When the Well Goes Dry...My So-Called Bucket List

In case it hasn't been noticed; I've been trying to get here at least once a week to post something mind-blowing, entertaining (maybe only to me) or inspirational. 
This week, it seems the well went dry (although plenty of you probably thought that was last week when I ran clips of stuff that happened more than 30 years ago) and I actually found myself 'Googling' blog ideas. Surreal experience.

Also, I'd already done many of them without realizing it.
Sometimes I wonder if anybody (besides 'Bama Bone, and my family) is actually reading these? Just like that song in 1776 (hey it was July 4th 5 days ago), I wonder,

"Is anybody there?"
"Does anybody care?"
"Does anybody see what I see?"

If you are there, and reading this, I sure wish you would comment. Tell me what I am doing wrong, or right. Unless of course you are a major celebrity and want to remain anonymous which of course, I completely understand. Thinking that major celebs who wish to remain anonymous are reading this is just one of the many coping mechanisms I employ.

So on to the business of this. After all this research, what do I elect to write...
Over the last 2-3 years, well, I've experienced quite a few deaths.  And I'm turning a year older as well, which puts me just a scoch closer to my own encounter with the reaper whose name is death.

Sorry don't mean to be morbid, it's just that all of this makes me reflective.
I started to wonder how I'd want to be remembered and what I really wanted to accomplish before I shrug off this mortal coil.

1. I'd like to be remembered as a person who was interesting. Frankly I don't care that much if you approve of me (by the way that's huge, it used to be my reason for getting up in the morning-your approval) or don't approve of me, but I hope you at least would say, "She's a piece of work!"

2. On my tombstone, memorial or epitaph, hologram, or whatever they are using, I'd like to see the following quotes:

• "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" It's Robert Browning and is one of the touchstones of my life.
• "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I know there is a certain political connotation to these words but there is very little that I believe so devoutly in or am more passionate about than these immortal words of Jefferson.
• Lastly and most importantly, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life". Quote-aholic that I am, I could go on for quite a bit, but it is these three that are the blocks upon which my life is built.

3. Probably the hymns/songs I'd most like to hear are, "Great is Thy Faithfulness", "It Is Well With My Soul", Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", Max Bruch's Symphony No 1 in G Minor, Michael W Smith's "Angus Dei" and Julian Lennon's "Too Late for Goodbyes", not for the obvious pun or irony, just because it's probably my favorite pop song of all time, narrowly edging out Level 42's "Something About You". There are probably much better songs technically, etc., but it's these two that I can play and never tire of.  By the same token, if any of the following ARE played, I'll find some way to haunt you, anything by Lady Gaga, "Uptown Funk", Spin Doctors "Two Princes", "Runaround" By Blues Traveler, anything by Snoop Dog, "The Thong Song", ummm... anything by One Republic and that hideous, hideous song that I can never get out of my head for days after I've heard it, "Somebody That I Used to Know" by artist with unpronounceable, stupid name, Gotye.

4.  When people remember me, I guess the things that they should know are that I lived my life always trying not to hurt people. To put myself in their place, walk a mile in their shoes. That I loved cats/dogs, nothing makes me happier than feeding, playing with or caring for them. My life's passions are books, music and movies. That when I'm sad, I always listen to The Carpenters; Karen's voice I always thought was the best and most soothing of all voices. That I had a secret passion for the Bee Gees and ABBA. That sometimes the only thing that makes me smile when nothing else could is to watch Fred Astaire dance. My favorite color has always been blue. While I read everything and anything, my favorite book is probably, Rosamunde Pilcher's Coming Home. Yes, the Bible is paramount, but I never really considered the Bible...merely a book. My favorite painting is the "Marriage of Arnolfini" by Jan Van Eyck. Although I also love JMW Turner, Winslow Homer, Auguste Renoir and the portraiture of John Singer Sargent. I love poetry, particularly Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and Shakespeare's Sonnet 116..."Let me not to the marriage of true minds, admit impediments..."

5. I always wanted to get married outside in a rose garden. Living in Fl, I probably should say the beach, but to me that's the ultimate cliché, besides I sunburn faster than it takes most people to find a seat at a wedding. I still hope to one day find me a kind, funny and handsome groom to join me in this garden.

6. I regret never having gone to my High School Senior Prom. I should have, I had the dress, but I lacked the courage.

7. Before I shrug off this mortal coil, I want to be a better writer. I need to work at it more, I've been lazy. I'm too old to keep being lazy.  Since the moment, I began committing words to the page, there is rarely anything I've loved doing more, except maybe reading.

8. I want to see Canada, Maine, and go on a train trip. Actually, I've retrenched a bit seeing as how it used to be England, Italy, France and Australia.

9. I know it's probably indulgent, and non-PC, considering most people nowadays have a memorial service with a please contribute to in lieu of flowers thing. But, damn it, I want flowers. Funerals are grim enough, so even though I'm not actually going to be there, I'd like to think of it as being beautiful. Life is short and beauty is important. I want to drink in all the beauty I can. It's probably little known, but flowers are a big deal to me. I love roses (although not red, old fashioned ones, yellow, peachy pink, ivory), lilies, freesias (if only for the scent), and hydrangeas best of all.  I also have a soft spot for gardenias and petunias which always make me think of my Grandma, but the scent of gardenias is a bit overpowering and petunias don't do well as cut flowers.

10. Sometimes I feel that I've lived life too safely. That I didn't take enough risks. So a few things I'd  wanted to do, but always talked myself out of are scuba diving, horseback riding, competing in ballroom dance, going on Space Mountain at Walt Disney World, and climbing up the tower at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse.  I should do these things.

So this is what you get when the well goes dry...essentially my bucket list.
What's yours? Leave a comment! 

Get Your Business Done

I lost a family member about two days ago.

A part of me inside is saying, "I can't believe you are writing about this again".
It feels that I'm always mentioning someone who died recently in this blog.

Lately it seems that I am losing all 'my people'. The people who I care about, who are in my memories, the folks that ultimately made me...me.

I put it down to becoming middle-aged. And I admit, I've been sad and wallowing in it.
Mourning the person, their life, their loss, but in the end it comes down to being selfish. In the final analysis, it seems that most of us, no one more than myself, are mourning what their loss 'does to me'.

More than any other, this death has shaken me. A few weeks ago, I didn't know how sick she was, how ill she'd become in the last year or so. And worst of all, I hadn't really asked.

I feel guilty and stricken. In this, my own blog, I preached about the importance of making time for family, but I felt that meant just attending the family dinners when asked and picking up occasion specific cards at the right time. I realized that I had taken the lazy way out, letting all of the invitations come to me second-hand through my parents and not taking the initiative as an adult and calling to see how they were, maybe emailing, driving over, etc.

In short, I  haven't grown up. I'm still acting like a 13 year old adolescent, worrying endlessly what 'people will think of me'.  It's hamstrung me in every way.  For fear of what people would think, I've stifled my sense of humor. I've put on a professional sort of mask to cover my personality so that I would be taken seriously because I've never been able to handle criticism, always fearing the ultimate judgment that I would be found out as a fallible human being. Excessive pride + vulnerability of any kind= crushing humiliation.

And it is this that caused me to always take the conventional path, to never make waves, to never step outside of the bounds and really do the things that show people what you mean to them. It's not what we say, it's what we do that people remember.

And this lady, what she did for me, for my sisters, for all of us kids was pretty remarkable. Acting only out of kindness, she spent her time, what little money she had and her energy to provide us with unforgettable memories. She took us to movies, for ice cream, to the zoo for the annual Easter egg hunt, to the fair for cotton candy and hotdogs, she set up weekend trips to the beach, backyard Double-Dare-esque obstacle courses, stuffed Christmas stockings, always had the time to play games, to listen to our childish chatter. As I sit here typing, the blanket she gave me in 1992 is still draped over the foot of my bed. In short she gave sacrificially, she never held anything back. She didn't spend time agonizing over what everyone thought, she was too busy doing...

I remember feeling bad that she had never become a mother herself, imposing a little of my own regret on to her, and it was just yesterday that I realized, she had actually been so much more than that. Instead of concentrating on one or two of her own kids, she'd been a sort of den mother to so many. Me, my sisters, their kids, the children she taught Sunday school to. There is not one of us, whose life wasn't impacted by her. This zany lady who taught us that it was okay to let our hair down, have fun and to be silly from time to time.

I guess I, in my devout struggle to become an accomplished adult, to by God be taken seriously, I forgot this.

A few years ago, on a popular sitcom, was an episode with the premise that a visiting African-American minister to their church turns the whole congregation on its ear, exhorting them that life is short and that the meaning of one's life, is to "Get your business done!" The family around whom the show centers is gripped as one by one the family members strive to follow the injunction and get their business done.

I know it's TV and maybe a little silly. But I took something profound from it and it's stayed with me.
No more so than this week...Am I getting my business done?
Maybe my career wouldn't have suffered such setbacks if people knew there was a real live human being inside. If they knew that when I'm alone, I sing...a lot. And that I can't hear salsa or flamenco music without moving my hips, that I bust a move frequently when really into music. That I can do the Cupid Shuffle at any moment completely from memory...even without the music. That I have to read my favorite poetry out loud, usually to my long-suffering cats.  If I talked at all, they'd find I'm actually pretty funny...that I have a really well developed sense of the absurd. They'd know that some mornings I wake up laughing because that Monty Python line, "No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition" is frequently in my head. That there are certain moments in movies where I laugh so hard, stuff comes out of my nose.

I quit showing all that; I reasoned that I was an adult, that it was time to start living my life in tailored black trousers with serious heels, and a serious expression, and to seriously work hard.

Maybe it's time I took a page from her book, maybe it's time for me to stop taking myself so seriously, to remember the lessons she taught me, to give more than I get, to stop worrying about what people think, to get busy having fun.

To get my business done.

I'll miss you Auntie G.....and I hope that in heaven you are baking, playing games and singing with the angels.

Non-Company that I Worked For But Was Never Really One Of Them...Or What I Learned and How I Learned It

So fast forward...hello 2015.

I missed the beginning of 2015 and most of 2014...
No I wasn't in a coma or anything, but I might as well have been.

Nearly three weeks ago, on a Thursday, I was called to my manager's office to as he put it, "Discuss a few things".
 
I grab my steno and a pen, dismiss the faint feeling of unease in the pit of my stomach and I walk to his office. As I enter, I see my manager seated at his desk and then as I open the door wider, I see the Sr. HR Rep. In later appraisals of the moment, two scenes from movies come to mind, in Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo, Leia, Chewy and gang are on Cloud City and invited to break bread with Lando Calrissian and Co, the door swings wide, then you hear the ominous low breaths of James Earl Jones as Vader welcomes them into the dining room with a malevolent hiss, "Please join me". The second being in Jurassic Park, when the velociraptors put their heads around the door, in a 'didn't expect to see us, did you?' pose.

I see an envelope on the desk, it's for me...my 'separation papers'.
I feel just like a wife who is being served divorce papers for the termination of a marriage she didn't even know was in trouble until that moment. Laid off...economic circumstances you understand, corporate restructuring, you are uninstalled, downsized, no longer an acceptable risk...you are out.

So the gist of all of this is, I am once again, unemployed...
It was hard for me to type this out, seeing it in black and white on the page makes it seem so final.
It does however, make all of the resumes sent, the interview clothes purchased and the hairdresser visit seem more worthwhile.

Fast forward to last Monday and I am headed out the door when my phone beeps to let me know I have a message. It's from a former co-worker. At first, I figure it is just another person reaching out, another "Hey man, sucks to be you, keep in touch, k,", both of us knowing all along that it is lip service and that neither of us will really be...in touch.

It's not...
What is on my phone, is a message telling me that a former co-worker is well...no other way to put it...dead.
I find myself thinking...
This time last month, this co-worker (let's call him Greg)Greg and I were having daily discussions about the training of a temp. Less than a month later, I no longer work there and he is...gone.
Really gone.

It doesn't seem possible...doesn't compute, add up, make sense...incomprehensible. My mind won't accept it.
Greg was 52 when he died and apparently he was alone when it happened. No one knew he was gone until he quit answering his cell phone and someone went to investigate. A coronary, no one there to dial 911, to talk to him...to hold his hand, to tell him he was cared about...loved.

I kept wondering, hoping that at least, in his last moments he called out to God and He, as he promised he would, sent an angel to take him the final steps...
"Leave it to Me, I'll lead you Home".

I spent the last 2 years or so living as if already dead. I went everyday to a job and I worked, and I worked and I took the work home with me, both literally and figuratively. I ate, slept, breathed and dreamt about it. I fought anxiety, anger, and depression constantly. Every morning as I drove myself to work, I would cry and beg God not to let me fail. I never prayed for joy or peace or happiness.
I prayed and prayed and I begged God, "All I have is this job, okay, All I am IS this job. Don't let me fail, let me be good at it, let me be the best at it. Please let them want me, please let them accept me, then I'd say again as if God forgot, PLEASE DON'T LET ME FAIL" .

I sat in my therapist's office week after week crying to the point I couldn't form words, could barely breathe. When I could, I'd laugh through tears about my job, that I loved so much I had to go to therapy every week.

I craved success and monetary rewards like a drug. One of the wake up calls is a moment of clarity I had when I told my therapist that the only joy I derived from my work was checking my bank account.

Saturday morning came, I woke, did my hair, spent time doing my nails and makeup. I put on my best Sunday go to meeting clothes and I went to Greg's memorial. As I was entering the church, I saw a few former managers and I heard a familiar voice call my name, "Hi Jill, how're you doing?", and it was if I were passing them in the hall on a Monday morning, as if nothing had ever happened. I was astounded,
"Really, you're going to ask me, how am I doing when you know damn well that you let me go quicker than it takes me to send an email...as if I were a smelly old cat that you were putting down?"

Then a light went on and I realized that for them, this is how they have to be, to make it in a corporate world, you have to divorce yourself from pesky emotions, like compassion, empathy, caring.

I ponder, how much longer would it have taken me to get that numb, that dead inside?

Later in the memorial, people reminisced about Greg.
But not about his work...
About how much he loved baseball, coaching, his son...how passionate he was about both these things. The church altar was literally filled with photos of him in baseball uniforms, and with his son.

I realized that I had nothing like that. No passion...that I been living as dead for years now.

I wonder how much of Greg's coronary was the result of life at Non Company, did he too experience the anxiety, depression, sadness...anger?

I don't want to be dead at 52.

And so, I thank God today that he loved me enough to let me fail.
To fail, so I that I might finally really live.

Letting Go

I'm sitting here in Central Florida on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of February. Outside, it could not be more beautiful, it's balmy, the air is full of sunshine and breezes. The azaleas are blooming and the palm trees are as a high as an elephant's eye...It's the kind of weather Jimmy Buffet conjures up when he's 'wasting away in Margaritaville' or eating his 'cheeseburgers in paradise'. It's so damn perfect, it makes you blink.

And yet, I'm sitting inside here, and I'm trying to come to grips with the past. Trying to let go.

Something as seemingly innocuous as getting new carpets and I'm knee deep in a blue funk. Allow me to expound a bit. My current floor coverings would not look out of place in Bob and Emily's all mod-cons Chicago apartment from Season One of 'The Bob Newhart Show', we NEED new carpet. It's time, heck, it was time 20 years ago!

But new carpets mean emptying the closets.  Emptying bureaus, drawers...full of photos, books, old clothes, hmmm...a concert program that shows I saw Dwight Yoakam in 1993, 'I saw Dwight Yoakam?' In short my entire life.  And just like my life, it's overcrowded with memories.

Just as am I starting to obsess about becoming next week's subject of a whole new episode of Hoarders, it hits me hard. Grief. Once again, it jumps up and well, there's no other way to put it, bitch slaps me in the face. I find a photograph of me, and my grandparents and Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob died in December. Less the 48 hours later, my Grandma K. died.  It's a lot to absorb in such a small amount of time. You see, Uncle Bob was a big part of my life, he was the tangible link to my past. A great guy, you'd of liked him. Everybody did. He never met a stranger. You know those Saturday Night Car Shows, where folks drive their old Fords and Chevys' to Steak and Shake and everybody stands around and gawks? Well, there's always that old guy who speaks fluent Mopar, that old guy was probably my Uncle Bob. You want to know about stock colors, options, hemis, or mpg, he's your man.  He would reserve space in a fleabag of a motel a year in advance for Labor Day Car Shows as his summer vacation. That was my Uncle Bob, he never met an engine he didn't like. He was Wayne Carini on a budget.

He was the guy who told me that it really was like 'Happy Days' in the old days, a born racounteur who loved to talk about the good old days. 'Life really was that good,' he was forever telling me. A walking contradiction, a guy who stayed so locked in the past that he had his whole Florida mobile home decked out in 50's era photos with a jukebox and diner style napkins and straws on his 50's art-deco table, yet he loved the Clash, was a devotee of Craigslist and Ebay, and even had a Facebook account, I'm told.

I guess we have that in common Uncle Bob and I, that love of that past. The thing that makes it so hard to let go. You're afraid of losing the memories, because you feel you might forget the person or maybe who you are.

So I wrote this today sending it out into cyberspace, so I can let it go and the world will know he was here and I won't have to hoard some more junk I don't need so that I don't forget. 

I like to think he would like that. On this glorious Florida day he would have loved, probably at some car show or antique fair somewhere, I'm memoralizing him so I can let go.

Where Have I Been....

Some of you reading this title will think it a statement, some a question. And you'd be right on both accounts.

Where...have...I...been. The simple answer is of course, right here. My writer's voice though, has not been translated through this medium for several months. It's been dormant, elusive...hiding, depressed, ill and exhausted. Many times I called up this site and sat staring at a blank page, a blinking cursor a tiny island in a sea of white.

I beg your indulgence, this may meander a bit. After so many dry months, my thoughts are bursting through my typing fingers like a deluge during an August Florida thunderstorm where raindrops strike the scorched asphalt so hard and with such fury, steam rises up like a wraith.

I can claim many excuses for my absence. In the last of weeks of August, a very dear aunt lost her battle with cancer and I've been absolutely heartsick and depressed. It came as quite a shock, until the very last, my mind refused to accept the chance of defeat and I truly believed she would recover. The greatest compliment I could pay her is the fact that she had such a sweetness and gentleness of character that she put me in mind several times of my own grandmother. As the pattern often goes, grief turned to depression and depression turned to a stony and unrelenting anger. The childhood anger of, 'it isn't fair'.

I guess, 'it isn't fair' would be the recurring theme of my thought patterns of late...

I have hesitated so many times over what to write in these blogs, how deeply I would share, fearing that my true nature or inclinations would 'turn off' my readership. And then this morning, as is my wont, I had an epiphany...'do I really even have a readership'? So why the hell am I so afraid of offending 'them', if there is even a 'them'. So here goes...

I was very invested in this election. I am a 38 year old single, childless woman and an ardent conservative. I guess those words in of themselves are a contradiction. Despite all this, I've never supported a candidate to the extent I backed Mitt Romney. In my case, it's personal. If you've ever read this blog, you know about my nearly 4 year employment odyssey. Just the other day, I agreed to another 6 month contract extension of a nearly 2 1/2 year  (if you count my former assignment there in a different department) assignment at my company. So I can honestly say that the four years Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Sotero or whatever the hell his name is, has been the leader of this country have been the four worst of my entire life.

Yes, I know that I am amongst the fortunate who have a job at all. However, I had the audacity to hope that maybe just maybe if we elected different leadership in this country, that I might have the chance of securing a more permanent situation where my salary might be closer to the +25% higher pay rate I earned just 6 years ago! I am frequently told that I 'just have to accept that things are different now' 'companies just aren't going to hire anymore when they can contract out labor and save themselves tax and insurance costs'.

What I have been the most devastated about, is the loss of my hope, my inherent belief in the American Dream.  To get even more personal and uncomfortable, because of my salary losses, and lack of insurance, I've been living with my 65 year old father. And my father, because of the fact that he cannot exist on the small amount social security pays him, is still running after business and trying to work the hours that most 20 year olds would balk at! In the years where I should be looking after him, I can barely afford to keep myself.

I really thought Mitt Romney was the solution to this countries' woes. This is not about party, or sour grapes in anyway. It is about my inherent fears about the defecit we have incurred, the raiding of my father and mother's medicare and social security to fund Obamacare. It is the fact that as a country, we don't seem to mind when our leadership sits back and watches the assasination, and subsequent torture and sodomization of our Libyan Ambassador and the brave men of our armed forces who defied orders to try and come to his aid. When we just stay quiet and accept the status quo.

It is having to sit by and watch as these things happen while most of my fellow countrymen put more time and thought into drafting their fantasy football team and worry more about who is getting kicked off what reality show, than to think the fact that our country is drifting into economic penury, that our children are going to inherit an unsustainable crushing debt, that is if there is even an America left once the Islamic groups in this country one by one become radicalized and overcome our increasingly reduced military.

So many times, everything inside of me, is crying out, 'Why...Why don't you Care? People will say, 'I'm busy', or 'I am just one person, what can I do?' or worse, 'Oh, it's not really that bad...we've survived worse things'.  Then they marginalize you and make you feel that if you really express all of these 'gloomy' thoughts that you are some kind of a weirdo, an alarmist. Just another opininated wacko....now go away, 'the Steelers are about to meet the Patriots' and I've got $50.00 riding on this game.'

I hope that will still be a comfort when your employer pays you in rice noodles and a few paltry yuan, and you get on your bicycle and peddle to your government apartment to watch state sponsored football which by the way...is what you call soccer...

Where I've been...the buses are afraid to run.