All Things Must Pass

Fair is a metaphor, because, like life, it is not. 

Fair. 

Which is where, if you aren't careful, you can spend twelve tickets for a cup of beer at a stand that is a few steps from another that charges seven.

Which is my way of saying that The Texas State Fair was about as good of a place as any to mark the fifth anniversary of Mom's death.  She was sixty-five.  On paper at least.  I think of her as being sixty-four.   She only lived eight days after her sixty-fifth birthday, most of which was spent as a wasted, bedridden shell of any version of her that I care to remember.

Yet here I am.

Funny that MK picked up on a line—to the point of comment—in what amounts to Part 1 of this here BLOG post.

I miss my Mom.  But I no longer grieve for her.

I wasn't lying when I wrote that.  But I would be lying if I didn't disclose the rest:  I'm often mad.

It has taken me five years to admit that.  And.  To realize that it isn't necessarily bad.  Because I'm not bitter she died.  This might sound one in the same to you reading this right now.  For me.  It is not.

The normal platitudes extended when a person dies do not work for aboynamedstu.  You get a lot of those when you lose someone close.  People mean well, for the most part.  But they don't know what to say. Or do. So they things like, 'she's no longer suffering.'  Or, 'she's in a better place.'  Or, 'you can learn (insert whatever they think you can glean from it, which I promise, 9 out of 10 times, will be about what the person saying it needs to learn) from her death.'

That kind of shit makes me bitter.  And, this is 10 out of 10 times more about me than you there reading this now, I don't like to think about my Mom in a better place.  Which implies heaven for most.  The person saying that don't know the life she led to make such a blanket moral declaration.  I can't tell you how many times I wanted to say to some well meaning person, 'maybe she's in a far worse place like hell, the way she lived her life.'  Or.  'I don't like to think about my Mom watching over me from heaven.  That means she can see me jerking off, and or not living up to the man she raised me to be.' 

Does heaven even work like that?  Or does God have the ability to block what the dead can see the same way Time Warner Cable allows me to block The Weather Channel from Boy #1 who has a penchant for watching tornado coverage to the point of freak-out.

The thing that drives me absolute bat shit crazy bitter though is this:  You can learn (insert the lesson) from the death.  Seriously.  Do I really need my Mom to die to learn something?  Or for that matter anyone.  Like Steve Jobs.  We need for the guy to croak so we can all remember the time he gave the speech where he said 'life is short, do what you love.' 

Fuck me.

This probably is starting to sound like nothing more than the bitter rant of a aboynamedstu who misses his Mommy.  But that's not this thing at all. Like I was saying, I'm not bitter.  Which wasn't always the case.  I've learned that the bitter is bad, the anger isn't.  No matter what you might have been told, or think.  Anger gets shit done.  It changes things.  And.   It has taken me five years to get that.  Because, I truly do suck in real time.

My Mom died in a house that sits on the 9th hole of what was once a 27 hole golf course.  On the first hole of that golf course, the stone you see at the top of this here BLOG post was laid the December after her death by a group of her friends in remembrance.  It's hard to tell from the picture but at the very top, above the cliche quote thing, it reads:

Joyce Tinsley
1941-2006
Love, Laugh, Live.

Like Mom, that golf course is gone.  It became unprofitable and was allowed to go jungle.  Which is why on a visit to Houston a few years ago, a friend gave the stone to my Dad who put it in a box and gave it to me one Christmas.  Not as a gift.  Talk about a coal in your stocking.  He gave it to me because it is tantamount to a grave stone since Mom was cremated and is in a box in Tulsa with my Dad.  God knows where that box is?  Maybe his closet?  He is remarried.

My point.  Where do you put such a stone?  That was what was bothering me.  Why I took it and set it, in the box, on a dark shelf in my garage for what had to be close to a year. 

Where do you put such a stone?  That was rhetorical.  I know the answer now.

I put it on a deck in my backyard next to the hot tub.  A hot tub that I only own because of a chain of events that were created by Mom dying. 

That might seem odd to most.  But for me, it makes perfect sense.  I see it every time I climb in or out of the hot tub.

It's my reminder.  And much better than that stupid fucking Semisonic song.

That the beginning is the end.  Or.  The end the beginning.

Because fair is a metaphor, like life, it is not.

Be vigilant in finding the tent that sells your cup of whatever for seven tickets instead of twelve.

Until I BLOG again...It's not always going to be this grey.