The shadows cast by the great trees are long. The trees seem to lean over me as the branches reach down waving their long fingers in the air. It's not menacing, not exactly. At least, I'm not afraid. But the gloom is oppressing, making the house foreboding. The house is big and white, all columns and windows, and I seem to be drifting toward it. Floating. The movement is not of my own volition.
And that's where it ends. Or that's all there is.
When I was a kid, I thought this was some kind of recurring dream that never went anywhere and wondered why I would dream it. I mean, why would I have this brief vision of this yard and house?
When I was much older, probably in my early 20s, my mom and I were going somewhere and travelling through north Shreveport -- actually, an area north of Shreveport -- and she suddenly told me to turn off onto some street and led me through several neighborhoods to some house. She pointed at it and said, "That's where we first lived when we moved to Shreveport." I knew, vaguely, that we had lived in some other house when we first moved from Texas, but we had moved into the house I grew up in well before I was one, before I was nine months old, in fact, because I learned to walk when I was nine months old. Before I could crawl. I learned to walk in the house I grew up in.
The house she pointed at -- a large, white, probably-old-plantation house -- was the house from my "dream." I recognized it instantly. The front lawn was extensive, the house far back from the road, and full of what were probably cypress trees. I don't know. I'm not really a tree guy. It would make sense for the area, though. All I know is that there were long, overhanging branches, probably full of Spanish moss, though I don't actually remember.
It was a surreal experience.
Not just because you're not supposed to remember things from when you're that young.
Also because I have no other associated memories from that place. Just "floating" through the yard toward the house, because I'm sure I was being carried.
It's not the only thought I have that goes back to before we're supposed to have cohesive memories, but the rest are mostly traumatic.
I remember the swollen spot on the floor in front of the refrigerator at the house I grew up in, because I remember standing on it crying as my mom left for work one day. But my grandparents had that fixed very early on, which means I was no more than two.
I remember my cousin pushing me off of my red tractor in the backyard and hitting my head on the steps going up to the back porch and the huge goose egg on my forehead.
I remember getting stung by a wasp on my finger and my arm swelling up and my aunt putting something on the sting that burned as much as the sting did.
I remember my puppy, the one I got when I turned two.
I remember him licking my face excitedly and laughing and laughing and trying to push him away but not wanting him to stop at the same time.
And I remember him lying dead in front of his dog house when I was not more than 2 1/2 and my mom not letting me go see him but not telling my why she wouldn't let me go see him. I cried. A lot.
I also remember sitting in my grandfather's lap as he read to me. He was a mechanic and always smelled of sweat and oil and, on the rare occasion I run into that precise smell out in the world, it brings up memories of sitting in his lap while he read to me. Little Black, a Pony and some book about an old blue truck that loved a cow and wouldn't let its owner sell her. Evidently, he would read those books over and over and over again to me because no one else would. My mom freely admitted later in life that she didn't have the patience to read to me, especially not the same book multiple times in a row. But my grandfather did.
I also remember my grandmother taking me to daycare with her. She worked at some daycare place, and I would go there with her. Mostly, I remember the bus trips home and how she would let me stand up in the seat and pull the cord for the bus to stop and that she would sometimes take me to some buffet place on the way home where she would let me get a piece of custard. The memory of that custard has become my platonic ideal of what custard should be even though I'm sure it probably wasn't really all that good.
And one from when I was three.
I remember the Watergate hearings being on TV and being very mad about it. Mostly because I wanted to watch something else -- in the specific memory, I wanted to be watching Star Trek -- but the hearings were the only thing on. Ah, the days of only having three stations to choose from!
Maybe, today, if more people were forced to watch StupidGate then more people would care about the even more egregious criminal we have in the the White House. Or maybe not, since it was quite clear that his criminality didn't matter to the people who voted for him as long as he fed their racism.
Showing posts with label grandfather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grandfather. Show all posts
Monday, February 3, 2020
Monday, November 14, 2016
Dying of Cancer
I've never talked much about my childhood on here, and I don't particularly care to, but there's a thing here that's important to what I'm going to say, so here's your bit of insight into me.
If you read carefully, that is.
Until I was four years old, I lived with my mother and my grandparents but, even after my mother got married, my grandfather was the primary male role model in my life. He was a large man. Quiet. Great "table muscles," as he called them. I never once heard him raise his voice to anyone, much less his hand, and my mother says she can't remember him ever once saying anything bad about anyone (my grandmother, evidently, was another story; she had the temper). He used to read to me. I'd sit in his lap and smell the engine grease on him and in his clothes (he was a mechanic, but there's more to the story than that) -- that smell was just a part of who he was -- and he would read to me, frequently the same book over and over again. Little Black, a Pony and some book about an old, beat up blue truck. See, I still remember them.
When I was 19, he was diagnosed with cancer; I don't remember what kind. It was one of the fast ones, though, but the doctors told us they'd caught it in time and that he would be okay. They continued to tell us that all through the treatment. "Everything's going well." "He's responding well to the treatment." "He should be going home in no time."
The last time I saw him was a Monday night. We'd gone to visit him at the hospital, which was in another city, but he spent most of our time there asleep. He did grip my arm before I left, a grip that was still powerful despite his weakened condition. Even that night, the doctors were telling us that he was doing "very well" and they expected that he would get to go home soon.
When the phone rang Wednesday morning, I knew what the call was. Part of me died that morning, too.
Cancer can be insidious that way. It doesn't ever really go away; it just hides. That's why we say it's in remission rather than cured. Maybe there will be an actual cure someday but, for now, the best we can do is treat it into submission and hope that we outlast it. The problem many people run into is that they treat it as if it's a curable disease so ignore the symptoms of it coming back because they don't want to confront the issue of still being sick.
Racism has a lot in common with cancer. It's not a curable thing, though many of us have wanted to treat it that way, even going so far as to declare on television that racism is a thing of the past. I understand the allure of believing that, but it's that kind of thinking that allows the cancer to spread. It's a thing that needs constant awareness just to keep it in check, and, as a society, we just haven't been doing that. We can see the results of ignoring the symptoms in the recent rampant tumor growth across the US. Well, not just the US, but I don't think other parts of the world ever thought they had "cured" racism.
At any rate, this past election has in many ways reminded me of my grandfather's cancer, not least in that everyone kept saying, "It's going to be okay. Clinton is going to win, and we're going to treat the racism (and sexism) cancer back into remission." But the cancer won; Trump won; and the emotions of that were very similar to that phone call letting us know that my grandfather had succumbed to the cancer and died. I'm not going as far as to say that the US has succumbed to the cancer, but the cancer, right now, is having its day.
This is no longer the kind of racism that only expresses itself through things like implicit bias and in systemic, institutionalized ways. It has become very explicit and in your face because people who have previously felt social pressure to keep their racism internal have suddenly found new freedom to externalize it. We have moved past implicit bias into explicit hatred and hate crimes.
So let me just be clear in case what I'm saying here hasn't been explicit enough:
Racism (and sexism) is a cancer eating this country up. It has been the great, ongoing conflict we have been dealing with since before the US became the US. Racism was one of the great issues that pushed us into a two party system with Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists (the modern Democrats) on the side of racial equality and Thomas Jefferson (the modern Republicans) and his Democratic Republicans on the side of racial discrimination and slavery. [Jefferson may have written "All men are created equal" but he only meant white men when he wrote that. He even kept his own mixed race children as slaves during his lifetime. That's just sick.]
Those of you who voted for Trump, whether you are feel as if you are racist or not, voted for the cancer. You voted for the cancer to have its day, or its four years as the case may be, and, in that, you are showing that you believe that you are more important than what Trump represents and that, my "friend" is racism. You are saying that you, you white person, deserve better treatment than the people that Trump has stated he intends to persecute, whether they be Muslim, Mexican, or female. You have said, "I know Trump is horrible and intends to do bad things to certain groups of people, but I am more important than those groups of people and I deserve my day at their expense." And, well, that, also, is just sick.
And the best part is...? Trump isn't going to give you your day, either, because you're not rich, and his policies are going to be just as disastrous for you as they will be for everyone else. So, yeah, good job.
If you read carefully, that is.
Until I was four years old, I lived with my mother and my grandparents but, even after my mother got married, my grandfather was the primary male role model in my life. He was a large man. Quiet. Great "table muscles," as he called them. I never once heard him raise his voice to anyone, much less his hand, and my mother says she can't remember him ever once saying anything bad about anyone (my grandmother, evidently, was another story; she had the temper). He used to read to me. I'd sit in his lap and smell the engine grease on him and in his clothes (he was a mechanic, but there's more to the story than that) -- that smell was just a part of who he was -- and he would read to me, frequently the same book over and over again. Little Black, a Pony and some book about an old, beat up blue truck. See, I still remember them.
When I was 19, he was diagnosed with cancer; I don't remember what kind. It was one of the fast ones, though, but the doctors told us they'd caught it in time and that he would be okay. They continued to tell us that all through the treatment. "Everything's going well." "He's responding well to the treatment." "He should be going home in no time."
The last time I saw him was a Monday night. We'd gone to visit him at the hospital, which was in another city, but he spent most of our time there asleep. He did grip my arm before I left, a grip that was still powerful despite his weakened condition. Even that night, the doctors were telling us that he was doing "very well" and they expected that he would get to go home soon.
When the phone rang Wednesday morning, I knew what the call was. Part of me died that morning, too.
Cancer can be insidious that way. It doesn't ever really go away; it just hides. That's why we say it's in remission rather than cured. Maybe there will be an actual cure someday but, for now, the best we can do is treat it into submission and hope that we outlast it. The problem many people run into is that they treat it as if it's a curable disease so ignore the symptoms of it coming back because they don't want to confront the issue of still being sick.
Racism has a lot in common with cancer. It's not a curable thing, though many of us have wanted to treat it that way, even going so far as to declare on television that racism is a thing of the past. I understand the allure of believing that, but it's that kind of thinking that allows the cancer to spread. It's a thing that needs constant awareness just to keep it in check, and, as a society, we just haven't been doing that. We can see the results of ignoring the symptoms in the recent rampant tumor growth across the US. Well, not just the US, but I don't think other parts of the world ever thought they had "cured" racism.
At any rate, this past election has in many ways reminded me of my grandfather's cancer, not least in that everyone kept saying, "It's going to be okay. Clinton is going to win, and we're going to treat the racism (and sexism) cancer back into remission." But the cancer won; Trump won; and the emotions of that were very similar to that phone call letting us know that my grandfather had succumbed to the cancer and died. I'm not going as far as to say that the US has succumbed to the cancer, but the cancer, right now, is having its day.
This is no longer the kind of racism that only expresses itself through things like implicit bias and in systemic, institutionalized ways. It has become very explicit and in your face because people who have previously felt social pressure to keep their racism internal have suddenly found new freedom to externalize it. We have moved past implicit bias into explicit hatred and hate crimes.
So let me just be clear in case what I'm saying here hasn't been explicit enough:
Racism (and sexism) is a cancer eating this country up. It has been the great, ongoing conflict we have been dealing with since before the US became the US. Racism was one of the great issues that pushed us into a two party system with Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists (the modern Democrats) on the side of racial equality and Thomas Jefferson (the modern Republicans) and his Democratic Republicans on the side of racial discrimination and slavery. [Jefferson may have written "All men are created equal" but he only meant white men when he wrote that. He even kept his own mixed race children as slaves during his lifetime. That's just sick.]
Those of you who voted for Trump, whether you are feel as if you are racist or not, voted for the cancer. You voted for the cancer to have its day, or its four years as the case may be, and, in that, you are showing that you believe that you are more important than what Trump represents and that, my "friend" is racism. You are saying that you, you white person, deserve better treatment than the people that Trump has stated he intends to persecute, whether they be Muslim, Mexican, or female. You have said, "I know Trump is horrible and intends to do bad things to certain groups of people, but I am more important than those groups of people and I deserve my day at their expense." And, well, that, also, is just sick.
And the best part is...? Trump isn't going to give you your day, either, because you're not rich, and his policies are going to be just as disastrous for you as they will be for everyone else. So, yeah, good job.
Monday, August 22, 2016
Dream a Little Dream... Or a Big One
Do you have a "dream"?
Do you even know what that is or what it means?
Is it a dream or a fantasy?
Yeah, I want to make a difference between those things.
But first:
I've been doing this a while, now, the whole author thing and, with it, the blog thing. I've changed the way I blog since way back in the beginning when I used a lot of my time to go and search out other blogs and be very interactive in the whole blogging process. It's time consuming, and I got to a point where I had to ask the question about what my dream was: Was it to write or was it to blog? But that's beside the point, though worth noting. The short of that was that I changed the way I blog, and I no longer go out searching for new blogs by other authors to get involved with.
The point of me telling you that is that I want to note how few blogs show up in my blog feed each day, now. Back when I was being heavily involved in blogging, there would be dozens of blog posts in my feed each day. It was seriously difficult to keep up with. When I changed the way I blogged, I didn't stop following people (even if I did stop visiting all of them), so all of those posts still showed up in my feed each day. Now, though, today, there were only two new posts in my feed. Monday, the heaviest day of the week, there were only eight, and there were none from Saturday and Sunday. [All of these numbers are as I write this on Tuesday, August 16.] Days without posts used to never happen. Never.
Sure, some of the missing people moved onto other platforms (InstaTwitter or whatever), but many of them just gave up on writing. Probably most of them. Okay, actually very certainly most of them. If I go down my list of people who no longer blog, most of them no longer do anything. They just quit.
And that is because of the difference between a dream and a fantasy.
For our purposes, we're going to call a "dream" something you yourself can accomplish.
We're going to call a "fantasy" something that happens to you.
So you can have a dream of buying lottery tickets, but any thoughts of winning the lottery are fantasies. Winning the lottery is not something you can achieve; it can only happen to you. Likewise, you can have a dream of being a writer (because you can sit down and do that), but you can only have a fantasy about being a rich and famous writer. You can be the best writer in the world and never become rich and famous because, as with the lottery, that is mostly luck. Maybe completely.
The problem is that it's easy to subvert your dream with the fantasy. Those things can be easy to confuse. When you believe your dream is the fantasy, you can become disillusioned. I know of several writers who quit, just gave up on it, because, after publishing a couple of things, they didn't become household names. It was crushing to them, and they just quit writing. They had a fantasy of becoming rich and famous and allowed it to take the place of their dream. That's a dangerous thing, allowing your fantasy to squash your dreams.
How do you deal with that kind of thing?
Well, the first way is to identify your dream and recognize the fantasy for what it is.
However, it is perfectly reasonable to have a dream of being "rich," but you need to identify that as your dream. Your actual dream. If that is your dream, you need to choose a path that enables you to work toward that as a dream and, let me just say, writing is a poor path to riches. Pun totally intended. You could even choose fame as a dream, I suppose, although fame is a very elusive thing, and you need to find avenues that lead to that more readily than writing. I would suggest giving Will Smith a call. Evidently, he followed a very specific plan to get to where he was in the 90s.
Now, I want to take all of this back a step farther: What is your real dream? I mean, writing is my dream, but there is a deeper dream, Let's call the dream the "deep magic," but there is a "deeper magic," the thing that supports the dream. That dream for me is the dream of leaving something behind. Something lasting. Something for my kids but also something that goes beyond just them and, in one way or another, everything I have done in my life has worked toward that.
Let me put it another way:
My grandfather was a great man. I'm going to go into why that is because 1. it would take too long and 2. it's unnecessary to what I'm going to say. He was a great man but, once I and the rest of his grandchildren are dead, there will be nothing left of him. Nothing beyond a notation in a genealogy file somewhere. And a birth certificate. Nothing that anyone will ever take note of in the future. Even the farm he poured his sweat into and the house he helped build are all gone now, burned to nothing in the wild fires that swept through East Texas a few years ago.
I don't know what kinds of dreams my grandfather had; he was more than a little laconic. But it makes me sad that he will be forgotten one day. I want to leave something behind, and my writing serves that dream.
It's not that I have a dream of being the Shakespeare of the age. Or, even, the Tolkien. Or, even, the Lewis. But I would be more than happy with being a MacDonald. See, you people don't even know who that is, do you? Here, I'll help: George MacDonald. See, it doesn't matter how unheard of he is for the most part, because his books are still out there and he still influences people. Probably in more ways than we can even imagine.
So, yeah, I choose the dream of writing to fulfill the dream of leaving something behind that lasts. And, well, if fame and riches follow, well, that's a nice fantasy, but it has nothing to do with my dream.
So what is your dream? Is it small or is it big? And can you separate it from fantasy?
"'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.
Do you even know what that is or what it means?
Is it a dream or a fantasy?
Yeah, I want to make a difference between those things.
But first:
I've been doing this a while, now, the whole author thing and, with it, the blog thing. I've changed the way I blog since way back in the beginning when I used a lot of my time to go and search out other blogs and be very interactive in the whole blogging process. It's time consuming, and I got to a point where I had to ask the question about what my dream was: Was it to write or was it to blog? But that's beside the point, though worth noting. The short of that was that I changed the way I blog, and I no longer go out searching for new blogs by other authors to get involved with.
The point of me telling you that is that I want to note how few blogs show up in my blog feed each day, now. Back when I was being heavily involved in blogging, there would be dozens of blog posts in my feed each day. It was seriously difficult to keep up with. When I changed the way I blogged, I didn't stop following people (even if I did stop visiting all of them), so all of those posts still showed up in my feed each day. Now, though, today, there were only two new posts in my feed. Monday, the heaviest day of the week, there were only eight, and there were none from Saturday and Sunday. [All of these numbers are as I write this on Tuesday, August 16.] Days without posts used to never happen. Never.
Sure, some of the missing people moved onto other platforms (InstaTwitter or whatever), but many of them just gave up on writing. Probably most of them. Okay, actually very certainly most of them. If I go down my list of people who no longer blog, most of them no longer do anything. They just quit.
And that is because of the difference between a dream and a fantasy.
For our purposes, we're going to call a "dream" something you yourself can accomplish.
We're going to call a "fantasy" something that happens to you.
So you can have a dream of buying lottery tickets, but any thoughts of winning the lottery are fantasies. Winning the lottery is not something you can achieve; it can only happen to you. Likewise, you can have a dream of being a writer (because you can sit down and do that), but you can only have a fantasy about being a rich and famous writer. You can be the best writer in the world and never become rich and famous because, as with the lottery, that is mostly luck. Maybe completely.
The problem is that it's easy to subvert your dream with the fantasy. Those things can be easy to confuse. When you believe your dream is the fantasy, you can become disillusioned. I know of several writers who quit, just gave up on it, because, after publishing a couple of things, they didn't become household names. It was crushing to them, and they just quit writing. They had a fantasy of becoming rich and famous and allowed it to take the place of their dream. That's a dangerous thing, allowing your fantasy to squash your dreams.
How do you deal with that kind of thing?
Well, the first way is to identify your dream and recognize the fantasy for what it is.
However, it is perfectly reasonable to have a dream of being "rich," but you need to identify that as your dream. Your actual dream. If that is your dream, you need to choose a path that enables you to work toward that as a dream and, let me just say, writing is a poor path to riches. Pun totally intended. You could even choose fame as a dream, I suppose, although fame is a very elusive thing, and you need to find avenues that lead to that more readily than writing. I would suggest giving Will Smith a call. Evidently, he followed a very specific plan to get to where he was in the 90s.
Now, I want to take all of this back a step farther: What is your real dream? I mean, writing is my dream, but there is a deeper dream, Let's call the dream the "deep magic," but there is a "deeper magic," the thing that supports the dream. That dream for me is the dream of leaving something behind. Something lasting. Something for my kids but also something that goes beyond just them and, in one way or another, everything I have done in my life has worked toward that.
Let me put it another way:
My grandfather was a great man. I'm going to go into why that is because 1. it would take too long and 2. it's unnecessary to what I'm going to say. He was a great man but, once I and the rest of his grandchildren are dead, there will be nothing left of him. Nothing beyond a notation in a genealogy file somewhere. And a birth certificate. Nothing that anyone will ever take note of in the future. Even the farm he poured his sweat into and the house he helped build are all gone now, burned to nothing in the wild fires that swept through East Texas a few years ago.
I don't know what kinds of dreams my grandfather had; he was more than a little laconic. But it makes me sad that he will be forgotten one day. I want to leave something behind, and my writing serves that dream.
It's not that I have a dream of being the Shakespeare of the age. Or, even, the Tolkien. Or, even, the Lewis. But I would be more than happy with being a MacDonald. See, you people don't even know who that is, do you? Here, I'll help: George MacDonald. See, it doesn't matter how unheard of he is for the most part, because his books are still out there and he still influences people. Probably in more ways than we can even imagine.
So, yeah, I choose the dream of writing to fulfill the dream of leaving something behind that lasts. And, well, if fame and riches follow, well, that's a nice fantasy, but it has nothing to do with my dream.
So what is your dream? Is it small or is it big? And can you separate it from fantasy?
"'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Shadow Spinner, the Serpent, and Keeping Your Serial Crisp
What kind of cereal do you like? For me, right now, I like Grape-Nuts. Mostly, I like Grape-Nuts because I don't like Cheerios. When you only keep non-sugared cereals in your house, it kind of limits your options. Actually, though, I do like Grape-Nuts. My grandfather, I suppose, taught me to like them as a young lad.
My grandfather didn't have any teeth. As long as I knew him, he didn't have any teeth. No, I don't know the story behind that, and, now that I'm thinking about it, I want to know. As a kid, though, it was just one of those things: my grandfather didn't have teeth. He also didn't have most of his right index finger (I do know the story behind that). Let me be clear, here: my grandfather didn't have teeth, and he didn't use dentures. My great-grandmother and one of my aunts also didn't have teeth, but they wore dentures, so we, as kids, didn't think of them as not having teeth. They did; they could just take theirs out. My grandfather didn't have teeth. At all. But he loved Grape-Nuts.
If you've ever had Grape-Nuts, you'll know that they're rather like they sound, except for the "grape" part; no one knows where that came from. Seriously, there are competing theories as to the origin of the name, none of which I'm buying. But, anyway, Grape-Nuts are hard, and I can't actually imagine trying to eat them without teeth. It would be like walking across scattered Lego with your bare feet. [Interesting fact: did you know "Lego" is the plural of "Lego"?] To get around this problem, my grandfather would let them soak in the milk long enough to get soft, which is the first way that I liked eating Grape-Nuts (I like them crunchy these days, though).
All of this to say that, even after 20 minutes in milk, Grape-Nuts still retain their structure; most cereal has turned to mush by that point.
I kind of went on with that longer than I mean to.
The real question, here, was me wondering what it's like for my readers being on part 24 of Shadow Spinner, but, then, I looked up some of Dickens' stuff, and people waited on the piers for the ships to come in with the newspapers that had his stuff serialized, and his stuff had, like, 60 chapters, so I'm not going to worry about it.
Well, I'm not going to worry about it beyond this:
If you're ready, RIGHT NOW! DANG IT!, to find out how it all ends--because there are another 10 chapters to go--well, you can, because Shadow Spinner is now available as a physical book! Yep, it's out there! And, remember, not only do you get Shadow Spinner, but you also get Bryan Pedas' story "Like An Axe Through Bone," available exclusively in the physical copy of Shadow Spinner. Also, what a great cover by Rusty!
If you want to keep on with the serialization, today is the FREE! release of "Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"! Let me just say, things are getting bad for Tib. Seriously bad.
Here is the list of the FREE! offerings for today, Monday, June 24:
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent" (also available tomorrow, Tuesday, June 25)
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"
"Part Twenty-one: The Chase"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden"
"Part Fourteen: Anger and Laughter"
"Part Thirteen: The Clearing"
"Part Eleven: The Kiss"
"Part Ten: The Broken Window"
"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"
"Part Eight: The Cold and The Dark"
"Part Seven: The Moth and the Shadow"
"Part Five: The Police Car"
"Part Four: The Cop"
"Part Three: The Bedroom"
"Part Two: The Kitchen Table"
"Part One: The Tunnel"
So that's 19 of the 24 parts for FREE! this week. And you should grab parts 1-5 for sure, because, if all goes according to plan--and I'm not saying it will, because I have three kids at home on summer vacation--those will not be available in this format two weeks from now.
My grandfather didn't have any teeth. As long as I knew him, he didn't have any teeth. No, I don't know the story behind that, and, now that I'm thinking about it, I want to know. As a kid, though, it was just one of those things: my grandfather didn't have teeth. He also didn't have most of his right index finger (I do know the story behind that). Let me be clear, here: my grandfather didn't have teeth, and he didn't use dentures. My great-grandmother and one of my aunts also didn't have teeth, but they wore dentures, so we, as kids, didn't think of them as not having teeth. They did; they could just take theirs out. My grandfather didn't have teeth. At all. But he loved Grape-Nuts.
If you've ever had Grape-Nuts, you'll know that they're rather like they sound, except for the "grape" part; no one knows where that came from. Seriously, there are competing theories as to the origin of the name, none of which I'm buying. But, anyway, Grape-Nuts are hard, and I can't actually imagine trying to eat them without teeth. It would be like walking across scattered Lego with your bare feet. [Interesting fact: did you know "Lego" is the plural of "Lego"?] To get around this problem, my grandfather would let them soak in the milk long enough to get soft, which is the first way that I liked eating Grape-Nuts (I like them crunchy these days, though).
All of this to say that, even after 20 minutes in milk, Grape-Nuts still retain their structure; most cereal has turned to mush by that point.
I kind of went on with that longer than I mean to.
The real question, here, was me wondering what it's like for my readers being on part 24 of Shadow Spinner, but, then, I looked up some of Dickens' stuff, and people waited on the piers for the ships to come in with the newspapers that had his stuff serialized, and his stuff had, like, 60 chapters, so I'm not going to worry about it.
Well, I'm not going to worry about it beyond this:
If you're ready, RIGHT NOW! DANG IT!, to find out how it all ends--because there are another 10 chapters to go--well, you can, because Shadow Spinner is now available as a physical book! Yep, it's out there! And, remember, not only do you get Shadow Spinner, but you also get Bryan Pedas' story "Like An Axe Through Bone," available exclusively in the physical copy of Shadow Spinner. Also, what a great cover by Rusty!
If you want to keep on with the serialization, today is the FREE! release of "Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"! Let me just say, things are getting bad for Tib. Seriously bad.
Here is the list of the FREE! offerings for today, Monday, June 24:
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent" (also available tomorrow, Tuesday, June 25)
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"
"Part Twenty-one: The Chase"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden"
"Part Fourteen: Anger and Laughter"
"Part Thirteen: The Clearing"
"Part Eleven: The Kiss"
"Part Ten: The Broken Window"
"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"
"Part Eight: The Cold and The Dark"
"Part Seven: The Moth and the Shadow"
"Part Five: The Police Car"
"Part Four: The Cop"
"Part Three: The Bedroom"
"Part Two: The Kitchen Table"
"Part One: The Tunnel"
So that's 19 of the 24 parts for FREE! this week. And you should grab parts 1-5 for sure, because, if all goes according to plan--and I'm not saying it will, because I have three kids at home on summer vacation--those will not be available in this format two weeks from now.
Monday, November 26, 2012
My Relationship with Death (part 2)
Death comes in two forms: the ones that happen that you aren't expecting, striking like lightning from a clear sky and the ones that creep up, the ones you see coming but can't do anything about. It's hard to say which is worse. I don't think knowing it's coming prepares us for it any more than when it just happens, and I don't think having it just happen lessens the pain of it not being drawn out. It really just comes down to the importance of the person in our lives.
When I was in high school, my uncle put my great-grandmother, who would sit and watch TV eating sticks of butter like candy bars, in a nursing home. She was in her 90s, and she couldn't be left alone during the day while he was at work; there was really no other option for him. When I was a little kid, my great-grandmother had been a significant figure in my life. She liked to take my cousins and me on long walks down the dusty east Texas road out in the country where she lived. We'd pick her wild flowers for the dining table. She made the best biscuits and gravy in this spiral arm. And the best squirrel dumplings. Granted, I've never even heard of anyone else making squirrel dumplings, but I'm sure hers would be the best even if that was a thing.
She was old, and she wasn't in the greatest of health. Basically, she moved from her bed to her chair and back again. She had a walker, but it barely fit through the old farm house they lived in, and she'd mostly quit using it anyway. She couldn't get in and out of bed without help, and the chair she sat in to watch TV was right next to her bed, so, really, she'd lived in that one little spot for at least a year before my uncle decided he couldn't take care of her by himself anymore. She told him (and everyone) that if he put her in a nursing home she would die. She was born in the house she lived in, and she wanted to die in it, too. He put her in the nursing home. Two weeks later, she was dead.
I was sad when she died, but I wasn't devastated. She had faded from being important in my life as I got older and she got more enfeebled. She was old (really old), and everyone was expecting her to die (although no one really expected her to just die right away after going to the nursing home). I figured that I was just prepared for her death and that's why it didn't hurt so much. However, my grandfather was devastated over the death of his mother-in-law. I remember him crying (I'd never seen him cry before) and bending over and kissing her forehead in the casket. That made me more sad than my own sadness.
But here's a more tangible demonstration of how death can affect us:
During the 1st semester of my sophomore year at college, my paternal grandfather died. I don't remember it being anything anyone expected. In fact, my maternal grandfather was struggling with cancer at the time, and most of our attention was on him. The truth is, we weren't at all close to my father's side of the family. Not even my father was close to my father's side of the family, so, when his father died, it was an obligation to be fulfilled and nothing more. But I had a friend, one of my best friends, at school that wanted to be supportive, and he came to the funeral. He's actually the person to pay attention to in this story. See, from his perspective, we didn't react any differently to this death than he did. And it was true; we didn't.
I moved back home with my parents during the middle of my sophomore year, which is another story entirely, but we can simplify it by saying it was just a lot cheaper than living on campus. It all had to do with the school cafeteria and how bad the food was, and it lead to my friend, the one that had gone to the funeral, rooming at my parents house for a semester. That, also, is another story entirely. The significance of it is that he was living with us when my maternal grandfather died in the spring.
As I said, my maternal grandfather had had cancer, a particularly aggressive type of back cancer, but the doctor had said that they'd found it early enough that everything should be fine. He said this to use all the time. I should also say that my maternal grandfather was, in many ways, the most important figure in my life. He was the one that read to me when I was little. The same few books over and over again. I'd sit in his lap smelling his unique mechanic odor. It probably wasn't unique, but I didn't know anyone else that smelled that way, and I've never known anyone else that smelled that way, even other mechanics. My mom didn't get married until I was four; we lived in my grandparents' house prior to that; my grandfather was the "father" I knew. I didn't know until later (after he died) that I had been his favorite.
It was a Monday night, and my family had been to see my grandfather in the hospital. He was barely the man I had known, and he was in a lot of pain. It was pretty horrible to see him that way, but the doctor was saying, even that night he said it, he was going to recover. Still, as we were getting in the car to leave, I said to my mother that it would be better for my grandfather to leave than to be in so much pain, and my grandfather had been saying that he was ready to go; it's just that no one else was ready for him to go. He was, for lack of a better way of putting it (and no one knew this at the time), the glue that held the whole family together.
Wednesday morning I was taking a bath (no showers in our house) and getting ready for the commute to school when the phone rang. I knew what that call was as soon as it started to ring, and I'd already broken down in the tub before my mom was off the phone with the news that my grandfather was dead. I was broken. It was like something snapped inside of me, and I didn't know what to do. My whole family was similarly devastated.
And there was my friend stuck in this house that had become some weird alien landscape to him. He'd been with us when my paternal grandfather died, and he expected the same sort of reaction from this death. He wasn't prepared for what happened and couldn't really deal with it. That morning as we were driving to school (one state over and nearly an hour away), I wasn't really in the car with him. I was just a leaking shell.
I didn't cry at all when my paternal grandfather died. I don't even think my dad cried when his dad died, but my family didn't stop crying when my maternal grandfather died. For my friend, it was like someone had thrown him out into a lake of tears, and he didn't know how to swim in it. He didn't know how to reach out to any of us, and, really, we didn't want him to. I just wanted to be left alone. Having to go to school at all was painful enough, but it was college, and college doesn't care about anything as trivial as death. College just wants to get all deep and talk about it a lot.
I can't describe in this space how deeply into me that death went. It really did break something in me. Maybe it was just my heart, but I don't think so. It was one of those instances, though, where you can see it coming, but you just can't prepare for it. My mother had been telling me that I should be prepared, but I kept clinging to the words of the doctor. I couldn't accept that my papa would die, so I just chose on some level to dismiss that as a possibility. That Monday night was the first time I'd even come close to acknowledging that he could die, and, when he died on Wednesday, I blamed myself. My words. So did my mother. Not that she said it that way, but she kept reminding me of what I had said.
Eventually, life continues. Well, it keeps on continuing no matter what, but, eventually, you creep back into it. What choice do you have? Later, after I'd recovered some semblance of humanity, my friend told me how freaked out he'd been by the whole situation. I'm gonna compare it to when you're walking up stairs in the dark and you think there's one more step but there's not. That feeling you have right then when you expect your foot to touch the next step but there's nothing there... that's how he felt, except it just kept going, that feeling. Like he'd stepped into some kind of void and kept falling and couldn't get his footing back until we did. His only way of dealing with it was to kind of avoid me at school, because he couldn't cope with my grief.
And I get it. When my mother-in-law died a couple of years ago, I had to go through that with my wife. There had been a long fight with pancreatic cancer, and, even though we knew that my mother-in-law had very slim chances of making it past six months, when she did make it past six months and then a year and, then, 18 months, it became harder and harder to accept that she would succumb. So, even though we knew it would come, we didn't believe in it. And the only reason I was able to cope with my wife's grief over the death of her mother was that I'd been through it before. I understood. My friend had never been through anything like that, so he didn't understand. He had no idea of the depth of the wound.
I think death is not just a thing that happens to people when they die; it's also an emotion. Like... like the opposite of love. There's really no other way to look at it, because only those two things affect us so deeply. Strike us to our cores and shatter us on the inside. Even though people can see what's going on, there's no way they can reach in and help put us right. The best they can do is be there. Be available. Of course, it helps to have been through it to be able to understand that. Because, really, the trite words don't help. The "he's in a better place" or the "he's at peace" or "he'll always be with you" are empty sounds that only help the person saying them.
Grief, real grief, is a tough thing. It stabs into you, becomes a part of you, rolls around in your insides. You can't just take it out or turn it off. Those of you out there that have gone through this kind of thing will know what I'm talking about; you others... well, you think you do; you think you know, but, the truth it, you don't. You can't. And no one can tell you what it's like. It would be like me trying to explain what peanut butter peppermint bars taste like, but, really, the only way to know is to taste it for yourself.
When I was in high school, my uncle put my great-grandmother, who would sit and watch TV eating sticks of butter like candy bars, in a nursing home. She was in her 90s, and she couldn't be left alone during the day while he was at work; there was really no other option for him. When I was a little kid, my great-grandmother had been a significant figure in my life. She liked to take my cousins and me on long walks down the dusty east Texas road out in the country where she lived. We'd pick her wild flowers for the dining table. She made the best biscuits and gravy in this spiral arm. And the best squirrel dumplings. Granted, I've never even heard of anyone else making squirrel dumplings, but I'm sure hers would be the best even if that was a thing.
She was old, and she wasn't in the greatest of health. Basically, she moved from her bed to her chair and back again. She had a walker, but it barely fit through the old farm house they lived in, and she'd mostly quit using it anyway. She couldn't get in and out of bed without help, and the chair she sat in to watch TV was right next to her bed, so, really, she'd lived in that one little spot for at least a year before my uncle decided he couldn't take care of her by himself anymore. She told him (and everyone) that if he put her in a nursing home she would die. She was born in the house she lived in, and she wanted to die in it, too. He put her in the nursing home. Two weeks later, she was dead.
I was sad when she died, but I wasn't devastated. She had faded from being important in my life as I got older and she got more enfeebled. She was old (really old), and everyone was expecting her to die (although no one really expected her to just die right away after going to the nursing home). I figured that I was just prepared for her death and that's why it didn't hurt so much. However, my grandfather was devastated over the death of his mother-in-law. I remember him crying (I'd never seen him cry before) and bending over and kissing her forehead in the casket. That made me more sad than my own sadness.
But here's a more tangible demonstration of how death can affect us:
During the 1st semester of my sophomore year at college, my paternal grandfather died. I don't remember it being anything anyone expected. In fact, my maternal grandfather was struggling with cancer at the time, and most of our attention was on him. The truth is, we weren't at all close to my father's side of the family. Not even my father was close to my father's side of the family, so, when his father died, it was an obligation to be fulfilled and nothing more. But I had a friend, one of my best friends, at school that wanted to be supportive, and he came to the funeral. He's actually the person to pay attention to in this story. See, from his perspective, we didn't react any differently to this death than he did. And it was true; we didn't.
I moved back home with my parents during the middle of my sophomore year, which is another story entirely, but we can simplify it by saying it was just a lot cheaper than living on campus. It all had to do with the school cafeteria and how bad the food was, and it lead to my friend, the one that had gone to the funeral, rooming at my parents house for a semester. That, also, is another story entirely. The significance of it is that he was living with us when my maternal grandfather died in the spring.
As I said, my maternal grandfather had had cancer, a particularly aggressive type of back cancer, but the doctor had said that they'd found it early enough that everything should be fine. He said this to use all the time. I should also say that my maternal grandfather was, in many ways, the most important figure in my life. He was the one that read to me when I was little. The same few books over and over again. I'd sit in his lap smelling his unique mechanic odor. It probably wasn't unique, but I didn't know anyone else that smelled that way, and I've never known anyone else that smelled that way, even other mechanics. My mom didn't get married until I was four; we lived in my grandparents' house prior to that; my grandfather was the "father" I knew. I didn't know until later (after he died) that I had been his favorite.
It was a Monday night, and my family had been to see my grandfather in the hospital. He was barely the man I had known, and he was in a lot of pain. It was pretty horrible to see him that way, but the doctor was saying, even that night he said it, he was going to recover. Still, as we were getting in the car to leave, I said to my mother that it would be better for my grandfather to leave than to be in so much pain, and my grandfather had been saying that he was ready to go; it's just that no one else was ready for him to go. He was, for lack of a better way of putting it (and no one knew this at the time), the glue that held the whole family together.
Wednesday morning I was taking a bath (no showers in our house) and getting ready for the commute to school when the phone rang. I knew what that call was as soon as it started to ring, and I'd already broken down in the tub before my mom was off the phone with the news that my grandfather was dead. I was broken. It was like something snapped inside of me, and I didn't know what to do. My whole family was similarly devastated.
And there was my friend stuck in this house that had become some weird alien landscape to him. He'd been with us when my paternal grandfather died, and he expected the same sort of reaction from this death. He wasn't prepared for what happened and couldn't really deal with it. That morning as we were driving to school (one state over and nearly an hour away), I wasn't really in the car with him. I was just a leaking shell.
I didn't cry at all when my paternal grandfather died. I don't even think my dad cried when his dad died, but my family didn't stop crying when my maternal grandfather died. For my friend, it was like someone had thrown him out into a lake of tears, and he didn't know how to swim in it. He didn't know how to reach out to any of us, and, really, we didn't want him to. I just wanted to be left alone. Having to go to school at all was painful enough, but it was college, and college doesn't care about anything as trivial as death. College just wants to get all deep and talk about it a lot.
I can't describe in this space how deeply into me that death went. It really did break something in me. Maybe it was just my heart, but I don't think so. It was one of those instances, though, where you can see it coming, but you just can't prepare for it. My mother had been telling me that I should be prepared, but I kept clinging to the words of the doctor. I couldn't accept that my papa would die, so I just chose on some level to dismiss that as a possibility. That Monday night was the first time I'd even come close to acknowledging that he could die, and, when he died on Wednesday, I blamed myself. My words. So did my mother. Not that she said it that way, but she kept reminding me of what I had said.
Eventually, life continues. Well, it keeps on continuing no matter what, but, eventually, you creep back into it. What choice do you have? Later, after I'd recovered some semblance of humanity, my friend told me how freaked out he'd been by the whole situation. I'm gonna compare it to when you're walking up stairs in the dark and you think there's one more step but there's not. That feeling you have right then when you expect your foot to touch the next step but there's nothing there... that's how he felt, except it just kept going, that feeling. Like he'd stepped into some kind of void and kept falling and couldn't get his footing back until we did. His only way of dealing with it was to kind of avoid me at school, because he couldn't cope with my grief.
And I get it. When my mother-in-law died a couple of years ago, I had to go through that with my wife. There had been a long fight with pancreatic cancer, and, even though we knew that my mother-in-law had very slim chances of making it past six months, when she did make it past six months and then a year and, then, 18 months, it became harder and harder to accept that she would succumb. So, even though we knew it would come, we didn't believe in it. And the only reason I was able to cope with my wife's grief over the death of her mother was that I'd been through it before. I understood. My friend had never been through anything like that, so he didn't understand. He had no idea of the depth of the wound.
I think death is not just a thing that happens to people when they die; it's also an emotion. Like... like the opposite of love. There's really no other way to look at it, because only those two things affect us so deeply. Strike us to our cores and shatter us on the inside. Even though people can see what's going on, there's no way they can reach in and help put us right. The best they can do is be there. Be available. Of course, it helps to have been through it to be able to understand that. Because, really, the trite words don't help. The "he's in a better place" or the "he's at peace" or "he'll always be with you" are empty sounds that only help the person saying them.
Grief, real grief, is a tough thing. It stabs into you, becomes a part of you, rolls around in your insides. You can't just take it out or turn it off. Those of you out there that have gone through this kind of thing will know what I'm talking about; you others... well, you think you do; you think you know, but, the truth it, you don't. You can't. And no one can tell you what it's like. It would be like me trying to explain what peanut butter peppermint bars taste like, but, really, the only way to know is to taste it for yourself.
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