Mom

On Tuesday night my mom won her battle against cancer. she didnt survive the fight but beat it in the only way she could. kamikaze style. It was winning for a while and had her scared and hurting, but she wouldn't let it win. she went somewhere it could no longer touch her and let it die with her body. she laughed at it at the end waking up momentarily to say " you know what I came, I saw and I conquered." then went back to sleep. a short time later she was gone. peacefully, unafraid and in her sleep. people talk about the faces of death, but they get that part wrong. the horror is in the face of dying. the face of death is the face of relief. the face of release. the face of peace.

I had spoken here before about the internet not being big enough to hold enough words to tell you about my mom. it still isnt, but im going to use part of it to tell you some of who she was. She was all the good things about me. her and my dad made me who I am. so if you know me, even slightly. you know some of my mom. Mom was a woman of immense strength. she was the one person that no matter how bad things got you could turn to and she would offer unquestioning love. while dad taught us all to laugh, mom tempered that laughter with love. me and my sisters no matter how much we fought and will fight will always end up as family because we know that love is the most important thing is the world. love is more powerful than anger, bitterness and even cancer.

Mom was also kind of dingy not in the wear your underwear on the outside way. but an unintended silly way we all found endearing and funny , including her. she would catch herself saying something along the line of if you put fish in the microwave wont the scales sparkle like a fork. then laugh every bit as hard as everyone else. this sprung from moms always thinking everything through. but it came out as Mom wasn't afraid to laugh at anything including herself.

Mom was the glue that held out family together through good times and bad. while dad was out trying to make a million with one of his inventions. mom was working steadily making sure the lights were on. being a den mother and brownie troop leader. or school mom . mom made sure our house was always the cool house where all the kids would come o play. not because we had cooler stuff laying around. but because no matter where or what our house was, it was always home. this continued as we all grew up. while my dad was the one who always brought home strays, mom was the one that made sure they were fed and loved. and no matter where me and my sisters went all over the world. when we came back moms house was always home. I think i'm going to miss that part the most. the feeling of home. the flopping down and knowing that no matter whats going on outside. in here it was home. thats a special magic mom had.

the antidotes and memories that make up a lifetime would take a lifetime to explain. so I wont try. Ill just simply say that everything I am is from my parents. my warmth , my humor, my ability to not only love but to do it without shame. all came from them. i will miss them with all my everything, but i will live each day with love and laughter and know in my heart that they did a damn fine job making us into what we are. while not rich in money I am rich in the things that matter. when someone goes they leave behind a lifetime of history, but they also create a future that while unwritten is guided by the love they shared.

Farstigaden

Im continually amazed that even though we have had thousands of years of civilization we still can't come up with a word that says, what needs to be said when someone you love is going though bullshit. we've had a very long time to come up with one. yet nobody has. when i tell people about my mom. they all try to say the same thing. im sorry your going through this horrible shit and i wish i could somehow make it better. so im coining a new word fartisigaden.

farstigaden can now be used instead of all the other ones. farsigaden can mean what all the other words fail to convey. it can mean i know what your going through but can't even begin to tell you because when i went through it it was worse because it happened to me. It can mean i would make it better if i could. It can mean solidarity fellow human and good luck through your sucky journey. because only you can travel that road but im here for you to send postcards to. it can mean i care about you and will always be here for you to rant at. It can mean when my mom died i was "insert story here". but mosty it can mean that your not alone and even though i can't feel your pain i will gladly let you share some of it with me. it can relieve the burden from the giver far more than it can from the receiver.
so from now on a simple farsigaden will mean more to me than all the other words that can't quite seem to pin it down. and i will know that i am loved and that you care and none of us need to struggle anymore to figure out how to say the perfect words.

Emotional Survival Instinct

Ok so yesterday they told me my moms got pancreatic cancer and she's gonna die. Im gonna be using this to get my thoughts out because i find it makes room for more that way . so bear with me. it actually helps. im not going to try to tell people about my mom. the people that know her dont need telling and the ones that dont, im sorry the internet isnt big enough to hold all the words id need.

so when you hear those words, the first thing you think is " what am i gonna do?"

i don"t care how saintly you like to think you are. thats the first thought. because your you and you live inside you and your the first person you run into. at this point Emotional Survival Instinct starts working. ESI is what keeps us from folding into a giant pile of self pity. ESI's first response is to put the next question into your head.
" what are we gonna do?"
because this is obviously too big for your self to deal with so it sends it out to as many people as possible. the next thing you think is "i can not fucking deal with this." ESI jumps up and tells you "you kind of have to. lets think about something else."
"poor mom" says ESI.
"poor me" says you.
"stop it!" shouts EMI. "you've got shit to take care of."
and suddenly details replace self pity for a while and ESI has saved you from complete overload. the whole mom is dying thing becomes known in your head as just "it" and occasionally no matter how many details you hide behind, "it" will politely tap you on the shoulder and mention that "its" still here, and would like your attention please. and ESI tells it just as politely that your busy right now and will deal with "it" later.

One of ESI's main weapons is hate. which when used judiciously is an amazing thing. but thats the key. little hate works quite well as an emotional release valve. guy cuts you off. here have a little hate. "Take that ya lousy driving bastard!!! I got to lower my emotional tank and you still get to drive like an asshole. luckily ESI knows how to regulate it or sorrow becomes rage. that just gets you into more trouble you really can't deal with right now and quite frankly none of us has the time to convince ourselves that 2 things aren't happening at once. so no you get by with little hates. sharing it around, and there's lots of places to stick a little hate. everyone whose mom isnt dying can have a little. Aretha Franklin can have quite a bit. cuz shes dying of the same thing and gets to be on the news. ESI is very good at its job. Nobody will notice a little extra hate floating around the world and its got more room than i do.

So you go through your day throwing up little blocks every time "it" pops up
" excuse me , your mom"
"sorry no time now my coffee needs milk. ill get back to you."
"er not to be pushy but the whole cancer thing"
" no time right now seems my email spam need to be deleted." and so on. but eventually it stops being polite and grabs you by the emotional lapels and says "look man, we have to talk. i'm not going away and im real and im right here" so you sigh and look "it" directly in the face. as the whole thing comes crashing down on you your first thought is
" what am i gonna do?"

Time

I have a birthday coming up and like all calm rational people over 40 its kind of freaking me out. not so much about getting older but time itself. time is funny stuff. we hear things like time marches on. time is fleeting. we waste it we kill it we we do everything in our power but pay attention to it. we spend our time developing new and exciting ways to ignore it.

I don't see time as an ever changing thing except in the way that the landscape changes as you drive across it. time to me seems more like a solid thing that we travel through. we are put down at the beginning of it. what happened before we got here is no more real than a story told by someone. history is what someone told you happened. so that doesn't matter. time for all of us begins when we get here and stops when we get to the end of it. we have our own personal time machines that we have named memory that can bring us back to any point along our journey. its our time to use as we like. we can't see the end of time. so we develop mile markers called years and days. and we develop clocks that can cut it into tiny bite sized pieces. but these just cover duration, not time itself. Time is just out there. the road on which we travel. the mile markers just give us some idea of where we were not where we're headed. there are no sign posts because its a straight road from beginning to end. there are no curves. there are however, rest stops, moments where we can pull over and take it all in. some moments last barley and instant others , well ill let you know, theyre still going on.

time is also caustic. as you go through it it peels away layers of what makes you you. every mile we travel through it tears away just another piece of the wonder we were born with. we gain wisdom at the price of innocents. we gain experience at the price of joy. we see things how they are the farther we get rather than hope for them to be otherwise.


So we get our road of time and we go down it. we use our own personal time machines to go back and make subtle changes to what we remember to make them better or worse. but always we march forward to the end of our time. the time of our lives. hopefully when we are out of time we'll be somewhere else. I'll leave that up to the religious people. but for now. instead of using my time to get through my life. im going to enjoy using my life to get through my time. because the thing about days is the more you get behind you the more faster they push you through it. with the weight of all the days pushing me forward im just hoping that theres an off ramp at the end of time because if theres just a wall im fucked.


One thing about time i didnt mention is that if you spent some of yours reading this. no refunds!

The Inlaw saga. it begins

you hear about how it never really hits you until the cell door slams. How in that moment it becomes real. But thats just words. you don't know the feel of pressing your face against the cold metal as you hear the noises of the prison as the lights go down. The sounds of hysterical laughter and crying and men masturbating themselves to sleep. you press against the door designed to keep you in and thank god that its there at least for now to keep others out. the sheer terror of thinking about tomorrow, or yesterday. the past cant be changed the future cant be controlled. you immerse yourself into the constant now. Now is all that matters. every moment filling your mind with change. no past no future just now. now is real. the door is real. this is all that matters. then you hear it. behind you. your not alone in the cell. now is shattered into a million tiny fragments of what ifs. filled with terror you turn ans there in the monochrome light that comes from nowhere but illuminates everything. the light of nightmares you see them... the dreaded In-laws


you wake up with a scream. thank god its not real. it was only a dream. im in my own bed . but then the alarm clock of reality hits you. the In laws ar actually coming. they will be here in days. and in a futile attempt you try to get back to sleep and find the dream because prison wasnt really all that bad.

Have a nice day!

As i was driving to work today I stopped to think and didnt start up again until was making the turn into my shop. I know I must have been paying some attention to my driving. There are curves and lights and pedestrians. Yet i don't remember the drive. I'm hoping there were no sirens because I didn't notice them either. this is a real thing Highway hypnosis, look it up. In a great cosmic coincidence what i stopped to think about was I seem to do the same thing with my life. I travel through it hypnotized by the mundane minutia of living i forget to notice the actual life.

We get so caught up in the day to day business of getting through those days we forget to notice the moments that make up those days. We run on auto pilot. We as humans have trained ourselves to avoid boredom at any cost. We concentrate on the next thing so much we miss the thing thats happening now. By doing that we also miss the little things that matter. Sure we get fired up about the big things. Those thing with enough inertia to get through the boredom shields we have built. elections, celebrity scandals. those we will take out time to notice. And for that moment, that tiny piece of our lives something matters, but hey Ive got things to do so i have to step back into the life highway.

I did another post on here where i said some things should matter. I was talking about dead puppies because hey thats always a fun thing to read. But besides dead puppies. things should matter. the little things we see everyday that are running smoothly we don't notice. we get complacent when lifes not all kinds of fucked up and miss what at the end of the day is the only thing that does matter. next time you say to someone the words "I love you" switch off the auto pilot and see what those words mean. we say those words to people we love by rote. If you get one back than everything's ok and you can go about your business. but consider the weight of those words. what they mean is far more important than "have a nice day". yet we say them in the same way. to offer someone your love, your most precious gift is important. it says Im on your side. It says I am not longer an i and am now and forever offering you an us. it says no matter where you go, no matter how hypnotized by life you get you will never be truly alone. so say them with care, but say them often just take a moment to notice them for what they are.

textually frustrated

Hey blog, how ya doing?
yeah i know its been a while, but you know how it is things to do. i get a little busy.
dont be like that you know i care about you.
look we need to talk. i think we should start seeing other posters.
its not you ,its me honest.
stop it don't cry. look i just think maybe we could broaden our horizons a little bit. we can still be friends.
hold it now thats a little uncalled for.
OK fine be that way. and ya know what? it is you. you make me narcissistic you make me think im funnier than i am. before you came along i had at least a little humility.
you are not nothing without me. thats just silly.
calm down. we can still be friends can't we?
I don't want to stop seeing you. i just think maybe we should you know, try different things. maybe have some other people come and play with us.
You are not ugly, stop that.
its just that while your very important to me. i have other things i need to get done. besides after that last entree where i admitted to several felony's. i just think it would be safer if we practiced safe blogging. i mean i cant control myself sometimes, i see you sitting here. no rules , no limits and it scares me.
oh sure you say that now, but the next time i come by ill say something that crosses even the comedy line and end up alienating both of my readers. then we're right back here at square one.
shhhhhhhhh. don't cry. im sorry.
so, you wanna?
you know...
what the fuck do you mean headache. your a blog ferfucksake.