Hello everyone. My next post was supposed to document my descent into madness. Since my last post, I have been struggling. After considering the suicide prevention training I had received in the Guard, I realized that I was being haunted by my own history. War it seems does not agree with me. Nor does privation, submission to a rigid command structure and perhaps worst of all, being surrounded by ridiculous, undisciplined juveniles that seem to populate all ranks, particularly the lower ones.
So, considering that asking for help is a sign of strength (bullshit, marketing genius by psych majors), I sought help for nightmares and other issues related to my own PTSD. Oops. I didn't even know I had it. I thought my quirks, that in many ways made me a great warrior, did not make me a great guard robot. But as soon as I started to talk to a doc, it was revealed that I needed all kinds of interventions!
There was this drug, then the other. Therapy weekly or bi weekly. Bad advice and worse results. I was driven mad by the people trained to heal the madness. I tried acupuncture, surgery, therapy, CBD and over a dozen combinations of various drug cocktails. What did I gain from this? Nothing. Let me tell you what I lost.
I no longer have my national guard income and career. I have lost the dozen friends I used to have. Only two friends and my sister have not yet abandoned me. I lost my marriage. I nearly lost my freedom, spending a few weeks in an inpatient facility was terribly frightful. I spent a night or two in jail and lost my lucrative day job. I went from making about $XXk a month to $X, then suddenly half of that since my estranged, soon to be ex-wife doesn't work full time.
Ah well, there are folks, other vets, civilians etc. in much worse shape. I should be happy. I still have a roof over my head though it's 2,274 miles from my kids. I have female companionship, food, and even the occasional legal, recreational marijuana available here in Bigfoot country.
Without my kids around me, I have been terribly sad. My depression became my friend, as did my rage. Then I flushed the meds.
After a few weeks, I started to recover myself. It wasn't easy or pain free. Then, the pain of loss, of everything I built over decades, lost in just a few short years, came crashing down on me. I found refuge in Sigrunn's Saga.
Readers here might not remember Sigrunn. She was first introduced years ago. I teased her stories arrival, but was not able to deliver until now.
Thankfully, I have had the good fortune to be trapped in my cell. I was able to meet an editor, a new friend of a friend. A professional who knows how to fix bad writing. If I'm lucky, she'll save Sigrunn's Saga in time for publishing 24 June 2018.
Followers, email me for a free electronic/kindle copy.
Alvie asked for an audiobook copy, so if anyone out there wants to interview for narrator, just email me or send an audio clip.
So, Sigrunn is coming, winter is leaving, whether it likes it or not.
For those of you who remember the Sigrunn post on this blog...there were 3 in Oct, 2012, she is not the same as the character first introduced there. Sorry about that. Because she is so much more than any of that, I want to give her her own space. Sigrunn's Saga deserves its own home - Sigrunn's Blaga.
Sigrunn's Blaga is going to launch in a few days. With any luck my new (yet unnamed editor) will also be introduced formally at the same time. She's putting a layer of polish on the Saga I could not do in my state, damaged as I am by war, drugs, therapists, marriage and all the rest.
Jess, if you see this - I have a free autographed copy for you. I miss you pal.
Friday, May 25, 2018
Monday, April 28, 2014
Suicide and the Army's $125 million unserious, possibly illegal response
Having affiliated with the National Guard and having heard that NG suicides are up I decided to look into the issue a bit. I've seen the Army's efforts, at least as they relate to the NG and some of the Navy's efforts as well and - neither seem serious to me. So I was curious; are my perceptions of unseriousness due to being a part of poorly led organizations or a poor organizational effort?
So I head to PBS, NPR and other new sources friendly to government and I read peer-reviewed pieces and learn that there is a lot of money involved to the tune of some $125 million, possibly more. This morning I hear on a WMAL that the Army has hired more than 90k clinicians and others to work on this problem. I don't recall seeing any big recruiting efforts but I'm not a clinician so maybe they were very carefully targeted.
Ninety thousand clinicians...where would they even find that many? Did they train them? Where are they stationed? That's more medical people treating our troops than we have troops in Afghanistan - never more than 50 or 53k at any given time. I have to track down this number but if the actual number is 10% of that it's still Nine-thousand probably more than enough to do the job right? Maybe not, if they had recruited heavily quality would have had to have been sacrificed - point in case MAJ Nidal Hassan. If we had 90k clinicians, and even half of them were armed and tossed in to support efforts in Afghanistan we'd have won six years ago before the president signaled our surrender in 2009 at his infamous West Point speech.
But I digress.
It turns out that the suicides have been miscounted somehow; each agency interminably resistant to auditing of its books also has branch-specific methods for counting the dead - at odds with the CDC method. Despite funny bookkeeping, I'm not saying it was meant to hide the true numbers or to make the problem look less significant - you draw your own conclusions, but it looks like the numbers will increase slightly in most cases. In any case, the trend line is clear - suicides of military personnel and veterans are on the uptick (year over year for last several) even as the latest annual report looks positive (pending accounting review...) for the most recent reporting period - except for the National Guard.
So, what’s wrong with the National Guard? I'm not going to speculate but I can share my own experiences with the Army's "resiliency" program part of a larger CSF or Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. This program is based on a hypothesis of a U Penn professor that was originally investigated for use with helping middle-school children improve coping skills. Now, in that original application results are mixed at best, but in the application to adults and combat stress there are some serious problems and they aren't new. I think one of the better criticisms of the program was done in 2012 by the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. In essence, they argue that the program's efficacy is overstated and there are credibility issues with the methodology, ethical problems by making participation in a psychological experiment mandatory without human subject protections, and so on. Serious stuff the Army needs to consider.
As for my own experience, the program is poorly operated. I haven't seen a clinician, indeed I can't name one that supports my training site. I've sat through many resiliency lectures given by young soldiers who are not remotely qualified to dispense prophylactic therapy with a fire hose at a group of unprepared subjects - some of whom might really need help or not require any therapy - prophylactic or otherwise. In some cases the instructors are suspicious and hostile it seems, to the training material and skip slides in the deck they don't seem to appreciate or understand and seem not to have any real grasp of the information presented. Some of them are hostile and toxic people themselves who might be creating burn out - I had one "Senior NCO" resiliency trainer - really a younger than 30, E-7 with less than ten years of service, no children - tell me that people with families shouldn't even join the guard because of the occasional familial responsibilities that conflict with training schedules.
Why is this guy lecturing about psychological health and well being? It would be comical if lives weren't at stake.
In the Navy, lecturers were similarly qualified, interested, and capable (and I let them know how I felt about it then, in writing). They were H.S. graduates, maybe with some college, usually computers, I.T. or maybe some medical training but no clinicians and they usually appeared to be seeing the material they were briefing for the very first time as they turned around, stared slack-jawed at the slides then turned around and tried to regurgitate it in some meaningful way - usually resorting to paraphrasing the slides (if you were lucky) or reading them in their entirety (poorly, if you were not lucky). I've sat through many of these suicide prevention training sessions, sometimes 2 lectures in a single drill weekend, and I've never seen - not in many years, a single qualified clinical or psych nurse or graduate social worker intern, giving this training. Why? 90k clinician hires - is that riddled with turn over? Are they being killed in combat at an alarming rate? Are they all at Ft. Hood, Bliss, and Carson? I mention Bliss because I see they have at least 6 suicides there just in April 2014.
I suspect they're counting these locally "trained" cadre of half-ass, under-qualified therapists as "clinicians" doubling down on the ethical error here. I wonder if the Army has considered laws against human experimentation that are called "Nuremberg" for a reason...
The Army needs to sit down and seriously reassess its approach and be honest about what it's doing - get serious about preventing suicide in a way that doesn't make it feel like mass punishment in formation in a way that takes limited real training time away from Soldiers, adding to their burden of stress and reducing their "resiliency", whatever that's supposed to be.
So I head to PBS, NPR and other new sources friendly to government and I read peer-reviewed pieces and learn that there is a lot of money involved to the tune of some $125 million, possibly more. This morning I hear on a WMAL that the Army has hired more than 90k clinicians and others to work on this problem. I don't recall seeing any big recruiting efforts but I'm not a clinician so maybe they were very carefully targeted.
Ninety thousand clinicians...where would they even find that many? Did they train them? Where are they stationed? That's more medical people treating our troops than we have troops in Afghanistan - never more than 50 or 53k at any given time. I have to track down this number but if the actual number is 10% of that it's still Nine-thousand probably more than enough to do the job right? Maybe not, if they had recruited heavily quality would have had to have been sacrificed - point in case MAJ Nidal Hassan. If we had 90k clinicians, and even half of them were armed and tossed in to support efforts in Afghanistan we'd have won six years ago before the president signaled our surrender in 2009 at his infamous West Point speech.
But I digress.
It turns out that the suicides have been miscounted somehow; each agency interminably resistant to auditing of its books also has branch-specific methods for counting the dead - at odds with the CDC method. Despite funny bookkeeping, I'm not saying it was meant to hide the true numbers or to make the problem look less significant - you draw your own conclusions, but it looks like the numbers will increase slightly in most cases. In any case, the trend line is clear - suicides of military personnel and veterans are on the uptick (year over year for last several) even as the latest annual report looks positive (pending accounting review...) for the most recent reporting period - except for the National Guard.
So, what’s wrong with the National Guard? I'm not going to speculate but I can share my own experiences with the Army's "resiliency" program part of a larger CSF or Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. This program is based on a hypothesis of a U Penn professor that was originally investigated for use with helping middle-school children improve coping skills. Now, in that original application results are mixed at best, but in the application to adults and combat stress there are some serious problems and they aren't new. I think one of the better criticisms of the program was done in 2012 by the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. In essence, they argue that the program's efficacy is overstated and there are credibility issues with the methodology, ethical problems by making participation in a psychological experiment mandatory without human subject protections, and so on. Serious stuff the Army needs to consider.
As for my own experience, the program is poorly operated. I haven't seen a clinician, indeed I can't name one that supports my training site. I've sat through many resiliency lectures given by young soldiers who are not remotely qualified to dispense prophylactic therapy with a fire hose at a group of unprepared subjects - some of whom might really need help or not require any therapy - prophylactic or otherwise. In some cases the instructors are suspicious and hostile it seems, to the training material and skip slides in the deck they don't seem to appreciate or understand and seem not to have any real grasp of the information presented. Some of them are hostile and toxic people themselves who might be creating burn out - I had one "Senior NCO" resiliency trainer - really a younger than 30, E-7 with less than ten years of service, no children - tell me that people with families shouldn't even join the guard because of the occasional familial responsibilities that conflict with training schedules.
Why is this guy lecturing about psychological health and well being? It would be comical if lives weren't at stake.
In the Navy, lecturers were similarly qualified, interested, and capable (and I let them know how I felt about it then, in writing). They were H.S. graduates, maybe with some college, usually computers, I.T. or maybe some medical training but no clinicians and they usually appeared to be seeing the material they were briefing for the very first time as they turned around, stared slack-jawed at the slides then turned around and tried to regurgitate it in some meaningful way - usually resorting to paraphrasing the slides (if you were lucky) or reading them in their entirety (poorly, if you were not lucky). I've sat through many of these suicide prevention training sessions, sometimes 2 lectures in a single drill weekend, and I've never seen - not in many years, a single qualified clinical or psych nurse or graduate social worker intern, giving this training. Why? 90k clinician hires - is that riddled with turn over? Are they being killed in combat at an alarming rate? Are they all at Ft. Hood, Bliss, and Carson? I mention Bliss because I see they have at least 6 suicides there just in April 2014.
I suspect they're counting these locally "trained" cadre of half-ass, under-qualified therapists as "clinicians" doubling down on the ethical error here. I wonder if the Army has considered laws against human experimentation that are called "Nuremberg" for a reason...
The Army needs to sit down and seriously reassess its approach and be honest about what it's doing - get serious about preventing suicide in a way that doesn't make it feel like mass punishment in formation in a way that takes limited real training time away from Soldiers, adding to their burden of stress and reducing their "resiliency", whatever that's supposed to be.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Thanksgiving II: Revenge of Tradition
What has happened to thanksgiving? The Detroit Lions won a football game! Wait you don’t have a TV? No problem you can go to the store and get one now even though its thanksgiving, of course, you already missed the game…but you might be able to get highlights on your phone unless your phone is old then you’ll have to upgrade there while getting your new discounted Black Thursday TV.
That’s what we’re calling it now I hear – Black Thursday. Blasphemy. A holiday about gratitude for and sharing of blessings turned into another exercise in narcissistic materialism. The news reports about economic indicators – a 2.9% increase in holiday spending worrying retailers and such. The home country from which we sprung, Britain was once derisively referred to as a nation of shop keepers a tradition we have maintained and improved upon, but should we be so obsessed with shopping, profits, markets, and economic indicators?
The real crime here is this insanity threatening thanksgiving, giving Detroit a chance to win, comes to us courtesy of another day of religious significance destroyed by materialism. It’s as if the whole baby Jesus's story was about the gifts that were brought him and how important they were. The baby was just an excuse to use a coupon and an event to spur economic activity at the bazaar. Xmas is already destroyed and they are trying to roll over thanksgiving - the only thing is left protecting Veteran’s Day and Remembrance Day from Xmas. Veteran’s day won’t have a chance if thanksgiving falls, with less than 1% of our country serving or having served. Pagan (and fun) Halloween will be destroyed next and before you know it we’ll be letting Santa usher in Labor Day – also marked by sales, most notably at mattress discounters.
Thanksgiving is a day for God. Black anything doesn’t belong anywhere near it. I just re-read President Washington’s thanksgiving proclamation I see God mentioned 9 times (19 if you count the pronoun “His”), prayer 3 times but no mentions of shopping or discount. Sure he was the man who has everything but surely he could have used a properly fitted coat at least?
It’s clear what the man who gave us the holiday thought of it and what its true purpose was. For me, I too am thankful for God and His blessings but I yet struggle how best to introduce the kids to this concept which I believe is best-experienced vice explained? For now, it’s enough to go through the motions, spending time with family and eating far too much – which I why I suspect Washington’s clothes were always a bit large for him – they hadn’t yet invented the elastic waistband.
But I digress.
If you know me and TO&S, you know I’m thankful most for my family and that starts with my wife. So for me, the holiday is about her and the time I get to spend with her. We did something special and new this year – we started prep work, not just cleaning and re-arranging the furniture or decorating but the real tangibly intimate tender togetherness that cooking together is for us. I feel tears well up when I try to imagine the holiday without her. I hope it never happens. For some, they are alone and they’re doing it for us – whether they understand the war or even agree with it – they’re in uniform on the watch for us, or our sons or friends. The photo was especially poignant for me having just a few months ago volunteered to come out of retirement and don once more the Army uniform for another term of service. That fellow manning that wall eating pressed turkey out of a box and ready mix mashed taters could easily have been me, and may yet be.
We’re not having it. Any of it. We’re pushing back (okay it was mostly her idea). I’m a fighter, so Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving is now Thanksgiving and it’s a two day holiday with Thanksgiving proper and Eve. From this day forth I proclaim it so, that if Black Thursday becomes a thing there will always be at least one day for my wife and me to enjoy giving thanks (for each other at least). Even if we’re forced to spend it assembling PB&J sandwich brown bag lunches for a long Thursday trek to some far off mall assigned as our official shopping center by the Obama website people for Black Thursday minimum economic stimulus activity required under the commerce clause.
So help me God.
That’s what we’re calling it now I hear – Black Thursday. Blasphemy. A holiday about gratitude for and sharing of blessings turned into another exercise in narcissistic materialism. The news reports about economic indicators – a 2.9% increase in holiday spending worrying retailers and such. The home country from which we sprung, Britain was once derisively referred to as a nation of shop keepers a tradition we have maintained and improved upon, but should we be so obsessed with shopping, profits, markets, and economic indicators?
The real crime here is this insanity threatening thanksgiving, giving Detroit a chance to win, comes to us courtesy of another day of religious significance destroyed by materialism. It’s as if the whole baby Jesus's story was about the gifts that were brought him and how important they were. The baby was just an excuse to use a coupon and an event to spur economic activity at the bazaar. Xmas is already destroyed and they are trying to roll over thanksgiving - the only thing is left protecting Veteran’s Day and Remembrance Day from Xmas. Veteran’s day won’t have a chance if thanksgiving falls, with less than 1% of our country serving or having served. Pagan (and fun) Halloween will be destroyed next and before you know it we’ll be letting Santa usher in Labor Day – also marked by sales, most notably at mattress discounters.
Thanksgiving is a day for God. Black anything doesn’t belong anywhere near it. I just re-read President Washington’s thanksgiving proclamation I see God mentioned 9 times (19 if you count the pronoun “His”), prayer 3 times but no mentions of shopping or discount. Sure he was the man who has everything but surely he could have used a properly fitted coat at least?
It’s clear what the man who gave us the holiday thought of it and what its true purpose was. For me, I too am thankful for God and His blessings but I yet struggle how best to introduce the kids to this concept which I believe is best-experienced vice explained? For now, it’s enough to go through the motions, spending time with family and eating far too much – which I why I suspect Washington’s clothes were always a bit large for him – they hadn’t yet invented the elastic waistband.
But I digress.
If you know me and TO&S, you know I’m thankful most for my family and that starts with my wife. So for me, the holiday is about her and the time I get to spend with her. We did something special and new this year – we started prep work, not just cleaning and re-arranging the furniture or decorating but the real tangibly intimate tender togetherness that cooking together is for us. I feel tears well up when I try to imagine the holiday without her. I hope it never happens. For some, they are alone and they’re doing it for us – whether they understand the war or even agree with it – they’re in uniform on the watch for us, or our sons or friends. The photo was especially poignant for me having just a few months ago volunteered to come out of retirement and don once more the Army uniform for another term of service. That fellow manning that wall eating pressed turkey out of a box and ready mix mashed taters could easily have been me, and may yet be.
We’re not having it. Any of it. We’re pushing back (okay it was mostly her idea). I’m a fighter, so Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving is now Thanksgiving and it’s a two day holiday with Thanksgiving proper and Eve. From this day forth I proclaim it so, that if Black Thursday becomes a thing there will always be at least one day for my wife and me to enjoy giving thanks (for each other at least). Even if we’re forced to spend it assembling PB&J sandwich brown bag lunches for a long Thursday trek to some far off mall assigned as our official shopping center by the Obama website people for Black Thursday minimum economic stimulus activity required under the commerce clause.
So help me God.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Death and Names
Death by any other name...
So for a few weeks now we’ve been anxiously dreading the death of a family patriarch. Pap-Pap Sheffel, on my editor’s side of the family. A WWII veteran of the 11th Airborne Div. and all around great guy, he will be sorely missed. His slow goodbye was exceptionally difficult for the family, split between Penna. and Indi. I did the best I could to help her deal with this difficult matter but often felt like only a spectator, helpless and useless. Worse when she asked me about my beliefs about the afterlife and what awaits us I was disappointed in my ability to answer her in a comforting way. But this isn’t about me.
She asked me about heaven and reincarnation. I was raised with the idea like she was that in heaven you have all your family waiting there for you as she was, but I had rejected that concept. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to meeting relatives who had abused my mother, rejected my father for being a half-breed, or who spat hate at me from every pore because I was an adopted half-breed son of a half breed. Why would I look forward to that? That concept of heaven made no sense to me.
I neglected to explain that now, with our family complete I could find comfort in that idea. Instead I asked stupid questions about what age would those people be? What would we do in heaven? Wouldn’t they rather spend time with their elders? Would they know me? Would I be as important to them or would they be reunited with a lost lover from a marriage I never knew about or some other such thing. What would other people’s expectations of me be there? Can you have any fun there or is it a Mormon caffeine free utopia and what good is that? I want to drink a beer with Ben Franklin in the afterlife, or party with some Vikings in Valhalla not sing hymns in the choir eternal being chastised by nuns for being off key or late for a performance. Maybe I’d just want to sleep in and skip it, stay in bed with the wife. Would God allow that?
I’ve always been “the journey is the important part” guy. I believe in heaven here and now, my life with my family is as good as it gets. Heaven? What’s that good for? Are we going to go fishing with God? I would only want to live again to meet my wife and enjoy again the tenuous first moments of our meeting, falling in love and growing into a single entity here on earth. So for me reincarnation is where it would be at. I’d want after the time of my reaping to return if only to scour the earth a dozen times in search of her, even if it meant dying horribly each time before the 13th time when I did find her, if ever so briefly.
It’s difficult to understand and harder still to explain – here I fall short again. So what comfort is there in knowing what is beyond? I’d rather not, for me there is comfort in that – in hoping I’m right, or maybe that God gives us a choice, a menu of options.
So the journey is what’s most important I’ve lost sleep worrying that I’m not making the best of that journey. Risk aversion having chased away valor and courage, slow and steady caution has destroyed my appetite to shake things up, make a difference and fight for what I believe in. There a lot of things I’ve managed to squeeze into my life, living easily a dozen times more than most could dream of – yet many things I’ve had to let go by the way so I could choose another path. Right now I want to find more fulfilling work, or something that lets me spend more time with my family. The two seem to be mutually exclusive in a galactic Catch-22.
I saw an old torpedo recovery boat on the GSA webpage. The boat was rusted out but reparable, I thought wow I could go for something like that a vacation boat or something a 2nd address to have on the water, but I’ll never try to make that kind of thing happen. Too expensive, to complex I think. What happened to me? Maybe I will. The wife talks about a vacation home sometime in the future. Of course I can’t afford that on my meager salary carrying my current and foreseeable debt load, we’re paycheck to paycheck now and financially imperiled by rising gas prices.
These are the concerns of the living. I used to look at the world through the eyes of a dead man born again, someone who thought everyday was a gift not to be taken for granted or wasted on idle concerns following my near death experience. Now I’m overwhelmed with daily bills and deadlines on a calendar my kids are growing so fast I’m afraid I’ll be a bigger mystery to them than my own father who spent most of his life at sea. I’m losing the fight to be what I want to really be right now and the loss of Pap-Pap made me think how sad it would be to look back from the deathbed and wonder if I could have done it better. Not just to satisfy my selfish sense of adventure and ambition but for my family and their future. I search for signs and portents and find the universe dark and empty, the stars are only an abyss and I’m flying blind.
When I put it that way it sounds pretty adventurous.
So death, heaven, and reincarnation what’s in a name?
I’d like to ask my mother that question. She had visited just before Pap-pap fell gravely ill. She expressed at dinner great sadness (including some show of holding back tears) that I was carrying her family name Chandler and not my adopted father’s name. He took great pride in having a son to carry on his name didn’t I know, she said he’d be angry or disappointed to see I was not carrying on the name. This hurt me a bit at the time. But I’ve been wrestling with this question too. Is it an existential question? I think it is, on par with death and the afterlife.
My father’s spirit was invoked, and said to have judged my life wrong for not honoring him and his wishes. I wasn’t only hurt by this I bristled. I lost sleep on the question for days. Should I just change the name back?
All the while, we continued our genealogical research for the 2nd book to draw heavily from the editor’s side of the family. And watching names change with every marriage and over every so many generations I suddenly recalled that the great ancestor Wong had changed HIS name when he moved from China to Hawaii, in part for expediency in conducting business. Well why not? How many families had changed their names when coming from the “old country” to Ellis Island? Was my move from Hawaii to the Contiguous States any different? The cultures are entirely alien, and in TO&S I had spun the name change undertaken to appease my ex-wife as a move to shield my offspring from having to be subject to scrutiny and speculation about their origins because of an ethnic name that had led to so many problems for me. Chandler is a gift to my kids, and a shelter from idiotic questions I’ve heard my entire life, and again at my first drill weekend back in the guards last weekend. My lieutenant was entering my social security number into a database and guessed I was born in Hawaii. I said no I was born in LA, but raised there – I got my social sec. id in Hawaii. And there it was, my old name in the system under “Other Names Used” and “A.K.A.” and the LT shocked, excitedly asked “Hawaii?! What the heck are you doing here?!” and it was parroted by many in the room.
I was now an idiot to each mainlander in the room. Their incredulous stares said it all. My first impression was set “idiot”.
I’m always interrogated like I’m an idiot for leaving Hawaii and I’m damn piss poor tired of it and I’m not willing to put up with that anymore. I don’t want my kids to have to answer that same line of questioning and there is the answer. My ancestor wanted to fit in, he took a local name, I like to fit in too and skip awkward often pointed questions about my origins so the name change will stay.
Have I somehow failed to honor my father? As I had said he was often a monster, a fountain of unchecked rage of which my mother and I were frequently the target of. I can’t imagine how best to honor that except to be better than that and to try to keep the good parts of his legacy I outlined including holding up his ancestor and his story as a shining example. I have endeavored to honor my mother who hasn’t abandoned the ethnic name despite a ‘marriage’ to a new man – the only decent one she’s ever known by the way, and I can’t explain that. For her own reasons life with my dad might have been heaven the way I see my own marriage. I can’t say I ever saw it could have been - she was often in tears and miserable. I don’t recall many happy days for her, or many smiles being worn on her face. He often struck her, sometimes viciously and she had left or attempted to leave him on many occasions. Still she seems to apply rose colored glasses to that time in our life and maybe I’m too harshly critical out of fear of being even a little violent.
I lay awake wondering what would happen to my kids if a plane crashed into the house and killed me would my wife be able to get the kids to safety? What if we both died? Would someone get to my kids before they died? I don’t normally do this, it’s the normal process I think of dealing with loss and grief, the fear of loss of Pap-pap, we had hoped he would recover and we could visit as a family, and the loss of my father and his name, my mom had brought me artifacts including the Chief’s Anchors dad had hoped to pin on my collar one day. That day will never come, and I think it made me sad that it was something my dad and I could have shared happily, there was so little happiness in my early life and it is so abundant now the contrast so stark as to sometimes cause an abrupt and powerful reaction as hot and cold air coming together rapidly in the sky forming a tornado, only in the heart. What’s in a name? Nothing. We Are As We Do, not as we are named. Pap-Pap was a good man even if Pap-pap is a silly name for such a wonderful man. My father’s name though filled with lyrical beauty was something not quite so lovely, but he was my dad and were he here I’d dare him to find fault with my reasoning. If he is waiting for me in heaven I think he’ll understand and approve, if I don’t then in the next life I hope only to have a father as so many kids lack even that.
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