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Mid-January, Rain - January 13, 2012
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October, White - October 31, 2011
October, 2011 - October 04, 2011


December 03, 2003

7:54 p.m.

I

So I went back to the clairvoyant Reiki healer yesterday. First she does a half hour "reading," where relatives from the other side step into the room and chat and give me advice, then a half hour energy treatment during which I might expect to twitch, cry, or have my sinuses run copiously. Or none of the above. Maybe just a little nap.

My father passed in October this year. We had our share of "unresolved communication" issues, partly because that's the way we were, and partly because, in his last months, he was so demented that he couldn't hold a whole thought (much less a conversation). I saw him once last April (in the nursing home), and before that, maybe almost two years prior (in his house; by then prone to bouts of unexplained tears, and nonsequitorial interrupting). When his third wife (not my mom) divorced him a few years ago, the last of the communication broke down as he alienated everyone. His ex wife forgave him for the nasty things he said and threatened, and couldn't bear to let him deteriorate by himself where he had no friends (the dementia started shortly after she left). She came back to bring food, to balance the checkbook, to take him to the doctor. She kept coming back, even through the divorce. Her daughter and son in law took him to a church supper. They looked after him because my sister and I were hundreds of miles away, taking care of my mother, who was dying of emphysema. She moved him out of his house when he couldn't take care of it any more, and was falling regularly (usually inebriated). Then she moved him out of the apartment into a nursing home, after he fell and broke his hip.

That was less than a year ago, as I recall.

In the end, he changed his will, and left a stupendous life insurance and all the other money and everything else he had, to her and her family.

My brother is pissed; he wants to contest the will. My sister and I are willing to let it be; she's well enough off, and though I barely have any money (wouldn't have any at all, if my mother hadn't left me a little last year; how ironic, since dad was always the one with all the income) I have to let dad do what he wants and have that be okay. Sometimes I think it wasn't fair, but I think he was bitter (when he still had the capacity to be bitter, that is) that we weren't present when he needed us. Certainly his ex wife was; she resented us deeply and there was a big rift for a while. How do you choose between your parents when both of them need you? I guess we care for the one we're closest to. Mom had already moved up from Georgia to live with my sister. She was dying. Dad's ex wife stepped in and was willing. We thought for a long time it was from guilt, but in the end I think she still loved him.

The last time we saw him, in the nursing home trying to recover from the hip fracture, he had lost most of his cognitive ability. Now and then there would be a hint of his sense of humor, but mostly he had difficulty putting a sentence together. He seemed benign, like there was no longer anything controversial about him, nothing to not like. He was like a child.

My sister and I drove down for his funeral in Virginia. It was a military affair, with taps and the shooting off of guns and smart young men in uniform. I remembered why I was proud of my dad; he'd flown in the war, he'd been a prisoner in Germany, he'd commanded air bases; his career was his love. He drank too much, cheated extensively on my mother and couldn't hold onto any of his wives, but the things he did accomplish were real and ready to be his testimony. I left the funeral (it was bitterly cold, and windy on the hill) and immediately set off to meet my band at a gig in Michigan the following night.

So I was a little surprised when dad was the first one in the room at my reading yesterday. My reader said he was a vibrant spirit, especially for having passed so recently; his passing was good, he was still very connected to the physical plane and those he loved; he and my mom had already met up. Are they getting along, I asked with a laugh. Yes, they're getting along great, she said. It's like everything that passed between them down here was just roles they were playing; not that it wasn't real, but it had to do with personalities and context and earthly situations, and now they're past all that. And whatever went on between me and my father, she added later that he wanted me to know, is just water under the bridge. Water under the bridge.

II

I had a long talk with my bass player friend this week. I'll call him Will. I knew him for a couple of years before something happened inside me and I became severely attached to him. It may or may not be related to finding out that he had cardiomyopathy. I'd worked with him on a couple of recording projects and just always loved his work and his shining spirit, and was crushed to find he was struggling with this hereditary, very inevitable disease. That was about three years ago now, and he'd had it for two already. He's already baffled the medical community with his stats, because he's perfectly compliant about diet and meds, but this year has been a lot scarier. But I have to digress just a little...

Will, Will, Will. See, he was in a longish relationship with someone who apparently loved to beat him up emotionally, because every other time I'd talk to him there would have been a blowup and he'd be all wrecked. I heard a story from my engineer friend about how Will had driven to the studio the night before a session (a 2-1/2 hour drive) and slept in his car in the driveway, just to get out of the apartment where they were fighting. His girlfriend was jealous and strict, my friend said. She changed their outgoing message from his voice to her voice, in case any old girlfriends called. She went through his bag, read his journal. Every couple of weeks there was an explosion over something. It was hard to imagine. The guy is very gentle. And small. I could whup him. Anyway, because I had been in a longish relationship with a madman who was extremely manipulative, domineering, loud, opinionated, angry, and in the end, abusive, I had a clue as to what was going on and I tried to suggest that perspective might be had by stepping back and looking at the relationship from a distance. I knew what it was to so lose myself to that powerful person, that psychic and emotional vampire, and I couldn't stand to see it happening to someone else.

But you know, you can't make someone's decisions for them.

So he ran hot and cold, and I fell deeper and started writing songs and poems about him, and honest to God I never, ever in my life, felt desire that deep and wide for someone, that was all mixed in with compassion and longing and fear of dying and an aching need to complete myself, and maybe someone else too.

It killed me.

I found a little shell on the beach on Nantucket that summer, that looked to me exactly shaped like a real heart. I carried it around in a pouch. I showed my bandmates. "Look," I said, "I found this and it reminded me of Will." My mate looked at it and said, "Oh. It looks like a tooth." I couldn't believe they couldn't see it looked just like a heart. I was severely depressed. After a while when we'd finished eating, she said, "Let's go, before she starts pulling out her tooth again." That's the state I was in.

I got one message that his girlfriend might be moving to New York; later, apparently she changed her mind. I stopped getting messages.

I broke off communication with him in the summer of '02; had to. Otherwise I'd just be waiting for a phone call that wasn't coming. I felt livid, cheated; I went on Prozac, went off. I wrote more poetry. I wished I could be numb. Meanwhile my mother died. Finally I wrote him a letter at the end of the summer, just a safe little hi-here's-the-news letter; I've moved, here's my address; my mom passed away. A couple of months later I got a postcard back. Thanks, of course I was glad to hear from you, sounds like you're doing well. Jesus Christ, I thought, a postcard?! Did his girlfriend have to read it before it went into the box?

I held onto that for another few months. Chewed it. Gnawed it like a marrow bone until I'd sucked all possible traces of life and blood from it. Why should I be locked up and unable to speak my truth? I thought. This sucks as bad as before. After another few months on Prozac, I decided to address my issues more directly. I canned the pills and wrote a really good letter, telling him exactly how I thought he'd been an irresponsible friend, wasn't paying attention to his own needs at home, had left me out in the cold when he knew I needed to know what was up with him. I urged him to be honest with himself and mindful in his dealings with others. I wished him well.

A few more months went by, and I learned secondhand that his girlfriend finally moved out and went to New York. Hm.

Saw my engineer friend at a conference a few weeks later, and he said Will had been in the hospital for another operation.

That's it, I thought. I can't have him die on me without resolving all this crap. One day I called him... left a message. He called back and left a message. A nice message. We talked later. He came out to a gig we played in September, and we talked some more. He'd lost more weight, and a little more hair, and he looked pretty skinny but it was wonderful to see him, to hear him laugh, to feel his buoyant spirit. I didn't prod or press him for information at all. Just let him talk. And you know what?

He said, everything I'd said in the letter was right. And he owed me a big apology.

Imagine my surprise to find that my assessment of his situation was, indeed, similar to my old one, and that it wasn't a case of simple rejection. (Simple? Is rejection ever simple?) For an hour I enjoyed the beauty of watching an oyster open up all by itself to reveal little, perfect fresh water pearls.

Since then, we talk every few weeks. About stuff, anything, fun things, and then occasionally just a little about what went before. His health goes up and down. Sometimes he works like the devil, sometimes he's in the hospital. Since my parents both passed, I don't think so much of losing him any more. It's more like I'll have this other relationship with him, if he dies.

And there's always the chance he might get a heart when the one he was born with won't beat any more.

Meanwhile the whole thing has made me focus on my own communication issues (reference dad, above, for one), and in spite of the unspeakable pain I went through, Will has been one of the loveliest muses I've ever had. I'll always be grateful for that, and connected to him through these words.

This is way too long. Sorry. Be well, be warm.


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