Hate. The word, in and of itself, has lost much power, much OOMF in this society in the past, ohh, let’s say decade. You hear it all the time around you daily…
“grrr, I HATE the rain!”
“oh, I HATE this computer!”
“I HATE her, she is so bossy…”
I say it all the time, I am guilty. And while in that context the word hate is used to describe dislike, frustration, annoyance, or anger…none of us use that word correctly. Hate is one of the strongest emotions that a human can have. You cannot love someone and yet really HATE them at the same time. Hate can kill. Hate can make a woman question what is right and good in this world.
Why must we spread hate? What is so tempting about that feeling that we want to hold onto it, keep it close to ourselves and FEED it?
I do not have any readers at this point, however I am hearing more and more from the more popular blogs that hate mail is their daily dose of shitty medicine. And I so not understand how someone can spew HATE, real, uncensored, horrible HATE, to a stranger and not feel…anything.
Ok, so I don’t know what they feel. I cannot put myself in those shoes because I would never tell someone to stop crying over their dad father already. That-that kind of hate- that I don’t have in me. I get angry. I am angry at the way people are being treated over seas. I am angry that this country is falling apart. I am angry that racism still exists.
I get angry a lot.
But I am going to make a concerted effort to stop using the word HATE. Because, after reading this, I know that I do not truly hate anything.
Join me, won’t you? Wipe out the word hate.
Oh, and if you are up to it, read this and consider wiping out that word too.
Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Tobacco Stains and the Snow Plow
I decided not to go that morning. I decided not to go to see her and she died.
Because I did not go see her? Maybe. Because the survived ovarian cancer, survived breast cancer, emphysema, past fall down the stairs thanks to her drunken ex-husband culminated and said “Your coming with us now”? Likely.
Since I was born, she was there. My mom brought her home after she visited her in the nursing home and found out they were not treating her right. My grandmother. She was like another child- unable to cook, run errands, or do algebra. Her and her ex got drunk one night and he pushed her down the stairs and he caused brain damage. I never met him, but oh, oh how I hate him for that.
And also, in a weird way, I am grateful. Otherwise, I never would have gotten to grow up with a grandmother who was my equal but could remember the wars. Could remember the depression. So many stories
She was always kind, always smiling. Always smoking too. I still wake up sometimes, 10 years after her death and 15 since I have lived in the same house, smelling her Benson and Hedges Menthols. And I hug my pillow and I wish, so terribly, that her wrinkled, tan, calloused and tobacco stained hands would hug me like she always used to. Would hold me while I cried, like she used to when I would find my mother on the couch, passed out with tequila spilled on the carpet.
I was living on my own, going to college and working and living, when my father called and invited me over for dinner. My grandma seemed off that night, sad somehow. I hugged her and she told me she loved me.
Then she told me to remember that I can fly away in my dreams.
And I knew. I knew she was going to die. She used to tell me that same phrase when I would cry and sob in her arms, clutching her shoulders, sobbing into her flat double mastectomy-ied chest, because even as a child I realized what my mother was doing to herself and I wanted to run away.
And I left. And that night it snowed. And I called my Dad early and said I would not be able to make it to feed the horses because the road had not been plowed yet, and would he mind walking out back to do it this morning?
An hour later he called back, as I was settling in to study, and told me my grandmother had died last night.
And I shattered, there amongst the piles of papers, my laptop, the wet boots from my trek to the buried car that morning. I shattered.
When my mother and I drove to the ocean to spread her ashes, I could not. I could not touch the ceramic jar. The cold, dead jar. The cancer. And I fell to my knees on the wet sand.
And I was five again, wishing I could run away.
Then I smelled her cigarettes, and my head filled with memories of her hands- making clay snakes with me, frosting cakes, giving me her veggies because she hated green things…
And I wished her sweet dreams. And my mom, my mom who has been through so much, let her mother’s ashes fly away.
And I imagined that she was up in Heaven, smoking her favorite cigarette and eating cake and patting some child on the head, comforting them as she used to comfort me.
************
Inspired by this from Her Bad Mother:
This post was inspired by a discussion that was shared between me and some very good friends – Lindsay, Loralee, Julie and Devra – at Mom 2.0. We curled up on the floor of the bedroom of the Four Season’s Presidential Suite during the CheeseBurgHer party and talked spirituality and faith, grief and loss, prayer and meditation and all variety of confused and confusing things. And then Lindsay decided that maybe we should explore some these questions (like the one I’m struggling with above, talking to kids about death) together, on our blogs. So we are. You’re welcome to join in. Leave me a link if you do. Or just speak your piece in the comments. Talking, maybe, will bring enlightenment. Or maybe more confusion. Either/or.
So: how do you talk to your children about death? Do you talk to your children about death? If they ask the hard questions, how do you/will you answer? Or do you, will you, like me, seek their answers, and look for comfort there?
Because I did not go see her? Maybe. Because the survived ovarian cancer, survived breast cancer, emphysema, past fall down the stairs thanks to her drunken ex-husband culminated and said “Your coming with us now”? Likely.
Since I was born, she was there. My mom brought her home after she visited her in the nursing home and found out they were not treating her right. My grandmother. She was like another child- unable to cook, run errands, or do algebra. Her and her ex got drunk one night and he pushed her down the stairs and he caused brain damage. I never met him, but oh, oh how I hate him for that.
And also, in a weird way, I am grateful. Otherwise, I never would have gotten to grow up with a grandmother who was my equal but could remember the wars. Could remember the depression. So many stories
She was always kind, always smiling. Always smoking too. I still wake up sometimes, 10 years after her death and 15 since I have lived in the same house, smelling her Benson and Hedges Menthols. And I hug my pillow and I wish, so terribly, that her wrinkled, tan, calloused and tobacco stained hands would hug me like she always used to. Would hold me while I cried, like she used to when I would find my mother on the couch, passed out with tequila spilled on the carpet.
I was living on my own, going to college and working and living, when my father called and invited me over for dinner. My grandma seemed off that night, sad somehow. I hugged her and she told me she loved me.
Then she told me to remember that I can fly away in my dreams.
And I knew. I knew she was going to die. She used to tell me that same phrase when I would cry and sob in her arms, clutching her shoulders, sobbing into her flat double mastectomy-ied chest, because even as a child I realized what my mother was doing to herself and I wanted to run away.
And I left. And that night it snowed. And I called my Dad early and said I would not be able to make it to feed the horses because the road had not been plowed yet, and would he mind walking out back to do it this morning?
An hour later he called back, as I was settling in to study, and told me my grandmother had died last night.
And I shattered, there amongst the piles of papers, my laptop, the wet boots from my trek to the buried car that morning. I shattered.
When my mother and I drove to the ocean to spread her ashes, I could not. I could not touch the ceramic jar. The cold, dead jar. The cancer. And I fell to my knees on the wet sand.
And I was five again, wishing I could run away.
Then I smelled her cigarettes, and my head filled with memories of her hands- making clay snakes with me, frosting cakes, giving me her veggies because she hated green things…
And I wished her sweet dreams. And my mom, my mom who has been through so much, let her mother’s ashes fly away.
And I imagined that she was up in Heaven, smoking her favorite cigarette and eating cake and patting some child on the head, comforting them as she used to comfort me.
************
Inspired by this from Her Bad Mother:
This post was inspired by a discussion that was shared between me and some very good friends – Lindsay, Loralee, Julie and Devra – at Mom 2.0. We curled up on the floor of the bedroom of the Four Season’s Presidential Suite during the CheeseBurgHer party and talked spirituality and faith, grief and loss, prayer and meditation and all variety of confused and confusing things. And then Lindsay decided that maybe we should explore some these questions (like the one I’m struggling with above, talking to kids about death) together, on our blogs. So we are. You’re welcome to join in. Leave me a link if you do. Or just speak your piece in the comments. Talking, maybe, will bring enlightenment. Or maybe more confusion. Either/or.
So: how do you talk to your children about death? Do you talk to your children about death? If they ask the hard questions, how do you/will you answer? Or do you, will you, like me, seek their answers, and look for comfort there?
Thursday, November 19, 2009
It's not the size of the keyboard but how many tears you shed on it
I’m a little pragmatic you see…no one would call me happy-go-lucky. I have lost to many people close to me to be dripping with gooey happiness all the time. I cry at sappy movies with animals in them, but with romantic comedies I always imagine that after the story ends the couple breaks up after the man comes home smashed and smacks her around. Maybe that was just my past life and I am just projecting. Life is safer this way, not hoping for the best out of people. Friends think I need therapy or God, I think I need to stay the course.
So, it was my utter shock to find myself shorting out my keyboard with tears and watering down my coffee with that dreaded substance I rarely see…saline coming out of my eyes. Over a girl I don’t even know. Well, I know what she writes. I know she puts her heart and soul into her kids. I know that many, many people need her and love her. I did not know I was one of those. I have never seen her in real life, only pictures. I visit her site, I leave comments on some posts, but overall I am a passerby, a stranger in the night if you will.
But when I found out hse had a stroke, I shut down. It was like when I found out my mom had cancer. Or being ripped away from the only family you have here because an asshole smacked me around. I went to my castle, got out my snuggie and feared the worst.
The bloggers I follow, Redneck Mommy and Her Bad Mother have done what I was pretty sure no one could do- they restored my faith in humanity. Those two crazy women who I laugh at, have shared tears with over the vastness that is the Internet, and most of all who I admire (Tanis would tell me I am crazy at this point) have shown me what it means to have close friends. I don’t know how far away those three women live from each other, but I know that with how much I have seen them supporting and praying for Anissa…well hell I believe nothing bad will ever happen again.
I don’t have the guts to tell them this on their sites of course, cause well, I’m a chickenshit. But it was more, I thought they deserved a post somewhere not buried in a comments section. Something that wanders could come upon. Some stranger in the night even.
Those three women, who I have never met, changed my life. I love them for it even if they will never know it.
I need more coffee b/c I cannot get hyperlinks to work...to meet Red Neck Mommy go here:http://theredneckmommy.com/ To meet Her Bad Mother go here http://herbadmother.com/
To see where Anissa lives on the Internet, go here http://www.aiminglow.com/. Anissa I don't pray, but I will send you all the healing energy I can manage
So, it was my utter shock to find myself shorting out my keyboard with tears and watering down my coffee with that dreaded substance I rarely see…saline coming out of my eyes. Over a girl I don’t even know. Well, I know what she writes. I know she puts her heart and soul into her kids. I know that many, many people need her and love her. I did not know I was one of those. I have never seen her in real life, only pictures. I visit her site, I leave comments on some posts, but overall I am a passerby, a stranger in the night if you will.
But when I found out hse had a stroke, I shut down. It was like when I found out my mom had cancer. Or being ripped away from the only family you have here because an asshole smacked me around. I went to my castle, got out my snuggie and feared the worst.
The bloggers I follow, Redneck Mommy and Her Bad Mother have done what I was pretty sure no one could do- they restored my faith in humanity. Those two crazy women who I laugh at, have shared tears with over the vastness that is the Internet, and most of all who I admire (Tanis would tell me I am crazy at this point) have shown me what it means to have close friends. I don’t know how far away those three women live from each other, but I know that with how much I have seen them supporting and praying for Anissa…well hell I believe nothing bad will ever happen again.
I don’t have the guts to tell them this on their sites of course, cause well, I’m a chickenshit. But it was more, I thought they deserved a post somewhere not buried in a comments section. Something that wanders could come upon. Some stranger in the night even.
Those three women, who I have never met, changed my life. I love them for it even if they will never know it.
I need more coffee b/c I cannot get hyperlinks to work...to meet Red Neck Mommy go here:http://theredneckmommy.com/ To meet Her Bad Mother go here http://herbadmother.com/
To see where Anissa lives on the Internet, go here http://www.aiminglow.com/. Anissa I don't pray, but I will send you all the healing energy I can manage
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