After experiencing the death of someone whom one had a close relationship with there is often an emotional effect of feeling great sorrow and depression followed by a shockingly heightened joy and attentiveness to life. One often feels guilty for the latter. Death can make you profoundly aware of life and all of life in this world is borrowed time, so you feel awakened. Do not feel guilty for this because the person you love and is now absent in body would not want you to live in this manner. Enjoy these moments of joyful emotions and be thankful for them because they will pass rapidly in the early stages of grief. Loss will suddenly strike you soon thereafter, often magnified by the reality and emotions of the deprivation of the physical presence of the one who is loved. In these moments pause and be thankful for your shared lives, though they are now absent from sight, sound, and touch.
I have found that after the fresh wound has healed one will experience these same moments of sorrow and loss, but instead of intense pain there can be a melancholic joy and thankfulness in the recollection of those who have passed through the veil of physical life.
A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetry gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetry gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
While Wilde is on mine
So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
All those people, all those lives
Where are they now ?
With loves, and hates
And passions just like mine
They were born
And then they lived
And then they died
It seems so unfair
I want to cry
O GOD, whose days are without end, and whose mercies cannot be numbered; Make us, we beseech thee, deeply sensible of the shortness and uncertainty of human life; and let thy Holy Spirit lead us in holiness and righteousness, all our days: that, when we shall have served thee in our generation, we may be gathered unto our fathers, having the testimony of a good conscience; in the communion of the Catholic Church; in the confidence of a certain faith; in the comfort of a reasonable, religious, and holy hope; in favour with thee our God, and in perfect charity with the world. All which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
- The Book of Common Prayer.
ALMIGHTY and everliving God, we yield unto thee most high praise and hearty thanks, for the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all thy saints, who have been the choice vessels of thy grace, and the lights of the world in their several generations; most humbly beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow the example of their stedfast-ness in thy faith, and obedience to thy holy commandments, that at the day of the general Resurrection, we, with all those who are of the mystical body of thy Son, may be set on his right hand, and hear that his most joyful voice: Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Grant this, O Father, for the sake of the same, thy Son Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
- The Book of Common Prayer.
How can they love God whom they have not seen?
“If a man say, I love the unborn children and careth not for children that are born, he is a liar: for he that careth not for the children around him whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” - The Venerable Bean.
“I’m sorry, Master. I was afraid and I went and hid your dollar in a Swiss Bank account. Here, have what is yours.’ But his Master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed?”
This (paraphrase verse) is directly followed by the parable “I was hungry, and you fed me not… ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
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LOBOTOMIES FOR ALL!
“Don’t ask questions… that’s disrespectful.” - Mr. Bruce Forrest, Bible teacher. 1986.
This directive was tersely directed at the class of my 12th Grade Bible class when someone raised their hand and asked a question. This was the year I had begun to reject Fundamentalist-Evangelicalism.
GOP of Texas RPT 2012 Platform.
“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), critical thinking skills, and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
I have been an educator for over a decade. What this really means is that the GOP is doubling down on learn-by-rote fact recitation – the worst of the pro-testing advocates who want anti-analytical drones who can press button A, B or C. - “Would ya’ll like fries with that?” *BEEP*
Don’t you dare question! Hey, don’t like it. You better man up, because corporal punishment of your child is legal in Texas. *WHAK!* If they haven’t numbed and dumbed the student’s ability to think, they will beat it out of them. Ah. American exceptionalism.
Well- you could always move to Louisiana where a biology textbook used by a “Christian” school, which will be accepting students with publicly funded vouchers in the fall, says that the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland is real. This is their intellectual means to debunk evolutionary theory and prove 24hr-7day creationism.
Be ye transformed by the removal of your mind.
Sitting in the kitchen area of my studio I began to daydream about the history permeated within my old wood table. I made Easter Eggs on this table, carved pumpkins, did homework, confessed to bad grades, and started every morning at this table.
The kitchen dining nook, walls papered with pale blue and white gingham, housed a small twelve inch television. After school cartoons were watched in the TV Room down stairs: Speed Racer, Batman, Gilligan’s Island, and Bugs Bunny cartoons. Early evening programmes were often watched on the little set in the kitchen while my mother was preparing dinner or we were eating without my father on nights when he was occasionally working late. When really young I would dance to the Mod Squad theme song in the kitchen. I quit doing that when I was prompted to dance. I was far too shy and prompting promoted crippling self-consciousness.
In primary school Little House on the Prairie was a big hit and considered a good wholesome family show, unlike Lavern and Shirley which was supposed to be off limits. I wonder how well Little House would be received today considering 25 year old Almanzo couldn’t wait to get into Laura’s 17 year old bonnet.
In Grade 6 I realized how overwrought, sentimental, and ridiculously melodramatic Little House had become. This was 1980 and Mary had already gone blind and the town fought anthrax. Perhaps it always was melodramatic. This was the year I understood how awful this form of writing and acting was. I just could not bear this show anymore, at least not without mocking it.
To start 1980 off Laura and Mary were staying alone at the School For the Blind when they were taken hostage by a trio of escaped convicts. This season was the final straw. When Albert experimented with smoking in the basement of the School For the Blind he got shooed out of the basement and hid his still-lit pipe in some cloths. The pipes ignite and the fire kills Alice Garvey and Mary’s baby son. I had Principal Edward R. Rooney’s reaction to Ferris Bueler’s sick day excuse: “Dead Grandmother?”
I began to grope around the kitchen “I’m BLIND!”
My sister tersely told me to be quiet. She was taking this seriously. The show was designed to make people cry on command. It was noted on a TV and movie review site somewhere that it was:
“quite possibly the first TV show where male adults, and practically everyone else, would be seen crying in all seriousness as opposed to for comical effect. Because of this trend, once the show got aired in Iceland, it quickly got nicknamed “Crying in The Cornfield” by viewers and haters alike.”
How could I mock poor Mary. Then - the dead baby. That was it! I remember blurting out “Dead baby?” My sister was incredulous. “Oh come on! Mom… this show has become ridiculous!
“Shut up!” my sister said.
“Candace- don’t say shut up.” mom said.
“But…” tears starting to well up.
“It’s ridiculous! Every week it’s a disaster! Doesn’t anything normal ever happen anymore? Everyone is going blind. Buildings burning down, dead babies?”
“MOM!” my sister said in a near wail.
Groping around now with my eyes shut “Has anyone seen my baby!”
No one can pay attention to the TV now. My sister ran from the kitchen upset. I think my mother was trying to suppress laughter because she had let a small giggle escape earlier confirming for me that yes, this show had become absurd. I remember being told not to mock the show in front of my sister because she really liked it still. At the end of the year when Mary’s husband regained his sight by being in a explosion I started to laugh riotously even though two sets of death ray eyes were shooting me.
