Author: cigarman501

“A Fact of Life…it is Hopeless”

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“‘I don’t like that this is a fact of life . . . but if you are psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets.” – JD Vance

People who read this will be surprised. They might even be concerned. Knowing my left leaning self I’m a bit surprised. I agree with JD Vance. I agree more with what he was accused of saying rather than what he actually said. I believe school shootings, along with all other shootings, are a fact of life and there is no going back. We are what we are…which is a very violent culture.

Why should I believe there is an answer? No matter which side you chose to blame, no matter what we believe to be the problem, we had ample time to change the trajectory of violent crime against others. We haven’t. If anything, the rhetoric of hate speech has ramped up.

Well, in truth, violent crime is down overall, but gun deaths are still high, and we still have young people dying. Many die from each other’s hands on street corners but that is different in my thinking than sending your child to school and wondering if you will see them again.

Honestly, the drop in violent crime is probably as much due to happenstance than anything we are actually doing. Cynical? Oh yes.

Before I retired from teaching, I took part in “active shooter” drills.  I shouldn’t…but will admit I didn’t take them as seriously as I should have. It could never happen here. That three quarter inches of sheetrock will protect us as well as getting under a desk will protect us from a tornado or nuclear bomb. I would certainly take it more seriously now…as seriously as life and death…especially with two school age grand babies.

The bodies of this latest horror had barely grown cold, but the arguments had begun. Even the comments, “It’s too early to debate politics and school shootings,” made my stomach turn. If we wait more than a couple of days, the argument will be too late to debate. It is too late. If we couldn’t do anything significant after Sandy Hook, why would we now?

Fingers point to too many guns, easy access, mental health issues, bullying, violent video games, transgenderism, poor parenting, God being removed from schools. The FBI, and local law enforcement are scrutinized and blamed…or accused of being part of a plot to take all of our guns. Some are legitimate but what have we done to fix it? Little.

We use the same arguments and blame used the last time children and teacher’s bodies were torn asunder. The same arguments that have been used for the past quarter century. No, nothing will change until we change ourselves but that isn’t happening. We would rather debate death like our favorite football team’s next game and offer little more than thoughts and prayers.

Despite my best efforts to remain hopeful, I have grown cynical of the world I live in.  Hope seems to be the new buzz word for the political party I will vote for in November. In the state where I reside, I might as well stay home because the state will be red by a landslide. So much for my hopefulness.

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The featured image I used was Mitchell Gaudet’s ‘Shooting Gallery Exhibition’ which focuses on the issue of gun violence and gun culture across the U.S.

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On a more hopeful note, I was born Southern fried in the renderings of fried fatback. Short essays and recipes from the South. Download or purchase it in paperback. “Food For Thought” by Don Miller. http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2

1968 Sucked

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“Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” Lyndon Johnson

The Democratic Convention begins tonight. Every four years, the Democratic Convention reminds me of the year 1968. It is the way my brain works and I have quit trying to fight it. It is one of the pig trails I travel in my head. That being said, 1968 sucked but at least this year’s convention, Richard Daley isn’t the mayor and in charge of security.

Vietnam protests joined Civil Rights protests, walkouts, sit ins, hostage taking along with the riots that saw Chicago policemen in battle gear wading into crowds and beating Vietnam War protesters and news correspondents, this was during the 1968 Democratic Convention and played out during August on our television sets. As the 2024 Democratic Convention kicks off, I’m again reminded of the clusterf*ck that was 1968.

1968 began badly and quickly got worse. The Battle of Khe Sahn and the Tet Offensive played out on the nightly news in January. The USS Pueblo was seized by the North Koreans. The only good thing to happen in January was the debut of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

February saw three students from Orangeburg, SC murdered by highway patrolmen during a Civil Rights protest at an area bowling alley. Thirty-one were wounded, many shot in the back, many with riot guns. A much larger protest at Howard University was without student murders but lasted much longer.

Maybe the best thing to come from February was a Walter Cronkite special after he had visited the front lines in Viet Nam after the TET Offensive.  The special ended with the now legendary personal commentary from Cronkite declaring that the war was unwinnable, and that the best option was to negotiate for an end to the battle. That analysis would famously lead Lyndon Johnson, watching the broadcast, to declare “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” Later, in March, Johnson would face the nation and reveal, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Also in March, My Lai, the massacre of Vietnamese civilians that would not become public until November of 1969.

In April and June, we lost Martin and Bobby to assassins’ bullets and American cities burned. A shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police would result in several arrests and deaths. A double explosion in downtown Richmond, Indiana kills forty-one and injures one hundred and fifty. It was due to a natural gas leak.

The United States wasn’t alone in our discontent.  Social unrest seemed to grip the world.  Movements sprang up worldwide as protests were registered in over two dozen countries.  Here at home, in addition to our Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements there were the Anti-nuclear movement, Environmental movement, Hippie movement, Women’s liberation movement, Chicano movement, and Red Power movement. All staged protests. 

One would hope the violence that played out on our black and white TVs during the Democratic Convention would be the end of it all. It wasn’t. There were continued protests and shootouts but just like in 1968, I’ve had enough.

In October, In Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two black Americans competing in the Olympic 200-meter run, raise their arms in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals for 1st and 3rd place. They were sent home and not to a hero’s welcome by the Silent Majority being courted by Richard Nixon. Nixon would win the Silent Majority and with them, the election in November creating more problems during the new decade.

Some historians believed 1968 saw the greatest wave of social unrest the United States had experienced since the Civil War.  Of course, that was before 2020 and the beginning of 2021.  I don’t know what historians will determin about these, there is so much misinformation to sift through I doubt a consensus will be reached during the remainder of my lifetime.

Despite the terrible year of 1968, I was a high school senior and college freshman in 1968. I was more interested in chasing the elusive American female and drinking beer at The Cellar, than what was going on with Viet Nam protests and the Civil Rights movements. That would change when I did my best to flunk out of college and luckily failed at that endeavor by the skin of my teeth. Viet Nam suddenly became a real possibility, but I managed to right my ship.

As a social studies major, the late Sixties and Seventies became a focus of my personnel studies. The world changed in 1968 and laid the groundwork for what was to come. I believe many of our present problems are a manifestation of that tumultuous year. Here is hoping that despite expected protests, the 2024 Democratic Convention is peaceful.

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Don Miller’s latest offering is “Food for Thought”, a cookbook that is more than a cookbook. This book along with others may be ordered at https://author.amazon.com/home?authorId=amzn1.amazonauthor.author.v1.va7gjnpr6ccslobr6eec3vbdag

Losers

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“The act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers.”
― Brian Tracy

I’m watching Olympic volleyball as I create this. US versus Poland. While my heart is with the red, white, and blue, the match is hotly contested, and the outcome is in serious doubt. It is a shame one team must win and one team must lose but that is the way we measure success. Winners or losers, there is nothing in between.

When the match is over one team with be running amok with chest bumps, high fives, and hugs. The other team will react with tears, some on their knees attempting to bury their heads in the hardwood floor. Ah, the agony of defeat.

This year, nearly one thousand medals will be awarded in three hundred and twenty-nine medal events across forty-five sports.  I will check the medal count daily and live vicariously through our athletes as they strive for the podium.

Two hundred and three different Olympic committees with over eleven thousand athletes are competing for one thousand pieces of gold, silver, and bronze. Three hundred and twenty-nine gold medals will be awarded, the rest are “losers.” Granted, medals will be earned for the first and second losers.

The lyrics of the Steely Dan tune, “Deacon Blues”, plays in my head.

“They got a name for the winners in the world, I want a name when I lose.
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, Call me Deacon Blues.”

The song is about the unrealized desire of a man who wants to be a jazz saxophonist but somehow it resonates in my meandering mind. It may be because of my unrealized desire to be both a professional saxophonist and a professional baseball player. I understand losing.

Loser update: Poland prevailed and the US volleyball team will have to be satisfied playing for the second loser spot. For those lost in my analogy, that is the bronze medal.

I’m sure many of you would like for me to “get to the point.”

For forty-one years I was an athletic coach. I, and my teams were defined by two distinct but opposite poles. Winning or losing. There was no middle ground. There was no room for moral victories. All I had to do was look at the scoreboard to see if my team was successful. Too many moral victories will get a coach fired.

It wasn’t until I took over a team that hadn’t won a game in two years and had in thirty-seven years never won more games than they lost that I had to redefine what was successful. Effort, making the effort to win. We were the greatest example of “the participation trophy” but we took that first step and improved.

The modern Olympic creed, expressed by its founder Pierre de Coubertin says it all. “The most important thing. . . is not winning but taking part”. The Olympics are about diverse groups coming together and taking part.

The nearly eleven thousand athletes competing in the Olympics are all winners. Most will not collect a medal. Some will lose by an eyelash while others will finish dead last. Some will get the dreaded DQ and a pole vaulter lost a chance at the podium because his man part got in the way although his dating portfolio may have improved.

While draped in a shroud of controversy from the “get go” I have found much to celebrate in this year’s Olympics. Simone Biles returning to gymnastics and silencing a long line of nay sayers, along with the rest of the gymnastic team that shouldn’t be forgotten because of Simone. Katie Ledecky and our swimming teams were dominant. Our track and field teams were too.

My favorite feel-good stories:  A sixty-one-year-old Chinese ping pong player gave me a short-lived moment of hope. The Turkish shooter dressed in jeans, tee-shirt, and black horn rims finishing on the podium in his event. All he needed was a shirt pocket with a pack of Camel unfiltered to be perfect.

The pommel horse gymnist with his own pair of horn rims. A bicyclist who four months ago was an alternate, winning the gold in her event. An Egyptian seven-month pregnant fencer redefined what it meant tocompete in the Olympics.

Not all of my heros were participants. The “dad bodied” guy in the colorful Speedo who was responsible for collecting swimming caps from the bottom of the pool was the definition of bravery.

We throw the descriptor “loser” around too much, especially here in the United States. We forget that all these athletes train for months if not years just to participate. They invest massive amounts of time, many on their own dime and most fall short.

All athletes are not as blessed as Simone Biles; some are the Eddie the Eagle, the Jamaican bobsled team, Eric the Eel or the poster boy for the “agony of defeat” on the Wide World of Sports, Vinko Bogataj. They all lost or wiped out in glorious fashion. All had to win something just to get to the world stage. I toast all the losers in the Olympics, you are all champions.

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Don Miller writes to stay sane. Some would say he has failed as gloriously as Vinko Bogataj. Don’s latest non-fiction offering is “Food For Thought, More Musings From a Mad Southerner.” His latest fictional release is “Thunder Along the Copperhead.” Both and more can be found at https://author.amazon.com/home?authorId=amzn1.amazonauthor.author.v1.va7gjnpr6ccslobr6eec3vbdag

What Ifs

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“I’m always wondering about the what ifs, about the road not taken.”
― Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

“What” and “if” are two words if taken alone, are benign. Just don’t put them together side-by-side. When taken together, they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life. “What if…?”

I am attempting to “get on” with the rest of my life after loss of my beloved wife but find myself dwelling on a myriad of “what ifs.” Is this what haunted means? I spend too much time dwelling in the dark place that is my head.

My “What ifs” come calling during the darkest part of the night, usually around the witching hour. Many come after dreams with a reoccurring theme. I am lost in familiar surroundings and can’t find my way. I should find out what my dreams mean.

It is normal, after experiencing a life altering event, to assess where you are in your life. I truly try to focus on “what is” but I can’t seem to keep “what was” from creeping into my thoughts. It doesn’t take long for “what is” to morph into “what if.” I should be concentrating on “what will be” but can’t seem to move on.

What I wouldn’t give for a mulligan. What if I had a chance to do it repeatedly until I finally got it right? Or do it wrong again? What if I came to the fork in the road and took it ala Yogi Berra? What ifs are driving me a little crazy.

I realize now, a lot of my what ifs have to do with focus. Retirement brought a lack of focus. Linda dealt with it better than I did. She focused upon helping aging family members and friends, buying plants, and buying anything that might be on sale…whether she needed it or not. I focused on her and became her enabler.

Aside from her buying habits, she was the rudder to my dingy and my rudder is now missing. The way my head is, I fear stormy weather is ahead with no way to steer to avoid it. “What if…?”

Somewhere along the way we lost our spontaneity. I enabled that too. Was that because we grew older? I don’t think so…I think “what ifs” took on another meaning…an even more negative meaning. It is as if we grew scared to take chances.

The Linda I fell in love with never liked anything scripted. She was fearless. We dropped a hat and took a road trip to Georgetown to celebrate our anniversary…not realizing it was also the weekend of the Fourth. We found the last room available in Georgetown County. That “what if” was epic.

Traveling at the drop of a hat worked out more times than it didn’t. I can’t remember any that didn’t work out…Well, we should have never made that side trip to Memphis…the barbeque just wasn’t worth it. We dropped our hats and traveled to New Orleans to celebrate an anniversary and later to Omaha to see the last College World Series played at Rosenblat Stadium. We didn’t think twice about it. What happened to us? Why didn’t we take more chances? “What if…?”

What if Covid hadn’t hit. What if we had discovered the cancer earlier…what if I had found her sooner after her first stroke when the “clot buster” drug could have been administered. What if I could hold her one more time? What if I could kiss her one more time? I think those last two are the what ifs I’m mostly dealing with.

Before Linda passed, I wrote “Food for Thought.” It is more about thought than food but there are plenty of recipes too. Available in paperback and download at http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2 .

It was the Kiss

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“Okay, this was kissing. Serious kissing. Not just a kiss before moving out, not a good-bye, this was hello, sexy, and wow….” ― Rachel Caine, Glass Houses

I’ve got Betty Everett’s “Shoop, Shoop” song playing in my head. If you don’t remember it, there is a Cher version that is slightly younger. The reframe, “It’s in his kiss, that’s where it is” is on auto repeat in my head. I am changing the pronouns from his to her.

Today would have been thirty-eight years…our anniversary. Unfortunately, it is exactly three months to the day since you left me. It is exactly three months not using the “d” word. Saying you “left” implies there is a possibility of reunion. Using the “d” word implies finality and I can’t use it. The truth hurts too badly.

This past weekend I decided to take a drive. I needed to get out of the house and a walk in 95-degree weather didn’t seem prudent. I decided to retravel some of the old pig trails we once traveled together in the comfort of our air-conditioned Jeep. It was a mistake. The pig trails mean nothing without you.

My drive did trigger memories of a time now past. The good old days…late 1984.  Pig trails meant something then.

I danced around you for a year or more while you dated Jim, my roommate. We became great friends that year. We grew close but there was no dancing together. You tried to “fix” me up with all your friends, but all your efforts failed. The joke was that you failed so badly you took mercy on me. Thank you for that mercy.

I think my subconscious knew you were the one. I recognized there was a spark, a tingle whenever our fingers might touch but you belonged to another. That’s not true, you never belonged to any one person, not even me. The problem was that I was loyal to a fault even to a person who didn’t deserve it or you.

Later that year, there was the inflatable pumpkin on your head in the fall and a major reaction when I came home and found you helping Jim wash his boat that spring. That two-piece… ala Jimmy Carter I sinned in my mind. In between there was the ice storm power outage and Jim’s stupidity putting a puppy dog under the house to keep warm with a five gallon can of kerosene. I don’t know when we laughed so hard, and Jim didn’t appreciate it or deserve the puppy…or you.

With summer came the road trip from hell. I was a tag along…a third wheel as I had been all that year. If a film or fifties TV show had been made of the year, I would have been Pat Brady to Roy Rogers or Jingles in Wild Bill Hickock…funny but safe.

Jim was forced to move to Charleston because of his job but your relationship with him was already unraveling…had been unraveling for a while and that trip to Charleston brought it into focus.  I had nothing to do with the fraying even though Jim believed otherwise.

I don’t remember what threw us together without Jim that Saturday afternoon in Charleston, but I took you to the market. What an afternoon. That is when it dawned on me that you might be special. Confirmation would have to wait until Jim’s final straw broke your back.

After your breakup, I continued to dance around until you took the initiative. We found ourselves dancing together for the first time at Bennigans. Serendipity put us together, and like the stray animals you love to adopt, I followed you home. The pretense was to get you safely home but there was the goodnight kiss…and I knew. There might have been several kisses at your doorway, but I knew after the first one. You were the best kisser…the best friend…the best lover…the best everything. I think heaven will be like that first kiss.

Dusty Springfield has replaced Betty Everett, “That ever since we met you’ve had a hold on me, it happens to be true, I only want to be with you!”  And now I can’t. I can only remember your kisses…and the way your body fit perfectly with mine when I held you close. You took spooning to a grand level.

I think about all the mistakes I made before we found each other. You made a few mistakes too. Our mistakes were fate’s way of preparing us for kismet. We talked about it often, sometimes karma isn’t a bitch.

The night I followed you home I wanted to protect you. I have wanted to protect you for thirty-eight years. When it came down to it, I couldn’t protect you from what I couldn’t see or touch. It isn’t logical but I still feel guilty.

Happy Anniversary my love. I miss you terribly. Truely, the guilt is real. So is my love.

Just Hush Up and Enjoy the Holiday

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“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

I made the mistake of searching for local Juneteenth celebrations or rather made the mistake of reading the accompanying comment section from my local news station. This was after I made a mistake of reading earlier comments made about Pride Month from the same source. Ah, the joys of living in a Red State.

Some of you bigoted folk need new material. Most of the comments were the same recycled stupidity I read when I previously clicked on last year’s comments about Kwanza and Black History Month…and this year’s Pride Month. Along the same lines, I’m sure many of you are cheering our state board of education’s decision not to offer AP African American Studies. Actually, I know you are, I’m a glutton for punishment and read those comments too.

Why are you so upset over something that isn’t bad? Don’t want to celebrate Juneteenth? Don’t. I’m going to celebrate with slow cooked pork, a crisp pilsner or five and the traditional piece of red velvet cake. Don’t want your child to take AP courses. Don’t sign up for them, AP courses are not required. Not gay, don’t say yes if a gay person asks you to marry them.

As far as Juneteenth, do some research…people on both sides of the argument slept through history class or were taught by “Lost Cause” instructors. You need to utilize our public library system or at least Google.  For example…and if you don’t want a history lesson you should back out now.

Many concerns centered around July 4, Independence Day….

“Juneteenth is just a made-up holiday. We were all free on July 4.”  The celebration of July 4, 1776, is also a “made up” holiday and freed us from nothing. We weren’t freed of anything other than Merry Old England and that wasn’t until September 3, 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. By the way, the Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed on July 4.

“We don’t need a second Independence Day!” It is true Juneteenth is considered by some to be a “second” Independence Day. By others it is celebrated as the Day of Jubilee. Still others celebrate January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation as the Day of Jubilee. Why is that bad? I want to point out that when the Declaration of Independence was signed a large segment of the soon to be United States was not free and would not be free for almost one hundred years.

Another frequent comment, “Slavery still existed in the border states and in the North after June 19, 1865.” You are correct. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t end slavery in the United States, the Thirteenth Amendment did. The Emancipation Proclamation only ended slavery in those areas involved in rebellion. Chattel slavery existed into 1866 in a couple of Border States and until new treaties were made with Native American tribes that had slaves.

Addressing the previous comment, “Why don’t we celebrate the Thirteenth Amendment instead.” I don’t know but it was ratified on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18th. That is a little close to Christmas don’t you think?

A comment about indenture, “What about my Irish slave ancestors?” Indentured servitude and chattel slavery are not the same. There is no evidence of widespread enslavement of the Irish indentured servants in the United States. Were some forced to work past the end of indenture?  Probably, and in some cases, they were brutalized, but it wasn’t widespread and indentured servants signed contracts, usually for four to six years, and had rights. Chattel slaves did not and that form was generational and for life.

“Making Juneteenth a national holiday was just a political move to gain votes.” Juneteenth as a national holiday might have been a political move. Possibly…probably…but it still isn’t a bad thing to celebrate and occasional good things occur from political moves.

June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the Civil War. Can you imagine the emotions that swept through the formally enslaved when they found out they were free. Juneteenth is Freedom Day for those whose ancestors were enslaved. They aren’t hurting or taking anything away from you. Join in and enjoy.

“Why did it take so long for word to get to them?” It really didn’t. Emancipation occurred piecemeal as the Confederacy was overwhelmed. While Lee surrendered his army in April of 1865, it didn’t end the war. On June 2, General Kirby Smith signed the surrender of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi making Texas the last Confederate stronghold to surrender. The final Confederate land forced to surrender did not come until June 23, when Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie gave up his command in the Oklahoma Indian Territory.

Juneteenth is not new and originally wasn’t called Juneteenth. It is new as a national holiday, but the first Juneteenth celebrations occurred in 1866. Festivals popped up across the South until the Great Migration took it across the rest of the nation beginning in the 1920s and 1930s.

While there was a decline in celebrations during the Jim Crow era (wonder why?), since the 1970s, Juneteenth celebrations have become numerous and have centered on African American freedoms, history, arts, crafts, and food. How is this bad?

Not historical, my least fravorite comment was, “When can we have a Whiteteenth?” Okay. Irish Heritage Month is in March, Scottish American and Scot Irish Heritage Month is in April. Italian Culture and Heritage Month is in October. Get my point? I know they aren’t national holidays but there is plenty of opportunities for us to celebrate our fish belly whiteness while gripping about Asian American Pacific Islander Month, May, Mexican Heritage Month, September 15 through October 15, and Native American Heritage Month, November.

So, please just hush up and enjoy the many diverse cultural celebrations…not just Juneteenth, celebrate them all. Go to a festival. Enjoy art, music, or food. Try to learn something so you don’t seem so dense and bigoted.  If you refuse, just hush up and stay in your lane.

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Many diverse recipes are included in Don Miller’s latest book, “Food For Thought” and can be purchased in paperback or downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2

Do I Want it to Get Better?

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“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

It has been two months, ten days and a double handful of hours, minutes, and seconds since you left me. I do miss you like hell. You were my sunshine, and the skies are much grayer since you left.

Family and friends check in to make sure I’m okay and always ask, “How are you doing?”

I appreciate their concern, but I don’t know how to answer the question. “I’m okay” is the lie I often tell them because I don’t think people want to hear, “Somewhere between numb and devastated.” Whatever I answer, I usually get the unsolicited but well-meant comment, “It will get better over time.” Will it?

I appreciate the advice but one of the voices in my head asks, “Do you want it to get better and for clarification, what is ‘it’ exactly?”

An honest question deserves an honest answer. I don’t have one. I’m at a loss. I want the pain to go away but I honestly don’t think I want the hole in my heart to heal. I think for the pain to go away memories must fade like an old black and white photo. You were so much more than a faded black and white photo. You were my “technicolor” darling.

My life was without color, and I was never whole until I met you. You were the tie that binds and a colorful psychedelic painting. I’ve gone back to incomplete and unraveled and as bland as boiled chicken. I don’t like the feeling that I’m not dead but not alive either. I am in a halfway house for grievers it seems.

Truthfully, I don’t want to not be thinking about you. I don’t want to not be missing you. I want you to be the first thing I think about when I rise in the morning and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. You deserve that along with the thoughts that come to me throughout the day and in dreams at night.

I’m sure people are worrying that I’m spending too much time alone wallowing in self-pity. I’m not. I’m not alone. You are still here. I carry you with me, right next to the hole in my heart.

I remember going to parties or gatherings and following you around like one of our puppy dogs. We would always find ourselves in an unpopulated corner of the room talking to each other, ignoring everyone else. You were always the most interesting person in the room and tit was comforting feeling your hip pressed against me and your arm hooked in mine. I carry you with me but the thought that I will never hold your hand or hug you brings back the unfathomable pain.

I try to stay busy. You certainly left me with a gracious plenty to do but as I work my way through bins and boxes, it is like one of our adventures. I never know what I’m going to find next, I just know it will remind me of you or something we did.

“So”, the nagging voice in my head asks again, “do you want it to get better?”  No, I don’t if it means the memories of you will diminish in any way. Maybe I can just hope for getting different rather than getting better.

***

Just before my wife’s passing, I published a “cookbook of stories” described as being Southern fried in the renderings of fried fatback. These are short essays and recipes from the South. Download or purchase in paperback. Food For Thought. http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2

Bumping into Memories

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“There are memories that time does not erase… Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire

It has been a month and a half since Linda left me. I struggle most days…attempting to come to grips with my new normal. Friends and family check on me. I say what I think they want to hear but truth be known, I am struggling.

I try to stay busy putting one foot in front of the other. It is easy to stay busy…I lived with a hoarder. Just a fact. Not recrimination. I allowed it. Thunder just rumbled. I’m sure it is just Linda’s “heavenly” reaction to hearing the word “allowed.”

We often talked about decluttering but never moved past conversation. I once attempted to put my foot down and exclaimed, “You can’t bring in anything new until you take out something old.”  It had no effect because I could never say no to her. She just stomped the foot I had put down.

Linda could throw nothing away and why buy one item when a dozen of the same item is a dozen times better. A bag full of broken sunglasses, other bags with the remains of broken drinking glasses or dishes. A bag with a dozen brand new baseball caps. Bags full of…bags.

In my head I heard, “It didn’t matter if I needed them or not, it mattered that they were on sale and I might have needed them.” I admit the thought brought a smile to my face.

I have taken garbage bag after garbage bag of clothes to a women’s shelter. Most were sweats or active wear and many still had tags, clothes she intended to wear but never got the opportunity to. Clothes she put away for a rainy day not knowing that day would come too soon. I still have many garbage bags to fill.

I pause to look at a beautiful purple dress with a colorful, matching wrap and a butterfly necklace hanging on a door frame. The outfit still has a tag on it. I’ve paused every time I’ve walked past it. It is so beautiful, so Linda. I can’t give it away…at least not now. I wish I had had a chance to see her wear it.

I took two large trash bags of stuffed animals, still with tags, to be given to the needy. I cried. I know there is a reason she bought them. I just didn’t know why. She never told me why.

In my head I ask for the hundredth time, “What did this (insert whatever) mean to you? Why was this little curio important to you and what should I do about it? I’m as bad as you are. I can’t just throw away for the sake of throwing away.” I should have paid better attention. I should have asked more questions.

I still have five rooms of memories to work my way through. I wonder what I may find. Blackbeard’s lost treasure may be lying under one of the beds surrounded by the other treasures you stuffed under them.

I bump into memories every time I turn around as it is. Bumping into memories is not a terrible thing. Sifting through the “treasures” saved by a hoarder is not a terrible thing if that hoarder’s name was Linda Gail. One woman’s garbage is another man’s treasure.

“For where thy treasure is, there also will thy heart be.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

It’s Alright Baby

/ cigarman501 / 13 Comments

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

Memories are odd as I am finding out. Memories will turn a frown into a smile or, just as quickly, a smile into a frown.

I am fortunate. I am surrounded by memories. I am also cursed. I am surrounded by memories. I can’t turn around without bumping into something that reminds me of you. As painful as it is, I don’t think I want it to be any other way.

To paraphrase your favorite NCIS character, Mike Franks: When talking about ghosts. Franks said to Gibbs, “But the memories we make. We fill the spaces we live in with them. That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live, the longer I live there, the spaces become filled with memories.”

My space is filled with memories but Franks said nothing about the emptiness that shares the space. The space I live in is filled with both memories…and emptiness. When you left me, you left behind wonderful memories but there is a tradeoff. There is a huge hole of emptiness where my heart once was.

Franks didn’t mention the bad memories, either. The last eight months have been hell on earth for you…and for me. I watched you fight and struggle. How many times did you try and uplift me? “It’s alright baby.” Those memories try to elbow their way in and are too successful.

I found an old flash drive with a folder labeled Photos and decided to relive the memories from days past thinking that if I filled my head with those, there would be no room for the bad ones. There would be no room for the emptiness. I was wrong.

I found out that I am a lousy photographer and that you just didn’t smile enough. You smiled for the photo but it was your fake smile. Your “say cheese” smile. You had a wonderful smile when you let yourself go, when the camera caught you unawares, playing with the grand babies or the puppies, smelling a flower or showing me a butterfly.

As I ruminated, I went to the more recent photos and videos, the bad memories, and found that you smiled more when you were at your lowest, when you were trying to convince me, “It’s alright baby.” You lied; it is not alright. Not alright at all.

So many mornings I came in to your hospital room and you smiled. Your true smile. When a visitor or a nurse came in, you smiled and tried to convince us that “It’s alright baby.” Even those terrible shots in the stomach earned the nurse giving it a, “It’s alright baby.”

I don’t know what to do. I try to busy myself but you elbow in between the words that play in my head. I spent thirty-seven years trusting you. I’m going to trust you one more time. I’m going to allow the memories to sustain me until “It’s alright baby.”

***

Thanks to all who attended and participated in Linda’s Celebration of Life. It was a special celebration for a special woman.