elizabeth erin, the beezle

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kath
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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby kath » 20 Sep 2012, 19:12

here we go, the second movement.

usually, when i have friends who happen to be even slightly kinda famous or known, i aint all that comfortable talkin about it in front of other people, if i bring it up, it's probably cuz i'm tryin to tell a goofy story about something else, and it just fits in as a piece. but as its own thing? i don't like it. not cuz i don't like anything resembling gratuitous name droppin or some bogus credit by association crap (even though i don't). that's a lil too playground for me. it just feels like a betrayal of trust thing. no, that's too strong. more like a breach of etiquette. no, that's too light. more like i'm betrayin a sorta confidence from someone who just might put a bit more of a premium on confidentiality than yer average bear. i don't really know if they'd give a fucque, cuz we never talk about that kinda crap. i just always assume they might give a fucque.

... which means i'm about to torch all that, of course. heh. see, my setting on this is gettin overridden, cuz it's about the beezle *and* it's about giving a guy credit. cue my refrain: i'm all about giving folk credit these days. i've been doin it a lot these past months. in fact, the last time i did it on FB after a series of other such posts, the person involved with the last sent me a PM sayin, "okay, what's wrong with you? are ya dyin of cancer? you sound like yer fucquin signing off and bon voyaging everybody." mwhaha. welll, noooo. it's just part of how i am now. life is short. time is fleeeeeting. doesn't matter whether i live til next week or til i'm 101. when i write this stuff out, i'm lettin people know. i'm lettin the person know, if i'm writing it where he will read it. if i'm writin it where he won't, it means i'm gonna tell him anyway to his face when i next get the chance. (it does, ya know. like that thingie in NDL when i was giving credit to the exhole during hugo.) what's the old quote.. i dunno what i'm thinkin til i write it down? it's the way i figure out how i'm gonna lay it all out.

whatever the layout, whatever my game plan, sometimes the timing is mainly what's promptin crap, as i said in my last post. beezie's bday ahead. the air around her is gettin charged. unavoidable. that friend of mine, les, the one who has what she fondly calls "an original beezle"... the painting above? she's put it up as her avatar on facebook. people be winding up, people other than me. people i been knowing for a long while, or who spent time with beezie in the flesh, people who might know her birthday even if it weren't set in stone in a photograph of an epitaph. unavoidable, the amp-up. same with the guy i'm gettin to in the next lil thousands of words.

in some other post in YY the other day, i brought up a skynyrd backstage pass. i've been around those guys a few times, but the association was indirect. my main connection is with 38 special, in particular a friend of mine, red. (red has nowt to do with hair color. has everything to do with a les paul.)

i've been knowing him for some time now. i happen to think the man is a fucquin genius. and i'm not even talkin about music, songwriting, playin, singin or bein able to parallel park a bus from hell. it's one of the reasons i always hafta laugh when i hear idjuts who think they're smart goin off on southern-rockers-as-dumb. but being a genius is nuthin compared to the important stuff... what kinda person a person really is. in his case, that would be one of the grooviest, sweetest, luvvinest, class-acts-walkinnest yer ever gonna find. he's also just one twisted, hysterical fucque. funny, how that twistedness is almost always how i first hook up with somebody, what gets us shakin hands as newbie pals right before we get to that friendly lil ice breaker of lining up ten tequila shots and startin a timer. under it all, it's just another one of those gateways into a person. (oo, pervvvvy.) with red, it really doesn't have a damn thing to do with me. i could be courtney love, flappin my gaping, largemouthed-bass maw and flauntin my crotch crabs, the ones that have an even bigger bite radius than i do, and he would still treat me right cuz that's just the way he is.

he's always loved my spawn, too. all manner of rockers, out on the road, backstage, the last thing they want is a buncha brats hangin around, gunkin up the party. red's the opposite. he always invited em there and was happy when they came. mind ye, *i* didn't always bring em cuz sometimes *i* needed the break, mwhaha, but he met em more than a few times, always yappin and warm and puttin em at ease, not that easy of a thing to do when yer around two pretty shy kids.

i never have gotten that, ya know, the shy spawn thing. it remains a source of amazement to me. there's me, rather overtly... um, extroverted. then my spawn, all shy and blushy. they're smiley and happy, not overly yappy with someone they like but don't know extremely well, meaning everyone not in their close family circle. i'm talkin still at kid age, of course. attila's got his touchy-feely side at times, with us, but beezie's never even been much of a hugger, really. always liked her personal space intact, long before the fall. i think it probably started once she had primary control over her own need for diaperage. (she was an ace shoulder patter, though. patpatpat.) neither one of em has ever really gotten into callin attention to themselves, not around non-kid folk. at a mixed-type gig, they would never dress to stand out, for example, even if there was a reason to dress to stand out. both of em preferred to get noticed in off routes. the beez, thru art, words, unless she was with people like me or reap or chi chi, when she would let her mouth wear her rampant uppitiness like any rap star. attila? when he was around peers, he would do the pacino dog day afternoon thing over a broken pencil, for the dramatic, interpretive, bigger-picture point (and for the duration of his kidschool years). he never much liked his peers. but older people he liked or respected, not a peep. all wide-eyed and polite and gentlespawnly.

red took it all in stride. he's done a few donuts around the greyhound block of life. (eww. that was sooo bad, my laptop groaned.) red groks people. he'd disappear into somewhere and come back with a six pack of beer in one hand for me and reap and a six pack of cokes in the other for them. the spawn would sit around, content with a sugar fix and relaxed in the company, feelin like they were sposed to be there somehow, a natural part of it, automatically included as people, instead of just being tacked on baggage, waiting behind a bush somewhere til they got schlepped homeward. they'd even be grateful enough to act as though they weren't listenin to a word while the 'adults' would do their adult' talk, typically of a highly fucqued and colorful nature.

when the beez had that four-story fall, when everyone was sure she was gonna die, red was out playin somewhere, as usual. he sent me one of the greatest letters i've ever read in my life. (and i've read a lotta letters in my life, even whole words). in part of it, he was tellin me he was absolutely sure of two things. one, that she was gonna make it thru this, no matter what all the docs said. she was gonna beat it. two, that she was gonna create something that would one day happify the world. keep in mind this was before she started her focus on the art thing. she drew and doodled and stuff, her whole life, but she didn't get into it as IT til she re-entered regular high school some time later, after that whole recovery process.

yeah, red's a good man. yeah, people who care find a way to be consoling and inspiring when a friend really fucquin needs it. and honestly, anyone who so much as reaches out a hand in the dark without a sound is consoling and inspiring when ya really fucquin need it. but whether she had died then or not, whether she had chosen the economic history of mechanical badminton as her school major... whether his 'sureties' proved true or not.. that aint what matters. it was his taking the time to write something like that when it's hard enough to think of word one to say. those gestures, whatever form they take and wherever they may be found (coughcough), they're... somewhere at the core of the meaning of life (oh shuddup). there are times when i think they may even matter more than oxygen.

so, well, she survives it. after all that time spent in ICUs and trauma wards, all that wide open chest crap, the tubes everywhere, the casts everywhere, the ridiculous other stuff that came in just when it wasn't needed like pneumonia and tube infections and whateverrrr... she finally gets outta the thickest woods. i get her outta hospital hell and back home here in bama. yeah, she's still got all that hard crap in front of her... PT to get from wheelchair to walker to cane to nuthin...all that private teacher prep to get her segued back into regular school... but she was home and non-wooded. sounds so simple, but a huge, huge deal. a miraculous deal. when red found out, he did a lil jigglin with the tour schedule so the band could hit huntsville. not some of the usual stops in nashville or anything. huntsville, a mile away from my house, cuz he wanted to see elizabeth. he made this fairly clear to me. (i think the exact phrasing might've been, "to hell with y'all fucquin losers. just send her.")

... and when elizabeth found out that red had done that? a few days before the show, this package arrives in the mail from chi chi for the beezie. we didn't think a thing of it. chi chi was always sending these damn batty packages to both spawn, spoiling em rotten with toys or expensive clothes nobody's ever gonna wear or movies or medieval maces or the latest tech gadget that a kid can't use til at least a few shoe sizes older, whatever. chi chi lives for that crap, the generous yet completely manic, on freaky whim, out in left field, pinbally hypershopping. we were UPS central, all the time. the e took that box to her room, as always, and as always, we igged it, til whatever time when she got a notion to share it, often with that knowing grin and head-shaking over the inexplicable rationale of the amazon chi. whatever it was, we sure as hell didn't think it was a beezlean request, fer chrissake. stealth beez. then the night of the show arrives, and the girl comes out of her room in this pair of black leather pants and matching fucquin boots, just beaming away with her bad self.

y'all DO realize that the beez wearin sumthin like black leather pants is kinda like me wearing sumthin pink with ribbons and shit on it, right? there she is... she's still walkin with a cane. she's still super scrawny from all the hospital crap. i know damn well she put herself thru her own damaged-foot-nerve hell gettin those boots on. this had zero to do with tryin to look "sexy" or tryin to look "cool" or any of those reasons a person might wanna wear a pair of black leather pants and matching boots. nope. it wasn't about her at all. it was about him. she was dressin up for red in a redly rockin kinda way... for the symbolic elizabethan principle of it all. she was returning what she saw as his honorific gesture. (i aint gettin the idea of the thing across right, but i aint dealin with you people's reading comprehension problems right now. y'all go snort some coke and i'll type slower. it'll even out.)

now, typically, whenever we went to see red, different locales with diff setups and rules, we would go a lil early just to touch base with him pre-show, get the lay of the land, make sure we were all lined up on the same page for post-show festivities, grab a quick chance to make fun of his shirt before he hit the stage, that kinda thing. however, we were runnin slow that night. the beez ditched the cane in the fucquin car after assuring us repeatedly for days beforehand that she was gonna use it in those crowds, covering that kinda unruly ground and drunken, obstacle-heavy terrain. (yes, ground *can* be unruly and terrain *can* be drunken. it's an ugly thing, folks.) parents, ye know you can try to force a stubborn, uppity kid to do many things that are actually the good things, the healthy things, even the necessary-for-safety things. but if a kid's set on not using a cane and you try to insist, the only thing yer gonna accomplish is speed-losing a hundred dollar quad cane at the first turn. so, yeah, we missed red pre-show. we still had the passes waitin and all, but the red-beez reunion was gonna hafta wait. (one thing red doesn't know: all those free passes he gave us over the years? every single time, reap went and bought the regular tickets behind red's back anyway. mwhaha. reap's attitude was ever, "support yer local red, just don't tell the funny-shirted fucque.")

post-show, there's that space of time when the band first reappears and they do their meet-n-greets or their pics with people or autographs, all that fan-friendly stuff. for that time, we've always taken to hangin out in the background somewhere like shadowy lil meth rats til that all thins out and we finally get to corral the man and sneak off. this time, we were off in some corner, drinkin beer and makin fun of a crew dude's shirt. the other side of the room had these big foldin tables laid out, red et alia signin crap and all that stuff, with i dunno how many people cyclin thru for their contact turn. a bunch. a roomful, i guess. i'm thinkin it's gonna be awhile.

then i look next to me, and i realize i am one shy person shy. i turn back towards the meet-n-greet table, and what do i see? the beezle, who has somehow managed to appear behind the table with red on his side... and they're huggin each other and laughin and yappin like two puppies hittin a grass lawn for the first time (um, puppies that hug and laugh and yap, of course. geeez.) or maybe like somewhere in between best friends and close family members who haven't seen each other in forty fucquin years. there's still all these people waitin in front of him for a red turn, but they had eyes and whatnot... they see what's goin on (they're gettin igged this time, must be solar flares) so they spread out towards the other band members, very good-naturedly, i might add. (i think maybe the core fans of a band reflect what the core band is like. i dunno, i need to think more on it, but not now. i got miles to yap before i take a shower.)

meanwhile, i'm watchin this with what had to look like my jaw hangin off the back of my ass. i walk over there to make sure i'm seein straight. ... huggin, yappin, laughin... ignoring everybody else, including me (relevant only in that when *i* can't get a word in edge-wise in the real world, we got some major solar flares afoot.) i mean, even the fact that beezle marched her lil scrawny butt past that fan crowd (marched in her slow, measured, deliberate strides), behind the table, right up to red in the middle of his red thing, and fast enough slowly for me to miss it... i swear, i thought i was seeing things, which inevitably leads me to that soul-searching question, am i too drunk or am i not drunk enough? this scene goes on for awhile. finally, red sees me gawkin at em in shock, and he gets that look, like something's gone seriously wrong with my eyes and it's made me venture into stoopitland. he comes out with that non-questionmarked ...what. i use it all the time myself, but i think you really need a southern guy like red to nail that word. when he uses it, it's got enough octone behind it to burn down atlanta.

honestly, before or after that night, i never saw the beez do anything quite like that. (when chi chi got married, we had to tie e's ass down to get her to dress up as part of the wedding party. actually, that aint what happened. what happened: i gave her one of my full-tilt this-is-about-chi-chi's-wishes-and-happiness-not-yer-particular-dress-code-aesthetical-stand-against-fabrofascism-for-one-damn-day rhetorical speeches. she gave in, but i felt the fury of the beez glare all day. she got over it later when i made her her fave lemon butter artichokes.)

ahh my ramblin rambleweeds. some years pass. red had his own wee spawn (the old fucquin goat), so we're doing the friend-parent thing, swappin pics and stories and yaddayaddayadda. one year, i get a xmas card from him with a pic of his dog in a santa hat. he gets pics of beezle art. another year he's co-lining it on tour with cheap trick. i tell him to inform robin zander that i would very much like said mr. zander to strip, coat himself in crisco and do whatever he must to not slip outta my lap. right after that, i get this nice envelope in the mail, a signed picture from the guys in cheap trick for "kath" with a few... personalized niceties thrown in. red's gettin streaming, bubbly bits of the on-the-rise beeziad. amazing how fast time passes, huh? all is well. life is luvvvvly. yeah.

y'all know what happens next. just whamm, beezie's gone. and red... he didn't take it too well. i found myself in one of the weirdest positions i've ever been in (and i've been in some weirrrrd positions), a place i still find myself in, regularly: i'm puttin out this time and energy to console somebody else on my own damn daughter's death. mwhaha. (well, i think it's funny as fucque, i dew.) he's busy and out-of-the-loop when it comes to all the words i've spilt about the whole thing. so i start giving him my service speech thing, other strands i've said a million times around here, about the meaning of life and love, the irrelevance of time, what is important about a person, blahblahblah. and it matters to me to do it, of course. i desperately want him not to think of her from some kinda heartbroken, miserable place. same thing i want with everybody, i guess, just different volume levels. so i'm goin thru my entire word arsenal database, everything i got, in the attempt. he's acting like he's listening, but i know he aint really hearin me. his head's floatin off somewhere by itself, just kinda gone... y'all know what i mean. his thing is all just "what can i do... tell me..."

i tell him, "ya wanna do sumthin? whenever yer okay enough with it, when ya work yer ass up to it or feel in the mood for it, i want ya to sing a song to elizabeth sometime when yer out there. i don't mean actually announce yer gonna do it into a mic somewhere in eastfucque, idaho and make it some ungodly cheez whiz fest.. i mean a private thing, just from you to her, no one else there knows. BUT here's the catch: you hafta be able to do it with a smile. for her and what she means and all, who she was/is. that's what you can do. or else you can send me a buncha fucquin cookiescookiescookies in the mail. ya." since i didn't get any cookies in the mail after awhile, i figured he had his mind made up to do the song thing.

how many months has it been since then? how many shows? i dunno if i'm sure he's been able to do it yet. that's the kinda person he is... um, whether he's been able to do it yet or not. (keep up, cokeheads.) he hasn't said a word about it, not that he ever needs to, of course. wasn't part of the deal. it's just my gut call.

... or it was til a few days ago. weird, timing. whenever he's leadin up to something with me, we haven't yapped in awhile, he starts it all off with a few toes in the pool. i'll get a few funny forwards or crap like that, outta the red blue. then i'll get a quick line or two of.. so hey, how's reap and have ya bitched him to death yet? small talk. just preamble, really, for whatever's coming... he's comin in town or somebody's died or he's got a hankerin to talk about some heavy-duty BIG thing. the next step: some mutual friend informs me that i need to charge up my damn phone. (y'all don't get it. i HATE my fucquin phone. it aint the yappery... i can yap on a phone for so long that people on the other side of the world starve to deaf. it's the phone itself, this square, unwieldy, awkward-to-hold thing. i've had surgeries on both hands, ya know, and i can't handle alll those lil buttons and texting or any of it. uggggghhhh. i can write ten pages faster than i can text one paragraph. i HATE it.)

what was i talkin about? ohh. okay, so if he's tryin to call me, something's up. maybe nuthin, nuthin made sumthin by timing. her bday's comin. people be winding up, people other than me. unavoidable. but any and all of this speculation is irrelevant. if he hasn't done his beez song yet, he will. just the kinda guy he is. and he'll do it right. these are the things that matter to me. maybe even more than oxygen.

just for the record, the band's just like he is... including the roadies, the crew, the whole damn lot of em. i mean, these guys bus around the country all the time to do shows cuz they just love doin it. (none of em fly. i'm sure y'all can figure out why. after the skynyrd crash, red was the one who went with ronnie's daddy to do the IDin. christ. can you fucquin imagine? as a lifelong aerophobe, amazingly, i myself have recently changed my aerotune. my aerotune... kinda like my autotune, cept less like a car and more like a deathtrap with wings. why? cuz (a) i need to get to places instead of dream about gettin to places. time is short, after all; and (b) when you think of allll the ways a person can die, so many of em longgg, horrifically painful, drawn out, i dunno. i think i might not mind ten seconds and then whambamadiosmaam. well, aside from the lil snag that a hundred other people would hafta be goin down with me in that scenario. we're talkin principle here.)

so anywayyyyyyy, those guys are bussin all around, doin shows, whatever... and right after a long night of another one, when ya know they'd probably rather be soakin in a tub or chillin in front of the tube or gettin a blowjob while hangin on a chandelier or some damn thing, they're actually waiting on yer ass like yer the queen/king/crown-it of sheba. the thing is, they don't even think about it. it's just their default nature. you really could be courtney love, skankin up the ground beneath ya, with a quad fishhook for a lip ring... you could have a brother gallagher sittin next to you, whining snottily and haughtily about the disappointing color of the grass... but when yer drink is a drop from empty, suddenly somebody, anybody, any of em, the keyboard player on a cappsian flyby, has gotten up in a blink, gone in and got ya another, with a big smile. and without a single thought of it. all those guys (cue kath in raising arizona voice) almost as wunnerful as red.

why add that last bit on the band? we all yap on music boards. we knock bands we don't dig. it's about the music, not the people behind it. of course. people diss a band like 38 all the damn time, especially on certain brit boards where the small group of folk who get into that kind music are massively outnumbered by the generally yankeed and/or coasted americans who think southern rock is for backward dummies, and they're outnumbered by the pond-ers who think ABfucquinC rule. i'd call it a fairly predictable demographic spread, as a general rule.

and that's groovy. taste is taste. i'm okay with that dissery, being the rational, level-headed, fair-minded creature i so truly am. well, with one lil exception: those times you see me flingin bullcrap out the front of my face, like i'm doin in the first three sentences of this paragraph, when there just aint noooo fucquin way i'm okay with it, no matter what you think you hear me sayin. mwhahaHA. anybody and everybody who disses 38 automatically lands on my shit list for the rest of the all eternity, whether they realize it or care or not. sure, it's all just academic, silly words on a screen.. until i end up aerotuning around and runnin into yer ass at some jollyup or some such. on that day, someone's gonna be changin their aerotune or they're gonna lose a fucquin aye. ya. ::smoochies::

p.s. do keep in mind, potential trollish types... even though i don't care about you, even though you mean less to me than the dead cockroach trapped in my clock tryin to tell me the time of day... this does not mean i would not enjoy trackin yer werthless ass down and causing you actual, physical pain should you hijack my words and post em wherever red's gonna see em prematurely. this is not a threat, mind ya. no no no. it is a statement of my infatuation with yer allowing me to stick that happy pin in my calendar.

p.p. s. now that i'm thinkin about, probably the worst thing that could happen if red ever read the above would involve that bit about my callin him a genius. i'm thinkin i might not ever hear the fucquin end of it.

p.p.s.s. ya knowwwww... in the %.0000000000000000000000038 chance that red should, outta nowhere, stumble onto this board unawares, and then inadvertently stagger and trip into this thread, after some bizarre navigational, possibly viral, mishap over at sheepporn.com, i might hypothetically add one lil note. confidential (winkwink) to red: maybe i kinda overstated the whole genius thing in my narrative zeal. after all, geniuses usually don't go around accidentally lockin themselves inside their own hotel rooms, do they, houdini?

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby never/ever » 22 Sep 2012, 09:17

Wow.

That's one heck of a wall of letters. Three stories woven into one too- almost StephenKingian in design!

I'm just curious now if Red's made the phonecall yet.....
kath wrote:i do not wanna buy the world a fucquin gotdamn coke.

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby Belle Lettre » 22 Sep 2012, 09:41

That was one hell of a read x
Nikki Gradual wrote:
Get a fucking grip you narcissistic cretins.

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kath
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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby kath » 23 Sep 2012, 17:50

thank y'all. for even making it through all that. mwhaha.

somehow, i have this feeling that y'all should win some kinda prize for making it through all that. i dunno... like a lifetime's supply of visine, maybe. a free case of excedrin for migraine. a gallon of jack. some damn thing.

extra props for ye and for any and all other facebookers who stuck it out with me yesterday, for the beezle's what-would've-been 22nd birthday. there's no way i'm even gonna try to repost all that crap. for the few nonfacebookers who might have the slightest interest... oh just sign up to FB with some kinda dummy account and dummy email. i can't deal with you. i can't cover all that day-long ground. i got a saints game comin up, ya know. and NO, i do NOT wanna talk about that right now.

what i will do, though... the bookend thang. the alpha-omega thang. the FB beez day, just from front end and tail end.................

happy birthday, beluvved elizabeth erin, beezle of my dreams. she would've been 22 this day, on the 22nd. i've spillt all the words a yappy bitch can, everywhere on the range, from many novels' worth in a sitting to one line on a carved epitaph. words can be so lame, but they're all i've got at hand...

... not an hour goes by when i don't think of her, even if it's just a moment in passing. my core belief bears a repeat: what matters about a person has zero to do with how much time ya get to rack up of being able to be with that person. if, in the end, the clock runnin out is the given for us all, it stands to reason that the truly meaningful things have nuthin to do with where those clock hands fall. nuthin to do with clocktime at all. so here's to beezie, my perpetual source of pride, inspiration and happification. yes, i feel blessed to have had/ to still have her in my life.

i say to ye all, sally forth and be elizabethan in spirit. paint something. play music ya luvv to someone you've never played music to before. read yer fave poems aloud. get pissed off at society, but instead of just bitchin, come up with a few actual solutions that you as an actual person could go out and do with yer own butt. name the first lizard you see and love it forever. go to a library or a museum and marvel at the rare book collection. follow yer real dreams, no matter what anyone else sez. call yer ma from a sushi place and make glubglubgglub noises into the phone. spend an hour interpreting *everything* you see symbolically. personalize yer shoes with sharpies. start shit with yer loved ones, as long as it's punny shit. dance like an egyptian from the waist up when yer stuck in a car in traffic. take apart the goofiest, stoopittest movie in the world the exact same way you'd take apart hamlet. worship the wafffe fry. ... oh yeah, and think of other people ONLY in terms of their very best qualities... every last one of em. ya.

Image

...(cue miles of beez photos, beez art, beezjay youtube tracks, my yappery on beezlism, etc)...

eleven pm last night...

groooovy. i just this very now got this pic, in the last few minutes, via email, from one of e's uni friends, celebrating the e-bday in her own way. she sent it along with this poem. you may be familiar with it. but i tell ya, coming from a friend who's been tryin to deal with the beezle's death, even with her own upbeat, goofy, warped self... who would hang out at e's tomb occasionally, hoping for some kinda answer or peace or consolation or inspiration or just familiar company... well, her finding this poem, finding something in it and sendin it to me... i think it means a whole helluvalot, i dew.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.


Image

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby kath » 26 Sep 2012, 19:56

this is part asking for advice and part running a lil sound check on my own perspective. i was gonna do it in NDL, cuz i thought i'd get more responses there. but once i realized i was churnin out yet another eye-burner in length, i just figged i'd keep it here, along with the other eye-burners. mwhaha. any feedback would be appreciated. (one day i'll learn that if i want feedback, i should work on bein a lil more readable in a single sitting and stuff like that. sigh.)

okay, now, a person should be able to handle grief in whatever fucquin way a person chooses. right? but if ya think that person is venturing into unhealthy territory, when and how do you step in? or do you step in at all?

i realized something on the phone with chi chi just a few days ago, and it's been buggin me ever since: she still hasn't told anybody else in the ER about the beez. my sister has been working there for 28 years, and some of her colleagues are close friends and have been for close to that long.

this refusal to inform other ER folk, in principle, is not the problem. after all, i completely understand her reasons. she's a doc in an ER. she's gotta be constantly on her game, in control, professional. she doesn't want her colleagues to freak out over the beezle news, becuz when they do, they're gonna try to love on chi chi or console her or hug her or cry with her... which is bound to make chi chi herself lose it. do ye follow me? the last thing chi chi wants is to lose her cool in that ER. there are very practical reasons for this, naturally... that job is demanding, tough, often a matter of life and death. one must stay focused at all times. one does NOT wanna get emotional. the only way to handle that kinda job is to be able to stay detached. she also doesn't wanna be seen as losing it in front of those colleagues... some of it is a matter of professional pride, in her position and her job. again, understandable.

i've faced similar weird situations to a much smaller, sillier degree. for example, although it sounds kinda crazy, i've grown very close to my dentist and his main asst, cindy, over the last twelve years. (i guess if you spent every other day with a person for that long, you'd get close, too. ahem.) cindy has a daughter named elizabeth, a source of happy bonding for us. we used to give each other elizabulletins all the time. soooo, when i had my first appt coming up after e's death, i wasn't sure how to handle it. at first, i thought i'd pull a chi chi and not say anything. really, it takes a lotta time and energy to get that kinda news across to someone. it takes some fuel to console others while they are trying consoling you, mwhahaHA. if yer goin to the dentist, chances are yer not feelin too hot, not at yer best, anyway. there's also a very valid, practical reason for staying quiet. do you want yer dentists to be upset, freaked, shaky, when they've got various tiny implements of agony and doom stuck in yer face??

but to stay quiet would essentially mean lying... cuz they're gonna ask me how my elizabeth is doing. what am i gonna do, say "oh, she's fine... bytheway how is yer new house coming?" i am a believer in out with it. get it out, own it, deal with it. so i was torn. reap came up with a compromise... he called em up a few days in advance, told em the news, thus giving em time to react and absorb. i went in and waited POST-procedure to open the subject with a "y'all heard...?", which then allowed em to lose it and break down and love on me in the proper context, without any risk of my suffering serious facial injury.

chi chi is in a much more stressful and intense situation, where she is responsible for so much more, of course. BUT (yes, i am finally getting to the problem, wake yer ass up)... it's getting to the point where her silence is turning freaky and feeding unhealthy emotional aspects of her personality.

first off, she *is* essentially lying every single day. they all ask her how elizabeth is, so just like my hypothetical with my dentist, she is forced into giving em some kinda bullshit line about e being fine and then redirecting the conversation. so it's now... what ... almost a year's worth of daily bullshit.

most importantly, it's almost as though she is buying into her own BS. something about it is making her revert emotionally. i can't describe this well, i know. the very aware, deliberate daily lie is somehow morphing into subconscious denial... kinda like she's deciding she likes the lie and she'd rather live there, ya know?

for awhile after the beez died, we would talk about it all together, not only the loss but all those other freaky things a grieving brain comes up with, guilt, anger, guilt about the anger, analysis of the tragedy from every possible angle. however, instead of progressing, chi chi's kinda going backwards. lately, if i bring up elizabethan topics, she gets a weird look on her face and changes the subject.

and whatever denial chi chi's got going on, it's making her other emotional responses regress some, too. back to how she was before i ever had kids, before my ma died, before she had sam. hard to spell out in a post that's already too long, but it aint good.

last time i was in town, she was so old-style, all-or-nuthin, completely intolerant and impatient in conversations about anything, it kinda freaked me out. sure, i could write it off if we happened to be talkin politics (who aint exasperated and impatient about all that shit these days?) i could write it off as her being overworked and underslept with other topics. but it just got nutty. she would cut me off vehemently not only if i disagreed with her view... she'd do it if i even admitted the possibility that there was an inch of another way of lookin at it. she went so overboard cutting me off, after a few days of it, i tried in my best lil diplomatic voice to jokingly remind her how senile i am, how if i can't get a few complete thoughts out, they're gonna be lost forever (which is the truth, by the way.) it infuriated her. she went from 0 to naked fury in a second. trying to 'check' her at all infuriated her.

she hasn't been in that mode for a very, very long time... back when she was so alone, so miserable, that everything, no matter how trivial or unrelated, became a question of absolute, total emotional loyalty and submission to her. she forced those extreme boundaries in a desperate need for control in the chaos, for clear emotional devotion to her, for some kinda obvious payback, something. i think her crazy pendulum swings back then were a function of her never really having had the kinda social, romantic experience and people skills i had. she was too busy almost killin herself to studystudystudy and get that MD at 23, in part so she could then hold what was left of our damn family together, while i was partyin and havin a ball, workin on my people skills while not doin a damn thing helpful for anybody in my family. she sacrificed all manner of things in a flash, all her life. but emotional compromise? it did not exist for her in those days. naturally, time helps with that, spawn, other people entering the family, her own thing with sam. for her to jump back to that... i dunno. freaky.

i can't judge how any of this is coming off to y'all (if yer still even reading by this point), it may sound silly, but i tell ya, alarms are goin off inside of me. yep. the only option when i was there: to stifle it and shut my trap unless i was gonna cheeringly back her up on everything pouring out her face, even if what was pouring out her face sounded extreme to the point of.. i dunno... crazy. whatever's goin on with her, she clearly doesn't need stoopit arguments over bullshitten things that mean less than nothing. she deserves a lil free indulgence, probably more than anybody i know on this planet. and yet... the alarms keep ringin.

there are other concerns... i'll call em secondary, i guess. a few of those friends in the ER who are close to her, have been for years and years... i imagine they might feel hurt by chi's lyin to em or not confiding in em. part of me feels bad even calling it lying, so substitute any word ya want. but i have probs coming down on chi chi in this respect, from her friends' shoes... cuz the truth is, i am guilty of the same thing myself. there are a few people i haven't told yet... people i should've told long ago. but becuz of their particular personalities, issyews, current shakiness, i just haven't been willing to go there with em. so my response has been to not talk to em at all, just so i won't hafta either go there or lie. there's a mature response, huh?

so.

options...

it aint like i'm gonna call the ER and announce it to everybody over the loudspeaker, just so it can be out and dealt with. (i sorta told chi chi i'd do it if she didn't tell em, but she knew i was joking.) i tried to tell her that she could take the reap approach... tell her good friend jay who's a poobah doc at the hospital admin level and let him spread the news to folk, when she aint on shift. they can have a lil time to absorb and react off-camera before chi chi sees em. i tried to tell her about the getting it out and owning it thing... that even though it may make her uncomfy for a lil while, it would be more of a bammmm and then over-with thing. it would happen so fast, really, so much faster than all this delaying. well, she was having none of it. which means i guess there aint a damn thing i can do.

what do y'all think? am i just over-worrying?


p.s. i feel bad even talkin about this crap, cuz it makes me feel as though i am bad-mouthin chi chi or something. the majority of the time, she is happy, cheery, batty, herself. i don't mean to make it sound as though she's in a deep, dark, depressed place or she's turned into an emotional 5-year-old or anything.

it just worries me. i can't make it stop worryin me. chi chi's luvv for the beezle is not something i can truly express. she was sooo fucquin proud of being able to be elizabeth's patron. she was so excited about e's future. whenever she was off work, she spent basically every spare moment with beez, taking her out to eat, to movies, playin games, shoppin. i said once that i thought the hardest phone call anyone has ever had to make was when the exhole had to call me right after e's fall. well, no. the hardest call was when chi chi called me. i know she tortures herself over not recognizing any danger signs in the beezle... she considers herself as being on the clock then and somehow responsible, no matter what i try to tell her. yet everyday, she goes out and wears herself to the bone in her job. she buys happy stuff for everyone around her. she does her chi thing, in spite of it all. i dunno what i'm sayin, so i should probably shuddup about it at this point. mwhaha.

p.p.s. just kiddin. i'm done.

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby never/ever » 12 Oct 2012, 02:25

I'm sorry kath that no one responded yet- guess the ignominy of this board is that it has less foot traffic than NDL where you'd be wading through responses by now. But I read your post earlier and mulled over it, in the wake of some things I was going over my own demeanour lately.

From what I gather is that chi chi has thrown up some extraordinary walls around her and she is determined to slight it one brick at a time all by herself. It's hard to pinpoint if she is doing that right now and at what rate the bricks are tumblin' down but, as hard as it is for her environment of loving people around her, it's something she must do herself. The hard thing is to decide whether you would want to 'betray her trust' in telling her colleagues so they can offer the extra chisels to break down barriers or is that betrayal will lead to the wall being broken down less quick or even heighten it. I don't know chi chi at all so I can't judge but the things you describe are all part of that fight for control (oh how I recognise that part!). The one insight I'd like to add is that sometimes people in grief aren't aware of their own behaviour.

A few days ago a colleague of mine walked up to me and complimented me on my behaviour. Totally out of the blue. I asked her what she meant and she said that I appeared more relaxed, fit and composed in dealing with staff and my work. Which made me think about how I had been before and what had transpired in the time that it took me to get to that improved state of mind.
And I realized that ever since my parents had been diagnosed with cancer back in 2006 I had been living in an intense pressurized situation which I thought I had dealt with pretty well. Going back about some of the issues I had and how much of this could be harked back by the fear, sleeplessness and anger I was experiencing during a lot of that time. Being by myself in a far away country wasn't exactly aiding to the situation- I bottled most of it up just like my dad always did, not acknowledging the net of support that was available to me. I just didn't know, didn't want to put myself into a help-situation with the people I cared most for being engaged in a much bigger battle themselves.

It's almost a year since my mother passed away but for only a few very short weeks I realize that the pressure is nearly gone (I still have a little sister I worry about a lot), the sadness isn't but because of not having any other problems it is easier to deal with. I can't figure out what process I followed just to get to that mental state, I presume that getting myself into physical shape helped too but it happened. Of course I can still have the odd snap but somehow in my daily living pattern I can now say that the whole circumstance of what happened in my family has led me to a new understanding of me, what I can handle and deal with and, after a year, can relativate about the things that are important. And in that respect that was the wall I had to break down, without actually knowing I was doing that.
Does that make sense?

I can't offer any help as to how to approach your daughter as she is in a lot of pain. I guess a lot of the same pain and frustration that built up inside of her for some time is seeking a way to get out. The thing is that breakthroughs in these situations can come from absolutely nowhere- from sitting on a couch with a friend watching a movie that at some stage pierces through with a little stab to some emotional response, a song or whatever or if a person from outside of the family can break it down- the latter always a danger as I understand that doctors make the worst patients.
I guess chi chi will get there in her own time. Being in a high-pressure work situation isn't gonna help but she'll find that spot in time where she can say that she has finally been able to start to deal with her emotions on a more personal level.

I hope you find yourself a way with your emotions kath- it's a killer to see your child go through so much and try to level it up in the way she is treating you at the moment. These posts are a good way ot articulating yourself and, me for one, I am hearing ya.
kath wrote:i do not wanna buy the world a fucquin gotdamn coke.

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby kath » 13 Oct 2012, 22:58

ahh, maarts. i ::smacketh:: upon thee. thank you for such a caring, thoughtful response. (and please don't feel bad that no one else has responded in this thread. it's not an easy topic to respond to, even under the best of circumstances... even when it's all academic and theoretical, as opposed to being reality... even when the topic is presented by someone who doesn't feel the need to write word jungles of thick, dense stylistic underbrush, only accessible with the sharpest of attention-span machetes. i do know that the folk around here care. i've gotten a few responses outside of this thread, too.)

It's almost a year since my mother passed away but for only a few very short weeks I realize that the pressure is nearly gone (I still have a little sister I worry about a lot), the sadness isn't but because of not having any other problems it is easier to deal with. I can't figure out what process I followed just to get to that mental state, I presume that getting myself into physical shape helped too but it happened. Of course I can still have the odd snap but somehow in my daily living pattern I can now say that the whole circumstance of what happened in my family has led me to a new understanding of me, what I can handle and deal with and, after a year, can relativate about the things that are important. And in that respect that was the wall I had to break down, without actually knowing I was doing that. Does that make sense?


it makes perfect sense, it does.

my sister is a complicated person. she's at once the toughest bitch in the entire world AND the most fragile emotionally, even naive, child-like, inexperienced. she's at once the smartest, most brilliant person i have ever met AND the most clueless and oblivious about certain things, things close to the heart, things hard to express for anyone. she's at once the most goofily open AND the most closed off and self-protective.

i guess we're all made up of those strange polar opposite characteristics, but she gives new meaning to polarity, honestly.

and i think you are right. she's gonna hafta get there on her own, wherever "there" is for her. what i should do is what i've always done, what i do naturally (or what i try to do, with varying degrees of success): encourage openness and communication by my own example... foster the healthiest possible way of lookin at the beezie's passing, again, by my own example, not only cuz it's the right way in my heart of hearts but also just becuz it's the healthiest way... keep everything lightened up, probably my mantra in this life, make her laugh, so i can at least somehow buffer her raw pain, provide some counterweight to it, whatever, which might get her to chill enough to be able to open up and deal... and i dunno, just love on her and be there for her, whether i'm physically there or not.

there is no right way or wrong way to handle grief. there are only ways that are right for an individual. and individual responses are as distinct and unique as fingerprints. obviously, as difficult as yer situation was with yer parents, as hard as it has been for you, you have managed to get thru those stormy seas, so to speak. i myself have my days where it's really fucquin hard... it's amazing to me, how even the smallest lil beezie things, reminders, will hit me the hardest. what also surprises me is when my own psyche regresses somehow in those stages of grief and i find myself downright furious at the beezle (sniff)... furious at her for shredding apart chi chi and reap and attila, people so sweet and loving at the core and the very people who always worshipped her the most. i hate even admitting that, cuz it really is not normal me and not something i'm proud of. i get furious at myself when i find myself getting mad at her. cuz allll that crap i said in my bloggy parts, i really do believe, about her mindset at the time and all that. my normal self doesn't spend time blaming her at all. my normal self understands her in as much as her actions are understandable from the outside. i'm just bein honest, though.

my point with the above is just to show that it all kinda goes together. the pride, the love, the hurt, the grief. it's hard for anyone to balance all of that and stay fucquin sane. i think chi chi is an incredible person, balancing the best way she can right now, the only way she can now. just as she has managed to make it thru the stormy seas of alllll the tragedies that have hit us in our family, all the fucquin heartbreak, i hafta be confident that she will do it with the beez, as well... even though i know this loss has hit her the hardest of all.

thanks again, for taking the time to share yer stuff with me, for doin it in spite of how difficult it is a thing to talk about. thanks for sympathizing, for understanding, for being encouraging. i do mean it, sir. smacksmacksmack.

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby sloopjohnc » 08 Jan 2013, 03:18

Late to the party, but the simple question is why haven't you asked your own sister why she's doing this. If she can't cry to her colleagues and friends, she could probably talk to you about it, couldn't she?

I don't really know either of you aside from the board, and only you, so I don't know what your relationship is like.

I would take it that your sister confronts death and family almost every day, and like you wrote, has to build an emotional wall around yourself and might be finding it tough to differentiate between her family and the job because she's been doing it for so long and it's worked for her so far.
Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk!

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby kath » 11 Jan 2013, 14:10

sloopjohnc wrote:Late to the party, but the simple question is why haven't you asked your own sister why she's doing this. If she can't cry to her colleagues and friends, she could probably talk to you about it, couldn't she?


i'm sure i didn't make this clear in my earlier post, but i did ask her months ago, when i first found out that she was avoiding telling the people at work. most of my earlier explanations for her not wantin to lose it at work and why... that's exactly what came flyin outta her face, just in sister-shorthand and at 90wps (words per second).

i really do understand that part of it, completely. back in the mists of time, when i had a job, when i was on the clock, i was pretty much the same.

it's really weird, when ya think about it. chi chi and i are opposites in so many ways. i'm an extroverted, laid-back, out-with-it, open lil social butterfly (swoopswoop). she's an introverted, uncomfortable in social settings, shy, conservative, high-strung midgo. i was always words and music and poetry and ideas... she was math, science, skepticism, rationalism. (i'm making it sound as though we don't have tons of crossover... we do... just go with it anyway.) i always had a lotta friends and since circa 8th grade, i was always in some kinda romantic relationship. she was very sporadic on both fronts. i had street smarts, she had book smarts.

it makes perfect sense that i would be a teacher and she would be a doc. what may seem ironic (to everybody else, but not to me): i could be in a field where my strengths involved being expressive, honest, outspoken, open, diplomatic, easily connectible with others and able to field all kinds of different people (hubbahubba), often dealing with source material full of death, pain, trauma, tragedy, high emotion, etc... but i'm right there with the chi when it comes to personal stuff and work. i took being professional very seriously. aint no way, no how, i was ever gonna lose it in front of colleagues or students. people felt comfortable enough losin it in front of me (in private), but i never did.

the closest i ever came, in case you've forgotten the story: during the ugly divorce, when the exhole accosted me right outside of my office as classes were changing and people were swarming everywhere, with him screaming and cursing and out of his rightish mind. if i had had a gun, i might've shot him, just for making that kinda scene on my professional turf. (i didn't have a gun. instead, i called my lawyer and slapped a restraining order on his ass.) the *one* time i was gonna be even marginally not in total control and possibly loopy in front of studentia~~when i had to warn a class i was having hand surgery a few hours before and i might be kinda groggy~~a guy in the back raised his hand excitedly and asked me if he could bring his camcorder.

anywayyyy, however understandable her wanting/needing to stay professional is, i think it's the collateral damage from her nondisclosure that's the real problem, that emotional regression i was talkin about in my original chi post. the more she stays quiet? the more shut off she is, the less she talks about any of it in any context, the stronger the denial becomes, the more paint-it-blacker she is when she *does* say anything. ya know? yer not late to the party, cuz it is *still* happening. it feeds off itself.

just for the record, i do not require or force people to let it out. i do not expect other people to handle things the way i do (ready... set... YAPYERASSOFF.) but i'm tellin ya, in chi chi's case, the cycle is definitely not healthy. just a few weeks ago when i was at the homestead, she was doin even more stuff that freaked me out.

i think i need to be around her much more often. noooooo, i aint tryin to say i am mother teresa with a shrink's degree and pompoms on the side, some magical cure for what ails her. i am sure that in 99 out of every 100 areas, i am what experts would call a very, very bad influence. but when it comes to beezology? i am the right kinda influence, the one she needs. as it is now, she only gets my beezosophy piecemeal, broken up, in lil doses, cuz i'm only around her a handful of times in any given year. reap and attila are around me 24/7, and i know i have rubbed off on em over time. their attitude is much better, healthier, more open, more positive. they've had the fullblown, nigh-daily, oft-repeated, very vocal, ODin version of my beezlism. ahem. they can't help but be inflluenced by it, the same way a lump of silly putty is influenced by a fucquin steamroller.

i mean, there *is* no one else around her to provide any other positive influence... any influence at all... cuz no one around her knows it. it may be understandable that she wants to stay professional and in control at work, but in her desire to avoid the emotional outpouring, the practical effect on her is emotional drought. she gets no comfort, no encouragement, no exchange of expression, nada. (sam, her hubby, is a wonderful man, loving, sweet, devoted... but he is just like chi chi herself is when it comes to dealing with heavy-duty emotions, and more often than not, he's just gonna follow her emotional lead.) the point: not only is she *not* getting boosted and buoyed by the people who care about her, what everydamnbody needs in some measure just as humans... at the same time, she doesn't have anyone to bounce off of. i think everybody knows this, which means i'm gonna say it anyway.... if you have dark, bleak, depressing, counterproductive, freaky, stressful thoughts, one of the worst things you can do is keep yerself isolated, alone, without other people to jump in there and give ya perspective, counter the devil's logic, offer feedback or advice or even good-natured distraction. otherwise, that icky crap just keeps feedin off itself.

sloopjohnc wrote:I would take it that your sister confronts death and family almost every day, and like you wrote, has to build an emotional wall around yourself and might be finding it tough to differentiate between her family and the job because she's been doing it for so long and it's worked for her so far.


yep, a point well-taken. she has had to be able to detach to be great at what she does. ya know, if i hadn't seen how she was at the start of this... if i had no sense of her getting worse... i wouldn't be as freaked.

i also meant what i said in my original post... it's pretty rare for me to question my own judgment about the stuff that really matters. it is even rarer for me to ask for advice... from anyone. (go ahead and count the times you've ever seen me do it. mwhahaHA.) i said something similar at some point in the beezography... but it's like i know my head is still plugged in and chugging along the way it always has... i'm pretty sure i'm reading things just as i always have... i look down at my journal and my handwriting looks exactly the same, but suddenly everyone close to me is lookin at the same page and tellin me it looks like greek. am i just over-freaking about chi... somehow as an overcompensation for the unhealthy results of the beezle's own nondisclosure policy? am i just freakier cuz i only have, like, a few family members left? has someone slipped me freak out vitamins when i wasn't lookin? yeahyeah. at the same time, no one here really knows me or chi chi or our relationship, so why would they feel comfy giving me advice? ack.

i never actually get around to resolving anything, do i? sniff. this calls for that healthiest of options... a sugary baked product.

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby kath » 26 Feb 2013, 16:14

i'm gonna add this, cuz it's one of those good things.

ya know, about a year after my brother died, i had that great dream about him, his message to me and all. somewhere in the back of my brain, i've kinda been waitin for a great beezle dream (as opposed to, say, the nightmare i described earlier.) not waiting consciously, really, not an active thing, but there, somewhere. well, i got one. last night, in fact.

it was short, really. i was standing in the kitchen at the homestead in new orleans. we were having some kinda big get together, some festive occasion, maybe a holiday feast or party, cuz the kitchen was packed, standing room only, with all these cheery, yappy people. never mind the fact that i only recognized a small percentage of em. everybody's havin a good time, whoever the fucque they are.

i am trying to locate a can of coke outta the fridge in the sardiney chaos... just openin the fridge door is a tricky task. i close the door and turn around, and there's the beezle, standing maybe six feet away in the crowd, yappin excitedly with her lil friend, whoever the hell the lil friend is. ya know what i mean, two teenage girls gigglin and whisperin and whatnot. she's the same age she was right before the fall, maybe 15, still that ass-long hair, her donnie darko tee shirt on. mwhaha.

what was so cool... the dream right then turned lucid. i suddenly knew i was in a dream, and i knew the beez was there and happy, right in front of me. there was no part of me that "wanted" some kinda message or wanted any answers or any single thought like that. i was just overjoyed and it was huggy time, bitches. so i get to her and i'm huggin her tight, even though i know she always hated that kinda overly huggy crap. but she's being overly indulgent this time and laughin nonstop, huggin me back... til it got to that point where the one word mommmmmmmmmmmm came out, meanin she wanted to go off with her lil friend and i needed to quit bein so damn mushy. so i let go, and still smilin she turned around to wander back to her lil friend.

right at that exact point, when she turned around, the scene changed in a snap. i was standin in my ma's bedroom, she was lyin down, in a nightgown, cradling a wee babe beezle, i dunno, 6 months old, maybe. i was still lucid, knowing the dream was a dream, not caring, wantin more huggy, dammit. i'm like, "ma, gimme that damn spawn," and my ma, i could tell, didn't wanna give her up at all and might cause some trouble over the issyew. (my ma, all over.) i had to insist a few times, before my ma let me grab her.

so i'm holdin wee beezbabe, huggin her, same as before, just happy, no thoughts, no analysis, no worries... and she looks up at me smiling and gigglin and lets loose one of those wee babe squeals of cackly hyper delight, throwin her head back and piercin my ear drums. then that deep, strong voice of my ma carries over from behind me somewhere and sez, "yew just give her back now, kathleen, dammit."

and i woke up.

cue any and all folk who would remind me how unreal dreams are, how slippery brains are, how suggestible psyches are, yaddayaddayadda. just like the dream i had of my brother, it aint about the thing being "real" or not... it's about how the thing hits ya all the way at yer core, how it influences yer own reality. and that was the single most happifying dream i have ever had in my entire life... no dream interpretation even required. ya.

p.s. i said somewhere earlier in this thread that i would kinda sorta like to change this thread title. not to take away from the wonderful lluvvin responses.. more to reflect what i think the feel should be, when the dust settles and when all is said and done. even if we just change it to her name, that would be good.

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby never/ever » 04 Mar 2013, 11:37

What a great story....that's so great that you have such a lucid dreamtime-moment.

I always wanted to have one of those moments like you have at the end of episodes of Cold Case...where after the case is solved the deceased stands and either the detective or one of the relatives sees the person involved standing clearly in front of them until they fade away...it would at times choke me up as I wanted to have a moment like that with my folks, acknowledging that they were watching me and showing that they were happy.
Of course that'll never happen. In a way I know that they are proud. That will do for now.
kath wrote:i do not wanna buy the world a fucquin gotdamn coke.

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Charlie O.
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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby Charlie O. » 04 Mar 2013, 16:52

I'm really happy that you had that dream, kath. I know from personal experience how genuinely healing such things can be, "rational" or no.
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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby kath » 07 Mar 2013, 12:53

thank y'all. ::smacksmack::

ya know, maarts, you say that cold case thing, and i know exactly what you mean. but you've gotta remember that my brain is just kinda constructed that way, right? i've always had vivid dreams all along the scale... nightmares, message dreams, goofy dreams, silent lucidity, you name it. the only reason i was part expecting the beez dream was cuz i've had the like before. i've seen that movie, too. i figured it was coming.

but sometimes you hafta watch what ya wish for, too. with my brother dream, i could smell him in the room when i woke up. i told my sister that, and she pulled out a tongue depressor and checked my head for fever. what i didn't tack on at the end of the above beez dream... i had just a flash of a second of thinkin i saw her standing across the room. it was a trick of the light... ya know how when ya just wake up, yer eyes are all blurry, and you can have a peripheral light source manifest as globby blurry blobbism til yer eyes clear up? just for the teeensiest fraction of a sec between blurry and clear, i saw her face, her shape.

i did not add this above, mainly cuz i know folk already think i'm batty, and i aint sure cementing the battier is really worth it. when i told reap about it, he got that look. you can guess the look i'm talkin about. the eyes full of luvvin concern maskin ten degrees of panic, the eyes that say ya want i should make ya some chicken soup, darlin... ya want some advil? right as the hand is dialin 911.

but the truth behind all of it is... you say in a way you know yer parents are proud of you. ya know what i would say to that? do you really need the cold case movie, dude? can you not see it, right in front of you? i can see it, for the folk i haven't had cast in dream shows.

perhaps it would also make you feel a tad better/more blessedly sane knowing i've taken farrrrrr too many hallucinogens in my life.

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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby kath » 22 Sep 2013, 16:45

Image


happy birthday to my beluvved elizabeth erin of infinite beezleness, on this, what would've been her 23rd birthday. those of you on FB know i do my rolling day long beezlepalooza over there, but i thought i'd go ahead and at least get sumthin up here now, while some of ye folk in freaky, unnatural time zones have an international beezle day left. mwhaha. i'll be back later with a few additions.

the point, of course: to celebrate all she was/is/will be/stands for. grope yer local artist (this can be yer own self, naturally). hug yer local beluvved. carpe yer local diem. ya. have a fucquin day.

::smack::


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Re: I'm shocked and stunned at the terrible news

Postby Cantankerous » 22 Sep 2013, 19:30

Happy birthday beezle






x
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Re: elizabeth erin, the beezle

Postby Charlie O. » 22 Sep 2013, 19:38

Have a good one, beezle and kin!
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Re: elizabeth erin, the beezle

Postby Seymore Porn » 22 Sep 2013, 21:21

I'd love to post something earth shattering and I can't.
I can thank Elizabeth because she caused me to examine myself as a parent, as did her mother Kath, who counts high in the few extraordinary people I know. I can only imagine what Kath and Reap's year has been like, I couldn't wish that on anyone.
Kath, Reap, Attila and Beezle, you are in my thoughts. Reap Attila and Beezle, my knowledge of you is second hand, and Kath is confined to here and Facebook. I'm blessed, thank you.
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Re: elizabeth erin, the beezle

Postby Belle Lettre » 22 Sep 2013, 23:13

Much love to you all. Xx
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Re: elizabeth erin, the beezle

Postby Count Machuki » 23 Sep 2013, 03:41

All right!
:grin: / :-(
Let U be the set of all united sets, K be the set of the kids and D be the set of things divided.
Then it follows that ∀ k ∈ K: K ∈ U ⇒ k ∉ D

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Re: elizabeth erin, the beezle

Postby never/ever » 23 Sep 2013, 12:40

I'd like to walk in this garden...somehow I believe E is already in it.


kath wrote:i do not wanna buy the world a fucquin gotdamn coke.


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