Loss and Father's Day Eve

The ineluctable peril when writing about loss is that it has been done.  A fresh take on a multi-billion-year phenomenon is rare.  Yet, here goes nothing, or more fittingly, the absence of something.

My Co-, well, Religionists?  Practitioners?  Whichever.  They speak about impermanence, that change is a constant.  Physicists, as a lot, tend to agree.  Yet cannot the same be said of change in the specific form of loss? 

All of us face loss in one form or another.  Loss of youth, of innocence, (eventually) of life.  These are the mortal locks of human existence.

The challenge is understanding, within the limits of knowledge, perceptions, and physical abilities, how to deal with loss.  Railing against it is a popular option, as is mourning.  Acceptance is much harder to embrace, depending on the type and severity of loss.  For there is always hope, sometimes rational, oft times not, that what was lost can be found once again.  This might be a form of hope and/or a manifestation of self-delusion.

Case in point, I “lost” my Dad in 2016.  Yet, in a truer sense of the word, he was lost to me before I was even born.  He served in Vietnam and, from what I am told, it took a horrific toll on his psyche.  Those who knew him said he did not truly “return” home insofar as the Jack Booms who resided in Metro Detroit in the late 1960s and afterwards was not the same Jack Booms who lived there prior to being shipped off to Indo-China.

The Jack Booms that I knew was one who was struggling, with varying degrees of success, with several maladies that fell under the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) umbrella.  And his “remedies” were rarely helpful and frequently self-administered.   These behaviors, of course, helped expedite his separation and eventual divorce from my Mom, with both events occurring in the latter half of the Carter Administration.  But I digress.

By the time he passed, I had (for the most part) accepted his lack of presence in my life.  Frankly, I was surprised to be contacted and told that he was in failing health.  I had anticipated that I would simply hear from someone, one day, who would be the bearer of the news that “Your father died.”  As it turned out, I had about four months, at the very end, from when I learned of his deteriorating condition to when he “shuffled off his mortal coil.” 

But in a way, as we had extremely limited contact from 1982 to 2016, his loss was accounted for, it was “baked into the cake” to use that horrid cliché.

That said, I heard he became a different person…more thoughtful and compassionate.  I am not certain precisely what caused this change in him, but I understand that his presence in the lives of others was warmly greeted.  He helped others as they faced their own losses, and was a true friend to them.

The more challenging losses, in my estimation, are those that are self-inflicted.  The loss of a relationship (friendship or otherwise) through neglect, or gross stupidity come to mind.  And not knowing how, or if, such losses can be repaired can cause the mind to fold in on itself.  Wondering.  Anguishing.  Hoping.  At times, doing our best to heal the wound.  Yet some solutions may be forever unobtainable, no matter how quickly or bravely we race into the breach.  Sometimes, we create the circumstances that are beyond our control.

Kierkegaard wrote, “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”  Of course, Jay Gatsby said, “Can’t repeat the past?  Why of course you can!”  On the whole, Kierkegaard had a better handle on reality, although both the man and the character died young.

In any event, when considering loss and its impact, it would be wonderful to be able to go back and undo what was done…or at least to fast forward past the pain to see how it is resolved.  Yet time moves, in this universe at least, at its own pace and in its own direction, regardless of our motives, feelings, and actions.

All we can do as sentient beings is to live and learn, and to appreciate both.  And to hope that mindful words and deeds can help us avoid potential losses, and help us deal with actual ones.

So, to Dad, I would say, “Thank you” for the lesson on loss.  It is probably the best counsel you ever imparted.  And it is appreciated, truly.

Stay tuned, as more will follow.

No Rain

Every so often, a person may find himself or herself at the center of a special kind of nexus in the space-time continuum.  A place combined with a span of time, sometimes measured in weeks, months or perhaps even a couple of years, where the chasm that exists between Potential and Fulfilled Promise is narrowed. 

One such nexus, for me, came into being at Spartan Village Apartments in the City of East Lansing, Michigan in 1993.  Blind Melon was crushing the charts and I (reluctantly) retired my Girbauds from the jeans rotation.  After a brief interregnum from undergraduate studies (a hiatus brought about at the request of my now alma mater), I returned with a renewed Focus.  Although I was holding down a job that would turn out to be the launching pad for my career, I was hitting the books consistently…earning High Honors.  I was living with my then-girlfriend, soon-to-be fiancée (later my wife and now ex-wife).  I wasn’t rich, very far from it, and I may have been sowing dragon’s teeth in my personal relationship…but life seemed easy.

I left that nexus perhaps in 1995, definitely no later than 1996.

It is said that you can never walk in the same river twice.  I think that was my problem for a while.  In the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, I kept trying to herd the same water molecules back to the same spot.  Even though I had moved to Northern Virginia and started dealing with an array of Adult challenges, I kept trying to re-enter or otherwise re-create that nexus.  If I could just go back, life could be easier again.  I was grasping and, quite frankly, floundering.  I was fighting change and it was a losing rearguard action.

Had I been willing to see the World as It Is (as opposed to Was), had I been willing to accept the changes in my life, perhaps I could have avoided a not-inconsiderable amount of the unnecessary anguish and heart-ache that occupied several years of my existence.

I don’t mean to sound fatalistic…I believe there is such a thing as free will and that we can work hard to try to forge a certain existence, to create a life as we want it to be.  Simultaneously, we need to accept that others in our life have their own goals, aspirations, desires, needs and fears…and that these can change too.  Moreover, sometimes Events intervene over which we have little or no control.  Health issues, job downturns and the like. 

Perhaps it requires an exercise in mindfulness… knowing when one has left the nexus, and having the wisdom and courage to accept that…and Move On to the Next.    Time, at least how we humans perceive it, rolls forward and we are swept along with it. 

Even Places are not immune to change.  I was reminded of this reality when I came across the following post the other day:

“The buildings have exceeded their life expectancy and have become very expensive to maintain and repair. While the buildings that are currently occupied remain safe for the time being, in order for us to continue to deliver outstanding Spartan experiences to our residents, we have determined that Spartan Village Apartments will close in 2017. “

Stay tuned, as more will follow.

Esto perpetua

Yesterday, I began my blog by talking about turning points.  This post is about such a point, although it wasn’t apparent at the time. 

It was 1998.  I was 26 and in Coeur d’Alene for the Idaho State Republican Convention.  This was during the time of the militias, the rise of the Black Helicopter crowd.  Easily one third of the assembled believed that blue-helmeted UN soldiers were massing near Sandpoint, ready to swoop down on the gathering.  At least that was my perspective on their thinking. 

Going in, I knew that a well-known white nationalist outfit had an HQ in the general vicinity, that somewhere past the lake, past the pines and well-kept homes with unlocked doors and townies with easy smiles…there was a hate-filled menace.

I tried to put this out of my mind when I arrived at the hotel, a pleasant enough one-star lodging.  During the check-in, I must have been biting on a fingernail because the hotel clerk commented on it.  She mentioned that she did the same, but with her toenails as well.   I was focused on getting to my room, so I didn’t stop to consider the implications of her disclosure.  Perhaps that is what passes for idle chatter in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe The Uneasy Vibe was getting to her too? People say strange things when they are nervous.

For those who don’t know, I was working for the Republicans back in those days.  It was a dance-with-who-brung-ya situation, since a GOP polling shop hired me back when I was still an undergraduate.  In politics, once you pick a side, changing teams is no small thing.  The same logic applies with crime syndicates.

The main purpose of my visit was to brief a client on some poll results.  She was still riding the wave of the 1994 Republican Revolution, undaunted by President Clinton’s re-election two years later.  The strategy meeting itself went about as well as could be expected…. totally uneventful but, like the entire trip, vaguely disquieting. 

It was on the last day there, as I was having lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake, that something odd happened.  My eyes became very sensitive to the light.  It was like the feeling you get from snow-blindness, but there was no snow, just a big lake with plenty of H2O in liquid form.  It was cloudy, so no sunlight was reflecting off the water.  Yet there I was, squinting like Mr. Magoo for no discernable reason.

According to Wikipedia, the “Inuit carve snow goggles from caribou antlers to help prevent snow blindness.”  Unfortunately, I had neither caribou antlers nor Wikipedia. 

As I was sitting there, trying to blink off this strange affliction, I was hit by the thought, “What am I doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” is a question that needs to be asked more often.  It pulls us, if only briefly, out of mundanity.  It compels us to consider our place in the world.  From it springs a host of other queries: what actions am I taking? Why? To what end?  Regardless of our ability to do something, should I be doing it? Is it fulfilling? Is it consistent with my values? Is it something that “The Best Me” would do or no?

This question lingered as I drove to Spokane International Airport to catch a plane home.  Eventually, it led to a decision to leave politics (for a while), switch party affiliation and chart a new career path.  It helped bring about change.

Of course there was a great deal of unnecessary frustration and foolishness that occurred after the question was asked, because sometimes accepting the answer is quite difficult.

That said, I am glad the question came to mind.

 [The next post will be shorter]

Stay tuned, as more will follow.