Writing for Sanity's Sake

To live life is to walk the path.

You walk the lucky path, until your luck runs out.

You walk the careful path, until you make a bad decision.

You walk the educated path, until you forget what you learned.

You walk the worker’s path, until you are unfit.

You walk the path of ignorance, until you find realization.

You wear out your shoes, your feet, and your life walking paths that many others have trod.

The only right path to walk is the one which makes you happy. That’s usually the one which you do not walk alone, but share with others.

Most people won’t recognize it when they see it. Walk in love so you will.

It’s taken almost an entire lifetime too shake off even just a portion of the dogmatic training I was subjected to as a child. If I make it two more weeks it will be 70 years, and for most of those years I have been fighting in a push and tug battle over my beliefs versus the beliefs of others which was thrust upon me unwittingly and unwillingly as a child, and to which I have also subjected others who I love.

It will be a battle that I will never win, and perhaps that is my fate…and my punishment?

The Ghost.

The ghost always seems to come upon me when my eyes, unwilling to close in sleep, because after all there are only so many hours left, and as my Grandma said “I’ll catch up on my sleep when I die” but yes the ghost comes drifting in like smoke off a cigarette into my sleepy eyes. It’s not insomnia, just the unwillingness to give in to the “the little death”

It looks like I would have been a drinker, and could have mellowed out and drifted off because after all the drink is in my blood something fierce, but I never give into it, never even finishing the samples they dole out at Olive Garden. I was drunk a couple of times in my early youthful days and just hated it, detested the loss of control while all the while knowing I was the fool.

So I write, I peck away. Trying to coax and coach myself into thinking of something worth saying because after all a writer defeats nothing more than an empty page or a blank line at the top of the page saying “what’s on your mind?” Well damn plenty is on my mind, but half nobody would want to hear and the other 50% just trivial. So I very much wish to wake up tomorrow after sleeping oh so gently to find this device laying on my chest in bed again with the cover open, hunting for something to fill the blank page, and to frighten the ghost away.

I was raised with bare incandescent lightbulbs in fixtures that had little chains affixed to them. You had to pull the chain to turn the lights on and off. If one of them stayed on a while and you touched it, woe unto you. A burned finger might be the outcome.

I remember my Mother’s first washing machine. The tub was automatic, and it ran off electricity, but you had to put the clothes through the top part to wring the water out by hand, turning the crank. Mom hung the clothes out on a clothesline using wooden clothespins to keep them up. I loved the smell of the clothes on the line as the breeze shimmied by, the faint odor of bleach on the white bedsheets, accentuated by the warm sun.

I used to listen every afternoon at four o’ clock for the giant air whistle at the mill to loudly signal that first shift was over, and then I’d run out and look down sixth street, watching for Daddy to come walking up that hill towards home. Most of the time to sit down at our little round, Formica top table to a meal of pintos, fried taters and cornbread.

I think now, I’m glad I was there then, at that time and that place with those people. I think now, I’m so lucky to have subsequently found the other friends and family with whom I have shared this life. Every direction in which I have turned there has always been someone there for me….with me.

I think now, there are still memories to be made and happiness to be shared. New relationships to nurture, and different paths to walk. There is always change. That’s the one thing you can count on.

I think the real truth is, that there really isn’t any. The colors you see in the rainbow are simply different shades of gray. The stars in the sky at night twinkle just to fool you. Happiness is so fleeting it seems like a vapor rising off the warm waters on a cold morning. The heart which starts out so tender and innocent, finds itself hardening under the constant barrage of skepticism until it seems it must turn to stone to protect itself.

If my life were a pond of water, being fed by the stream of time and my mistakes and sins were like pebbles hitting the water…then the ripples would never cease. I believe in the forgiveness of our maker for our trespasses, because if it were not so I could not live with myself.

I think of my poor Mom tonight and her lifelong battle with mental illness, and how I failed often to understand what to do. I was angry at times when I should have been serene. I was short sometimes when I should have stayed silent. I lived with the disguise which the disease enveloped her in, and battled it..forgetting at times the frail human inside. How can one be so unfeeling I wonder? Was it the shell I built around myself from the time I was eight years old, and that first breakdown happened? “His Momma is crazy!” They would whisper behind my back. They all knew it. They had heard about her running down the street, calling out after me for help that day I walked to school. Begging me, the little boy to help her, the adult. And the time at Milledgeville…the trips out and back. The fear of loss, the relief of temporary reunion, and the agony of leaving. Every weekend for eight weeks

Mom made a comeback. It was long and hard. Just that simple. Long and hard, with a life filled with powerful medications and several more breakdowns. She loved us, and we knew it, but we endured some sorrow. I could never completely understand the dark places where her sickness took her. I am sure she could not either. She was very strong in truth, to be able to keep those shadows away, where many would have given in to it. She kept her sanity through sheer force of will and the need to be with her family.

Momma didn’t deserve the hand she was dealt. She didn’t ask for it, and at times didn’t handle it well. I understand now though, at this age, how easy it would be to feel sorry for yourself.

So tonight I grieve a little.
I grieve for such an early loss of innocence for two little boys. I grieve for the loss of time for a Mother with her children. I don’t write this for sympathy, or to be lauded. To be truthful, most people know none of this, and it might be better if no one ever did. I’m writing it for myself, for my own sanity and for complete disclosure of the fact that many, many pebbles went into my pond because of this. And to expunge some of the guilt I still feel and forever will feel.

My Mom’s name was Evia Bowers, and she lived to be 82 years old and died with her two son’s holding her hands, and the rest of her family in the room in 2010. She was in this world, and she did the best she could with the hand she was dealt. Just wanted you to know.

Every night I try to end my day of consciousness with meditation. You can call it prayer if you wish. I know we are flesh and blood creatures who act based mostly on a million years of evolution and many attributes which have been hard wired into our brain. Certain chemicals which we smell or touch trigger autonomic and automatic actions. Certain external triggers that we perceive trigger release of chemicals in our bodies, which predetermine how we will act or react. I know all of this. I know much of the science involved in our development as a species.

I can’t explain the need to acknowledge the unknown. The “X” factor that sometimes throws a monkey wrench into my logical thinking. So, every night I think about it. I meditate. I pray. Even if nothing is listening, even if God is listening. Even if it’s just for my sanity.

I find myself wishing that I had done more when I was able, to make this world a better place. A better place for my “tribe” and yours too. A world with pure water and air. A world where the people who love outweigh the detritus of the people who do not love. I wish for a word where people could accept others for what they are, not what some structure which mankind and his society have set up says they should be. I wish for a world where humans do not label other humans. A world where one group does not stand around and dictate how other groups should act, based on their set of norms. We are all the same you know, the spirit is colorless, sexless, unbiased and holy innocent. If we are anything at all when we leave this life, it won’t be what you or I think it will be. It just won’t. We just do not know the secrets the Universe holds, or the silence and finality it may possess!

I think of a world where my grandchildren and their grandchildren will have a chance at true happiness, not just mundane survival. Life should always involve happiness because without it, there is no living. There’s life….but no living. Every day I try to make my grandchildren laugh if I am around them. I’ll act silly, I’ll tickle, I’ll make faces. One second of happiness is worth a thousand hours of nothingness.

This fickle world, so full of evil in the form of those who steal happiness and love from us on a daily basis with their self centered actions and deeds, this world we inhabit will not last. Our species will not last. Look at the history of life on this planet. We humans think ourselves so special and singular. We are not. We are here, now…for a time. Is it too much to ask that we respect each other’s humanity, and lay off the hatred? Is it too much to ask to move away from the money motivated culture we have built over the past five thousand years, and evolve into creatures who care about all living things?

I guess it is too much to ask right now, at this point. It won’t always be that way though.

The HOR passed an aid bill for the American people back in May, this is September. By simple math, that’s 4 months. RBG died last week, and her body wasn’t cold before the GOP started talking about ramming through a candidate to replace her on the SCOTUS. They want to do it in two weeks.

They cannot in four months do something to help the American people who are suffering through this pandemic, but they can rush through an approval process, before the election…for something as important as a Supreme Court Justices seat?

I cannot fathom for the life of me how the American people can stand by and suffer this injustice.

Of all the qualities which set human beings apart from the rest of humanity, there is our voice. It was this means of communication which allowed us to move beyond other species and become social animals.

Our voice allowed our ancestors to pass on instructions on how to do critical things to survive. We began to live less off of instinct and more off of experiences passed down from generation to generation. Language came long, long before the ability to write and so most knowledge was passed down by oral tradition. Since early man tended to live in familial situations, with tight family ties, language probably varied a lot, and then as families stretched out and became tribes the group adopted the most useable language form available to communicate within the entire group.

But, the anthropological aspect is not where I want to concentrate. It’s the spiritual and mystical aspect of the voice to which I wish to “speak”

I’ve had so many wonderful and unique voices which have inhabited the echoes of my mind. My Dad’s laugh…I can never get it far from my immediate memory. He laughed a lot and at a lot of things. He gave me a lot of advice with that voice. I took some of it, and some I wish I had taken. His voice was stilled in 2010.

My Grandfather Jervis’s voice. My voice is a mixture of his voice and my Dad’s, leaning more heavily towards his. He could sing from bass to tenor and I inherited a bit of that. I used to sit around in his living room and listen to him sing his “scales” “Do..do..do……do, ray, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do..do..do..” I got up in front of the congregation where my Grandpa was song leader when I was four years old and waved my hands around like I was conducting the choir. Nobody laughed or made fun of me. I was really proud of myself and I remember it so well. My Grandfather’s voice was stilled in 1991.

My Mom and my Grandmother had similar voices…and they were both worriers. I asked my Grandmother on her 100th birthday what she would have done different if she could go back and go it all over again. She simply said “I’d worry about things less, because all the worrying I did never changed nothing” Her voice was stilled in late 1999. I still dream of her quite often, most of the time in the kitchen. She’s always telling me: “I wouldn’t worry about that, Honey” she’ll say. I still worry…I guess I can’t help it, I get it from her and Mom. My dear Momma….she would always say “I love you” and too many times, “I’m sorry” for things which really were not her fault, not anybody’s fault, just fate and fate alone. Mom’s voice was also stilled in 2010.

In late 1999, I was really scared. The specialist had found a lump on my vocal cords and he was pretty sure it was cancer. I went into surgery wondering if I would come out with a voice…..would I come out with a hole in my throat and no voice. Turned out it was a big lump of scar tissue. I came out with my vocal cords, but it took a year a rehabilitation to even get back to regular talking, much less singing. I have had to be very careful since then. Some days are good, some days not so good. At least I still have that mechanism of communication to use with my family, my friends…(although sometimes I bet they wish I would shut up!)

My voice will be stilled one day, as have been the voices of all human beings who ever lived. I hope I have used it correctly…will use it better, and maybe there will be some memorable phrase “hanging in the air” for someone to remember me by.

I’m afraid of heights. I also don’t like flying. I don’t like big crowds and speaking in front of a group of people terrifies me. Funny how things that are simple and basic to some people make other peoples knees turn to jelly.

I don’t know where a lot of these fears came from. Some of them have just developed over the years. Some fears we have always harbored. I have always been afraid of death. I never even wanted to think about it until the last few years. It’s a subject that most of us definitely want to avoid. I think sometimes we feel like if we talk about it, it might jinx us and we will end up on the “mortar board” at some funeral home before the days out. Also, it’s a pretty depressing subject to broach. Nobody wants to be depressed, so nobody talks about it. I can’t remember the first time I thought about it, and was scared. I think it was when I was about four years old. Really, it’s true. As a little kid when I should have been thinking about playing cowboys and Indians, I was mulling over the great unknown. It’s been a bummer over the years.

Lately, I have come to the conclusion that by talking about death maybe we can make it less scary. I am not as afraid of it as I used to be. It’s not the little kid fear of going to hell and burning up in a blazing fire type fear anymore. It’s more of just an apprehension of something unknown. It’s a disappointment that I might not be around to see my loved ones complete most of their journey that they have started. It’s the conversations and contact with my family that I don’t want to give up. The touches and looks of people you love, and who love you. Most of all, it turns out that it’s a selfish thing. Imagine that. I have so many selfish reasons for living that I don’t want to die and give them all up.

I don’t want to give up the beautiful sunny days like the one we had today. I don’t want to give up the good books that I enjoy reading every day. I don’t want to give up discussions with friends, eating out in great restaurants, the rain in my face, rolling up a Snowman. I don’t want to give up Christmas, or New Years. I don’t want to give up the hope of a #1 finish for the Dawgs, or the Falcons. I don’t want to give up seeing my grandchildren play ball, or band, or graduate from School….

But, it’s not what we want that we get is it?

There are so many theories and theological thesis about what happens to us after we die. It’s hard to pin one down and stick with it. One thing that I can assure you though is that it will be different from any of them. I don’t think that man has been given the knowledge, through any type of religion or science of what really happens. It may just be peace. Peace would be nice; I’ll take that over some of what I’ve heard over the years.

I’ve seen a lot of people going through unbelievable suffering, or who no longer know who or what they are who would take peace too. The little old lady who was “rooming” next to my Mother at the nursing home, back in 2010, who was there one day and gone the next. She was in bad shape. She was ready for a rest, and she got it. I think if you could have broken through the wall of her senility she would have told you she was. . A lot of times people outlive the desire to live, and when they do that, they are ready for peace. I am sure she wasn’t scared of it. Maybe welcomed it.

My own Grandfather, who lived the last few years of his life, not knowing who he was, where he was, who we were. My heart ached for him. I didn’t want him to live like that, but I didn’t want him to die like that either. I hope at the very end, when the spirit separated from the body…he once again knew who he was.

As long as we have the desire, then we should “keep on truckin’” as we used to say back in the 70’s. It’s when we lose the desire, due to things that are happening to us physically, that it becomes a hardship to keep on keeping on.

So, I guess as my perspective has changed from that little shivering four year old kid, who shouldn’t have even known what death was, to the more knowledgeable but equally unknowing 69 soon to be 70 year old that I am now am. I still have my desire to live and hope that I keep it for a long, long time to come. I hope all of you do also. But, when we are ready for peace, I hope we find it and that it turns out to be better than we ever imagined.