Fuckabuncha death!

We have had the entire history of mankind to find a way to deal with it, yet we still have not found a way to make it right. Our entire lives are lived inside our heads. We are the nothing but the voice behind the eyes. So we invent places for that voice to go after the rest of us no longer works. We can see the body. Its done. All the parts stop functioning, Yet we try hard to believe that somehow the tiny voice finds a way to go on. Entire religions are based on this hope.Be a good person eat your veggies. worship this skybeard and after you go through the horrible process of actually dying, you get to see grammie again. We cling to hope of miracles tomorrow because they have stopped working today. People stopped believing in the old testament wrath of god shit because after a few thousand years of nothing spectacular happening, we had to reinvent religion. We had to explain to people that yeah life is fucked up now, but just wait til you die, whoo doggies!!! Then its gonna be awesome. Depending on which magic dude you follow you get anything from virgins to clouds and harps. Hope for tomorrow is what gets most of us through today.
Grief is a selfish emotion. It can't be shared. Oh you can tell other people about it in hopes that their feeling like shit somehow makes your feeling like shit somehow less, but the simple fact is that everyone of us grieves alone. We try to rationalize it. We look at the 7 stages of grief as some sort of road map that will take us out the other side. When in fact all we can do is wait it out. Eventually we get sick of feeling bad for ourselves and move on with our lives. Knowing there's a little pool of sad we can always bring up when we want to have our own personal pity party. Grief gets us nowhere. Its not cathartic. Its not something that makes us stronger. If it was, it wouldn't be such a giant punch in the heart every single fucking time. It's selfish because after we watch our loved ones go, we are left with ourselves.We feel that we somehow deserve a little me time to mope and be miserable because they got to have some while in the process of actually dying and now its our turn. It has somehow become the way we deal with this kind of thing. there are rules and cards and support groups.
There are people making a fortune on your grief. Just the same as there are people making bank on your belief. You can't let your loved ones go without a costly ceremony. Gotta have flowers and music and pretty words. Gotta pay a little extra for a place to stick them so you can come by for a few years and make yourself feel badly all over again.Time released grief! This amazes me. People that believe with all of their hearts that their loved ones are going to a better place will spend a fortune to make sure that what they left behind is taken care of. Isn't your whole belief system dependent on the fact that their soul, their essence, is now gone? So you will pay dearly for a place to store their vacated remains in the hopes that somehow this will what? Get you into the same heaven? Make you a better person because you have created a little island of sadness here on earth? How is this healthy? How is this sane? How can i get in on it and make me some money? We have priests at last rights we have them at funerals and burials. Isn't this a little redundant? Which part of the person are we saying goodbye to? Their everlasting souls or their vacated meat puppet? And why do i have to pay you all 3 times?
My own personal beliefs about life after death are I don't have a clue. Weep for me my religious friends because I will never have the comfort you have with your beliefs. I just don't know what happens. The little piece of me that still believes in magic and hope and unicorns wants to think, hey ive been a good person , I've tried to leave the world a little better then how I found it. I'll go to the happy place. But the rest of me. the rational, sane part of me thinks thats just the bullshit people use to keep going. That free beer tomorrow is something we can all cling to to make it through today. the one thing i am sure of is that when i do die the people that love me , because i do try to be a good person, will suffer because of it. The ones left behind will search for ways that will somehow make it make sense and will eventually come to the same conclusions that i have,which is fuckabuhncha death.

How many pets do you have?

Pretty simple for most people but as the husband of a rescuer I'm never really sure about the answer. When I left home today we had 15. When I get home tonight it could be more. I'm never really sure. I mean yeah i know the ones that are our forever dogs. I can even remember all their names if push come to shove, but I'm never sure of the count. This is part of being married to an animal rescuer. Its an odd little world. I'm not on the front line. I don't live and breathe it like most of the crazy wonderful people that are. I just sit on the sidelines and reap the rewards. I sit and listen to my wife's half of conversations. I hear things like " what color is his poo? can you send me a pic?" Now unless you have some sort of sex life that requires specialty equipment and quite possibly back-up, chances are this is not something you're used to hearing.


As an observer, I'm continually amazed by the people that do this stuff. Not just the dedication and hard work. That kinda goes without saying. No, I'm impressed with the special kind of crazy that one needs to move in the rescuers circle. You can usually spot a rescuer, by the subtle signs. Small jewelry shaped like their specialty, a few random i love my (insert pet here)items and the fact that they are being pulled behind something that looks like it's already died and been brought back to life by someone named Igor. Because one of the things about rescuers is that they take in the broken animals. The hurt or scared or just plain difficult to love, and they love them. See that's the thing about rescuers. Underneath the crazy bumper stickers and buttons and smells. Thats what they do, they love. Even if they only have the animal for a day or week or life time. they love them. They somehow manage to return the love that all animals give unconditionally. And the thing that amazes me is that the love continues long after the animals have found a home. I can usually tell the signs, small bites taken out of clothing, scratches, missing digits, and of course the smell. But its the look you learn to recognize. The look that says they have seen all the cruelty that people can muster thrown at the most innocent of lives, and they are not happy about it. Oh, and by the way would you mind if this incontinent dog uses your foot as a restroom because hes really a lovely little person and that will clean up a treat when it dries.


These quirky crazy wonderful people are doing things that would amaze someone in the field of logistics. The alert will go up. there is a dog in Sheepstestickle Tennessee that needs to get to his new home in Bucksnort Flats Wisconsin. And the machine goes to work. Suddenly the computers and phones light up. We'll so and so is going almost to Tn., can someone give this dog a ride to the Walmart near the freeway? The next thing you know this little life has gone across the country in 15 different vehicles and is now on my wifes Fb page with his new forever folks. The networks that are used are far beyond my understanding, but lets just say this, if these people ever decided to use their powers for evil instead of good. The world wouldn't stand a chance. These people don't do this for a living, there is no money to be made, no awards given. They do a tough job because it needs to be done. They dont seek fame or honor, they just want to make the world a little better. They take the sad and turn it into happy. Its as simple as that. So ok my house smells funny and my furniture is covered with hair and duct tape and this is why we can't have anything nice, and yes i can now differentiate between 14 different types of poo, and yes sometimes i have to drive 14 hours to bring this Schnauzer to a rest stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere, but i would't change any of it. No a single wacky smelly moment of it.


So how many pets do we have? well as animal rescuers we have thousands. Each one that comes into our lives is loved forever. Even if they only stay a day, they are forever our animals now. They have left their mark on our hearts. Luckily we can usually find someone to feed them and give them a place to live, but they are still ours.

hindsight

i havnt been back here for a while. i just popped in today to look for the farstigaden thread and noticed that it was a year ago today i put it up. doesn't seem like a year since all that was going down. Sometimes it feels like it was 100 years ago others like it was just yesterday. Its odd looking at your grief from the outside. when your in it its a lot different. don't get me wrong here, I still miss my parents every day and don't think I'll ever get over the sadness, but the actual grief, thats a whole different potato. Grief is more of a physical thing to me than mere sadness at a giant loss. It wraps you up in its arms and keeps you there until you can face the world again. while your in it its a horrible scarey thing but when you can look at it from the outside, its not such a bad thing at all. look nobody can be happy 24/7. So we experience little sads all the time just to remind us what happy is. Those arent grief, those are reminders. true grief is a protective cocoon that wraps itself around you so tightly that nothing can hurt you. none of the little sads can get through. nothing can come inside to remind you that life on the whole is a steaming pile of shit. little sads are like wading into a cold lake. as you get deeper and each part hits you its a shock . but grief is the lake after you've been in it for a while. you know its cold but someone splashing you with a little sad doesnt really effect you. and as time passes you can just dive into lake grief , have a swim and come out. maybe lie on your towel of happy long enough to get dry but not so long that another dip in the lake doesnt make your balls shrivel.

Even after a year i still find time to go and take a dip in the grief lake, but its never as cold and horrible as it was the first time i jumped in. I know I'll get used to it a lot faster. maybe float on a rubber ducky made from happy memories that keep me floating instead of drowning. so while i hated grief with a passion the whole time i was living in it. now i kind of see a reason for it. when your hurting as bad as you can possibly hurt nothing else can really hurt you. so while im not living in the grief its still out there. it still hides behind corners and jumps out at you and yells BOO! and you remember the pain of living inside of it you know you can get away from it before it swallows you up again. its easier to spot because it has little sads all around it like remora fish. but we need little sads. so thats ok.
now of course if i were to try telling this to someone in the middle of grief they'll probably beat me to death with my own sanctimonious philosophy full of wayyyyy too many metephores then is really good for anybody.

A story of hope.

2 weeks ago we got a call from the Carson City animal shelter. They said they had what appeared to be an Irish wolfhound puppy with a broken leg. Being that they have no funds for food there, let alone medical care, they said that it would have to be euthanized. They couldn’t afford xrays let alone the medical attention this dog was going to need. So it was off to the gas chamber. End of story, another little life falls through the cracks of the system and the story ends there…

Except it didn’t. Not having a lot of money ourselves we decided the least we could do( and the most at that point) was to at least get her xrayed. Who knew? Maybe it was just something that could fix itself with a little time and nursing. Time we have. So we took her to our vet who said it was indeed very badly broken and would need surgery to fix it. A very expensive surgery. Right around $2500. There was no way in hell we could come up with that kind of money. Maybe $500 to have the leg amputated but no way in hell we could ever afford to have her fixed. Again end of story. Probably be kinder to just put her down. It’s a tough decision but one we are forced to make more often then we like.

But then something happened. My wife and I both got on the internet and bitched about the world in general and everything that’s wrong with it today. Suddenly people started to come up with ideas and cash and support we didn’t even realize we had. People sold things on etsy or dug into their own pockets and started sending us money. And money to our vet who was so touched by the outpouring of love. He donated his time for the operation. His staff donated theirs. And Zinda the puppy now had something she never even imagined she would ever have. A future.

So there you have it. A nice feel good story. But it goes beyond that. These people, ones we have never even met in person have gone out of their way and blurred the lines between the internet world and the real world. and every day that line becomes more and more transparent. People start out on chatrooms and facebook and comment sections. They start out sharing their opinions and end up sharing their lives. Little cells of people not hampered by imaginary lines on the globe become families. Strangers that would never have met if not for the old world wide web now care about someone they’ve never met thousands of miles away. The community we can’t seem to share with the guy next door we now share with the entire world.

The internet is still in its infancy. Its still growing and learning what it can do. Its become a meeting place for all of our little communities. Imagine what it can be like when it grows up.
In my case at least its made me a better person. I used to only share the good things going on in my life. Hey its not a bunch of strangers business whats sucks in my life. But after a while you run out of good. So you start to try to do more good things for something to share,. Eventually you become the good person you claim to be. Its not a conscious thing. It just happens. And you see others doing the same. Hey Bob just posted on facebook he donated a bag of food to the local food bank. Hell I can do that. Hey sally just went out and registered people to vote. I can do that. The next thing you know your doing kind things not for the accolades and likes. Your doing them because its really rather easy. And bam you just made your little part of the world a better place. And as the lines on the map become fainter and fainter the community becomes larger. People stop becoming numbers they start to become friends. They start to matter more than they ever did before. When you start to care for friends you’ve never met its only a matter of time before you start to care for strangers the same way. Give it another 20 years and kindness will be the norm. as all our tiny circles of internet friends become bigger until we are all, everyone on the planet a part of the community.
My little story is a small example of the things people can and will do. Not because they need to feel better about themselves or brag on facebook about how cool they are. But because it needed doing. Unorganized and without ego. Just people doing what needs to be done. How cool is that? How cool will it become? When hope starts to become reality its caused by people, not slogans or meme’s. I for one am looking forward to what we all become.

I honestly dont have anything worth saying but im sick of seeing my moms eulogy here. so Im making it go bye bye

I don't know how to refine a lifetime of moments into a few words.

I hate funerals.

So i have to write a eulogy for my mom. nobody is forcing me but it needs to be done. Her memorial service is set for next Thursday. I know its almost 3 weeks after the fact, but there are family and friends that want to be there and moms ashes not going anywhere. I hate the whole idea of a funeral. i just don't get it. people keep telling me its for the ones that survived . a chance to say good bye. a part of the healing process. i have just never seen them that way. I see them as a wallow fest. i see them as gathering people together that, other than family, have never gotten a chance to see you blubber like a child. there is a steady progression of people that come forward whose sole goal is to make you feel even worse. Come in , sit down. you know how your feeling bad about your mom dying, well heres a few fucking anecdotes to remind you of what you've lost. think you feel bad now? wait it gets better. here comes a crying grandson to remind you of more things you'd forgotten. this not enough for you? how about some sad music . oh come on your not nearly sad enough. why don't you get up and try to blubber your way through a few words. why don't you come up here and try to explain to people just how bad you feel. why dont you try and find words to express a lifetime of moments. then when your done we can all gather together at the grief buffet and pretend that everything is now ok. we sent her off in style. people felt really horrible for the hour it took to punch you in the heart. have some chicken. im sorry i just don't get it.

At the grief buffet people will come over to you with the head tilt of farstigaden and you get to thank them for taking time out of their busy live to make you feel worse. your job is to thank them for this. yes it was a lovely service , mom would have been pleased. what the fuck? mom would have been more pleased not to be dead thank you very much , so stop eyeing her knickknacks , take some chicken and go away. and thank you for reminding me about the time mom had done something so fucking noble that you felt compelled to come here and make me cry. i have my own life time of memories of how great she was and to be honest. you really don't understand anything. you cant possibly understand whats going on inside my heart right now because your not me. nobody is. hell at this point im not even sure whats going on inside me. I know people need to say something. and awkwardly silent gathering with only the sound of eating would while be hilarious to me, probably be rather awkward to those attending. so we go through it and we sit in our little grief seats and try to make people feel better for gathering to make us feel worse. we thank them for coming and realize that they are as lost as we are for the words needed, because so far none have been invented.

After everyone has gone and its just the family we do what is necessary. we talk shit about the people that came. did you see what so and so was wearing? and who was the guy in the hat? we make fun of those that cared because at this point. its well and truly over. moms gone and there is nothing left to make it somehow better. no more arrangements, no more tributes, just the cold stark reality that we are now and forever on our own. you make plans to visit the graves and on her birthday bring flowers, but as time and details get in the way, you just don't have time this year, you'll do it next week. and eventually even that stops happening as time and life make it harder and harder to relive the death. it has to. you can't constantly make yourself go through that horror as a tribute to someone. not someone that spent her life making sure you were protected from this very thing.
so i will write a eulogy. it will be poignant and witty and touch the heart strings of those attending, as i do my share to make everyone feel just a little worse about losing someone they loved. people will come up to me and tell me how touched they were by the words i used to define my mom. I will sift through a lifetime of history and i will remind others of the nuggets ive found. i will find millions of words to say the simple sentence " i love you mom and will miss you with every ounce of me." I will do my best to find the words for which there are none. i will try to some up love and loss and joy and everything she is to me in a few paragraphs and when someone with chicken stuck to their lower lip and a pocket full of knick-knacks comes to me and tells me what a good job ive done and how proud my mom would be of me. i will do everything in my power not to shake them and try to make them understand that the words ive written were not for my mom, but for them. because mom never needed the words. all she ever needed was a hug.