Friends, Acquaintances, Total Strangers, Robots, or Whatever:
Here we are, high summer, the dog days fast approaching... Storms are brewing over the gulf, and I am dreading the next few electric bills. The losses of this previous winter and spring are still fresh, wounds that are simply going to be there. My mother and my baby sister are never far from my thoughts. In my deepest mind, they never leave my thoughts. It has been nearly six months since I lost Marsha. Nearly four since Momma. I've been going on with life as best I can. It's been making a living and dealing with things. It's finding what distracts me and makes me happy. It's balancing being my true self yet still kinda being what the world expects of me. It's trying to keep my mind off what depresses me, stresses me out, all while trying not to be unhealthy about it. I have thoroughly backed up Marsha's digital stuff. Her plays, pictures, web pages, Sims saves, CD's and more... I put all of this in a special folder along with my own 20 plus year collection of games, movies, music, text, HTML, and yadda yadda Yoda. I am working on ways to make sure all this digital treasure lives long after I am gone, so that people will know me, and more importantly, know her. Maybe I am crazy for grasping at such straws, but I've gotta do something otherwise this grief is going to sink my mental health below the waves. Nobody but me knows just how precariously close to a fullon breakdown I've come. It's been a knife's edge and nobody knows. I only thought I knew loneliness before. Try feeling like you're falling and there's nobody there to catch you. Social media tends to make this feeling worse. I really need to stay away, had kinda planned it before I lost Marsha. I guess I feel this need for connection with other human beings after all. I need it even more without my baby sister being just a phone call away. Yet it is just impossible, at least highly improbable. It's all a game for the young. I am no longer young. Being I have little choice but to go on, there are needs that somehow need to be met. I need stability in my life. I need a whole hell of a lot less worrying about when the sky is gonna fall. I don't need the stress of a relationship. What I really need is a friend. I feel old, irrelevant. It's as if my life were a video game that glitched out. My character can aimlessly wander, but there are no more real goals. It's like there is no point anymore. I've gotta break out of this somehow. It's not healthy, you know?
How much of ourselves do we really leave behind? My Great Great Grandfather lived from 1847 to 1927. I have exactly two photographs of him. The only other thing I have is remembering what my grandfather told me about his own grandfather. My Great Grandfather lived from 1881 to 1972. Of him I have several photos. My father tells me about him. I remember my mother, who married my father in 1970, saying that my great grandfather used to call her his little lady. My Grandfather lived from 1906 to 2002. I have direct memories of him. There are many pictures, audio, and a bit of video of hum and my grandmother. My father was born in 1948. He is my one remaining parent. My mother lived from 1949 to 2022. My baby sister lived from 1981 to 2022. Half my great great grandfather's lifetime. Less than half my grandfather's and my great grandfather's lifetime. Eight years less than my life so far. This is something that makes no sense to me. I was born first. How the hell am I still here? But I've talked about that a lot already. What did they leave behind other than my memories and my love for them? Marsha of course had a lot of digital stuff and I have saved all that I can. There are photographs and her plays, her drama awards, her Bachelors Degree from FSU, letters and texts we sent to each other. There are her writings. There are the voice impressions we sent to each other on tape. There is her website dedicated to her favorite soap opera couple, still online and accessible. I have a heart full of memories that I really should write down. Maybe this can be what I leave behind. I honestly wonder what that would be. Will my descendants be going through my files realizing how weird their ancestor was? If I have great great grandchildren, will they have more of me than the two photographs I have of my great grandfather. Will they be able to learn about Marsha? Will they through genetics be able to feel a connection to her when they see her smile, hear her laugh, read the thoughts she wrote down so long ago? I hope they can. I hope they will. I hope that maybe I can at least be of help in keeping her memory for the future. I could be a little closer to peace knowing that I did at least this for her. I don't know if eternal oblivion or seeing her again awaits me. I hope for the latter. The only upside of the former is that either way: This will be when my grief will end. I will be with my baby sister again, across the universe or forever in nothingness. Either way, it will be the end of this pain.
I think it is very easy to misunderstand, even when it is not the intention. It happens with most everyone. I can't say I always get it right, myself. In fact it seems the older I get, the less I understand.You know, It isn't always about being depressed. Sometimes it's just fatigue. Sometimes it's just having nowhere to go.
Okay, okay, okay Subject Change, clean cup move down, mooooove doooooown!
It's awesome to see Ozzy making new music. He's my Dad's age, you know. I doubt I'd even live that long, much less be that darned spry at his age. Then you see Paul singing his heart out onstage at 80, twice the age John lived to be. I think we would gave had at least some sort of Beatles reunion in the late 80s or early 90's had John not been stolen from us. It is good to see Paul still out there. Then you have William Shatner, Captain Kirk himself going to space for real at age 90 last year. Yet here I am feeling ancient with a little bit to go before crossing the half century mark. Does life really begin at 50? I'm not sure I believe so. And even if so, it seems to be not at all fair to Marsha. See how every tangent my thoughts goes on, how they always come back? The heaviness of my thoughts are an event horizon. I am tired of grieving, but I cannot stop it. Every day I wake up she is still gone from this Earth.
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