Livin' Small

I’ve had this thought running through my head for quite some time. Gray hairs in the sideburns is a memory that I have from back in my forties.

I was at work one day when I got up and wandered off to the bathroom or “head” as it’s called in the military. Oh, I work for and with the Navy in a medical facility. I did my business and proceeded to the sink to wash my hands. When I looked up into the mirror I saw the tell-tale sign of age. It was the dreaded gray hair. Just one, but that was all it took. In a sort of panic I reached up and grabbed it and pulled it out, returning my sideburn back to its only color. Whew! What a scare.

Of course, over time I found myself pulling more of them out realizing all the while I would either have no sideburns left or I would lose the battle and find no color left in those tufts of hair in front of my ears. True to form, the signs of age slowly overtook me and now years later I find that there is no other color than gray for my sideburns.

On another note, I’ve been bald since my late twenties and have only had one fleeting moment of fear of the lack of hair and surprising to me it occurred in the same bathroom at the hospital. That moment had me not wanting to go back into the hallway. For God’s sake I was bald and people would be looking at me. Then rationality came back. I’d been like this for almost twenty years and people already knew I was bald. So what.

I’m staying out of that bathroom, though. No telling what I might be struck with some future visit.

Here’s something people sometimes. . .well most of the time, don’t like. Change. It’s inevitable. Just by virtue of being alive creates change. I guess the real culprit of change is what changes. If it’s a good change, we’re okay with it, but some change isn’t so welcome.

Getting older doesn’t bode well for change in many lives. I have been very fortunate to have as few ills as can be expected by some. Oh, I’m dealing with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and general aches and pains associated with growing old, but overall, I’m feeling pretty decent.

I know some about my age, who are tremendously tried in one health issue or another. Heart, kidney, lungs infested with cancer and so on are not diseases I look at lightly. Any of these can be the early end of an otherwise productive life.

My middle brother died the day after my birthday a year ago this past week from lung cancer. He’d always been a hard working man. He lived life in a way that had people looking to him as a fill in dad, uncle or whatever they saw as a kind, caring and compassionate individual. He helped many by being a friend, confidant and took no judgmental thought to whoever they were. Mike could always be depended upon for help.

I could go on about Danny or Timmy, who have both passed on. Jamie or “Tad” as we called him when he was young is still here and living in Hawaii. He feels life has given him a new home there and I understand. He’s not judged for who or what he lives by. That’s where he should be. He is the Omega of the five brothers. I am the Alpha.

What I’m really after is this. If I write about myself please bare with me. It’s how I adjust and view the changes in my life. It helps me to keep things in perspective.

For thirty-seven years I was married. By law I still am, but by the heart and Spirit of God I’m not. Please don’t be judgmental about this. We had a very liberal judge in our proceedings towards divorce who thought I should part with more of my income than is justifiable. Even the appellate attorney I consulted agrees the judge overstepped his bounds by denying me my Constitutional rights to pursue said divorce by taking so much of my rightful income making it so I am unable to financially subsist if I file for a final decree. The cost of fighting for my right was too prohibitive and lengthy for me to do so as well with the court of appeals. I made a statement that I committed adultery to cut costs as well, which was not supposed to be used in the finality of the trial, but was apparently used weightily against me. Remarks that were said by me were taken out of context by the judge without any questioning of me on the stand as to the veracity of what was said.

To put it mildly I was overly punished for what was done without any answers to my questions of what happened on the other side of the coin, so to speak. I hold no need for retribution, punishment or otherwise towards my ex-spouse or what she has had done to me. I have presented myself before God and man and I have been forgiven and I am justified to pursue life as it is. It is not my choice to live with the woman I love and care for in the manner we do. We are bound by the laws of the state to have to live this way until something changes. Change. That word again.

Okay, let’s “change” the subject. I had an epiphany this past week. It’s a change I knew was coming and toyed with it for the last two or three years, but now it’s going to become a reality. I picked up my retirement package this week. I have set a date of 31 December of next year. I have six months or so from now to acclimate to the next change. In July of next year the package will begin to move forward. Reality of this change is causing reassessment of who I am and what am I to do.

Another change has occurred as of yesterday. I’ve also toyed with this idea of my home and property. It is a two acre yard and I do enjoy working in it, but age is creeping up on me now and I’m not getting as much done anymore as quickly as I would like. I have to pace myself. Two acres is going to become too much for me to maintain. I must downsize.

There’s a brick home about a mile from here that’s for sale and Libby and I have been eyeing it for a few months now and yesterday we decided it was time to look at it closer. It’s a small three bedroom, one bath with carport home and a detached garage big enough for what we need. The yard is about a half acre with drainage around one side. It was very well maintained by the previous owner and appears to be in solid condition. The price is very reasonable, so we have as of this morning put in a bid on the home and have been preapproved. Moving to this home will give Libby and I something that we can call our very own, as the home I’m in now was from my previous life. This new home is perfect with good neighbors around us. Mary Ann and Roy Metts live right across the road and she was all over it when we told her a while back we were kind of interested in buying this house. It’s a very well maintained neighborhood as well. Very well manicured lawns and such by every owner along this road is par for the course. The church we attend is within walking distance and the new Walmart going up is just up on the end of the road across Hwy 258 from this house. And the biggest thing for me is that there is no HOA. I hate HOA’s.

The house payments you ask? Let’s say it’s half the average house payment for most people. The estimated payment is about the same as I’m paying now. That’s not bad.

Change is ultimately going to have to happen. No matter what we or anyone else has to say about the matter. What can happen is that we play a part in the change to the best of our ability.

One can easily look at my right middle finger next to the fingernail and deduce I use a pen or pencil a lot. But that doesn’t make me a writer. Writing stories and allegories, prose and poems, fiction and non-fiction come from the heart, mind and imagination. The fingers of my hand have been the instruments that have penned some of these things when my inspiration was active with life that was full of tumult, happiness and just plain curiosity.

In my youth I drew pictures of mostly sketches and cartoons. I tried painting, but could not get the hang of it. In my mid-twenties I began to form letters into words from the mind-art my soul wanted to paint. Drawing with stories is about as difficult sometimes as making an image of something you see.

The world is a big place. The military took me places I’d never expected to see. States and countries out there in this world have such different colors of people and culture. We, as a people, paint this world with what comes from our being. Some paint pastels of compassion. Some paint sharp intrusive colors of their will upon others. There are people who paint bright slick colors of happiness, yet we will still have some who paint the world with flat colors of depression and gloom.

When I got to my fifties I began to paint a mishmash of images from my mind. Some were flat colors, some were glossy. There were mountainous stories, but when you have mountains in your life, you also have lush valleys. Greens, yellows and blues of all hues stretched out across that decade of my life. Unfortunately there were some dark greys, reds and a smattering of black. I found life didn’t necessarily have the defined lines of color, but more like a splash of color thrown against life mixing together to make a blend of life I had not expected.

I gave up life as it was and put up a new canvas. The old painting I’d worked on for all my life till that time now sits in the dark corner of the room away from the light upon a new canvas. The sun shines brightly on it as my mind imagines the new images I’ve painted. Life and love have new meaning.

What colors do you use to paint the world around you?

I lay awake this morning thinking. Sometimes I can’t help but run over some thoughts of the previous day and analyze things I have read. An interesting term caught my eye on Facebook yesterday.
“Keyboard Patriots” is new to me, but rings a very clear bell. It was used to describe a certain genre of people who can post entries of their patriotism, yet lack the testicular fortitude to back it up. They are apt to be called “sheeple”. This is another term which I relate to cattle going to slaughter. I picture two cows in the line with one asking of the other where they were going. The other says they don’t know, but let’s go since nothing appears to be happening anyway.
But, things ARE happening. As I’ve said before I’m no conspiracy theorist and don’t purport in any fashion to be. I’m a realist. I have to know my enemy. My enemy is not an uneducated individual or group. They appear to be backward yet in my best estimation are a demon-possessed group of people driven to kill any and all who defy their religion. Oh, but you say, that’s hogwash. Have you studied the Middle East? Do you know their mind-set?
The worst of the keyboard patriots call themselves Christians. Do we know we are the key target of this people’s rage? They kill Christians because they represent the promise of Abraham that was taken from them thousands of years ago. Ishmael, of whom they descended from, is the father of these zealots of Islam. They are so jealous of the promise of Abraham that they have taken the Christian God and made him their god. They have switched out Jesus for Mohammed and turned the one true God of Abraham into a militant god they call Allah. To carry this even further a notch, women are less than animals. People, these warriors of Allah, wipe their butts with their bare left hand. They have sex with goats, because they consider it an alternative to women. They are filthy people.
If we were to drop off any who read this right now today in the middle of a country they control you would likely be the target of a beheading for the glory of Allah. Folks, this isn’t some joke or far-fetched reality. It’s happening right now.
The comment I read came from a video stating that ISIS (just another term for these people) are already in Mexico and likely crossing into our unprotected southern border. This is a real threat. How long has it been that causes us to forget these same people by another name came to American airports just over a decade ago and commandeered passenger airliners and rammed them into two of the largest symbolic buildings of free trade in the United States and also the symbolic heart of our military might? They want us dead. As many of you as possible gone from the face of the earth is their goal.
I’m no keyboard patriot. I have served time in the military. I know the sacrifices that have been made by my fellow soldiers in Vietnam. A lot of us died there. In fact some fifty-eight thousand young men and women died for a politically motivated war that the French left behind in their own defeat. We don’t need another needless war. It tore our country apart. And it’s been unraveling ever since.
No. I will not be a keyboard patriot. The time will come that we will be forced to take up arms again to defend our land. I don’t think we will be overcome by our enemy, because I don’t think for a minute that true Americans will sit idly by and let an enemy invade this country. The military might of this country still surpasses any enemy’s invasion, but it will be the common everyday man and woman who takes up arms that will be the most effective of all. We’re not like countries that have been disarmed by its government making us unarmed targets with no way to defend ourselves. We will not sit idly by and be civilian casualties. We will become warriors of defense in our nation. Stand up now or you may be a victim on a video of a beheading. They mean what they say. Do you?

Yesterday morning found me on the road to the Piggly Wiggly deli to get some fresh link sausage.  That’s some fierce eating right there.  In all likelihood it shouldn’t be on my diet list, but what the hay.  I take my cholesterol medication.  It works in my favor.  All I need do is give it something to fight.  Right?!

When I got up to the register there before it was four stacks of those turnover looking pies you see in various packages from different bakeries.  They had two stacks of apple, and one each of blackberry and peach.  Guess what those things did to me.  They made my hand shoot right out and grabbed a peach one.  Then on my way to the register I go.

This morning I remembered my peach pie and stuck it in my lunch bag.  And just now I had that hankerin’ for it.  I slowly ate every crumb of it.  Man, was it good. . . till I picked up the box to throw it in the trash and I saw on the nutritional facts.  There it was.  Four hundred calories with 150 from fat.  But wait!  Zero cholesterol.  SAVED!  Still there was that calorie count.  Ugh.  No exclamation point on that ugh.  Just one of utter disgust.

When I was younger, that didn’t seem to matter, so why now at my age should I now have to endure to knowledge that I should not have devoured such a tantalizing treat?

Another reason to say that old age sucks.

As an older man now I have the perfect vision of hindsight. I have quite a bit of it. It is too bad that when we’re young we don’t consider much for foresight and its consequences. I don’t fault anyone for my mistakes. Some were large, some were small and insignificant. The latter made little to change my life, but the larger ones did.

I’ve hurt people badly and for that I am truly sorry. The problem is I made choices I tried to live with and found them impossible to do so as I grew older.

What I say first is the hardest to confess. I married at the age of twenty-one. I most assuredly now know I should have reconsidered it. It’s not that good didn’t come from it. I have two wonderful sons, who are successful in life and I feel have been positive contributors to society. One is a district manager of a major banking chain and the other served this country for twenty-one years and retired as a Master Sergeant. I have two wonderful granddaughters, one of which I have not seen in five years. I’m an outcast for deciding I could no longer continue in marriage hence the younger granddaughter’s absence from my life.

People can speculate what happened, but to put it straightforward it’s no one’s business about the details. Let’s just say it happened. 

I will only say that I grew unhappy with everything, not just marriage. I also grew to realize that all the good my church did for my maturity as a Christian did not change the fact that there were corrupt leaders in the church. It bordered on being a cult. When the pastor says you better be to a service unless you’re dead or dying should tell you just an inkling of many other things that was used to control members. You might say I should give him a little leeway in the statement, but I knew he was serious. I also saw him use people’s talents to further his cause and when he was done with them they were tossed aside like empty wheat husks from the harvest.

Maybe no one else is brave enough to say it without anger, but I can. I’m a most compassionate person and it’s a virtue that’s been tested. Don’t ask me. Ask people who know me. I spent thirty years of my life honing that skill. I saw a lot of people hurt and leaving the church over what I saw. I even confronted the pastor about his actions, but that was of little consequence.

I could never develop a relationship with this man, although his call to prospective leadership was to get close to him. I don’t know of anyone who ever got close to him stayed very long. I knew some para-famous pastors who tried, but ran as far the other way as they could once they got to know him.   One of my fellow deacons confided in me after I left the church that a seasoned ministry told him to run, not walk, but run as fast as you can from him when he left. This seasoned ministry was one of my pastor’s mentors on top of all that.

My relationship with God suffered greatly over the last seven to ten years. In the beginning of realizing this I found one important issue I needed to confront. I had grown weary in well-doing. Works will not foster a robust, healthy relationship with God. It will, however, cause one to lose their spiritual acuity. In the beginning of my walk I had a close relationship with God and could talk with Him. I’d grown dull to His voice. I lost my conversation into the spiritual realm. Relationship was lost.

One final word on this part of life was that I realized something no one else seemed to catch onto. When my pastor gave up this role in leadership to become something more of a pastor emeritus it became apparent to me he was suffering from a chronic disease. He would end up in the hospital to remove fluid from his lungs. It would be as much as a liter in an overnight stay in the hospital. I knew what that meant, but no one would speak it. He was experiencing congestive heart failure. Knowing this he gave over the reins of pastoral care to another. He passed away the first of June 2009 at his desk preparing for service for the next morning.

Once he passed the new pastor was quick to move away from the methods and means of the old way the church was run and even changed the name of the church to remove the stigma of all that had gone before. All of my past there was gone, save the memories of what once was.

Now my life had been stripped of marital and spiritual relationship. I ended up dealing with depression, anxiety attacks and sitting in a psychologist’s office. Losing marriage drove me there. The church was an ancillary loss past that.

Just a brief insight to the marriage can be summarized here. Well over a year, more like two before I ended it, I began my research as to what should I do. I tried to put things together in my head as to what I should do. She tried to leave me once during that time and for the second time in our marriage I talked her into staying. I should have relinquished and let her go then. Maybe I wouldn’t have been such a bad guy then. I’ll admit I met someone just prior to leaving, but I didn’t expect it to be a major factor in leaving. I would have left anyway. Our roads crossed at a crucial time in both our lives, yet we clicked. If no one else understands or believes it we both decided both of us should walk away if it was felt necessary by either of us and we did do that for a while. Once I left the damage was done and I was in counseling. Needless to say it was of little use to me. I explained to the psychologist about my separation and meeting someone else. His description of her was a “shiny new toy”. If I were to go back today I would have to tell him my “shiny new toy” is still shining as brightly and more than ever.

At that time I’d learned what failed relationship was. I’d lost my marriage, church and more than anything else my spiritual relationship.

Then came out of the dust of a failed past a woman I could not get away from. I know I write a lot about her, but it’s impossible to not write about her. Libby told me once if I needed to go back to my wife she would honor my decision even though it would sadden her. She was not going to hold to me if I didn’t want a relationship with her. I told her the same. It was her choice to stay with me if she so chose. From that we began to build a relationship. All prior relationships had conditions, but this one did not. We didn’t place any conditional requirements on one another. We accepted each other for who we were. . .baggage and all. And believe me, we do have baggage and we deal with it. Still our love for each other has grown out of that simple unconditional love for each other.

Since then we’ve grown together more tightly than I would have ever supposed. When I was thirteen or so I asked God one night. . .well more than “one” night. . .what my future wife would look like. Libby is that woman. I recognized her a long time ago as that dream come true. We both sometime opine why we did not meet when we were young. We would have had bunches of kids. I can picture them all tow-headed rascals with both boys and girls. Still we have life as it is. Like I said it isn’t all bad. We just walked different paths and when we met we found that what we have here is. . .relationship. Right relationship. A solid relationship. The title above is a play on Andy Griffith’s story “What it was, was football”. Sometimes we have to look back to figure out what things are. What Libby and I have is just that. What it is, is relationship.