We played our own brand of team games that St. Patrick’s Day evening.

Young parents, all friends from church, our many kids were long since tucked in at our homes by an undoubtedly exhausted team of babysitters in our employ so we could cut loose for just one night.

A large group of close couple friends, and at the time, the most irreverent collective our conservative church could tolerate, we usually pushed the limits of propriety,  narrowly escaping chastisement the following Sunday morning, a public lynching or otherwise excommunication.

Tonight, the pastor and his wife had been invited to our coven.

Terry, the unofficial ringleader, had opened game night with her native Irish menu. I don’t recall if we drank beer that evening under the excuse of it being the holiday it was, but if we hadn’t, the atmosphere we had created without it was nonetheless pub-like.

Potato bowling: pantyhose tied around the waist, the feet of which held bowling ball sized spuds swinging hands-free, between the legs on linoleum alley of her kitchen. Gyrating, pelvic-thrusting potato-bowling parents, all of us, that early evening, full of corned beef and cabbage and probably beer.  It was clear the pastor and his wife were going to be part of our secret society from now on, or we’d have to kill them.

The ten-pin potato tournament awarded prizes and game night progressed to Team Dictionary. Scouring the Merriam-Webster for the most obscure of words for the one the opposition would certainly have no clue to its meaning, all had to submit guesses. “YONI” was redefined that night as a “japanese home perm.” “SHAGANAPPI” was a show-stopper, though. One response was so off-color, politically incorrect and so damn funny, the entire crowd had a matrix moment where time seemed to stand still for a full 20 minutes or more of deafening teary-eyed laughter and probably more beer. The women peed themselves. The guys were wet with tears. We were all glad our babysitters couldn’t see us because they would have taken our children to safety or CPS.

It was clear we all needed this night.

The Irish hostess and her husband were not finished though.

Team Pictionary, if you remember the game, is one in which a word is given to one person, (in this team event, two,) each the round leader of his own team huddled in the furthest most corners of the host’s large living room.  The object was to  race back to their team’s giant easel of oversized paper with the same word and a bold sharpie. Our kids’ Valentines Day cards still proudly posted on our home refrigerators,  were Monet’s in comparison to the drawings we silently but hastily produced to summon the correct answer from each of our two teams.

For this particular round, I was my team’s leader.

So far, it had become a close and fierce competition. I think the winning team got the leftovers from dinner, making it all out war.  I and my counterpart from the other team stood in the middle of the room with the word-giver and judge who very quietly turned over the card to the two of us , revealing the tie-breaking word each of us was to illustrate. We raced over furniture and around tables back to our teams in opposite corners of the room and began drawing.

Furiously, I drew pictures to describe the word I’d seen on the card. Across the room, the other leader was doing the same for his team. We could hear the guesses of the opposing teams across the room as the leaders drew pictures designed to elicit the winning response and guarantee tomorrow night’s dinner to the victory team.

But something was obviously and terribly wrong.

Both teams screamed single word guesses into the charged air like popcorn without a lid. Though not able to see their drawings, we could easily hear their guesses from way over there. And they could hear ours.

“Worship,” “Reverence,” “Holy” and other words of divinity rose from their group as their still-drawing leader sought to create the picture for his team that would end game night for all of us.

My group, however, spewed forth utterances like “Butt,” “Ass,” “Penis,” “Vagina” and much worse, like a George Carlin monologue.

Across the room, they shouted: “Angel!”

Our group:“Dick and balls!”

Their group: “Godly!”

Ours:“Butthole!”

This exchange went on for much too long, but long enough for some increasingly curious glances across the room and jaw-dropping looks across the room from our pastor at his foul-mouthed wife on our team.

At points, there was a mutual silence as teams could only stare across the room, away from the pictures their leaders had drawn, in disbelief that both teams were, indeed, pursuing the same given word.

We compared easel drawings.

The artist-leader on the opposing team had created elaborate pictorials of heavenly beings with heads and halos bowed in reverence, hoping his team would be the first to guess our given word “PROSTRATE.”

I had somehow misread the given word on that slowly revealed card at the very start.

Having missed that second “R” in PROSTRATE, I had eagerly drawn porn.

I had pictures of every imaginable genital in every position with little black arrows pointing to them as if these church people hadn’t seen porn once or twice already. I had been drawing a stick figure’s  PROSTATE.

As if “Shaganappi” wasn’t enough, all of us lost it.

Again.

Most hadn’t even recovered from the physical effects of the earlier laughingstock and had the crowd been 20 years older at the time, ambulances would have been called that very moment.

I don’t know who walked away with the leftovers.

At the end of that evening, it really didn’t matter. We’d had our fill.

Still chuckling at the door, we said our goodbyes and insincere apologies to our friends and each couple and our newly inducted pastor and his wife, and drove home to get our babysitters back to theirs by midnight.

Even now while writing, I’m reminded that gatherings like this one from a St. Patrick’s day long ago are times of my life which can instantly transform even my gloomiest of days.

I imagine someday, on my death bed, whomever remains from the fun group that night, may come to my side and lieu of a soft goodbye, will simply say “shaganappi” as their farewell.

And I will die laughing.

I recently ended a correspondence with a friend not with “Love” or “Yours truly” but

“LMSM, Don.”

To me, the salutation has become a near reflexive way of summarizing most of my notes and communications to family and friends with something eminently more meaningful, powerful and true.

Let’s face it, “Love” isn’t exactly how we feel toward all with whom we communicate. Not that its absence means “I don’t love you,” but just that used so frequently, the power of the single most important word in any language is overused and watered down from its true intent.  “Yours truly”…well, who says that anymore? We learned it way back in our typing class books as a nice but “truly” vague way of signing off during frantic tests of our typing speed. And what exactly does “truly” mean?

I digress.

I’m pretty much as far from being a trendsetter or follower as one can get.  I have always cherished originality and creativity way too much to get trapped in the insignificance of memes.  The latest trend, it seems is the “YOLO” abbreviation for You Only Live Once.  This one, in particular, strikes a sad chord for me in that it is inherently selfish, an unfortunate reflection of our life and times.  The digital internet age and the increasing pace of our society  has us searching for the easiest, most expedient ways of communicating our thoughts and sentiments.

“YOLO, Don.” or “You only live once, Don.”

For most of us, it’s trendy but meaningless.  But when something like YOLO catches on, it’s like a spark in a forest that soon becomes all the rage of a fire, but will soon and inevitably so, burn itself out, only to be replaced by yet another.

LMSM.  I suppose this is my proposal for replacing the burnt out YOLO with something that is more universally true, uplifting and hopeful.  It reflects a hope for all humanity and an intention of the user as a gesture of corporate goodwill.

Maybe it will catch on.

Will you make it yours…truly?

LMSM,

Don

Because Life Means So Much.

It truly does.

#LMSM

A lengthy talk with a friend, as they often do, finally arrived at the pivotal existential question we’d been searching for the past hour or two.  It was our version of an Elbert Hubbard quote that asks: Are we successful because of our vast and varied knowledge of things, our noble actions and efforts, or simply, because of who we genuinely are?

Both of us being type A personalities, we endeavored to evaluate each of the three independently but found it impossible to arrive at any one as the explanatory answer.

We concluded that success, being an ever-evolving and truly individual destination, is in fact no destination at all.  Success is not dependent on knowledge, for many are successfully uneducated.  It couldn’t be based alone on actions either as behaviors have to originate in motivations– things much more intrinsic to the soul.

The horseshoe that came closest to a ringer of an answer was the remaining variable…with a very important twist:

Success is a result of who we are…becoming.

Success is not stasis, a stagnant fragile balance.  If our destinations that define success are constantly evolving and changing, necessarily, who we are is caught up in the same truth.

We impact and are impacted by events of our lives just as raw elements from the periodic table mix with one another to create elaborate, new elements.  We have to have knowledge to be that scientist, motivation and desire to do and create something new or better for ourselves and others, and those, essentially, make us who we are now and better yet, who we are ever becoming.

Satisfied with our mental pursuits, we poured another cup of coffee, believing we’d been successful in our analysis.  That is, until we realized that if our successful outcome was indeed not a destination as we had originally posited, we would have to meet again to re-evaluate someday.

We enjoy each other’s company immensely.

I think our reason for trying to tackle such an existential question wasn’t simply to arrive at an answer.

I think we just wanted an excuse to have to hang out again!

“Men are pigs and fags are liars.”

The first time I tried crystal meth, this not-so-gentle truth was shared with me.

My new best friend had been out most of his life and despite his obvious contempt for the gay world, he proudly wore the nickname  “Mr. Gay 411.”  He’d earned it.

He threw all the best gay parties, knew, knew of or had otherwise slept with everyone who met his reasonably selective criteria of beauty and drug use on the many online “dating” websites (note: Gay men don’t “date” for the most part.)  His most valuable possession, earning him the handle,  was his state-of-the-art rolodex  listing detailed statistics of most gay men who did drugs, had an online profile and had somehow, at least so far, escaped the physical and hygienic destruction that meth eventually bestows on long term users.

Alphabetically. By screen name. Cross-referenced.

He was my new best friend not simply because he’d introduced me to meth, which I found an effective and cheap—albeit illegal—substitute for a prescription medication I could no longer afford.  I liked him a lot. He was also a father, had been married and his endearing southern accent told me more deep truths and secrets about living the gay highlife than I would ever hear again from one source.

He was also the first of what I have come to find as a relatively commonplace attitude in the new subculture that had fully embraced my own coming out.  Many openly admit that they don’t know their HIV status and don’t care to know.  Perplexed by his indifference to that question which I asked often of him, my now growing habit and frequency of visits to his nicely appointed, suburban home in a middle-class neighborhood soon clouded my mind to the nagging dissatisfaction of his answer. In a nutshell, there were more important things to worry about, like buying drugs and welcoming guests at all hours to party.  And by “party” I mean have sex.

For Christmas one year, I joked that I had bought him a numbered ticket dispenser like those used by Baskin & Robbins customers waiting their turn to be served their treats. I vowed to metaphorically install it at his front door to help manage the flow of guests to whom he had rolodexed invitations and meticulously scheduled in blocks of time like job interviews at a corporate HR department.

Men are pigs.

That one was easy to accept.

Men who remain unenlightened to a higher calling are generally selfish pigs, approximating or exceeding most sexual-needy stereotypes we have come to laugh at in prime time comedies.  When gay and drugs are added, that fact is augmented tenfold becoming an alluring trifecta.

Oink.

The point of my story is not to state or rehash stereotypes or even to find humor in them to help sedate the sad truth of the male libido.  But really, even as a man, I have come to believe it’s not at all funny.

Fags are liars.

It may as well have been a book title, a primer for the Coming Out 101 course at one time I vowed to teach the innocent marks at the bars who were unwittingly referred to as “fresh meat.”  Arriving nightly, freshly coiffed and undeniably petrified, they often mistook the festive, accepting environments  as something other than the slaughterhouses they actually were.

But I am one of the fortunate few.

With all odds against it, I emerged from my once eager, deep venture into the gay drug subculture nearly unscathed.  I walked away with no diseases, all my teeth and a reasonably good complexion for a now 52 year old man who’d spent the past several years there, the latter portion of it high every day.

In the years since, I have made an elective decision to be celibate.

Studies of meth use point to a marked decline in libido after stopping use.  They suggest that after continued and prolonged firing of those neural pleasure sites that meth produces, they are just flat burnt out. It can take months for libido to return to normal function.

But I have long since passed that marker and replaced that forced physiological celibacy with an intentional one.  The few male friends who know this have found my news shocking, beyond belief.  Most men view libido as a drive beyond their scope to corral, tame and control.  As a single man, for this season of my life, I choose to view it as a nuisance, a distraction of mind, not body, that impairs the attainment of things I have since come to classify as eminently more important. My present circumstances being 52, grey and overweight don’t make me the prized catch I once was, either if that even plays a role.

Dallas Willard has described spiritual disciplines in two realms: a)disciplines of engagement and b)denial.  Engaging disciplines are those active efforts of doing things that promote well-being and in doing so, a spiritual centering of sorts.  Denial disciplines are the practice of those decisions which thru the process of deprivation, create a vacuum for these same virtues.

So here’s the part where I act all virtuous, a chaste, holier-than-thou whore-turned-monk.

While I would like to say I was religiously motivated in my decision, I was not.  For me and my journey, celibacy was just the next step.  It was a no-brainer with deep spiritual underpinnings.

After having climbed out of the gutters and my head having cleared, for the very first time in my life, I had acquired a clear sense of all I had lost in the process.  When I speak to others, I use this description:

Imagine, if you will, your entire self immersed, surrounded by a very dark cloud in which everyone and everything is random, out of order, degraded and depraved.  A force from behind slowly pulls you out backwards by your stained and broken spirit, kicking and screaming until that moment you break the barrier between the cloud and the clarity.

At first, your view is the barrier immediately before you and from which you were extracted. You get your very first close-up glimpse of the horrible swirling maelstrom you had been calling home.  Continuing backwards, your view gains some periphery and you see the full outline of that dark cloud. Further, you lose vision of the internal maelstrom and now see that dark cloud in relation to everything else, other beautiful clouds, light, illumination.  This is the point of epiphanous attack, where you can now clearly see how black, indeed, is that cloud which once contained you and the starkest of contrasts between it and the rest of life.

If that description was too flowery for you, think of a pearl in an ever-swirling  toilet bowl of excrement.

Either way, I was somehow very thankfully but sadly one of the chosen ones.

Hope, once firmly grasped, will quickly yank you from where you are and fly you into its own erotica.  And when something so profound as this happens, satisfaction of the physical necessarily  loses its appeal, like a quick stop for gas en route to a weekend at Disneyland.

Chris Rice, my acknowledged favorite musical artist and lyricist, describes in a song that, for the life of me, I can’t seem to find as of yet,  so many random and meaningless sexual encounters as momentary pleasures, the crescendo of each is an inevitable sharp, momentarily painful blow of a spike by a hammer, chipping away a tiny, seemingly insignificant piece of the soul.

Since I have been out of the drug scene entirely and the gay scene mostly (seems you only belong if you’re sexual and uber vocal about equal rights these days,) I realize that I may have begun a new genre entirely.

In the film, Chasing Amy, I was moved by the mid-movie monologue of the female lead who, upon explaining her view of coupling, posed a profound question.  A practicing lesbian who in the story had connected with Ben Affleck, her straight friend, so deeply, that as the relationship progressed she became compelled to ask herself the question:

Why in the search for a life partner must I immediately halve my available options purely based on gender?  While my complementary mystical other half could very well be (and to her gay subculture, should be) another lesbian, I would be shortchanging myself of a full half of the possible options and in turn placing limits on whom I was available to love.

So if love is, indeed, friendship caught fire, then at the dismay and disbelief of my own gay friends, I have chosen also, to leave my gender options wide open in my pursuit of a life mate.  And until that time I hope to remain sexually celibate.

You see, my spirit has learned some things.

When I first explored myself in the gay milieu, I was morally appalled that every piece of literature, every event, every sort of entertainment and conversation wreaked of at minimum, sexual innuendo.  It was as if the only thing the gay community had to sell its converts was sex.  It was a shallow, self serving concept into which I confess I bought for a time, partly  because of the disenfranchisement of my former subculture.  Bereft of accepting friends, the attention I was promised by the gay community as a new convert was a hook I eagerly bit out of my own insecurity.

So, I’m happy.

Poor as a dog is hairy, but happy.

I think I may be the first to populate this new and unnamed genre.  And I have to admit, it’s pretty damn exciting to be blazing a new trail that I imagine only very few will ever fully understand.  Myself included.

Men are pigs,

Fags are liars.

I was both,

But now am neither.

Don’t you love a good poem?

A long, warm embrace and I said “Come back again, Jon, you’re always welcome here.”

Not an hour ago, Jon had mustered the courage to come to my door and knock.  There was a part of him, I know, that hoped nobody would answer.

Nobody ever knocks on my door. I rarely have a visitor anymore, so when I hear a knock or a doorbell, I know it must be either Publisher’s Clearinghouse or bad news.  Today it was different.

I could see it on his face, too, as I opened the door to find him standing there.  He later said he didn’t know if I still lived here but had been in the neighborhood many times before but didn’t know if he was in a safe-enough place yet to take the risk of seeing me again. After all, our last encounter was not very pleasant.

Jon was a friend from my days of dealing drugs and partying. We spent a lot of time together and I recall that despite our last encounter when he was still using and I was sober over a year, he was one of a handful of friends in the drug circles who had that je ne sais quoi.  I knew that under that always  high, drug injecting, self-centered man was a quality person who would, with any luck and before it was too late, emerge and be redeemed as I was.

Jon is three months clean. His distance from his last use, however, doesn’t match with the sobriety level he exhibits.  His level of insight far exceeds most at his stage of recovery.

He came in. We talked for an hour. He explained how the paranoia from his prolonged drug use had caught up with him finally.  Laying on his bedroom floor with .45 in hand, he was destined either to kill the invisible intruders of his paranoia or himself that night.

Finally, ready to escape the nightmare, he said he’d knocked on the door at his mother’s house and admitted he needed help. He moved in that night and has been off drugs since.

I’m honored that he took the risk of knocking on my door this morning, one he’d knocked on countless times before with a much different agenda.

I think we’ll be close friends once again, bound together now by an adhesive much stronger than drugs ever were.

Someone asked me recently how I did it.
How I got off drugs, meth of all things.

Undoubtedly tonight at my meeting I’ll be asked once again as is the tradition for anyone getting a chip for a year or two or more clean.

I’ve given much thought to the question. Less to the mechanics of my leap into sobriety, but more about which of my words might just be a trigger for another addict in attendance… to turn that bright light on upstairs to illuminate them to the possibility that they, too, deserve a future.

You see, it’s not the quitting of drugs that’s important. It’s about the installation of hope in someone that they are worth far more in this world than the company of any drug and its cohorts. It’s about having been utterly blinded by the stupor of a drug and its false promise of contentment which blocks out hope or vision that there’s really anything more to life. To that end, we are all addicts. We all have something we’ve allowed to remain which blocks hope. Something to which we remain bound.

“Clean and sober.” It’s almost cliché these days.
The distinction between the two, however, is perhaps the most important thing I learned in my two years of recovery. I got clean once, but I get more sober with each passing day.

The truly recovered are not recovered at all. They are recovering. And the truly recovering can instinctively tell the difference. A recovering person hasn’t simply stopped using. They have started living. It’s evident that clarity of mind, purpose and a place for God was birthed at some moment. But rarely is that moment a single epiphany, but the commencement of lifelong epiphanies which, strung together, create the continuity of recovering.

The high I get from my ongoing little epiphanies of life these days. They continue to escort me down a much more beautiful path. And when you find yourself in a much prettier place, hope is much easier to find. In fact, it seems to find you.

And ain’t that really the definition of God?

So for the addicts in all of us, I say to you, we are here in this world for one reason only: Be that hope for someone today.

Musings at 3am on a Tuesday…go figure.

For 15 years as a psychotherapist, I was paid handsomely for providing my observations about my patients’ behavior, thinking, reasoning, communication and relational styles. Subsequently, I helped them to successfully navigate each toward a more adaptable, functional way of living. Because they were patients, I gently operated under an assumption that their willingness to follow my lead was implicit…. After all, they sought me, not vice versa.

When they were less willing, my road included a brief detour into deliberate discussions which helped them to ask me for what I was hired to provide. Success usually followed and at the end of treatment, they were empowered, believing they were, for the most part, their own guide out of the dark and into the light. That exact point made my work a joy.

Since, encountering acquaintances, friends and people I loved, I could not be their therapists and, indeed, was not. I have sifted clinical impressions of each through an undetectable, internal mental health sieve and kept and continued only with those who had best friendship potential. Neither they nor my process was ever perfect but, with the exception friends acquired during my drug days (which are two years in the past tomorrow,) it has saved me much heartache and effort trying to fix anyone who hasn’t asked for it.

It was fair to me and it was fair to them.

It seemed to work.

My present struggle is with the exceptions–the ones who slipped through and continue in my life–to whom I cannot and will not offer unsolicited yet well-meaning suggestion and opinion but who, also, have maintained a presence nonetheless. My social circle is the smallest it has ever been for this extrovert and the prospect of discontinuing even one relationship I’ve allowed in, would represent a significant percentage loss from the whole.

But as I get older, being accepted is less important. The quantity of people in my life is far less important than the quality of the people I allow to remain.

Still, it’s the hardest thing, to say good bye through my absence and lack of perseverance in a relationship I once counted as a keeper.

However, it’s often those things most necessary for our survival that are the most difficult to effect. The abandonment makes one just that much closer to loneliness.

I attended the memorial service of my old boss recently.

It had been many years since I was in his employ and many more since we’d seen each other.  But I’d heard of his passing due to some form of unmentionable cancer and some of my family members who also worked with him in our family’s former advertising business were making the trek into town to pay their last respects.  My presence would have gone unnoticed but I would be nice to have the family together again, even for the day, and I knew it would be a big event in town as he was well known, highly networked and therefore, he would likely be eulogized by some very important people.  Admittedly, I attended more out of curiosity than grief but I checked that at the door. Or at least I thought I had.

My family and I arrived at the catholic church that afternoon having parked our modest cars amongst the lot of luxury vehicles.  Former senators,  governors and other movers and shakers from one of the most vibrant eras of Las Vegas flanked our stride but here, all in black, eerily, we were equals.  It was a poignant reminder.

The Who’s Who crowd was capacity. Standing room only.  I remember thinking about when I used to ponder the question of who would come to my funeral one day, my passing would never command such an audience.  And that was merely the beginning of many epiphanies that would come to me during the hour-long event.

As happens with weddings and funerals, I’d taken notice of several people from my very distant past who were in attendance.  It had been decades since I’d seen most and it was easy to cherry pick the few to whom those years had obviously been kinder.  Many others had weathered the storms of life the past thirty years so poorly, they were  beyond recognition.  I’m pretty sure more than one of them had that very afternoon asked themselves if they were next.

The single sheet agenda promised an interesting selection of eulogizers. Those who’d made the cut were to be undoubtedly fascinating and articulate.

During the opening compulsory exercises, I silently recalled wondering whether a church was an appropriate place for the deceased’s closing ceremonies.  After all, he never seemed the church-going type. But then isn’t that how we do it?  And with that thought, my mind had begun one of my greatest journeys

They were funny. They were memorable. They recalled the best and the most embarrassing times of his life. The crowd laughed on cue and feigned a tears at the appropriately synchronized moments. It was a nice show.

But as If I were a society page critic sent to cover the event, I couldn’t help but ask the questions that, clearly, nobody wanted to answer.  Were these closing remarks accurate representations of the entirety of my former boss’ life?  Moreover, would they be the choices of the deceased if he’d had the forethought to write his own eulogy?

It was at that point that I began my own.  I’d stumbled on what turned out to be the most cathartic writing of my life to date.

I wrote my own eulogy.

Now, of course, my document is already signed and sealed, complete with cues for the playing of what’s become my life theme song, Life Means So Much, by Christian artist/songwriter, Chris Rice. In fact, if you’re so inclined, now would be a good time to look it up and download it on your smartphone and press play.  I’ll give you a minute.

Writing my own eulogy at first seemed like a pretty morbid exercise, the idea of which was birthed at an equally morbid time.  But as a a momentarily  inspired musician or a painter with canvas at sunset, I was compelled to think in sentences and having said my goodbyes to those distant friends and family at the service, I rushed home and powered up my computer.

What emerged through my fingers that evening and late into the night provided me with a kind of freedom I’m not sure I could genuinely describe.  The details of my document, now folded and sealed for revelation on that glorious day that I meet my Maker, are my secret to keep until that day.  If you’re intrigued enough by now, let me extend a sincere invitation to my own memorial service.  Watch your local listings for details.

Suffice to say, writing my own eulogy helped me to like the person I’d become.  The exercise was beautifully honest.  I figured “Hell, I’m dead. Who do I need to impress? Why hold back anything?”

There’s no handbook for such a project but to tell those who remain the kind of man I really was…not the trumped up version certain family members and friends might script for the hungry audience, if indeed there is one.

I have been through quite a lot in my life to date.  There are many very memorable and wonderful things in my experience of 52 years. Likewise, there are many very horrible things that have happened.  I acknowledged each as I wrote, but still, I thought, I’m missing something.

I had no deathbed confessions to write.

Sure, there were some relationships I’d wished had been healed.  God knows I had tried.  There were a slew of  previously shameful experiences I had long since reconciled with others and my God.  Through my recovery from drug addiction and subsequent personal reflection, I’d done my big work.  I realized then that  I was writing no cliffhanger.  No season finale loaded with twists, turns and surprise character revelations.

When I had finished, I knew I had finished. No more words would come.  In fact, I don’t recall even going back to edit or spell check. (I have never used spell check and I’m proud of the fact.)

Rest In Peace was quite apparently now something within my reach.  This was comforting beyond words.

As I sealed the envelope, prepared to give it to my sister for safekeeping until that day of (spoiler alert)

Not-So-Exciting-Revelation, I realized I was ready to die.

Not that I necessarily wanted to die, but was ready for the event whether that night or many years to come.

There’s an extraordinarily therapeutic value in writing one’s own eulogy.  If you dare to be honest with yourself, it can be the story of a lifetime, quite literally, that cleanses your soul and flags any remaining tasks to finish up.

We don’t know the hour or the day.  I don’t think my ex-boss knew when his day would come exactly.  But knowing him pretty well, I think he was self-centered enough that he would have wanted the last word that day.

For me, I decided I didn’t want to leave that task to others to formulate for me during what would probably be the most difficult time to write something so important.

I highly recommend it.

[Six years old this November, he’s taught me more about caring for others than any human ever did. This is a short story when he was still just a year old.]

We walk and pick up trash in our 20 minute daily metaphor.

“Let’s take a walk!”

Those few words induce such a frenzy in Butch, my nearly year-old puppy, his reaction has become the highlight of my day. Attaching his harness and leash is like fitting a spawning salmon in a dinner jacket. We start our excursions at a frantic pace to nowhere. Dogs have few preferences. Anywhere new to sniff, snort, roll, run and poop is ecstasy.

For a dozen years or more, I’d kindly but emphatically, refused several tempters with puppy in hand, pleading with me to own another dog. But growing up and while married, the inevitable eventual task of putting down a sick or dying animal always fell to me. Always. Now I can’t even keep a houseplant alive without guilt and vowed never again to accept the life and death responsibility of anything more animated if I could avoid it.

Clearly, I missed out.

I got Butch from a family friend in a clever, well-crafted moment of weakness she’d set-up knowing my post-addiction loneliness . Lori anticipated my refusal as she placed the tiny, licking creature into my open palm and told me we share the same birthday and well, I succumbed for the last time once again.

He’s now my best friend. And aren’t they all.

On our walks, he sniffs, I think, and together, we pick up other people’s trash.

It’s no noble green act for humanity. Our team effort of sniffing and retrieving garbage others have tossed, has become a metaphor for a much deeper message in the early morning hours.

On occasion, I am guilty of letting an empty water bottle drop or wrapper fly out of my car door in a rogue wind and I just don’t have the energy to go on a chase. It doesn’t haunt me. I don’t lose sleep or go to confession over it. Life goes on. Sue me.

Despite my apathy, though, it will land somewhere, and I wonder…
Will someone do us the same favor someday?

Without forethought or expectation and sometimes purely by accident, we care for others. We end up fixing their thoughtless mistakes thoughtlessly and without premeditation. Today they call it pay-it-forward. My hope for humanity, having taken some big hits in recent years, is buoyed by stuff like this.

But random acts of kindness have become so commercialized. These days, people have to be instructed to commit them and it kinda misses the point entirely. What was once indeed random is no longer the conscientious overflow of someone’s innate character, but a moment of self-aggrandizement on Facebook. Original, reflexive acts of humankindness are what used to set us apart from other species.
Well, most of them.

Seated in the shade on the cool grass, I asked Butch if he understood this complex yet very simple thought.
He squatted and pooped.

Good dog. I think he gets it.

Dog hearts are so big, with roles reversed and opposable thumbs, I think they’d pick up ours bare handed.

En route home with a full trash bag, I was more thankful than ever for that day Lori introduced us. Dogs seem to get naturally what humans don’t. The time will come when I have to say good bye to my best friend, but I will remember today and every day on an early morning walk with Butch and times like these when he inspires me to be a better human.

Fat Anne.

That’s what they called her at the junior high bus stop. Overweight and acne pocked, every morning, she slowly made her way up the street past the jeering group of adolescent boys to sit alone on the curb, light a cigarette and wait for the bus.

I was one of those boys.

There was a point in my rationalizations both then and later on when I had grown up and begun my career, that upon recalling those many sad mornings, I took pride that I was never one who called her names, never pushed her, berated her or talked about her behind her back. For awhile, when haunted with these memories, I had taken comfort in what I had prematurely resolved as my “innocence” despite being one in the crowd of those boys.

When I was about 35, having boldly worked up the courage to locate my own high school bully, I called him on the phone out of the blue and tactfully confronted him with what I experienced as his unprovoked, heartless, cruel and mostly verbal attacks on me back then and what, ultimately, those experiences had caused me for the rest of my life. As I made it past the brief niceties of our opening conversation and understood he was willing to listen, I spoke my piece to him. What followed was dumbfounding. While I’d hoped for and anticipated that things would be set straight, an overdue explanation would be handed to me and resulting apologies exchanged as we wound up the call, never happened. I was left with a dial tone to hang up with a message from him that “we were kids, get over it.”

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps he was dead wrong.

Bullied children never get over it. The bully cycles of life peak around adolescence out of multiple reasons I won’t explain here. But I will note that this period of life is formative for so much of our adult self and relational development that left unresolved, without intervention, damages are for a lifetime. The link to drug use, passivity, gross self-images, suicidality and more tragedy later in life for those bullied needs no studies to support the claim.

I had been fortunate for my sophomore year to have been offered an easy way out of the bullying while still saving face. Many students were offered the option of populating the newly constructed Bonanza High School and I was one of the first to sign up. For reasons of self preservation, I chose to silently leave behind many very close friends for the hope of social peace and unbullied belonging starting the new school might promise.

Fast forward. Around my 10 year high school class reunion.

10 years after high school, things change. What was once bullying had become a social posturing among classmates eager to show themselves having been most successful in education, careers, family and possessions. I walked in to my own reunion expecting this and was not at all disappointed. I waded through the bullshit and was generally pleased with the story of my own first decade. But something was missing. Someone was missing.

Fat Anne, (Anne now for the sake of respect,) had remained to graduate at Clark, my former high school. I still had some contact with friends from there and inquired about their reunion date that summer. Choosing the traditional Sunday family picnic event, I showed up at their event for one purpose only.

As if the posturing bit from former classmates at my own high school wasn’t enough, I weathered the limp handshakes and stories of greatness of all the rich, old money kids who’d remained to graduate at Clark during this second reunion round of my summer. I was on a hunt for someone, and it wasn’t my own bully, who was, undoubtedly there…somewhere. I’d got over it.

I first saw her leaning against a pole at the shaded picnic area pavilion in the park. She was still overweight, overdressed and had that same cigarette dripping from her mouth. And again, she was alone. I’d rehearsed my approach many times that morning but had hoped, if she was indeed going to be there, that it wouldn’t be such a flashback, and that like all the rest, she’d be flanked with a loving husband and a couple small tikes playing with the balloons that spiraled up the pavilion to a pinnacled sign, “Welcome Back 10 Years Clark Chargers!”

“Hi Anne,” I said, hoping she would remember who I was after a decade that had been good to me, but apparently not to her. “Hi Don,” she said, snuffing her cigarette on the pole embarrassed as if she were caught smoking by some meddling parent at the bus stop years ago. We hugged and talked about superficial stuff as everyone did that day. I refrained from telling too much of my successes. I mostly listened to her as she, also, had a story to tell to which quite obviously few had bothered to listen to that day, or never.

She tried to appear upbeat while she spoke of the many demons she dealt with, still did, and her employment history as if it were a verbal resume seeking affirmation by someone, anyone.

About a half hour of chat went by before we exchanged hugs once again and I walked the long way across the grass to my car, occasionally glancing back. She had disappeared from her post. Scanning in all directions, I couldn’t find her nor her cigarette smoke anywhere in sight. I opened my door, slid inside, turned on the air conditioning and cried. I had failed to do what I had set out that day. I spoke nothing that resembled an acknowledgement or apology that afternoon for what I had done…rather, what I had left undone…ten years earlier.

You see, I am my brother’s keeper. I know it now. I knew it at the bus stop ten years earlier.

My biggest regret had been my lack of courage to step out of the bunch of boys at that bus stop and into plain sight where she could see me, to see that I was, indeed different from them. And perhaps on a particularly courageous morning, I might even had ventured some small talk with her there at risk of ridicule later on from the boys.

Before Anne and I had parted, we’d exchanged addresses. Email was in its infancy back then and I figured I might yet be able to clear my conscience and perhaps bring a smile to her weathered face with a letter some day.

I wish I had kept a copy of the letter I wrote that following fall. I was brief but to the point having stated that I had learned it wasn’t enough to have not been one who taunted her or called her by the labels to which she’d become accustomed back then. I was most ashamed that I’d also not been strong enough with myself to defend her publicly against such ridicule. I asked for her forgiveness the best I could, sealed and stamped the envelope, and sent it on its way.

To this day, I don’t know if Anne ever received my letter or if by some slim chance she’d received any such letters from others who might have also realized their shame at that bus stop. Certainly, there were enough witnesses to her daily stoning and the occasional glance into the eyes of a few bystanders at the bus stop showed me that their adolescent minds and hearts felt the same as mine but were also silenced by the status quo.

My experience on both sides of the bully when I was young may never be resolved to my satisfaction. Lance may never write me with a well deserved apology. Anne may never acknowledge my own letter of apology. Both relationships may eventually expire, each with that unwritten final chapter. But that’s okay.

God has an incredible way of working these kinds of things out. And if, indeed, everything in life happens for a reason, until a better one comes along, it is this:

He has given me the events of this story for you and for your children. Read it to them when they are young. Perhaps they may be saved from the fate of Anne.

Teach them courage.Teach them that in a very real sense, they are their brother’s keepers, if not for today, for one to come.