Funerals

I went to a funeral service this morning.  I was dreading it for so many reasons. This was the funeral of a young man;a terrible loss that came totally out of the blue.  When someone is old, or very ill it is easier to reconcile their death in your head, if not your heart.  He was just... gone.  We went to support his mother and his step mother who are both friends.  I do not know and don't think I ever really care to meet his father.

Funeral services are supposed to be cathartic.  I grew up with the ritual of Catholic funeral services and the comforting liturgy of the Protestant service.  I knew I was in trouble when the minister waved his obviously ancient Bible in the air and told us he was going to read from the Word Of God. (in my mind he was speaking in capital letters)  Great. He chose verses that were not comforting, but more "Come to Jesus- or else"  He did default to the 23rd Psalm, but there is so much more that could have been of comfort, but that stuff is in the Old Testament, and this was more about  threatening you with damnation unless you accepted Jesus than any words of peace in the heart.  It reminded me why I don't follow any organized religion.  I just don't get anything from it.  Now, I have friends who go to church regularly and one who is a minister.  I am sure that they get something from it and I am not saying that going to church is a bad thing IF it does something for you.  It just made me mad.  There was very little said by the minister of the boy whose services he was conducting, although he did read a long and frankly annoying letter that was supposed to have come from his teacher. In it, the teacher went on and on in praise of the boy's FATHER while mentioning what a good student the boy was and how the teacher would always remember him.  In retrospect, I believe the letter was sent by the teacher to comfort the father privately, to assure him that he had been a good father, but it rang hollow if it were meant to honor the boy. .His best friend managed to get through a beautiful eulogy without crying.  There was a memorial video, which included no pictures of his still-living and present- in -the- boys- life mother.  She was not mentioned once. It was as if the child sprung fully realized from his father's forehead or the mother were dead.  It would have been nice to have included her in those mentioned.   I left the service feeling empty and not resolved or healed in any way.  I should have been.

Chris and I went to Dave and Busters and had lunch and played video games.  We talked about memories of the child whose services we had just left and thought that this was a fitting way to honor his memory.  I try to remember the phase from "Elegy for JFK"  "what he was, he was.  What he is fated to become, depends on us.  Remembering his death, how we choose to live will decide its' meaning".   So Ian, I hope your friends will laugh more and care for each other and always remember you and that those who love you and always  will continue to get stronger in your memory, to make you proud of them somehow even if you are not in this realm to see it.

Teachers

As the song goes "when I think back on all the crap I learned in High School, it's a wonder I can think at all"  As I approach my 40th reunion- how is THAT possible-   I am thinking about it and the impact on who I am, those three years spent at San Fernando High School and beyond.

On Monday, I had lunch with my favorite English teacher.  This man had quite an impact on me.  He gave me the freedom to create with my peers and let me write without criticism. Critique, yes.  Direction and editing, yes but never telling me that I should not write something.  Occasionally he would call something crap, and I generally agreed with him.  I found I was a pretty good editor of my own stuff.  Mostly in those days I wrote poetry, something I seem to have forgotten how to do and hope to get back to doing, even if it's just for myself.  The way I wrote, back then, was to try to get the meaning of what I was thinking by using the fewest words possible; sort of haiku but without having to count the syllables.  That helps me today in some of the work I am doing, as I have to pare down someone's request to the size of a "tweet" to fit into the online request forms.   Meeting and talking with someone who mentored me and to be able to again express my thanks was very nice.  He is still one very interesting guy and I enjoyed having lunch and talking about things.  We plan to do this more often.

My friend Maggie, who is a dance teacher, posted something today about not being a "real" teacher because she didn't give tests.   My response is "Life gives you enough tests.  Real teachers give you the tools to face them."  I think often about a handful of teachers whose names and life lessons I remember.  My former English teacher was unconventional, but I took away from his class something I use every day.  I can't say the same about algebra or biology.  I followed my heart and got my degree in English.  For a brief time, I thought about teaching, but it was not for me; thankfully I was in a credential program where my mentor understood that.  I remember going to my end of semester review and preparing to tell her I was leaving.  She looked uncomfortable as I sat down. I said "Pam, I won't be back next semester"  She visibly relaxed  "oh GOD"  she said  "I was up half the night trying to figure out how to tell you that you were not cut out for teaching"  We both laughed and I told her I knew about three weeks into the program but needed the credits to graduate so I stuck it out.  She gave me a decent grade.  It was good for me to be there and I am grateful.  My co-teacher is now a professor at Moorpark  College.  HE was cut out to teach!

Teaching is a profession that is underrated.  Teachers will never get rich, but their impact is felt.  A good teacher can turn someone around.  I am thankful for those who have chosen a profession that will shape hearts and minds.

Post Easter thoughts

Well, the eggs were dyed and the chocolate was eaten, not by me as I am trying to get to a "fighting weight" these days.  Although it didn't cause it, the weight is not helping the osteo .  I was actually crying when I walked up the hill on Friday.   I am such a wimp.

For Christians, Easter is "the Big one"  a lot of people think it's Christmas that is the big holiday, but not really. Easter, the Crucifixion and resurrection of Christ IS the basis for our faith.   Sure Christmas is a lot more fun, but Easter is a time of reflection and renewal.  Faith for me is personal and I would NEVER insist anyone believe as I do.  I have come to my own peace with God.  I call him by name and I don't type G-d. I don't "fear" God.  I think the term got lost in the translation and it's really "respect" that they mean.

I got into a "discussion" with the friend of a friend over a meme both my friend and I posted, something to the effect that  if your religion requires you to hate someone it's time for a new religion.  This person went all over it about how she was shamed and people told her she would go to hell and how intolerant Christians were to pagans.  I get it and I agree, but this woman wanted to take it further. I said something about answering hate with hate not being the answer.  She went off, a bit, telling me that the problem was religion and that all "blind faith" was wrong.  I agreed to disagree and thanked her for the opportunity to discuss things, but it has gotten me to thinking.  Not everyone who follows a belief does so blindly.   She  also seemed very upset about people telling her she was going to Hell.  If you don't believe in Hell, why are you worried about going there?  I don't really believe in Hell, even if the threat of an eternity burning is what some religions use to keep people on their "path"  Extremists of every faith take it too far, in my book.   There is no one way to believe, and as long as you are helping your fellow travelers on this planet, it's all good. I suppose I will find out some day if I am wrong.  Right now I'm not too concerned with it.  On Saturday, I was approached by a minister in the Vons parking lot.  He was handing out flyers for his services. I told him, quite honestly, that I don't go to church.  He asked me "if you were called home right now, would you be ready"  Strange question.  I answered "yes"  I think I'm ok with that.  He didn't really have an answer for me and thanked me and moved on.  It was a weird encounter.

I spent Easter surrounded by friends , my "other family" eating and laughing and talking.  Every holiday around here is about food anyway and I made a mountain of it.  Feeding people is what I love to do and I was happy to see everyone enjoying the food and the company.  I am truly blessed and it doesn't take a holiday for me to realize that.

Toys

I've been thinking about toys lately.  My 18 month old grandson has a ROOM full of them, some from me, the grandma who always brings him something, some inherited from his older cousins and some bought by his doting parents and godparents.  He has more toys than he can play with and I wonder if he really needs all that stuff.  These days, toys are such gadgets, all electronica and interactive, designed to stimulate a child's mind.  But I wonder where their imagination comes into play, when the toy DOES everything.  I remember creating whole scenarios with toy cars that just... rolled, with dolls that just were  dolls.  Balls just bounced, they didn't light up and sing the alphabet ( seriously, he has one that does this and he loves it but  really???)  He is such a gizmo guy at 18 months he can go onto his mother's phone, find the app for his Mickey Mouse videos and change the language to Spanish.  His father speaks to him in Spanish so he is hearing both languages at home so that is good, but I worry that he is being fed a steady diet of already programmed play and not being forced to use his imagination.  It got me thinking about some of the Millennials I know.  They don't seem to have much imagination and everything is centered around their phones.  When I am in meetings with them I am often dismayed at the lack of creative solutions and FUN in the way they problemsolve.  Education seems so focused on scoring on performance tests that we forgot to teach our children how to think for themselves.  Play is the "job" of a child. It helps to grow all their muscles, including their brains.  Ok the brain is an organ, but you get the idea.

I have been thinking about the toys I played with as a child and some of them were pretty useless.  Can SOMEONE explain why we all had Slinky's?  "It walks down stairs alone or in pairs"   that was it.  But we all had them.  Useless freaking toy that was marketed to us. It was cheap enough and we got them from someone but I tried to figure out something more creative to do with mine and it became a tangle of bent wire in the toy-box that got stuck one everything else in the toy-box.   Then there was Silly putty.  It copied comics, as far as I can recall and not much else.  It came out of the aerospace industry, didn't it?  It dried out if the little plastic egg it was kept in got cracked, which mine did.  My favorite "toy" was my roller skates or my skateboard, neither of which were the high tech things you see today. They were fun, even the skates that clamped to your shoe and you had to keep the skate-key around your neck to keep tightening them or they fell off and you went flying.   I once knocked myself completely out roller skating.  I must have hit a rock or something at the bottom of the driveway. They found me at the bottom of the hill, out cold.  Concussion....  I was a tomboy and it didn't stop me from doing whatever it was that got me hurt in the first place because I don't remember what I did.  Total blank spot.  I just remember waking up on the couch with my grandmother saying "she's coming around"  They kept me in for the rest of the day, even though I was ready to go back outside.

I am hoping my grandson and children from his generation untether from their gizmos and experience the joy of outside games that you make up as you go along.  Remember "Three fly's up"  a game you played when there were only two or three of you and you wanted to play baseball?  Whoever had the ball would hit and whoever caught three fly balls would have the next "up"?   We would play that for hours.  Fun times.

I should be writing

I'm a writer, or at least in my heart and mind I am one, even if I am not a published author except for here in this blog.  That's not quite true, I was published in a newspaper for the United Crusade ( now the United Way) when I was seven.  I peaked early.  Recent events in my life have made me make a promise to myself to "find my art"  and so I renew my commitment to write something- anything- as often as I can.  The goal is daily and I will try my best. I wonder if I will have anything of note to say.

Here's how I operate.  I pour myself a cup of morning Joe and when the first jolt of caffeine hits my veins I start writing.  It's an exercise in free-form most of the time and what comes out is mostly what goes on in my head.  No filter.  It's kind of an experiment to see if my thoughts are cohesive or I am rambling.  Today I am rambling, well maybe meandering.  I like the word meandering. It sort of implies I am picking my way through the minefield of words that make up the inside of my brain.  Hence the title of this blog "Inside Robyn's brain"  I actually typed the word "mindfield" instead of minefield.  I wonder if that counts as a Freudian slip of sorts?

Uh oh,  I paused to read what I had written rather than just kept going so I am stalled here.  Probably a good place to stop in any case but I will be back at this in the morning.  I hope to talk about good books, art exhibits, great and not so great meals and trips we take when I venture out of the kitchen where the computer sits.  I promise to try to spend more time being thoughtful, less time complaining about thing and if I am complaining I want to be funny about it.  I promised myself I would spend less time playing mindless but entertaining casino games on Facebook and more time entertaining myself in my mind.

and buy a coloring book.  Yeah  I need one of those.  New crayons....

Tuesday night thoughts

Somewhere at the end of my first marriage, my soon-to-be-ex  snapped at me "you don't' do what you're told."  I believe my clever rejoinder was something akin to "duh"  I Do have a degree in English, pithy repartee is my bailiwick, please do not attempt this at home as injuries may occur.

My point is I do not respond well to being commanded.  Or  bullied. Or threatened.  Like many  women of Baby Boomer age, I was raised to believe in the value of my opinion . The best way to get me to do something is to ASK.  I was recently told if I did not drop everything and attend a meeting I was unaware of I would not be on the Committee.  Really?  That simple?  I should have thought of that dodge ages ago.  Ok I am cool with that.  Do not think that threatening me or bullying me will work.  I really don't respond well to that and will do one of two things, neither of which is to follow your order.  I will either ignore the order or do the complete opposite, just to be contrary.  Childish?  Probably.  If we are going to work together on something, anything, here is my line in the sand.  DO NOT ORDER ME TO DO ANYTHING.  It puts my Irish up, as my Dad used to say, and when I get my Irish up, things can get unpleasant.

Recently, several well-meaning friends have been trying to tell me how to live my life.  I know they are worried about me, so I am taking the advice for what it is, something  I already know and am thinking about.  I heard a song from Cat Stevens the other day , when he was Cat Stevens , just a garden variety folksinger who had a reputation for being a bit of an asshole, not the "Kill 'em all and Let Allah sort it out" fool he is today.  The song, Father/Son, is sung between a father and a son who is growing up and moving into his own life.    The line "If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them they know not me" resonated with me.   I appreciate that people love me enough to tell me what they think I should do, but I know myself and what I feel I want to do.  As in all things, I am a planner THEN a doer and I need more information before I make any sort of move toward anything.  Given the events of the past few weeks, I am still a wee bit shaky  and I know better than to make any really BIG changes in this frame of mind.  I will seek more professional, dispassionate advice.  

In the meantime, I'm going to take the advice of several medical professionals and avoid stress as much as possible, get more exercise and relax.   I have several books I need to finish, including the new Elvis Cole.  I am not sure how I feel about Elvis.  I hope he is better than he has been in the past few books. His personality has made me really want to hang out with Joe Pike more.  We shall see and I promise to write a review of the book AND the things that went on in Laughlin over the weekend.  Odd stuff, not terrible, just... odd.

Emergency room visit

For those of you who are not Facebook friends, I wound up at Kaiser Sunset Emergency Tuesday. I'm ok- sort of but here is what happened.

On Tuesday I woke up kind of felling funny, not funny haha, but funny peculiar.  I went to work anyway.  On my way in I started to get chest pains.  Great.    I have to walk up a hill to get to work but was kind of yelling at myself to push myself up the hill.  I figured it was just anxiety, although it really didn't feel like that.  There was pressure in my chest,like a giant hand pressing in the middle of my chest.  I took my anxiety meds, thinking they would help. It got worse.  But you know me, I'm stubborn.  I had a meeting I had been preparing for and  I thought "ok, just make the meeting and then go to Kaiser"  My pulmonologist had told me to go to emergency and get the tests run and he would talk to me next week.  I felt awful and the pain was getting more intense.  I went to the cot room to rest, figuring it would give the meds a fighting chance.  It got worse.  Finally I was talking to a co-worker and realized I was not tracking properly.  She said she would get her car and take me to emergency.  I agreed.  Then they called my boss and she made them call 911.  This is were is got interesting.  I didn't want 911 but rules are rules so I waited for the paramedics in the lunchroom.  There were a lot of co-workers having lunch and I really didn't want them doing medical stuff on me in the lunchroom, so when one of the officers offered to take me to another chair I went with him.  The paramedics took my vitals. My BP was in stroke territory.  They put me in the ambulance and ran an EKG.  As I was pretty certain I was not having a heart attack. The paramedic began castigating me about it, HIS determination was that I was just having an anxiety attack. I have something called pulmonary hypertension and I told him so.  HE said "No you just have garden variety hypertension and this is just going to be a really expensive taxi ride."  Now....  one of my triggers is finances.  His comment about how much this was going to cost me did NOTHING to ease my fears. I was in pain.  I was scared.  I was in the back of a freaking ambulance- and all this guy could do was insinuate I was just some hysterical woman who needed to take her anxiety pill and get over it.  He actually asked me where my husband was, and said that if he were coming they would wait and release me to him.  I offered to get out of the ambulance right then.  He said no I couldn't.  I told them to take me to Kaiser Sunset, where Chris was meeting me.  It took a while and he asked me a few more questions, but he already had his diagnosis as far as he was concerned. He was not reassuring in any way.  I thought compassion would be part of the game plan here.

I got to Kaiser and they ran all kinds of tests. The test for the presence of blood clots in my lungs was off the charts.  In January, I had the test done and it was 1640- normal is around 500.  But my doctor said that maybe that IS my normal and they would keep an eye on it.  This time the numbers were 4000- more than double. They ran another CAT scan and... nothing.  I have a meeting with my doctor on Tuesday.  I want to know why and what I should be doing.  I see a cocktail of even more meds in my future.  I WILL get well.  I have to.  I have Chris and my Bob.  They mean everything to me.

I took it easy on Wednesday and shakily went back to work on Thursday.  Made it through the day. The pain is still there, not as much but it is there.  I am having trouble sleeping- duh.  Chris is taking me away on a planned getaway this weekend and I have no plans but to relax and watch the river flow.  Sit on the bank with a cup of coffee and a good book for a bit.  Take photos and relax.  Maybe go to Oatman and see the burros.  Relax and remember that life is brief.  I promised to get back into my art.  Maybe I will try to remember how to write poetry.  I used to be pretty good at it and it is a creative process that I miss doing.  These blogs are ok to and I promise to try to write more of them; not just complaining about my life but thoughtful insightful things that  might go through my brain.