9:50am Writing Practice 55° Boise
Got a text from Sue first thing, woke me up. I would have been up by then by I had gotten up to pee and take my ASEA at 4:40 and couldn't go back to sleep, so I ended up reading for a while, turning off the light again at 6:30. So I was sleeping soundly when her text buzzed my phone at 8:45. But I'm up now, not quite as perky as a normal morning but at least the sun is shinning and the breeze is slight. The air is fresh and full of the scents of the high dessert that I love so much in the summer. It promises to be a gorgeous day out there, a perfect day to get some yard work done. But I may have to drive to Baker.
Sue has finally had it with that puppy and what a ride it's been this past year. I made the mistake of taking her with me out to Ginny's place to see the puppies last July, never once thinking ahead to the possibility that she might go crazy and want one. She got the puppy in September and it's been one thing after the next ever since, as you can imagine with an unstable person who has never had a dog before. There was no talking her out of it last summer, I tried. I knew it would end up like this but some things have to be experienced in order to be understood.
As soon as I typed that last sentence, it hit me. That's why I had to move to Hannibal in 2006. That's why I had to marry Bob and then John, why I had to birth Nathan and then Stephen. That's why I had to have two suicide attempts and undergo addiction issues. Some things have to be experienced in order to be understood. So is that why I have to have this experience of losing a child to suicide? To really understand the final piece in the puzzle of depression, mental illness, self-medication and addiction that all leads to self-harm, ending in death, sooner or later. Well, all life ends in death sooner or later, it's just a matter of quality and what we do with the life we have.
At the end of his life, my step-dad, Richard, declared himself a failure. What makes life a success or failure at the end? I'd really like to know because I'm tempted to declare my life a failure as well even though it's not over yet. It can't be about material acquisitions and that's a good thing. Is it about family? Connections? Contributions to the collective consciousness? Is it about love or kindness or what? Maybe it's up to each one to decide how he feels about his life when it's about to be over. Will it be a relief? A sinking down with a sigh of, finally, at last, I can relax. This trying every day is taxing and on some days, a tad boring.
When dad said that about himself being a failure, I scrambled in my head, trying to think of things to offer as proof that he was wrong. That makes me sad, thinking of that. Because I couldn't think of much, except that he had provided for his family; we had always had a home and enough food to eat. He had always been there. But he had not been there for us, if you can see the difference. He had taken an active role in Mark's life with fishing and camping and I'm sure they talked, but he had no role in my life, just a presence. Would I have wanted him to love me, be there for me, be a real dad to me? Heck yes! Do I still miss the fact that he wasn't able to be that guy? You bet. But does that make him a failure in his own life? In the big picture, no, of course not. He was kind and helpful and sincere. I think he was locked inside himself in many ways but he did love us; he loved deeply, just too deep to access on the surface. He had no outlets for creativity, no hobbies. He liked yard work, he enjoyed puttering around. He kept himself and his stuff organized. He was steady and solid, never moody, although he was fairly quick to anger and he tolerated no flare-ups in others, joyful or otherwise. He hated indecision and confusion, what he called a Chinese Circus. But he didn't write or create or leave anything of himself behind for posterity. I doubt if anyone left on Earth thinks of him at all. He's gone, erased from existence. And I get the idea that he likes it that way.
But was he a failure? Was Stephen a failure? Was my mother? Or my brother, Gerald? I think they all thought so at the end of their lives. If I was coming up to the end of my life, would I feel like a failure? I've found value in so many of my life's experiences but what have I done with it? I've shared on a limited basis. Stephen left his music and his photographs, Mom left her songs and recordings, her voice, and Gerald helped so many people get and stay sober, he inspired others who were at the bottom of the barrel. He cared about people who had no one else on Earth to care about them. He saved lives. Of all of us, I think Gerald would be the big success story and isn't that ironic. In order to make my life a success at the end, I have to aspire to the example Gerald set --- he was Brother/Father Harth, he provided a safe haven for weary addicts and he did that for over ten years. He may have thought he was a failure because he didn't attain the worldwide recognition that he thought he should have, but he did great on a daily basis for many years. People still remember him and speak highly of him. His example of a sober life continues to inspire and his story is one worth telling.
So is that the scale with which to grade oneself? To end up with a story worth telling, where people remember you or at least enjoy your story? In that case, Dad was a failure. If he has a story worth telling, no one knows it. My mother has a story worth telling and I know enough of it to tell. Plus there's her music. I can work with that. And of course Stephen left a story to tell and I'm working on that daily. His story is tied to my story and I have at least 6 books to write that will include all of it, Gerald's, Mom's, Stephen's and mine. So my story is huge! Will it be valuable? That remains to be seen, but it will all die with me if I don't find a way to tell it. And then we'll all be failures.
So that's it then. If it's about stories, it's up to me to get in there and spend the rest of my life writing it all down so that we can all be successful. Including you, Dad. I'll find a way to write your life as a success. I promise.
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