Death comes ’round again…

My Pappaw Lunsford died yesterday. It has been about 6 months since his wife, my Mammaw, passed away. He didn’t want to be here without her. I don’t blame him. She was his entire world for so many years… moments turn to hours turn to days turn to weeks turn to months turn to years and then… then Death.

Lloyd Lunsford was my last living grandparent. His passing has impacted me… like a gong has been struck and it’s reverberating through my soul.

Last night, lying in bed with my Beloved, I asked “What do you think happens when we die?”, my tears streamed onto his bare chest and he squeezed me tighter. “The Atheist would say that nothing happens.  That that is it. The body dies, physiological functions cease, and we cease to be.”, he began, “but I know that energy doesn’t just die. Energy goes on. It can be changed & transformed, but it keeps going. So, I can’t help but believe that when our bodies die, when this vehicle that we inhabit ceases functioning, that our energy, our Life force, is transformed and keeps going. Whether that be to go on to Heaven, or the Summerlands, or the Happy Hunting Grounds, or return to that Great Cosmic Consciousness, I don’t know.  But I have no reason NOT to believe that your Pappaw & Mammaw have found each other again.” He kept talking about quantum physics and the energy that Love creates and I began to doze off, comforted by his words and his Love and his arms wrapped tightly around me.

 

Today I feel wounded. Like I wanna wrap my arms around myself & try to unravel the tangled mess of my thoughts & emotions and be still.

Disposable Lives

You’ve heard this before.

Think of cave paintings. Ancient handprints on those dark, damp walls. Crude forms. Attempts to not only communicate, but to matter. The handprint says, “Hello. This is me. I hunted. I provided for my people. We built fires. We had children. We survived harsh winters. We did the best we could. We were here. We do not wish to be forgotten.”

*

I was in a long-term relationship once that ended badly. I handled it poorly, did some things that could be considered bad.  I’ll take my share of the blame. At the time, I had a lot of things. Stuff. A movie collection I had spent years on. Books. A hard drive filled with photos and important music. You know. Stuff.

I lost it all.

And for a while, I was upset about that. Really upset. I fell into an old trap. I thought the things I owned somehow defined me, made me who I am. After all, I write about pop culture and horror movies for a living. I’m supposed to have all those things, right? How can I prove who I am if I don’t have them? How can I have any credibility? How can I say, “Hello. This is me?”

*

We visited Cootie’s grandfather in the hospital a couple of nights ago. He lost his wife last year. He made the decision to be removed from all the machines that go “bing.” No IV, no kind of life support, nothing. He’s tired. He’s ready to go.

Of course it’s sad. It’s very sad. I only got to speak to the man once, last Yule, but he did me the honor of telling me his life story. I heard about his career. How he worked hard and he worked well to take care of his family. He talked about his wife, whom he absolutely adored, and how difficult it was to go on without her. Time was his enemy at that point, and he was stunned at how quickly time had flown and how rapaciously it had turned against him.

I made a point of telling him how much in love with his granddaughter I was, how she was good to me and how I tried to be good to her. I hope it mattered. I would want to know that. The older I get, the more I enjoy hearing about love, wanting others around to be loved, and loved well. Regardless, I felt he needed to know. So I told him.

He was telling me stories, anecdotes.

He was saying, “Hello. This is me. I do not wish to be forgotten.”

*

So many stories, so few of them mine to tell.

Time streams through and around us all, teaching us lessons and taking its toll. As time has passed, we’ve replaced a majority of the movies I lost, even upgraded to Blu-Ray. I’ve taken back all my music and, again, have added more to the collection. I do like having my stuff. But I am not my stuff.

I’m not beating myself up. It’s okay to have your things and enjoy them. But that can’t be it. That’s not it.  Nobody leads a disposable life.

Maybe that’s why I write. I talk to people. I post pictures. I try, as well as I can, to love.  And to actually live. Everyone deserves to have tales told about them around the campfire.  I want to leave something behind that can’t necessarily be divided up between the wife and kids.

Don’t we all?

What’s your cave painting?

*

Hi. I’m here. I know what it’s like to love and to be loved. That took a long time. I’m doing the best I can.  We all are.  Someday, you’ll find something that looks like my hand on a wall somewhere. That is me, saying hello to you. I do not wish to be forgotten.

Balance

Yesterday I lost something.

Today I found something I thought I’d lost.

Old pictures.

These are only a few. Pictures of my Punky growing up. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to know I still have these.

 

The Value of “things”

I’m not a materialistic person. Stuff is stuff. It comes & goes. I rarely get attached to things and when I do, I feel like my quest for Nirvana has gone right down the shitter.

As I have explained previously, in painful detail, the Mogwai & I have moved around a lot. From one house to another, one marriage/relationship to another, hell even one state to another. When you move, especially when it’s due to the explosive shattering of a long term relationship, you lose shit. Sometimes you lose a little, sometimes you lose nearly everything.  But sometimes, just sometimes, there are things that you manage to hang on to. Sometimes they are dumb little things, like a big nosed garden gnome in a red hat. But when you are able to hold onto those things, every time you unpack them in a new place, you know that you are home. They are familiar. They are comforting. They take on memories. They make you smile.

When you lose those things, you can’t help but be sad.

Yet still, things are things. You pick up & move on. Other things take their place. Time keeps on rolling…

The Evolution of Dreams

When I was a child, I wanted to be a paleontologist. Dinosaurs were awesome, and I mean awesome in the sense that they inspired awe in me. I could rattle off species names that most adults I knew couldn’t pronounce much less spell. I was enraptured staring at photos of dinosaur skeletons & reading about the World they lived in. I envisioned myself camped out in the desert digging up fossils, making important discoveries, being legendary in my field. I was a child. Children dream big dreams and often those dreams fall by the wayside as they grow. As an adult, I have camped in the desert. In a tent. For a whole week. I nearly froze at night & dehydrated during the day. When I came out of that canyon I had never been so glad to see a shower in my life. I might do it again one day. In a CAMPER.

The one thing that stuck with me from that trip was the sky. The amazing turquoise sky contrasted against the red rock landscape during the day and then the awesome convex star filled blackness of the night. Standing beneath that sky I was a child again. My heart raced. My spirit reached out to touch that infinity & I remembered how it felt to stand in awe. That awe inspires longing in me.  A longing to do something meaningful, to be a part of something wonderful, no matter the size or scope.  In that headspace I could dream big dreams again.

As an adult, I have also spent the last 12 years working in a cubicle. That is not awesome. In fact, it is the opposite of awesome. It is completely mind-numbingly, soul-suckingly, un-awesome. I go home most days with pain in my back & pain in my head. There, I am soothed by the Love of my family, buoyed by the Worship from my X, and inspired by the Joy that they bring into my Life. And then I start thinking, dreaming, planning, working… I look into the empty stare of the skull & I smile.  I am awe inspired and spurred into movement.  In that headspace I can dream big dreams again.