I have a hard time with Christmas because it's less than two weeks then to the anniversary of Daniel's death.
Since he died, the holidays have been a count down of sorts to the anniversary, although that has eased over the years. The holiday specials on television like A Christmas Carol are frequently too much for me to bear, so I turn them off or find a good mystery I can get lost in.
That does not mean, however, that I give up on the people who continue to live and love. This year Derek, my chosen son, is in from Colorado and we will meet him and his girlfriend for brunch today before they return home, and I can hardly wait. We are having Christmas Eve with our old grandsons David and Jonathan, and we'll spend Christmas Day with Shannon, Derek's sister. We'll be with our new grandkids, Alexa and Grayson, the following weekend, and with Bill, who is like a son - and Carter, his son - the next day. I focus myself in each moment, and I survive, as I have for the last 15 years, soon to be 16.
This year is a different challenge because my therapist, the woman who was going to take me to Florence and buy me a pair of leather slacks if I lost 100 pounds (a safe bet, hah!) also died - in early summer. I haven't replaced her because I have learned that people cannot be replaced: they are not interchangeable parts in the machinery of life. And I haven't found a new therapist yet because I haven't really looked for one.
I didn't intend for this entry to be such a downer. I am truly thankful for all our family - related and not - and our friends, and the people we know who provide a giant pillow of love, which is, as I think about it, the essence of Christmas. I'll get through it, land softly and savor the moments. It will be a good Christmas after all.
We all have problems, and each person's is the worst because it's his/hers. But we get through them because of the love of others.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Free Hugs
Thanksgiving is coming up and certainly we as Americans have a lot to be thankful for.
Despite the economic turndown (crash?), we still have a lot to offer, and I have a suggestion that won’t cost anything except a trip to your local downtown area.
Ann and I are a part of the Free Hugs Campaign, and we’re going to “demonstrate” for the first time Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, for a couple of hours in the Loop in Chicago. We don’t know what anyone’s reaction will be. We hope for positive results
The Free Hugs Campaign is a loosely disorganized group of people who stand in busy pedestrian areas and silently offer, you guessed it, Free Hugs. They/ we hold up a sign and people are free to participate or not. Most don’t. Our grandson Jonathan (he’s 16 and a junior in high school) has participated in the past, and we were touched by his stories, mostly simple stories of people who ignored him or got a hug.
The Free Hugs Campaign was started by Juan Mann. Here’s his story:
“I'd been living in London when my world turned upside down and I'd had to come home. By the time my plane landed back in Sydney, all I had left was a carry on bag full of clothes and a world of troubles. No one to welcome me back, no place to call home. I was a tourist in my hometown.
“Standing there in the arrivals terminal, watching other passengers meeting their waiting friends and family, with open arms and smiling faces, hugging and laughing together, I wanted someone out there to be waiting for me. To be happy to see me. To smile at me. To hug me.
“So I got some cardboard and a marker and made a sign. I found the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city and held that sign aloft, with the words "Free Hugs" on both sides.
“And for 15 minutes, people just stared right through me. The first person who stopped, tapped me on the shoulder and told me how her dog had just died that morning. How that morning had been the one year anniversary of her only daughter dying in a car accident. How what she needed now, when she felt most alone in the world, was a hug. I got down on one knee, we put our arms around each other and when we parted, she was smiling.
“Everyone has problems and for sure mine haven't compared. But to see someone who was once frowning, smile even for a moment, is worth it every time.”
Will we accomplish much next Wednesday? I don’t know. I suspect people will react to us differently than the man, evidently a preacher, who shouts on State street in front of a major department store. He tells people that they are going to hell if they don’t repent. That God hates sex and certainly despises gay people.
My God is a God of love. He is probably too often disappointed in me and my friends and humanity in general. But I can’t believe He hates us. This Thanksgiving, despite my sin of gluttony, I’m going to try to pass along some Love.
I invite you to join us, if not in physically in the Loop on Wednesday afternoon, then in spirit. If you can’t be in Chicago, try your own city or suburb. See what happens.
Pass it along.
I invite you to comment below as always. If you join us, please let us know how you fared.
Despite the economic turndown (crash?), we still have a lot to offer, and I have a suggestion that won’t cost anything except a trip to your local downtown area.
Ann and I are a part of the Free Hugs Campaign, and we’re going to “demonstrate” for the first time Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, for a couple of hours in the Loop in Chicago. We don’t know what anyone’s reaction will be. We hope for positive results
The Free Hugs Campaign is a loosely disorganized group of people who stand in busy pedestrian areas and silently offer, you guessed it, Free Hugs. They/ we hold up a sign and people are free to participate or not. Most don’t. Our grandson Jonathan (he’s 16 and a junior in high school) has participated in the past, and we were touched by his stories, mostly simple stories of people who ignored him or got a hug.
The Free Hugs Campaign was started by Juan Mann. Here’s his story:
“I'd been living in London when my world turned upside down and I'd had to come home. By the time my plane landed back in Sydney, all I had left was a carry on bag full of clothes and a world of troubles. No one to welcome me back, no place to call home. I was a tourist in my hometown.
“Standing there in the arrivals terminal, watching other passengers meeting their waiting friends and family, with open arms and smiling faces, hugging and laughing together, I wanted someone out there to be waiting for me. To be happy to see me. To smile at me. To hug me.
“So I got some cardboard and a marker and made a sign. I found the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city and held that sign aloft, with the words "Free Hugs" on both sides.
“And for 15 minutes, people just stared right through me. The first person who stopped, tapped me on the shoulder and told me how her dog had just died that morning. How that morning had been the one year anniversary of her only daughter dying in a car accident. How what she needed now, when she felt most alone in the world, was a hug. I got down on one knee, we put our arms around each other and when we parted, she was smiling.
“Everyone has problems and for sure mine haven't compared. But to see someone who was once frowning, smile even for a moment, is worth it every time.”
Will we accomplish much next Wednesday? I don’t know. I suspect people will react to us differently than the man, evidently a preacher, who shouts on State street in front of a major department store. He tells people that they are going to hell if they don’t repent. That God hates sex and certainly despises gay people.
My God is a God of love. He is probably too often disappointed in me and my friends and humanity in general. But I can’t believe He hates us. This Thanksgiving, despite my sin of gluttony, I’m going to try to pass along some Love.
I invite you to join us, if not in physically in the Loop on Wednesday afternoon, then in spirit. If you can’t be in Chicago, try your own city or suburb. See what happens.
Pass it along.
I invite you to comment below as always. If you join us, please let us know how you fared.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Blessed with Love
I have been blessed with love. My wife of 40 years, Ann. David and Jonathan, our grandsons, and their father Tim. Shannon and Derek, who chose me their dad. Bill, Shannon’s boyfriend, and his son C.P., who were close even before Bill and Shannon became involved. My cousin (third cousin on her mother’s side, just ask) Rochelle. Sandra, my late son’s girlfriend. My chosen sister Laurie in California. None of these people is a blood relation, but all are family. Family chosen by love.
Both my parents have died (or passed, passed on, beyond, over, whatever; the number of euphemisms for death is as big as the number for sex).
The big loss in my life, however, is my son Daniel who died in January of 1993. After Daniel’s death in an accident, we never saw him, never embraced him. We had his body cremated and kept the ashes (I loathe the word cremains, and spell check doesn’t even recognize it) for several years until we buried them with my father-in-law.
We have kept in close touch with Sandra, Daniel’s girlfriend when he died. At the time of Daniel’s death I was worried that she might be pregnant. Then I was sorry she wasn’t. But she has a new love, Mark, and we are happy for her because she’s happy and he’s a great guy.
We work to keep Daniel’s memory alive. We did not turn his room into a shrine. In fact, it was too painful to stay in the home where we lived together, and we moved from there. Both Ann and I kept a shirt in a plastic bag so we can smell him on them occasionally, probably pretty morbid and unhealthy, but everyone grieves differently and no one does it wrong. The boots he wore on a service trip to Appalachia we sent back with David to bury when he took the same service trip. Daniel’s friend Nick buried his high school ID on Mt. Olympus, much to our surprise because we didn’t know Nick had the ID.
When he died, Daniel was a fine arts photography student at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, home of Kodak. He produced hundreds of photographs in his year and a half there. These photos show him in self portrait, show his friends, show Rochester landmarks, show even the dog we owned at the time. And we have photos that we and his friends took of him. All of them reveal Daniel in some way.
We also have audio and video tapes of Daniel doing things nineteen-year-olds did in the late 80’s and early 90’s: in his band, on his skateboard, at a New Year’s Eve party a week before he died. Things like that.
But technology is outpacing us. Photographs fade. We no longer own a VCR. The audio tape player is over 20 years old and beginning to tire. The tapes become fainter and more distorted. If the player eats a tape, we’ll be out of luck, never able to hear our son again. We’re working on transferring the tapes to another medium, perhaps CD’s and DVD’s. Then in a few years we will have them transferred again, and eventually yet again, no doubt, as technology advances. With each generation they will become less accurate, and we will be less directly connected to Daniel. Not that the tapes we have are anything but a feeble representation of him now, albeit a representation that is better than nothing.
Yet it occurs to me that the fading tapes and the advancing technology are perhaps not a bad thing. Their loss is painful, certainly, but less sharp than fourteen – or ten or four – years ago. We have tried not to turn our son into a saint (and failed, no doubt; read on), because we know the only place Daniel can truly live is in the hearts of the people who knew and loved him. Every contact with another person influences us in some way, no matter how miniscule. And Daniel influenced a lot of people. A couple of his friends finished their educations because he would have wanted them to. Some are kinder people, because he was kind and they want to honor him. No doubt some are ornerier because he could be pretty ornery when he wanted to be.
We have family of all ages, genders, and races. They do not replace Daniel – nothing can ever do that. And they do not dilute our love for him. They enhance it. Our capacity to love these people stems directly from Daniel. From his capacity to love us and us to love him.
The photographs will fade. The tapes will disintegrate. But his legacy continues.
Both my parents have died (or passed, passed on, beyond, over, whatever; the number of euphemisms for death is as big as the number for sex).
The big loss in my life, however, is my son Daniel who died in January of 1993. After Daniel’s death in an accident, we never saw him, never embraced him. We had his body cremated and kept the ashes (I loathe the word cremains, and spell check doesn’t even recognize it) for several years until we buried them with my father-in-law.
We have kept in close touch with Sandra, Daniel’s girlfriend when he died. At the time of Daniel’s death I was worried that she might be pregnant. Then I was sorry she wasn’t. But she has a new love, Mark, and we are happy for her because she’s happy and he’s a great guy.
We work to keep Daniel’s memory alive. We did not turn his room into a shrine. In fact, it was too painful to stay in the home where we lived together, and we moved from there. Both Ann and I kept a shirt in a plastic bag so we can smell him on them occasionally, probably pretty morbid and unhealthy, but everyone grieves differently and no one does it wrong. The boots he wore on a service trip to Appalachia we sent back with David to bury when he took the same service trip. Daniel’s friend Nick buried his high school ID on Mt. Olympus, much to our surprise because we didn’t know Nick had the ID.
When he died, Daniel was a fine arts photography student at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, home of Kodak. He produced hundreds of photographs in his year and a half there. These photos show him in self portrait, show his friends, show Rochester landmarks, show even the dog we owned at the time. And we have photos that we and his friends took of him. All of them reveal Daniel in some way.
We also have audio and video tapes of Daniel doing things nineteen-year-olds did in the late 80’s and early 90’s: in his band, on his skateboard, at a New Year’s Eve party a week before he died. Things like that.
But technology is outpacing us. Photographs fade. We no longer own a VCR. The audio tape player is over 20 years old and beginning to tire. The tapes become fainter and more distorted. If the player eats a tape, we’ll be out of luck, never able to hear our son again. We’re working on transferring the tapes to another medium, perhaps CD’s and DVD’s. Then in a few years we will have them transferred again, and eventually yet again, no doubt, as technology advances. With each generation they will become less accurate, and we will be less directly connected to Daniel. Not that the tapes we have are anything but a feeble representation of him now, albeit a representation that is better than nothing.
Yet it occurs to me that the fading tapes and the advancing technology are perhaps not a bad thing. Their loss is painful, certainly, but less sharp than fourteen – or ten or four – years ago. We have tried not to turn our son into a saint (and failed, no doubt; read on), because we know the only place Daniel can truly live is in the hearts of the people who knew and loved him. Every contact with another person influences us in some way, no matter how miniscule. And Daniel influenced a lot of people. A couple of his friends finished their educations because he would have wanted them to. Some are kinder people, because he was kind and they want to honor him. No doubt some are ornerier because he could be pretty ornery when he wanted to be.
We have family of all ages, genders, and races. They do not replace Daniel – nothing can ever do that. And they do not dilute our love for him. They enhance it. Our capacity to love these people stems directly from Daniel. From his capacity to love us and us to love him.
The photographs will fade. The tapes will disintegrate. But his legacy continues.
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