03-20-2014

  It comes time that the build up is that I need to find relief. I have that "support group" that we hear people say we all need, and we do all need that sooner or later and from time to time. When I was a teenager I had a poster on my wall of a baby Seal that said, "Everybody needs somebody sometime", truer words were never spoken. Thing is, just who do I lean on that doesn't already bear a heavy load close by? Funny, my motto has changed somewhat over the 53 years of my life. It is now, do no harm as well as allow no harm, if possible. 

  I swore in as the Executor of mom's estate today, actually swore in an oath, one of which I would do no matter what. Me and Megan went to one of the two banks and gave copies where I could manage the estate's business and tomorrow we do the same at the other bank. I do not look forward to doing that. I spent some more time straightening mom's current mail and bills and receipts. Mom kept everything just not exactly in any kind of organization, but I think she knew just which stack something was in, much like my desk was and still is today. I never make it up there long before I have to stop. It feels like I am in mom's personal business, even though I know that is what she would want, still feels weird. I talk to her, sometimes even fuss at her, but always tell her that I miss her. Is she here on earth, I don't think so, but I think they can see us from Heaven. I do not think they can relate to anything negative, God does not allow that. Just as negative energy is an absence of positive, dark the absence of light, so then bad is the absence of good, and when God is, good is all there is.

  I found letters from a "religious group" promising fame, money, health, happiness... if the person would just send in their prayer money. If there was a spin they seem to have it, different in each letter. I think Hell holds a special place for people like this. Funny, mom always wanted me to be a preacher, and those who have heard my mouth would find that funny. Some in the past that have crossed me might think that funny too. I read the scriptures solely from want and personal need, and solely to learn from. Some things I am a slow learner on. I use to wonder how mom could even think such a thing, until I read letters that prey upon the sick, old, weak, and greedy. She had tons of that stuff, the TV is full of those people, and these days it even infects many churches as well. A sweet lie is still a lie, just a little easier to swallow. I could not do that to people, partly out of respect and partly out of fear of God. Be that as it may though one can find a happy medium between too sweet and too sour. One cannot buy or talk their way to Heaven anymore than one can have the Hell scared or beat out of them.

  I do what I must do on her behalf under prying eyes who look from across the street and judge. They mourn with their mouths in public, just as they worship God in public... yet in the secrets they keep secret. Maybe that is why mom picked me. I try and show as little as possible in public yet in the quiet stillness of the night, I am anything but. I give my brokenness and pain and sorrow to the One that it will not do harm each night in prayer. I step not confident, knowing that those who do often slip and fall in the overconfidence. I write these things here because not many people will read them or ever see them, yet writing has served the purpose of healing. Still, I hold back from what I would say. Something I am increasingly becoming worse at in person. I think that for far too long we have stroked each other and ourselves, maybe a little truth is past order. Maybe it is the pain I hide inside and maybe it is the want for a better world, either way, if I set and watch that stuff go one I am not better than the ones that do it. Maybe worse.         

One Of The Last Days

 This really doesn't fit the Throat Cancer Blog but more fits in here. Maybe I will recant more in time to come of mom's last days, maybe not. I've really not had time to grieve, so much to do and it all needs to be done yesterday, plus couldn't break down with Megan already broken. So, this will have to serve as my out for now. Partly though it is my fault because I would not talk with her about such matters as important papers and dying. In my mind that would make her give up and die sooner, in reality I wish I had allowed her to talk freely and listened. Other than getting the Will's location in once, and one other time where her Life Insurance papers were located, and telling me to sell the Office Building... over a course of days and trials to get in those few things, that was it.

  About two days before mom died she was laying there in her Hospital Bed that Hospice provided, she had been bed bound for twenty one days in the hospital at UT, and was for her last fifteen days on this earth at home. But know this, she fought valiantly and died honorably. Being there gives a person so much time to think, so much to think about. A Preacher once told mom that God snatches us up when He gets us close enough to Him to take. It is my belief that He calls the day and the exact time we go home.

  We were sitting there, or at least I was, mom was laying. You could see she was in deep thoughts, deeper than I had seen her before. She looked like she was a million miles away. She looked around the room in her Den where we had the hospital bed set up. You would have to see the stuff mom collected throughout her 85 years, and this room was the least of it. The stuff ranges from cheap to expensive, most in the middle, yet she had hand picked most of it, some though is stuff people gave her for gifts. The cost of things though were displayed no matter, all together, for her most prized things were things people had given her. We measure the worth of anything by the emotions it stirs when we are wise.

 Mom asked as she was looking around the room, "Why did we do it?" I was a bit caught off guard and I guess distracted with whatever it was I was doing, probably nothing. "Do what?" I asked. "Why did we work all the time. Why did we buy all this stuff and build all this stuff?"  I had regressed back to my thoughts the last minutes of the heart attack as I was laying there. The year long that seemed to never end battle with throat cancer. Those hours upon hours of pain and not being about to move about much. I am reminded of a simple yet sentence I read in the Bible and heard most of my life, "Be still and know that I am God". I hear people say that and think they know what that means, yet they haven't a clue unless they have been in a position of not being able to do anything but that. It reminds me of another thing I hear people say that have led a charmed life, "Use me oh Lord"... yea right, my saying is Oh Lord don't use me, use that idiot that is wanting to be used. I hurt enough already and while I know the saying is God will not allow any more than we can handle to be placed upon us, He gets real close sometimes.

  So anyway, again mom said, "Why did we buy all this and work all the time? It don't make sense."  I said, "No, it don't much sense. I guess we just got caught up in the trap the world sets for us. We placed a lot of time, energy, and money in moth and rust." Mom looked at me and said, "Moth and rust? What are you talking about, moth and rust? I'm talking about this. I smiled and said, "I am too mom. Everything we bought or received or was given that we can touch or set on a shelf is moth and rust. It decays in time like we do, either falling prey to moths or rust. I guess we got sidetracked a bit, but you know, it brought us some pleasure." Mom said, "Well, we didn't drink. Didn't go nowhere really. We worked hard and was honest." She paused as if to remember the past, then looked over and smiled and said, "I guess it did didn't it". I smiled and said, "Yea, and everybody's gotta do something, and we worked... and liked to work, we might have overdone it a bit."  then chuckled.

  She seemed to be at peace with that, and that was the main thing. There is nothing wrong with having things as long as you don't deprive others, are honest, and try and see those in need have to the extent you can help. As long as one does not value things over people and living things, I see no problem with having stuff. One has to know just how much Howard Hughes left behind when he died... all of it. Love, Truth, Kindness, and Faith... that you get to keep. Mom seemed to be at ease some and slowly drifted off to sleep after a long night of being in A Fib, which she still was, but was coming down to normal finally. I looked at her hands, fingers really, something I seldom do. Her fingers were smooth and shiny. It doesn't mean death is here but that it us near, but that doesn't mean they can't go back. I can't explain it but it is something one can see if they know what to look for.

  Without bursting into tears I can't talk about any of this, but I need to vent, so this is how I can get some relief. I must remain strong for everybody else, that is the role I have to play. Just like days when I don't feel I can move I hide it from whomever I run into. If I hurt, as long as I can hide it I do. Mom I have discovered done the same, at least to me she did. I had no idea how much pain she had lived with, she would not let that be known. I'm not sure even the doctors knew until the end.