrangements to get to a polling place to cast a vote for a politician they hope won't sell them out. I honor those Americans who say "screw the big guys, real life happens down here in the trenches" and get on with their lives anyway.

May 23, 2006

Rhythm

Everyday is a new day, even when they feel like the same old day. Work, home, sleep, work, home, sleep.... Stuff in between, but those three things are primarily what my life is about. Every once in a while something happens to change the rhythm of the day.

This week my nephew and his wife are visiting from NY, and my parents are visiting from S.FL. Neither couple is staying at my house, as we no longer have a guest room. Both visits are joyous occassions I don't have the energy for. Like a long drive on a highway, I'm accustomed to and comforted by the steady sound of the tires on the seams of the road. This week is like driving off on a different road with a different seam pattern. Louder and coming more frequently, I long for the quiet steady thud of my usual highway noise.

I know some people would find this a mere existence or a death knell. I don't. I like it quiet and steady. There is so much unpredictable about life. There are storms, and wars, and threats of mass annihilation, global warming, Russians selling nukes to the highest bidder, the next Al Qaida attack on the US pending, people who disppear from your life, death by car accidents and heart attacks on golf courses. There is so much that can't be predicted or planned for. I like the steady rhythm of my usual drive. Sometimes it's the only way I know everything is ok. Sometimes the changing rhythm is the only time I know something is not ok. I can be that way.

The next few work days begin the rhythm of the summer. School is out as of tomorrow, our teachers off, 10 weeks before the start of the new school year. Some of the work I do will change, the pace in which it has to be done will change, the number of people I will interact with will change. Just as I get used to it the change to the pace of the school year will be here. So you see? Just when you're getting used to something and feeling comfortable in it, it changes. The older I get the older it gets. I can be that way.

P.S. A Quote

If you want to know the past, to know what has caused you, look at yourself in the present, for that is the past’s effect. If you want to know your future, then look at yourself in the present, for that is the cause of the future.

-Majjhima Nikaya

May 15, 2006

The Big Sacrifice

Today is Monday. Or is it? If we never adjusted the calendar by incorporating leap year what day of the week would it really be? I get weird on Mondays and so I don't like them. Monday is the start of the big sacrifice. The big sacrifice is time, my time, hours lived doing something for money. I like my work and my co-workers but if I didn't need to work for money I would not work. I would not work anywhere. I would do what I loved.

I've often envied ball players. Not just because I love to watch and play baseball, but because major league ball players get to play and make money at it. Football too. Grown men, making serious money, playing. Yes, they work hard. Yes, they are disciplined and do a lot of things to stay in shape so they can play at their best. But no matter how they feel about it or how well they do it, it's called play.

Frankye is fond of reminding her friends that Native Americans have no word for time. She says this anytime we get on her about being late or not paying attention to time. As a Nanticoke Indian she believes she has a genetic excuse for her lack of adherance to a clock. She's right. I wish there were no word for time in my culture as well.

I was talking to a friend today about visiting restoration communities. My favorite period of American history is the colonial through the revolutionay war period. One of my favorite places is Colonial Williamsburg and I also enjoyed a long ago visit to Old Sturbridge Village in MA. I would have loved to live in America in that time period. As a believer in reincarnation I'm sure I lived somewhere, if not on this earth than at least in the Bardo. Alas, I don't remember any of it. And since menopause there is much of this life I don't remember either.

Not remembering allows me to engage in fantasies when I am reading about that time period. Of course, my fantasies don't include bathing in ice water, or not bathing, toileting in a hole in the ground, or working longer days for survival plowing and harvesting food, making my own clothes from sacks, etc. What I find attractive is the solitariness of the day. The privacy from phones, neighbors on top of you, traffic, constant electronic input and news. I'd like a society that doesn't adhere to a clock but instead responds to the rising and setting sun.

I think about how I can make my life simpler. I could lose the phones, the television, and radio. It would make me more oblivious to what's going on around me, not necessarily a bad thing, but not a guarantee that my life would be simpler. I could never buy anything again unless it contributed to my survival, food, clothes as needed, etc. I could spend my non-working time reading, meditating and sleeping more. I could live in a one - or two-room house. I could not travel more than 10 - 15 miles away and be content to spend more time at home. Somehow I don't think these things would make my life simpler in the way I long for. I think simpler to me means less regimented. Adhereing to a clock is regimentation. Mondays, and what they represent, is regimentation. Maybe I just need to ignore Mondays.

May 13, 2006

Hurricane as Metaphor

Life is about as predictable as a hurricane. Through modern technology, satelites, doppler, infrared imaging, etc. we know it's coming, but until it actually arrives we don't know where it will land or how destructive it will be. Life is like that.

We know from a very early age that life comes and goes. As small children we witness the loss of pets - turtles, goldfish, dogs. Sometimes children lose parents or witness their own parents losing a parent or another family member. We always know death is there, we just don't know when or how close it's going to hit us.

Not all hurricanes cause death and destruction. Not all deaths cause loss of life. Sometimes dreams die, or opportunities, or relationships. Sometimes it's easier to pick up and move on after that kind of death. Sometimes it's harder. It depends on how attached we are to what we have lost and how willing we are to let it blow away.

Picasso said, "Reality is to be found in lightness and darkness." So are hurricanes and so is life. The transitions are tough sometimes, the calm before the storm, the loud, violent winds and rain, the return of the calm, even after the most horrible of hurricanes, even after the most devastating deaths and losses. If you stay, and it doesn't kill you, it will pass. That's the cycle of life.

May 9, 2006

May 8, 2006

Home Again

We are home again. Home from South Carolina. Home from the awful news and experience of Todd's death and burial. We arrived to a clean home, a refrigerator and pantry full of food, chores that had been done and cats that had been lovingly cared for. An hour after our arrival our closest friends, the givers of the above, came by with our dogs and prepared and served dinner. They stayed several hours, way past their usual departure time, and were loving and caring, and sympathetic. They are the best.

When they left it was Frankye and I here, with our animals. We are both tired, emotionally drained, and sad. There is almost an echo here in the house. Todd was not my son, not my brother or nephew, and I hadn't spent a lot of time with him. But when I did, it was most often in this house. He installed all the ceramic flooring in this home and did several other jobs around the house for us.

Whenever Todd Lynn were going to be near the Jacksonville area they'd stop in and see us or we'd meet up with them at the Cracker Barrell near I-95 and have a quick breakfast as they made their way home. Todd and Lynn came for Frankye's 60th birthday weekend and it was wonderful for everyone to have the whole family there and a great gift for Frankye.

The hard part is going to be the days and years ahead for Frankye. Coming home, leaving Todd's home, seemed to reinforce the loss of him. There is no seeing him anymore. Or hearing his voice on the phone. Or listening to Shannon retell her latest communication with Todd.

We have a beautiful 8 x 12 professional photo of Todd and Lynn that's been on our dining room credenza since he gave it to us this past Christmas. It was a recent photo and is exactly how he was the last time we saw him. That's where it will stay. Todd will remain forever 42 and strong and funny, and amazingly gifted and capable. He was happy when he died. He was excited about life, about his future and he loved living in Pelzer, South Carolina. That's where he died and that's how he would have wanted it.

May 5, 2006

Sorrow Transcends

Frankye and her family had a most difficult day yesterday. They were confronted with the undeniable evidence of their loss. Knowing something is true and then seeing it's true are two different things.

Frankye, her daughter, and I went to a private viewing of her son's body. We went a little later in the day allowing his wife and children to have time together there. Without planning it we arrived at the same time as Frankye's ex-husband and his wife. Frankye and Bryant were married for 15 years and had two children together. There was a lot of pain in their break-up, as there often is, and their lives went separate ways, living in differenct regions of the country.

Yesterday those two lives converged again at a funeral home in South Carolina. Upon seeing each other in the parking lot they embraced. It was as if seeing each other there at the same time made it even more real. Something neither of them wanted to believe.

We all entered the funeral home and made our way to where Todd was laid-out. Bryant couldn't go in at first. Frankye sat and talked with him and assured him that it was ok if he didn't go in. Frankye and Shannon and I went in. They were devastated by the evidence of the awful truth about Todd. Their pain just over flowed. I watched as Frankye, with trembling hands, stroked Todd's face and hair. She spoke to him and wept deeply. She read scriptures that he loved and wept some more.

After a short time Bryant came in and was also overwhelmed with his grief. Then Bryant and Frankye, apart so many decades, sat side-by-side a foot from Todd's casket and holding hands wept their pain in front of the man they made together. Sorrow transcended into love and into forgiveness.

Today is the funeral and there are more people coming. Frankye's siblings will arrive, her ex, Kerry, and her son, Jack, who grew up with Todd arrived late last night. All the grand children, but one, will be there. A large community of friends, many of whom wept openly at Todd's casket last night, will come for the funeral. We'll all be there to say goodbye to Todd one last time.

It's been an emotional and draining time for everyone, including me. Watching people you love in so much pain is difficult. Not being able to do anything but offer slight comfort is also difficult. Frankye said it was the second hardest day of her life. The first hardest day was Tuesday, the day she found out Todd had died. I can't make any of this un-happen. I can only hold her hand while it is happening.

May 4, 2006

On the Front Lines

Living on the front lines means dying on the front lines. Everyone who is alive lives on some kind of a front line somewhere. Thoreau said "most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Quiet desperation is a front line, as is a battle field, as is an operating room, a pulpit, or a receptionist's desk. Each of us has our own front line, no matter how hard we try to avoid the rawness of life, it is there, either in quiet desperation or in living, bloody color.

Tuesday afternoon, Frankye's son, Todd Windsor White was killed in a car accident not 10 miles from his home. He had just left his home, his wife recovering from surgery, and he on his way to a part-time job. He was killed when a vehicle went through a stop sign and collided with his SVU causing it to roll. He was ejected from the vehicle and died instantly. He was 42 years old. Father of 2, stepfather of 2, husband, son, brother, uncle, nephew, friend of many.

Todd was good looking and funny. He was an intense man who loved the things he loved with a passion. He loved his wife that way, and his family. He loved the woods, and bow hunting and fishing. The walls of his home are adorned with stuffed trophy kills, each one with a story he recounted with pride. He ate what he killed, and he cooked it well and shared it with others. He was a skilled craftsman and took pride in a job painstakingly done well. Our home has a ceramic tile floor carefully and beautifully installed by Todd.

Todd loved his church and the South Carolina community he had recently moved to. He had friends there, some old friends, many new friends. He had recently incorporated his new construction business and was looking forward to his brother-in-law, his new partner's, arrival from Massachussettes. He had plans for the future and had simultaneously made amends with his past. While opening new doors Todd had closed old doors. He made right old errors, bridged gaps too long gaping, and let those he loved know he loved them.

That was the front line Todd Windsor White lived and died on. He will be mourned, and loved and remembered by those who knew and loved him. We've gathered here in this small town of Pelzer, South Carolina, from different states, FL, VT, MD, NC, MA, and TX to his front line to remember him and let him touch our lives one more time.