Grieving as a Grown-up

My mother died thirty years ago, a lot longer ago than I've been alive. I was twenty when she passed. Twenty is an age when self hasn't been defined beyond self. Twenty year olds are self-involved. As I recall, the earth was revolving around me so when my mother was no longer in that world, my reaction was devastation that she wasn't in MY life. It didn't occur to me that she wasn't in THIS life. She was ready to go, my father begged her to stay and I just waited to see how I would be affected by whatever she did.

My father died three years later and even at twenty-three my life was still mainly about me. It was worse than my mother dying because anything that I had attached to her had shifted to my father. Without his knowledge, he was carrying a lot of my baggage around when he passed on. I saw myself as a suddenly burdened twenty-three year old orphan who couldn't fathom what to do or how to do it.

One of these days I'll write about how their dying was the kindest thing they ever did for me. But not today.
Today's musings are about grief. I left the town in which I grew up shortly after my father's passing. I drove four days in my Buick LeSabre to a state most people don't even really believe exists. It took twenty-one years for me to return to my birth state and my hometown. That gap of time was determined more by circumstances than desire or lack thereof. When I drove my rented car into the town of my youth 21 years later, it was as if I was half dreaming. Instinctively I knew where to turn and what roads would lead to locations of importance. But like a dream, it barely seemed like a real place where I had really lived. I speak only in the physical sense because emotionally I connected immediately. I began to cry as soon as I got near my childhood home. Tears blurred my vision driving past Deane-Porter School, Forrestdale School, the high school, Holy Cross Church and even Hower's grocer which wasn't even called that anymore.

I had to pull-over and sit and compose myself. My soul was sick with all of the heaving and weaving and lurching tearing through it. It took some time before I realized that the tears and sobs were the symptoms of grief. I was mourning my parents as a grown-up. Now that I was an adult I saw them from an adult's point of view. I was a different person going through the fresh pain of losing a parent. I was never conscious of when the world stopped revolving around me but it did become clear as I sat in the car and recognized my parents as adults, as an adult myself. How deeply dimensional they became and how hurt I felt to know that I would never know them in that way.

Thomas Wolfe's "You can't go home again" is a tired cliche that gets dragged out for any old occasion to prove a point. I can't quote him with any truth. You CAN go home again. It's just that when you do go home again, it becomes what you have become: better, more experienced, more compassionate, more prepared, more whole. More.

Laugh Until Milk Comes Out Of Your Nose!

Betty Lou wants to share a few of her favorite jokes ...

Two boys, 8 and 9, start using profane language all the time. Their parents, distraught, ask a psychiatrist what they should do. The doctor says, "The next time one of those boys uses a bad word, each of you should smack him across the face." "OK" say the parents. The next morning the boys come down for breakfast and the older boy turns to his mom and says, "Pass the fuckin' cornflakes. The mother immediately slaps him across the face. Then the father slaps the boy sending the kid off his chair and onto the floor. Mom turns to the younger boy and asks, "Now, what do you want?" He replies, "I sure as shit don't want the fuckin' cornflakes!"

An exceedingly wealthy business magnate was hosting a celebration on his estate. After he had fed and entertained his guests they were all gathered around the Olympic size pool. At that point he took the cover off the pool to reveal that it was teeming with hungry pirana fish. "To anyone brave enough to swim the length of this pool," he challenged, "I will give you your choice of a million dollars or half of the shares in my company Or, you can have my daughter's hand in marriage." Immediately there was a splash and they all turned to watch a man swimming furiously down the length of the pool. When he got to the other side, he dragged himself out, bleeding and clothes in tatters. The wealthy man was thrilled: "I am impressed. I didn't think anyone would take my offer, but you did and now you have a choice to make. Did you take this risk for the million dollars, the shares in my company, or my daughter's hand? Tell me, what do you want?" The young man replied, "I want to know who pushed me in the pool!"

A man walks into a bar with a duck on his shoulder. The bartender yells out, "Hey what do you think you're doing? Get that pig outta here!" The man says, "What are you, an idiot? This is a duck, not a pig!" The bartender replies, "I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the duck!"

I'm Betty McLou! How do you McDo?

Danny Boy

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.
And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.
And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

Dear Betty Lou,

Dear Betty Lou,
A friend invited me to attend a church service with her yesterday. She is of a different faith than myself and I was interested in another perspective on worship. I was shocked to hear the preacher repeatedly use the word "we" in his remarks . Examples: "We don't watch television shows that promote infidelity" or "we support the 2nd ammendment." Betty Lou, when did churches start speaking on behalf of their parishoners instead of speaking to them? I was offended by what appeared to be forced inclusion which seemed to translate into a popular Bushism: "If you're not with us, you're against us." What's your take on this phenomenon?

Betty Lou Responds -
I take it as an affront to individual expression. Too often these days people are going through life with a "Club" mentality. This means that individuals are not trusting their own individuality and find comfort in thoughts and ideas agreed upon by a mob. The impetous for this type of behavior dates back to childhood when every kid felt like an outsider hoping to be accepted by the "cool kids." Rather than risk not being asked to the prom as an adult, people leap into the largest group no matter what ideals are being embraced by said group. The sinister aspect of all this, of course, is that supposed ministers of God are ignoring the most important gift handed down by our Lord in favor of increasing church membership. That gift, of course, is the gift of free will and what comes along with that: the ability to think critically, make individual choices and to know when to stand up and walk out of church while understanding that God isn't the least bit offended.

Susan B. Anthony : More Accurate Than Nostradamus!

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

Look when she lived then look what she said about our government and foreign policy. Change a few words and nothing's really changed at all.

"How can you not be all on fire? ... I really believe I shall explode if some of you young women don't wake up --and raise your voice in protest against the impending crime of this nation upon the new islands it has clutched from other folks. Do come into the living present and work to save us from any more barbaric male governments."