Heaven?

Another senseless death last night

The phone rang while I washed the dinner dishes.

It can wait.

     I came upstairs a few minutes later to see a call from my unofficial son.  A young man I took into my heart years ago who lost his mother at a young age.  He never actually calls.  He text and shows up with goofy grins from his latest love interest, but he never calls.  I call back immediately to see what is wrong and I am answered with a cry, a choked sob, words I can not process.  Tony (name changed) is dead.  I take a breath as he blurts out " I came down to get him for a ride and he is in bed, dead.  I am the first call - I tell him I am on my way and tell him to call the police, ambulance something.  I rushed there hoping they were wrong, hoping he had a weak pulse, something, anything. 

     As I pull up I see police everywhere, my goofy boy looks so lost and I reach for a hug as he breaks down.  There is no weak pulse, no saving him. Tony is dead, in his sleep, he was 25 years old.

     Inside are his cousin and fiance, talking to the police.  the three amigos, three young boys as much a family as they could be and now the youngest was gone.  I can not bring comfort as there is no way to make sense of young lives lost.  I can only be there for him and let him mourn.  Is there a heaven?  I do not know, but I think of it most when a young life is taken, that maybe there is a higher power and they are holding them now, letting them know they are OK and no longer in pain.  

I did not grow up with religion and I have turned to a god I do not know just as much as I have questioned his existence.  Some may call me a hypocrite, I call it lost.  

I can write no more today - I will explore this more when I can think.

Alone

     I have been in a daze for months.  I can't seem to shake it.  I go through the motions day by day.  My business is thriving and I see my friends more then I used to.  So why do I feel like a shadow in my own life?  My smile is fake, my skin looks dull and my eyes seem lifeless.  To most I seem to have a very good life.  My colleagues congratulate me and ask for tips.  I am on the receiving end of many compliments from friends, family and strangers.  I am always dumbfounded when gentlemen ask me out or even pay me a compliment.  I don't see any of it.  I guess I always see what I have not done, what I should have done differently.  I feel very much a failure and yet I really can not account for it.  
     I suppose we all have an image in our minds of what life was to be like.  I was going to be a film maker, live in a quiet art community in California and have 2 or 3 hippie babies.  I knew I was not a soccer mom, but that was not how I wanted to raise my children anyway.  I wanted them to be free and artistic or explorers or even surfers.  I never really understood marriage,but I wanted a lover and friend for life. I wanted someone who appreciated and even worked in naturopathy.  I did not want to be condemned for my belief that not all medicine is good and organic whole food really is better for us and the environment.  
     I guess I was born 15 years to late.  I really should have been a young adult in the 70's.  

Determination

    Tonight my baby cousin learned to crawl-forward.  Any one who has spent time around babies knows crawling forward is the start of true independence.  Some babies spend days, weeks, and even months trying to accomplish this.  They all start with the backwards scoot.  Like a car constantly stuck in reverse they can get to where they want to be it just takes a really long time!  The sheer will and determination it takes for a child to accomplish all it does in the first few years of life is absolutely amazing.  
     A baby will learn to eat, lift there head, sit up, crawl, and walk all in one year.  In the first five years they learn sight and sound recognition, speech, writing, multi tasking, art, architecture, and master the dramatic arts.  By the age of 3 they have mastered the art of sales.  Like a young teen in a used car lot a seemingly strong intelligent parent, aunt, uncle or grandparent will walk into a grocery store for milk and come out with 3 toys, cookies, and of course a much needed trinket from the quarter machines on the way out the door! The same person will have forgot the milk like the teen forgets to ask the price of the car merely because a 3 year old suggested how much the intelligent person would be loved if they bought that toy! 
   So it is true, like the book says, Everything I Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten. Where then does this knowledge, this will power, creativity, and determination go to?  How do these same children grow up to be adults who are so vastly different then the powerhouse that they started as.  Is our society so corrupt that it can literally suck the life right out of our children?  When does it start and when does it end?  These days I follow the postings of friends with young ones and sadly enough it begins in the first grade!  First grade, really, these kids are doubting and fearful and lost in the first year of school.  When asked why they all say the same thing.  \I have no friends, the teacher makes fun of me, I can't play sports.  I work with the parents of these young ones and guide them to friendships and confidence.  Sadly before we start they all say the same thing.  Why don't they teach you this stuff in books?  This stuff used to just be normal child rearing 101.  The latchkey society did not raise great parents.  Their hearts are in the right place they just lack the tools to parent because no one taught them!  
    I think it is time to write a parenting 101 book for everything they don't teach but should already know!

There Will Come a Day

     This past week the east coast of the United States of America saw a storm like no other in its history. Hurricane Sandy came up the coast line then did something a storm rarely does. Like a predator chasing its prey, the storm veered left and took a massive toll to areas that never see a storm of this magnitude.   It was not the strength of the storm but its magnitude and location that caused so much damage.  New Jersey and Lower Manhattan saw the greatest damage and one week later the clean up has hardly begun.  
     What amazes me, no frightens me, is the lack of compassion from my fellow human beings outside of the damaged areas.  The storm was built up for days, and that alone was a factor that contributed to so little a loss of life.  The damage was massive and the cost not even measurable at this point.  I am surrounded by people who say,"that was nothing", "what was all the hype about","forecasters way over dramatized this one","can we get something else on TV besides the storm coverage". I am infuriated, at a loss for words, and yet not a bit shocked at the lack of compassion shown by my fellow Americans.  The pictures you see on TV are real!  Thousands of people displaced or homeless. 6 mile long lines for a can of gas at the few stations that can get it, just so they can get some heat.  
     It is by a mere 200 miles that this was not my hometown.  No food, no shelter, no medicine, no power, no heat, and their entire lives gone.  The most common complaint I heard all week is how this messed up Halloween because the had to change the date because of the storm!  There was no Halloween for these children and for many there will be no Thanksgiving or Christmas as well.  There lives are forever changed.  Yet I hear again, "that wasn't so bad, I slept right through it, didn't even lose a tree"! 
      I might be more understanding if I lived on the west coast.  I would not condone these remarks, but at least the distance would be a factor in the ability to understand the locations and the damage that occurred.  I am from Pennsylvania and we all grew up taking trips to NYC or summers at the beach in Jersey or Maryland.  Our own childhood memories are affected.  I understand they will rebuild and life goes on.  Right now the suffering of fellow human beings is what I can not comprehend. There seems to be no compassion left in America for major tragedies.  We have not suffered so great as a nation that we should no longer have the ability to empathize with our fellow Americans.  We have seen several horrible tragedies as a nation in recent years, but we are not in a constant state of war or famine, or disease.  There are countries who suffer so much more on a day to day basis and still look after each other.  Why then does a nation with so much to offer turn their head the other way when the trouble is just miles from their doorstep?
Disasters happen and there are no guarantees your life will not be the next one turned upside down.  How will you feel when you have nothing left and your hear a man on the street say"that wasn't so bad".