Here I go again, back in the game, so to speak = haven't blogged for a while, because I didn't know if my ongoing themes of doom and gloom was something people wanted to read about again, but here I go again anyway.
You readers should know by now that people who write down their thoughts write down what they have lived through and experienced, you know, the way a person's mind works.
A lot of my thoughts come from something I have read or something I have seen on TV or on a cable movie. Such as the case with this current blog.
In Reader's Digest there is a story called "When the Water Runs Cold" = it's about the relationship between a grandson and his aging grandfather, who is 91-years-old.
The grandson asks the old man what it's like to live to be as old as he is and the grandfather replies = 'Well, when you're young and you take a shower, the water is hot and refreshing, stimulating = when you get, say, in your 50s, the water is lukewarm and when you get as old as I am, the water always runs cold" =
My reaction was intense = first of all, my emotions run deep, deep into my soul and I cried at the story. How profound that story was to me! Life and Death= two inevitable events in your life.
I remembered how my sister Marie suffered for nine years in a nursing home before she blessedly passed away, free of all that pain, physical and emotional, for all those years, becoming a shell of the vibrant, fun-loving person she used to be.
I remembered how my brother Sonny passed away three months later, having survived a horrific car wreck and an agonizing surgery on his back, only to be killed by his wife and her boyfriend. My family and I finally figured out what happened to him and I filed a police report last fall with the Kentucky State Police. They agreed his death was probably caused by someone else, but they said without an autopsy report, they couldn't pursue it, but at least they agreed with all of our suspicions.
I remembered how my sister Betty passed away in December 1996 from colon cancer and how I had rushed to her bedside at St. Claire Hospital in Morehead from Atlanta, Georgia, to be by her bedside in her final days.
She had spent her last Thanksgiving with her family, knowing her time on this Earth was short. When I reached her bedside, she was awake and she recognized me. I hugged her and told her, "I'm here" = she looked up at me, hugged me and tears streamed down her face. Shortly after that, she was placed on life support, a machine breathing for her. Over the next several days, the waiting room was filled with people who loved her and cared for her, but we all were just waiting, wanting to be there when she crossed to the Other Side.
I don't believe God answers everyone's prayers.
He's probably busy, you know, taking care of other things. As I have said before, I am a spiritual person, not a religious one and I have been saved, I have confessed all my past sins out loud and God has answered some of my prayers, but there is a nagging feeling buried deep in my mind that comes to the surface when all the lights are turned out except for the one above the kitchen sink, the babies are asleep, the TV is turned off and doubts swirl through my mind like a raging storm. I'm not able to shut out those thoughts, wish I could, but I can't.
So, you see, dear readers, I live in my own world, it's plain to see, not unaware of what is happening around me, but I have also grown old and the water in the shower feels cold to me and I wonder why I am even doing this = taking a shower when my body is going to be cremated eventually, it doesn't have to be spotlessly clean, I've earned all the dirt on me and don't want to wash it completely away . . . . . . . . .
It reminds me of having to bathe myself in a big old tin tub behind the wood-burning pot-bellied stove, in front of anyone who happened to be sitting near the stove = that marked me, because one of the ones sitting around the stove was my abuser, who was constantly feeding wood into the stove, because he said, "to keep the boy warm" = but I still had to bathe myself, because I was told if I was clean and well-groomed with clean clothes when I went to school the next day, no one would ever be the wiser of how I really had to live.
Sitting on my couch this afternoon, after making a quick trip to Save-A-Lot for a few groceries, I was somehow eerily calm, watching Judge Judy, drinking my taboo small coffee I bought at McD's, eating my fish sandwich and eating my taboo French fries. Coping with a MS flareup caused by the change in the weather, the coffee relaxed me and for a moment, I was at peace, just for a moment, though, just for a moment.
I finished my coffee, turned the TV off and combed Darby Doodle's thick fur = he loved the stroking of his back, his head and his neck. I flashed back to the night I rescued him = that was almost eight years ago = I couldn't believe how fast time had gone by. I talked to him, told him how much I loved him, how much he means to me and he looked at me with that beautiful face and I knew he understood.
Maybe, just maybe, God answers the prayers he wants you to cherish and Darby Doodle was one of those prayers answered that I completely cherish. The deep, deep love I have for all my babies goes to the core of my soul and I feel that feeling every day they are here with me, so they are prayers that did not go unanswered.
