“You know, you could live t’see that day come- th’ day that th’ Lord comes. You could live t’see it.” The Foxfire Series
This was more of a threat than a reward in my childhood. It was more of a “You better be good because Jesus is coming back, and he wont like it if you’re naughty” type thing really. I imagined terrible scenes of storm clouds and trumpets descending, transcending, back to earth and the havoc that would come from Jesus’s wrath. I imagined Walking Dead like scenarios (though obviously before the Walking Dead came about), and was absolutely scared stupid of such events. As I grew up this image began to bleed into other ideas I had about Christianity. How could the Jesus of the Gospel be the Jesus of Revelations? Would I be spending eternity with an angry and just God? I concluded that if eternity of heaven was like what the same church that presented the resurrection to me as, I didn’t want any part of it. And I did what we all do with philosophies that we half-like. I ignored it. I blatantly avoided the concept of death.
This worked out fine. When I decided to not care I didn’t do that awful thing of waking up in the middle of the night terrified of swallowing my own tongue (age 11), or being convinced I was dead already and no one noticed (Thank you Sixth Sense, age 9). For almost 10 years things went swimmingly; every so often someone would die and I would think, “Hm, that’s odd. I wonder where they went.” or “I wonder why they decided to leave.” But ultimately I didn’t have to try too hard to rationalize some sort of conscious exit; as if to say, death is a choice, like what color shoes to wear.
You would think that in 26 years I would have had more evidence based faith… but no. I still believe in God. On most days I believe Jesus is the son of God, but even then I can’t believe that’s the ‘only way’. If God loves us, he loves us more than rules. I learned about animism in college, and its nice to have a word to put with the feeling I’ve had all along. I truly believe that my years spent in the dark corner (google it) have basically turned me into a river, or a rock, or any object that is worn on by time. We all take new shape, because time is the ruler of all things. I think all things have lives. My greatest spiritual downfall is “The Soul”. Its a fickle thing… and I’m not sure everyone has one. But if all humans have them, then every living thing has them; we are animals after all.
So, lucky 26. 26 was a bad year. I made bad decisions; not like robbing a bank bad, but bad nonetheless.
Do you have one person that is simply/ larger than life? Steve was it. My dad went a little… introverted for awhile, my grandmother was very strict, and my mother wasn’t around. Steve was the only adult that would tell me like it is. He was so full of soul that to attempt to recreate him now is a fallacy. One day I will write a book about him, and he will be the ornery cyclops. He was a one eyed smoke stack. And in many ways he was like a father to me; a creepy father… but a father. My best friend called and said he was sick and that I should call him. The man was a walking chemistry experiment. Steve couldn’t die. I was SO convinced of it that I didn’t call. I thought of him and wished him well, but I didn’t call. I felt like if I did he would take it as resignation to his mortality; far be it for me to doubt it. So, 3 weeks later when I was standing out on a cliff watching the sun retreat behind some outcrop with the name “Devil” in it, I was cut short when I attempted to photograph the image when a text came through that he’d died. Cut short is the best way to put it. Have you ever been sitting somewhere for a long time, completely engrossed in something and realize that you’ve been breathing uncomfortably shallow? That’s what it felt like. I remember taking a deep breath for what felt like the first time in years; and I didn’t cry… I fell apart. I fell apart in that ugly way where tears wont even come, when you just look like you’re about to throw up.
My parents separated when I was 6. My mother had fallen in love with another man. Frankly, it could have been any man. I don’t think he was particularly wonderful. Actually, he was most certainly less than wonderful. He was incarcerated. I know far too many details about this, but I am the revenge my father wanted. It’s sad, but there’s not much undoing to be done at this point. My mother was/is in and out of the picture. My father was out of his element. Within 2 months of her being gone, my hair was cut short and I’d switched schools. I spent afternoons at my Great grandmother’s house while she slipped further and further into dementia, until she refused to shower or eat and was put into a home. My grandmother picked up where my mother’d left off. There’s really not much more to say than that. I always felt as if she was the outspoken southern woman who took me in when no one else wanted me. She was always sick. She was always taking drugs; not the fun kind that give you good feels. The last time I saw her was 2013. She made me angry because she preemptively went into the hospital to get iron infusions so she could make it though the holidays without having to go in the hospital. Sadly, her plan was foiled when she was sicker than even SHE thought and spent over half my trip in the hospital. I knew at this point that I was going to Chiropractic school. She didn’t get it at all, but as with every thing I wanted to do, she encouraged me. I asked her the last day I was there if she wanted to have surgery. If you aren’t familiar, open heart surgery used to require the ribcage to be cracked open. Because this would be her 3rd open heart surgery they had to open her rib cage. That alone would wreck anyone, much less a 76 year old woman. I wanted her to have dignity. I wanted to support her in any way she wanted. She said that she had no other options. And for life, she was right. It was slowly die, or slowly-er die. She chose slowly-er. She survived the surgery, but couldn’t come off the oxygen. A product of being tubed with oxygen is that she was unable to verbally communicate. On my birthday, 2 months after her surgery she sent a photo of her holding up a sign that read, “Happy Birthday Samantha.” It was amazing! And even more amazingly, that evening she CALLED and I got to hear her voice. I had already resigned to the idea that I would never hear her speak again. That was probably the best gift I’ve ever been given. She died 4 months later… in a less than dignified way… but I guess in the end it doesn’t matter how you die, just that you’ve done it.
So…. 6000 characters later, what the hell does this have to do with the quote??!! Here it is: We all live. We all die. We all sweat. We all cry. Hot damn. That rhymed. We shouldn’t live in fear of ourselves, others, our God, our failures, or our to-do list. You may see something amazing, and then you may not. The miracle of life is that you exist, and persist as best you can. The miracle is that you see and feel and taste and hear and smell this life and times keeps happening. So you may see the return of Jesus Christ. Or you may see the perfect sunrise. Or you may see your child fall in love. Or you may see absolute beauty in the most obscure things, but the miracle is that you, oh tiny wonder that you are, were there to see it; and that is all that has ever mattered.
This was more of a threat than a reward in my childhood. It was more of a “You better be good because Jesus is coming back, and he wont like it if you’re naughty” type thing really. I imagined terrible scenes of storm clouds and trumpets descending, transcending, back to earth and the havoc that would come from Jesus’s wrath. I imagined Walking Dead like scenarios (though obviously before the Walking Dead came about), and was absolutely scared stupid of such events. As I grew up this image began to bleed into other ideas I had about Christianity. How could the Jesus of the Gospel be the Jesus of Revelations? Would I be spending eternity with an angry and just God? I concluded that if eternity of heaven was like what the same church that presented the resurrection to me as, I didn’t want any part of it. And I did what we all do with philosophies that we half-like. I ignored it. I blatantly avoided the concept of death.
This worked out fine. When I decided to not care I didn’t do that awful thing of waking up in the middle of the night terrified of swallowing my own tongue (age 11), or being convinced I was dead already and no one noticed (Thank you Sixth Sense, age 9). For almost 10 years things went swimmingly; every so often someone would die and I would think, “Hm, that’s odd. I wonder where they went.” or “I wonder why they decided to leave.” But ultimately I didn’t have to try too hard to rationalize some sort of conscious exit; as if to say, death is a choice, like what color shoes to wear.
You would think that in 26 years I would have had more evidence based faith… but no. I still believe in God. On most days I believe Jesus is the son of God, but even then I can’t believe that’s the ‘only way’. If God loves us, he loves us more than rules. I learned about animism in college, and its nice to have a word to put with the feeling I’ve had all along. I truly believe that my years spent in the dark corner (google it) have basically turned me into a river, or a rock, or any object that is worn on by time. We all take new shape, because time is the ruler of all things. I think all things have lives. My greatest spiritual downfall is “The Soul”. Its a fickle thing… and I’m not sure everyone has one. But if all humans have them, then every living thing has them; we are animals after all.
So, lucky 26. 26 was a bad year. I made bad decisions; not like robbing a bank bad, but bad nonetheless.
Do you have one person that is simply/ larger than life? Steve was it. My dad went a little… introverted for awhile, my grandmother was very strict, and my mother wasn’t around. Steve was the only adult that would tell me like it is. He was so full of soul that to attempt to recreate him now is a fallacy. One day I will write a book about him, and he will be the ornery cyclops. He was a one eyed smoke stack. And in many ways he was like a father to me; a creepy father… but a father. My best friend called and said he was sick and that I should call him. The man was a walking chemistry experiment. Steve couldn’t die. I was SO convinced of it that I didn’t call. I thought of him and wished him well, but I didn’t call. I felt like if I did he would take it as resignation to his mortality; far be it for me to doubt it. So, 3 weeks later when I was standing out on a cliff watching the sun retreat behind some outcrop with the name “Devil” in it, I was cut short when I attempted to photograph the image when a text came through that he’d died. Cut short is the best way to put it. Have you ever been sitting somewhere for a long time, completely engrossed in something and realize that you’ve been breathing uncomfortably shallow? That’s what it felt like. I remember taking a deep breath for what felt like the first time in years; and I didn’t cry… I fell apart. I fell apart in that ugly way where tears wont even come, when you just look like you’re about to throw up.
My parents separated when I was 6. My mother had fallen in love with another man. Frankly, it could have been any man. I don’t think he was particularly wonderful. Actually, he was most certainly less than wonderful. He was incarcerated. I know far too many details about this, but I am the revenge my father wanted. It’s sad, but there’s not much undoing to be done at this point. My mother was/is in and out of the picture. My father was out of his element. Within 2 months of her being gone, my hair was cut short and I’d switched schools. I spent afternoons at my Great grandmother’s house while she slipped further and further into dementia, until she refused to shower or eat and was put into a home. My grandmother picked up where my mother’d left off. There’s really not much more to say than that. I always felt as if she was the outspoken southern woman who took me in when no one else wanted me. She was always sick. She was always taking drugs; not the fun kind that give you good feels. The last time I saw her was 2013. She made me angry because she preemptively went into the hospital to get iron infusions so she could make it though the holidays without having to go in the hospital. Sadly, her plan was foiled when she was sicker than even SHE thought and spent over half my trip in the hospital. I knew at this point that I was going to Chiropractic school. She didn’t get it at all, but as with every thing I wanted to do, she encouraged me. I asked her the last day I was there if she wanted to have surgery. If you aren’t familiar, open heart surgery used to require the ribcage to be cracked open. Because this would be her 3rd open heart surgery they had to open her rib cage. That alone would wreck anyone, much less a 76 year old woman. I wanted her to have dignity. I wanted to support her in any way she wanted. She said that she had no other options. And for life, she was right. It was slowly die, or slowly-er die. She chose slowly-er. She survived the surgery, but couldn’t come off the oxygen. A product of being tubed with oxygen is that she was unable to verbally communicate. On my birthday, 2 months after her surgery she sent a photo of her holding up a sign that read, “Happy Birthday Samantha.” It was amazing! And even more amazingly, that evening she CALLED and I got to hear her voice. I had already resigned to the idea that I would never hear her speak again. That was probably the best gift I’ve ever been given. She died 4 months later… in a less than dignified way… but I guess in the end it doesn’t matter how you die, just that you’ve done it.
So…. 6000 characters later, what the hell does this have to do with the quote??!! Here it is: We all live. We all die. We all sweat. We all cry. Hot damn. That rhymed. We shouldn’t live in fear of ourselves, others, our God, our failures, or our to-do list. You may see something amazing, and then you may not. The miracle of life is that you exist, and persist as best you can. The miracle is that you see and feel and taste and hear and smell this life and times keeps happening. So you may see the return of Jesus Christ. Or you may see the perfect sunrise. Or you may see your child fall in love. Or you may see absolute beauty in the most obscure things, but the miracle is that you, oh tiny wonder that you are, were there to see it; and that is all that has ever mattered.
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