I got so caught up writing about my dad yesterday that I didn’t fully explore the topic of not being able to “go home again.”
While my dad is “alive” (not that it’s much of a life at the moment), my mom is stuck in a holding pattern in her life. While this sucks for her on so many levels, there is one way that it is good for me. (More of the selfish thoughts, here!)
While my dad is still alive, my childhood home remains mostly the same. Small changes will happen, as is normal in a house, but it is still very recognizably the home in which I grew up. And I love being able to go back to it: the bookshelves stuffed with books whose spines I have perused all my life – histories, scientific studies, histories, philosophical works, histories, biographies, histories, more histories – and my mom’s vase collection, my dad’s Japanese statues, the bust of Plato … and that’s just the room I’m in now! All over the house are the things that made up “home.”
After my dad dies, my mom can’t keep this rambling old house by herself. She is going to have my older brother, his wife, and their three kids move in. She will take the small apartment on the second floor where my grandfather used to live, and the house will be theirs to redecorate as they choose. The physical building will remain in the family, which is nice, but the home of my childhood will be gone forever.
Coming back here can be hard. Sometimes I can feel scared that I never left – never moved across the country and started my own life. But even though I needed to leave this nest, and was so happy to at the time, the fact that it has been still here for me to return to, to take little sips of memory, to take comfort in the fixed center that waited for me.
Soon that unchanging anchor will be gone. Each time I come back to it could be the last time. As I walk around the house, I try to drink in the images, the feel, the memory-seeped atmosphere. It will break my heart to loose this – and since that change will come when my father dies, it will be one heart break added to an even deeper one.
So this may be my last time “home.” I am hoping that my dad will keep on through one last family Christmas together, but that is really a selfish hope, because he doesn’t enjoy life day-to-day, and to hope that he’ll suffer through three more months just so I can have a good Christmas is really pretty inconsiderate and insensitive of me. But even if he can’t really enjoy it, it would be wonderful (for me) if when we opened our gifts under the tree, he was sitting in his chair and watching, like he always has been for my whole life.
But what gift do you buy for a dying man (who doesn’t even enjoy his beloved dark chocolate anymore)?
As we’ve seen so many times in history, once that spirit takes hold there is little that can stand in its way. (Applause.) And the riots at Stonewall gave way to protests, and protests gave way to a movement, and the movement gave way to a transformation that continues to this day. It continues when a partner fights for her right to sit at the hospital bedside of a woman she loves. It continues when a teenager is called a name for being different and says, “So what if I am?” It continues in your work and in your activism, in your fight to freely live your lives to the fullest.
In one year after the protests, a few hundred gays and lesbians and their supporters gathered at the Stonewall Inn to lead a historic march for equality. But when they reached Central Park, the few hundred that began the march had swelled to 5,000. Something had changed, and it would never change back.
The truth is when these folks protested at Stonewall 40 years ago no one could have imagined that you — or, for that matter, I — (laughter) — would be standing here today. (Applause.) So we are all witnesses to monumental changes in this country. That should give us hope, but we cannot rest. We must continue to do our part to make progress — step by step, law by law, mind by changing mind. And I want you to know that in this task I will not only be your friend, I will continue to be an ally and a champion and a President who fights with you and for you.
Naturally, running a country by the “divine right of kings” is a bit crap. But there are some times when having an entity outside the political realm that represents the concept of the nation is a great thing.
Honors are the best example: while it’s nice and all for a President to pin a medal on the chest of a wounded soldier, there’s the slight issue that the man doing the pinning may have been the person who decided that the soldier would be in harm’s way. Having a monarch is a good solution for this: prime ministers, presidents and politicians can start the war, and the king or queen can stand as the embodiment of the nation in expressing gratitude and appreciation to the people who got caught in the mess.
And then there are the non-military honors. Who wouldn’t get behind some national token of esteem for Capt. Chester Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who crash-landed his airplane in a river without killing anyone? When Capt. Eric Moody safely landed a 747 after all four engines failed, he was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air (a reasonable assessment, given that 247 people found themselves in an unpowered airliner at 37000…)
But todays point (ta-da!):
Today, it was announced that Alan Cumming, “Actor, Producer and Presenter”, has been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, “for service to film, theatre and the arts and to activism for equal rights for the gay and lesbian commty, USA.”.
Alan Cumming, OBE. Sounds about right.
Or maybe Nightcrawler, OBE for thems who likes that sort of thing…
I don’t know how many of you know of the SNL skit “Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey,” but it’s painfully funny. Below is an example….
I like to laugh at myself (exercises in humility being a good thing at all times) and so when I find myself wandering internally in deep philosophical journeys, even as I continue with such thoughts, at the same time I keep such “Deep Thoughts” in mind, as:
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: “Mankind”. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words – “mank” and “ind.” What do these words mean? It’s a mystery, and that’s why so is mankind.
(Before I went into any discussion of the profound deliberations I’ve been up to, I felt it important to know that all of this is seasoned with the above grain of satiric salt!)
So, from the moment my Master was hit by that fucktard who just had to try and overtake three cars so he could get home a minute faster (which, obviously, was a total fail on so many levels) I’ve had serious ruminations happening in me brainpan. I’ve worked them all out to my satisfaction, but I thought I’d write them down anyway. Maybe to remind myself of them someday, or maybe they will actually help someone else somehow/somewhen.
My first thought in my “crazy train” of contemplation was actually on the way to the hospital to see my Master before his emergency surgery. The drive seemed to take forever, and my father-in-law was trying to help by being very British and keeping the conversation light, and so he was telling me about the places we were driving through. I couldn’t scream, “Shut up and drive, faster, my husband could be dying, or about to die, and I don’t care if that church was built in 1491!” so I said, “Ah,” and “Really?” at appropriate places, meanwhile trying to deal with the thoughts that were racing through my head.
The one that started off the chain was, “I can’t deal with this! How can people deal with the uncertainty of life?! The person you love, your other half, can be killed by someone else’s carelessness in but a second! How do people deal with this?!”
Two answers flowed in over the hours and days that followed, and I’ve refined them since by talking to my Master (who really is my moral compass*), and some friends.
Answer the first: There ain’t nothin’ you can do, baby, so you just make the best plans you can, and when shit happens, you roll up your sleeves and muck the shit as fast as you can to keep the boat from sinking (yes, into the metaphorical stream of shit. I enjoy mixing metaphors…).
That’s the most basic answer: you deal with it because you have to, and there’s nothing else you can do, except fall apart and be useless – and I don’t consider that an option.
Now, I’ve had lots of help from lots of amazing people over the past couple weeks, and I’m not downplaying that in the least. One of the ways that you deal with problems is by accepting the help that you actually need. Pride and self-sufficiency are lovely, and they are why I got out from my father-in-law’s to the guest house as fast as I did, but you need to be able to let go of them when they would just get in the way of the best possible outcome.
So, the way you deal with things is by not running around, wringing your hands, and crying, “How do people deal with this?!”
However, if that just isn’t enough for you – and there’s nothing wrong with that, because, honestly, it’s hard as fuck – then there is religion. I don’t care what kind of God/s you subscribe to, from the Three-In-One package deal, to a cadre of incestuous Gods-with-flaws-that-make-you-look-like-a-saint, to a big amorphous-yet-benign “Universe” – this is the answer if you just don’t like the idea that life comes down to “Shit happens.”
Religion gives you a reason – and since things like loved ones dying, or natural (or unnatural) disasters, or simply those awful days where everything you do goes horribly wrong, are so damned hard to accept and understand, getting a reason for them that you can derive some comfort from, or give you a place of strength to work from is not a bad thing.
So it can be “God’s Will,” or “This was Fated,” or whatever you like, and whatever gets you through the crisis and the day.
And that is half the point of religion. When things get so hard you feel like you simply can’t deal with them, you have the faith that you are getting help from Someone, or that at least, despite all seeming evidence to the contrary, things are supposed to be going this way (you’ll just find out the reasons later – later being possibly in this life, after death in Heaven or wherever, or in your next life). It really is much easier to deal with a problem if there is more to it than the random and chaotic “Shit Happens.”
(In case you are interested, the other half the point of religion, in my ever-so-humble opinion, is community. You get a group of people who care about you, and help you, and who share in important transitions in life. And they can help confirm the comfort of the first point of religion, since you generally join a community who believes similar things as you do.)
So, driving over to the hospital, I saw my choice was “Shit Happens, So Deal,” or to reach out to religion of some sort.
Being me, I chose “both of the above,” because I like having my cake and eating it, too.
I rolled up my sleeves and got on with Shit Shoveling – and, without actually feeling any need to believe in God, I got out the cross that was given to me at my Master’s and my wedding (it was his grandmother’s) and put it on. It was a physical comfort – and it actually helped me a lot because when I went to go think something superstitious and stupid over the following days, I’d hold onto the cross and say to myself, “If you are going to resort to that sort of thing, you have to be consistent and just stick to this one!” which kept me from a lot of self-torture (“What if I could just have hugged him for a few minutes longer before he left for work, and he would have avoided the fucktard altogether…”) because, as I am not willing or able to accept the basic tenants of Christianity, there is no good reason why I should allow myself to wallow in any other sort of superstitions. (This is not to be taken as an insult to any Christian reading this, BTW. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and all….)
All this rambling may not seem like I’m covering any new ground, thought-wise, but it’s very big for me because it means I’ve finally found the way (for me, personally) to deal with the hard stuff in life, which I’ve really been kinda unclear on before this. I’ve tried on various forms of religion, starting actually when I was about twelve years old, and I’ve spent a long time looking for the comfort for which everyone longs.
Sadly, of course, and it’s just so me, but in the end I don’t actually choose that comfort at all. I’ve chosen the “Shit Happens,” doctrine, and all my years of studying and thinking about religion have led me to that, so it’s an entirely informed decision. (Well, if you can call “nothing else makes sense to me,” informed!)
In the end though, letting go of the feeling that there must be an answer, a reason, or even at least someone/something who’s got a handle on this (even if I don’t understand it), letting go of that feeling is a comfort of it’s own. The release of the thought, “What can I do to understand this,” to the understanding that, “I can’t understand this, but I don’t have to understand it to act in such a way as to get through this as best as possible, and be satisfied, looking back at it, that I did the right thing,” well, that’s a comfort in it’s own right. It’s not the easiest path, but it’s the only right path for me.
Ironically, it’s a wonderful phrase with the word, “God” in it that sums this up best for me. It’s from the Cadfael series, by Ellis Peters, and it goes a little something like this:
Expect the best, and walk so discreetly as to invite it, and then leave all to God.
To me, “and then leave all to God,” means “don’t cling to fears for the future, or even the idea that you have any real control over that future.” The whole quote reminds me that I just have to make the best plans I can, wait for those plans to not “survive contact with the enemy,” and then try and win anyway.
*It is really important to me that my Master is someone with whom I can discuss theology, philosophy, and matters moral and mortal, and he always teaches me something, shows me a point of view I had not considered, etc. I needed a Master who I could look up to in that respect, as in all others.
series, by Ellis Peters, and it goes a little something like this:
