When Sister Visits

My sister comes to visit me tomorrow at my home in Florida. I'm excited! I've been cleaning house, washing clothes, cooking some meals, and getting the car she gave me serviced and washed. We'll have fun if I can manage to keep my behavior acceptable to her.

She's a gifted elementary school music teacher and accomplished pianist with a Ph.D. in music, and lives in Maryland in a sturdy brick house on acres of land with her life-time husband. She also lives close to her two talented sons and their talented, exceptional families. She has five grandchildren ranging in age from elementary through high school, some of whom she taught to play the piano, beginning them at early ages. Now they're becoming accomplished musicians on other instruments. One could say my sister has lived a successful life, and I'm immensely proud of her!

I, in contrast to her, am bipolar, childless, thrice-divorced, and live alone in a mobile home (at least until a hurricane or tornado knocks it down) on a Social Security check, Medicare, and food stamps. However, I, too, have been successful--I've successfully remained alive for more than six decades in spite of my efforts to die while still resident in my youthful face and figure. I long-ago outlived that possibility!

I went off my bipolar meds in 2001. It just seemed to be the right thing to do. I believe I'm not in the terrible mental anguish I used to be in before diagnosis and during the 16 years I was on every medication out there to stabilize me. 

In fact, I've been sure that I was somehow miraculously healed of this noxious affliction and that I wake up every day feeling and behaving consistently and predictably. Recently, two of my friends who see me frequently have informed me that I'm wrong. They they never know who I will be from one time to the next.  Some days, one of my friends said, I'm "higher than a kite" and never stop talking. Other days I'm so depressed I "can hardly get a word out." Hmm. Really?  Okay. But I haven't been altogether wrong. I do feel and behave consistently and predictably like myself, from my internal view. But my poor friends!  How can anyone put up with me? 

Well, my sister can't. When I came home from college for visits, all excited to see my sister and mother, and with so much to tell them, I could see them roll their eyes at each other after only two hours of my non-stop talking.

My sister avoided me altogether for many years. Sometimes she'd magically pop back into my life for a month or so in phone conversations, maybe just to see if I'd changed stripes to spots, and then the phone calls would stop and she'd be gone. Perhaps I'd crossed her lines again.  

I lived in the same town as Mother for years, but when my sister came to visit Mother, she was very clear that I was unwelcome to join the visits, and often I didn't know she and her family were in town. Then suddenly, after not seeing her for ten years, her family came to town and wanted to come to the restaurant where I was performing music, to see me and be with me. And they did.

When our mother was dying, my sister flew down to stay at the Hospice House with Mother.  I went into a rant one day about how the doctors in the hospital had killed Mother, and my sister begged me to "take a pill." I believed at the time that she couldn't stand my behavior and wanted me to shut up. I wanted to accommodate her and wondered which pills I had that would transform me into someone she could tolerate. I had only Zanax and Klonopin, and a small dose of either makes me go to sleep. So did my sister just want me to go to bed and sleep the rest of the week? I didn't take a pill or stop talking.

Many of our famous political leaders and activists talked and wrote a lot. John Adams did. It's said he wrote all over the margins of his books as he read them, like I do--a dialogue with the author, of course! It's said Winston Churchill was bipolar and a drinker. And have you read Mark Twain recently? His new autobiography, Volume I, is out. It's 700 pages long, with two more volumes to be published in the next few years! 

When my sister visits, I'm pretty clear on her rules. She will share very few, if any, of her personal thoughts, feelings, or ideas about what she believes or what's going on in her relationships, and she doesn't want to hear mine, either. I'm also not to talk about politics or religion. I think she believes she's a "capitalist," and a Christian, and she doesn't want to hear anything from me, who she believes is an atheist and a "socialist." I would correct her impression and say that I'm comfortable with the mysteries of life without needing to cling to any belief to explain them, and I'm a "populist."

Somehow I can circumvent all of her rules when I shift into what I call my comic strip personality, where every idea has a punchline that makes her laugh. Yep. I know how to make her laugh. We're sisters! We share the same sense of humor. We have the same voices when we talk, many of the same mannerisms in facial expressions, and we can sing together, too--and share our new songs and creative ideas with each other. And she's fun to cook for. She likes my salmon patties. 

I need her to help me organize my projects (four books and another album of original songs) during the five days she's here. And she can help me make decisions about organizing and disposing of my belongings. I'm sure she doesn't want to come in here and try to make decisions about all of my keepsakes when I die.

This is my sister's first visit to Mother's house since I've been living in it. My dark mind believes everyone, human and non human, dies while living in this house, including Mother, her husband, and recently my dog Savannah. When I first moved in here, a neighbor told me in a whisper that this mobile home community is nicknamed "The Lord's Waiting Room." He was right. Handfuls of people residing here die every month.

I want to hang a welcome sign on the entrance door for my sister: "Welcome to the House of Death in The Lord's Waiting Room. Enter at your own risk." I wonder if she shares that part of my sense of humor.

I'm ready to leave this life now, but not until I get my lifetime of creative work out into the world. I'd also like to know what my sister hides from me about herself, and I'd like to be acceptable to her, and even loved by her, for myself, not as someone she has to control in order to be able to tolerate. I believe that I am more than my behavior, more than just a walking poster-adult for bipolar disorder. My wishes all might take longer to fulfill than time I have left on this planet. So be it. For now, my sister and I can share laughter and music. That's more than enough!

Real Life in Everyday Moments

I see a news report on America's involvement in Libya and Mr. Obama's refusal to follow his legal community's recommendations to ask Congress for permission, and I remember my years passionately protesting the Vietnam War. I support the congressmembers who sued Mr. Obama.

I watch and listen to Rachel Maddow making us aware of how so many states are circumventing the Roe vs. Wade ruling and shutting down women's options for abortion, and I remember when I became unintentionally pregnant and almost died from an underground abortion performed by a 90-year-old man living in a row house in the slums of a city, before abortions were legal. I'm afraid for women who become unintentionally pregnant and can't find a safe way to terminate their pregnancies.

My African Grey Carmen fluffs her wings, lifts one foot high in the air, and bobs her head up and down as we dance in the living room to music tracks on Lance and Huguette's latest CD, and I remember my years of friendship with those two wonderful Canadian entertainers who perform winters in Florida as a duo. I miss them and wish them well.

And while laughing at Carmen's version of dancing, I remember the day I screamed one of those werewolf-victim-horror-movie screams into the receiver and dropped the phone a second after I answered a potential employer's phone call while Carmen was perched on my other hand. She flew for the phone I was holding to my ear and sank her beak deeply into my neck and down my back in eight places, bloodying my hand as I tried to pry her off my back. I managed to pick up the phone and tell the employer I'd call him back in a few minutes after I stopped the bleeding. Carmen had bitten me a fraction of an inch next to my jugular vein. I stopped the bleeding. The caller's eardrum was likely split, but he hired me as an editor in his company anyway. I'm grateful for the times Carmen makes me laugh, and I NEVER pick up a telephone or the TV remote control when she is not safely bolted inside her cage!

I work with my voice student and comfort her when she gets frustrated and cries, remembering the college years when I ran out of the room crying during my weekly voice lessons with my 70-year-old Hungarian opera star teacher, Lilly Justus. I wonder if I'm a strict, focused, exacting teacher like Justus, demanding the utmost effort from my students, but never letting them know it's okay to not be able to get there--yet.

I learn that my first husband has died, and just when I start to feel sad and remember how deeply I loved him, I remember how he lied under oath to the Catholic priests on a statement he signed in order to get our marriage annulled in the Catholic Church so he could marry a girl from a strict Catholic family. The marriage was annulled, but his false testimony could have sent me to prison. I'll write that story sometime, and for this moment, I'll balance my memories in that gully of disparity between my adoration of him and my anger and disappointment, mostly (now I know) at myself for my consent to his abuses. 

I think about drinking an alcoholic beverage to soothe emotional pain, and I remember the last time I drank twenty years ago. I was taking Lithium prescribed for my bipolar disorder and got alcohol poisoning. Certain that I would die any moment, I crawled on my hands and knees to my bed and climbed onto it while the man I loved stood over me furiously shouting every curse word and insult in his military vocabulary and calling me every filthy name he could think of. For this moment, I'm keepin' that memory green, and I refuse to drink any alcoholic beverage.

My friend who is on a cross-country road trip calls and tells me the antibiotics she's on for a sinus infection aren't working, and I remember my years on the road with my band when one (or more) of us got sick and went to hospital emergency rooms for medical care. Now there are walk-in clinics. I tell her it's okay to stop in a city and find one of those and spend a few hours waiting to see the doctor to get a prescription for a different antibiotic. One's health always comes first, I've learned.

My human mind is always scanning the landscape of present and past and galloping off into fantasy, possibility, and imagination. Controlling my mind to "not think" about or submerge negative or painful events takes too much energy, but I try always to be mindful of my thoughts and to sort out imagination and fantasy from reality so I can choose which ones I will focus on and act on.

Mistakes and life experiences are our teachers, and experiencing every rich blessing in the moment calls out imagination, memory, and associated meanings and emotions.

Kahlil Gibran writes in "The Prophet, "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?"

For this moment, I will give myself permission to be totally human and revel in my joyful kangaroo mind as it turns cartwheels and leaps now into the present moment, now into imagination, and now into the past years of my rich, fully-lived life, without boundaries or limitations.

Letting my mind loose to wander can cause a public relations problem. Yesterday wasn't the first time a good friend has said, "Renelle, you think too much!"  

Remembering Savannah

Savannah's charisma must have been partly her shiny black coat and partly her jaunty trot with the way her head moved fluidly from the left to the right and back to the left so as not to miss anything. She was the canine equivalent of a Tennessee Walking Horse. She was more popular than I was! Strangers stopped and got out of their cars in the middle of streets to come over to pet her. Neighbors invited her into their yards to play with their dogs. She was used to cars stopping beside us on our walks and the head leaning out the window and looking down at her and saying, "Hello, Savannah." She walked straight to the window and raised her head to acknowledge the greeter. I never minded being invisible when I was with her. Anyone who showed love to my dog was showing love to me.

Savanna and Me

It's been nearly four months since my beloved rottie Savannah died. I've been wishing I were a computer that could be reset back to a previous date. I would go back in time to the years when Savannah walked at a proud, spirited trot, without a limp showing pain; before the growths started lumping up inside her body; when she could hold her own in rough play with other neighborhood large breeds. 

I wish I could reset to before all the times I let her down, beginning with the first minute I brought her home from the shelter in the front seat of my mini-compact car, with her body falling in folds onto the floor, with no space where it could fit all together, and her head, neck and chest cramming into the space between my legs and the steering wheel, making steering the car almost impossible. All I could do was to keep shoving her in sections over to the other seat and hope we'd make it home. She just wasn't a front-seat dog!

I got her in November of 2001, after I'd been robbed on THE 9/11, and a few weeks after I'd had a hysterectomy. My music equipment was stolen on that 9/11 day, and I was unable to make it to my gig at the restaurant that night. The police told me to get a motion sensor that barked like a big dog to protect myself. I decided it was time again to get a real dog for a companion, but a large one.

Olivia went with me to the shelter on the first day

The woman at the animal shelter talked to me about what I wanted and then brought Savannah out to me in the yard where I could get acquainted with her. The woman told me she rescued and bred rottweilers, and this sweet-natured rottie of sterling quality was perfect for me. The shelter had named her "Savannah." Animal rescue had found her only the week before walking along a major highway with only a choker chain around her neck. 

I'd always had long-haired dogs, most of them cute little wiffy-wuffies with shoe-button noses, and as I looked at Savannah's short black fur and eyes wide apart, I wondered if I could ever learn to love her. We walked slowly together, while the shelter volunteer gave me tips on how to take care of her. To praise her, I was to simply pat her on her wide chest. Before I left, dog and I looked at each other and she moved towards me and gave me a faint lick on my face. I went home that afternoon without her. The next day, I went back with photos of my backyard to prove it was fenced all the way around, and adopted Savannah.

The shelter workers assured me that she had been thoroughly checked over by a veterinarian and judged to be healthy, but when I got her home and observed her, something told me she was very sick. My own vet discovered that she had the bacteria in her body that dogs get from drinking stagnant water, and she had a large tumor that had grown from some tissue left from a time when she'd been spayed.

I called the animal shelter, and they told me they believed Savannah would have a good home with me, and agreed to pay the bill. My friend Norm and I took Savannah to the vet hospital for her surgery and brought her back home that night. Norm and I will both remember that night forever. We had laid Savannah on the floor of the backseat, but when we got home, she was in too much pain to get herself up, or to let us move her. We couldn't get her out of the car. It was after dark, and cold. I covered her with a blanket and left her there. About 30 minutes later, we looked out and saw her sitting up in the backseat, ready to join us in the house.

The vet believed Savannah was five years old, but based on her energy, I guessed that she was more likely two or three. Her temperament was sweet, and I had no doubt she had only been loved by her previous owner. A few weeks after her surgery, a new obedience training class was starting, for a nominal fee, and even though Savannah and I were still recovering from our surgeries, I believed it was time for us to get trained. She was a 75-pound full-grown dog, and I knew I would have to be able to speak a command to her. Moving her physically would not be an option.

The class was held in a very large room, with 50 other dogs and twice that number of people. The trainer stood in the middle of the floor speaking a microphone that projected through a booming speaker system, and she yelled at me constantly throughout the two very long hours: "Renelle, make your dog sit up." "Renelle, don't let that rottie get near that little dog!" "Renelle, watch your dog!" It's no wonder. Instead of sitting, Savannah was lying down. Instead of standing, she was dragging me all over the room, trying to herd all the dogs and all of the people into her own pack. Both of us were exhausted before the class was halfway over.

I vowed not to go back the following week. My name being shouted through the speakers was still ringing in my ears--it was all too humiliating. But the day before the next training session, I remembered my psychiatrist had given me Zanax to take for my newest diagnosis of "social anxiety disorder." I was only taking a tiny .25 mg. just before I had to attend a social event, which wasn't very often, but the medicine worked. I decided to take that same dose on the nights before the training sessions. The trainer continued to yell at me and no one else through the 10 weeks, but on the medication, I wasn't bothered. 

Joanne Priaulx with Savannah

Although Savannah and I graduated, I don't think visitors who came to our home believed we had our diploma. Savannah was always playful and had to be the center of attention. Rotties are herders, and she was the best! She sat on a visitor's feet, leaning against him or her, always between the visitor and me. Then she would look at me with her wide, panting smile, so proud of how well she was protecting me. 

In later years, from watching the dog whisperer, I learned how to have body language that would "own" a visitor, if I thought Savannah's behavior would bother someone. Rev. Sue used to laughingly say that I spent the whole visit trying to discipline my dog.

I knew as the years went by how painful it became for Savannah to walk. She was diagnosed with hip displasia and arthritis in her shoulder. I tried her on every painkiller the vet could prescribe, but she had always had a sensitive digestive system--had to eat prescription food--and just couldn't tolerate the medicine. She was full of tumors, including one next to her spine. For several years, I often had to help her stand up when it was time to go for a walk. Sometimes I had to pull her down the street--walking was just too painful, but I believed if she didn't walk, she would be in worse pain.

Lu trying to get Savannah's Christmas Toy

She was always playful, and up until her last week, she initiated a play session at least once a day with her squeaky ice cream cone toy. It was the only toy she'd ever owned that she didn't chew up. The dog whisperer would have said she was "killing" her toys.  

A week after I was diagnosed with leukemia, and a week before I knew I would have to put her to sleep, Savannah got out while I was out grocery shopping. The front porch door was closed, but not properly latched. She didn't have her collar on, and even my next door neighbor believed she was a stray. Finally another neighbor told her the dog was Savannah. When I got home, Savannah was on the porch and the door was latched. The only way I knew something had gone wrong was how Savannah bent her head down in a guilty posture when she saw me.

I believe she ate something poisonous. Neighbors reported she'd been seen on streets on the other side of the community. By that evening, she was very sick and too weak to walk. She spent the night in the emergency animal hospital on fluids and a shot for nausea. After she was home the next day and the shot wore off, she became very sick again. She stopped eating and drinking. 

The vet assistants came out to the car and gave her another shot to stop her vomiting while she lay in the backseat. I thought she might start eating and drinking after that, but she didn't. Her coat looked uneven, her ribs started showing through, and she was too weak to stand. 

I knew that she would start vomiting again when the shot wore off the next morning. She and I sat together on a blanket in the front yard in the warm sun that last afternoon, relating to neighbors, each in our own way. That evening, friends came over to say good-bye, and one of my friends sent a chaplain in the neighborhood over to pray for Savannah. 

I stayed down in the carport room with her on that last night, dragging her on her bed out through the carport to the yard every few hours and standing her up so she could go. I didn't want her to be uncomfortable.

The next morning my friend Hazel returned to help me lift her on her bed onto the backseat of the car. I've known days so bad I've tried to take my life before, but this was the saddest, most intolerable day I've ever spent. I can still see the veterinary assistants gently lifting Savannah out onto a stretcher and following as they slowly carried her into the clinic. I can still see Hazel, Savannah and me sitting on the floor, Hazel crying, Savannah holding her head up, steadily looking into my eyes while I cradled her head in my hands and told her I loved her, while the doctor on the floor beside me did what he did. I remember coming home and crying until my head was pounding and I couldn't move out of the chair.

I wanted to write a song about Savannah and use it for the background music for a slideshow of all of her pictures. Then last night, I put a bunch of my recordings onto a CD for my friend to take with her on a trip, and as I listened to make sure the songs had all gone onto the CD properly, "At Last" started playing. I suddenly knew what those words meant--they perfectly expressed the gift that Savannah had been for me.

I worked all last night to learn how to make a slideshow, and I finally completed it and posted it on YouTube in memory of her. You can click on the picture in the right column to see it. 

I think bringing up this sadness again has helped me move onto another level of healing and acceptance. 

I would rewind my life and live those years with Savannah all over again if I could. But since that isn't an option, I still have my memories, and a hope--that I might one day be reunited with her in another dimension, maybe even in another life when she'll be the master and I'll be the dog. If she's as good a master as she was a dog, I have a lot to look forward to! 

RIP, Savannah. 1998 (?)- Feb. 9, 2011
"Until the 12th of never, I'll still be loving you." 

Books in a Series that Raised Me

First, before I get into the book part, I want to thank all of my followers who are signed up on this blog and my friends who have told me they're reading it. I write with you in mind, hoping my stories will continue to get you in touch with your beliefs and feelings while supporting and inspiring you.

Also, welcome to a new follower, Mauro. We have never met, Mauro, but I already love you and bless you for what you are doing for two people that our mutual friend, Sharon, and I care very much about. And now you're in my heart, and on my Facebook page, Mauro! We'll stay in touch.

Today's Thinkless

I've coined a new term: thinkless. It sounds like it should be an adjective, but since I'm coining it, I'm declaring it to be a noun that refers to a phrase or saying loaded with equivocal words, and therefore, does not have a logical meaning. A thinkless is either taken out of context, or people believe they know what the equivocal words mean. A thinkless is often meant to be a life-guiding tool for the rest of us who would be unable to feel our happiness or make the next life decision without it. By the way, I write my own thinklesses, but I won't often recognize them.

Thinkless for Today: "When people ask us how long does it take for something to manifest, we say, as long as it takes you to release the resistance." --Abraham 

Really? So I guess humans should stop resisting tyranny if they want to manifest peace and democracy; and maybe it's better to do whatever it takes to shut down our immune system's resistance against disease so we can manifest health. -Really?  I won't go into the "Abraham" part except to say that--well--what "it " says is open to many interpretations, as are the words written in the Bible.

Books in a Series that Saved Me

These are the books that kept me off the streets, inside my house; in my own bed; in my own chair; on the floor; quietly, slowly reading every single word; talking to no one; minding my own business. If I was reading all of these books, and so many more, when did I have time to create so much of my own turbulent life drama? I can only imagine how much worse my life would have been if all these authors and stories hadn't been babysitting me! They may have saved my life, until now.

I'm writing about them from my aging memory that might not remember all the details correctly, but you can learn the details for yourself if you haven't already read these books, and feel free to write your own experiences with the books you've read in the comments below this post.

I read the first two series listed here during my few weed-smoking years beginning in the late 1960's when I was in my mid-twenties. That's when the cultural revolution unlocked my cage door and I, along with zillions of Dr. Spock-raised lab rats, went screaming out into a strange new wilderness with no rules! These stories didn't need any drug enhancement! 

 1. The Gor Series by John Norman

A friend who loved reading science fiction introduced me to these exciting combination philosophy, erotica, science fiction novels in 1972, five years after the first book, Tarnsman of Gor, was published. These are all stories of Tarl Cabot who was kidnapped from earth and transported to a planet called Gor, which can't be seen from earth because it is on the other side of the sun. On Gor, Cabot rides through the air on the back of a huge, unruly bird known as a tarn. In the first book, the woman (I think she's a princess) Cabot falls in love with on Gor is swiped off the top of a tower from some villain on a tarn, and Cabot spends the rest of the books running dangerous gauntlets and struggling with insane primitive tribespeople in his search for her. I kept reading each next book hoping he'd find her.

John Norman is the pseudonym of Dr. John Lange, a professor of philosophy and a classical scholar. He wrote 29 novels in that series. I read the first seven, one after the other, and then grabbed and read every new one as it came out, probably reading 10 of them over the years. 

In one of the novels, Tarl Cabot started disliking himself and, for me, lost his power and appeal. Also, Norman began writing long soapbox-style passages, expounding on his distorted philosophy about women's roles, sex, and violence. The author's voice took the place of the good stories, and I considered further reading to be a waste of my time. 

I look for the author's voice when I read fiction adventure stories, but when that voice becomes too invasive and so obviously misguided, the friendship ends.

2. Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan series

These books were another series of drug trips in themselves. Written in first person as the truth (Castaneda is said to have received his Ph.D. from UCLA with a dissertation that is word for word from his third book), most probably they are fiction. Yet a few of the teachings in them are still part of my way of life, embedded somewhere in my tangled mind. Author Carlos Castaneda begins the series with The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, (1968) in which he, a doctoral student at UCLA who is doing research for his dissertation, seeks out Don Juan Matus to learn about the plants used by the Yaqui Indians of the Sonoran Desert. The result is that Castaneda becomes Don Juan's student, learning to live as a warrior on the "path with the heart."

Castaneda's experiences with Don Juan, both terrifying and enlightening, take the reader on a journey into non-ordinary reality. Even though I wanted to, I never learned to "see" those tentacles protruding out of real humans, but I still secretly believe that not everyone walking around is a human, and I freely give myself permission to avoid people who don't resonate with me. I also learned that those within the circle of a problem cannot solve it as easily as someone coming in from the outside. I've practiced and proven that to be true in my life. When a path I'm on ceases to be fulfilling for me, I leave it, as Don Juan advised Castaneda to do.

I also learned that a warrior shouldn't have a predictable daily schedule, so that he or she cannot easily be found. I continue to live this warrior way, but admit that settling into a routine might have worked better for me. Now my body doesn't know when to sleep, when it's hungry or when it's thirsty. I've decided that at this age, with leukemia, it's too late to pay attention to those things. It's best to happily continue on as the stealthy, uncommitted, unpredictable warrior that I am.

We often don't remember what someone "tells" us, but we remember the delicious story with the nugget of truth embedded in it. The principles in this series stuck with me because of the non-ordinary way that Don Juan taught the lessons to Castaneda. 

I spent years grabbing the Castaneda books off the shelf as soon as they came out, but I stopped reading the next in the series sometime after Don Juan turned into an ant and disappeared forever through a crack in the floor. In the last book I half-read, Castaneda was in a desert cabin where women were dancing in a circle without their feet touching the floor. My drug years were over by then, and my husband Whitey had convinced me that a table was actually a table. 

3. James Herriot's Series

James Herriot, pseudonym for James Alfred Wight, wrote a series of five heartwarming books telling the stories of his practice as a rural veterinarian in the English countryside. His first book, All Creatures Great and Small was published in 1972. 

Herriot's stories, written in first person, are loving, funny and sad portrayals of the human and animal characters that he encountered. I believe that in the first book, he courts his wife, and in the end of that book, he marries her. If you ever wanted a model for writing an autobiography, these stories are the ultimate, highest standard of writing. I couldn't help but love him, and I always looked in the bookstores for each next book. 

The stories became a TV series, but I always want my own imagination to do the work, and I loved reading the books--All Creatures Great and Small; All Things Bright and Beautiful; All Things Wise and Wonderful; The Lord God Made Them All; Every Living Thing.

Wight died of cancer in 1995 at his home in Yorkshire.

More about James Herriot

In a future post I will tell you about one more series of well-written books that parachuted me into other dramatic times and places--"The Winning of America Series."

Right Here, Right Now

My friend asked me today if I wanted a stack of Oprah magazines, and I surprised myself with a strong "No." I don't have enough time left in my life to keep reading everyone else's writing. I have my own stuff to finish writing and get out the door. And I have amazing friends who are writers. I want to read their work! Even though they're "unknowns" as authors (right now!), their stories are as intriguing and powerful as any I've read from the knowns.

I just finished the 6th and final week of a life writers' group I've been facilitating. I hope these talented writers, and all of you who have shared your wonderful stories with me over the years, will continue writing stories. 

If you are not now in a writing group, how about joining up with a bunch of serious writers online, or forming your own online group? Published writer of 14 books and masterful creative writing instructor, Barbara Abercrombie, has an exciting blog for writers. You can experience her nurturing guidance and learn how her students are working together online at this site:  Barbara Abercrombie's Writer's Blog

I first became acquainted with Barbara Abercrombie's work through her excellent book, Courage & Craft--Writing Your Life Into Story. If you haven't read it, I suggest that you buy it, and as you read it, start writing! You can also find Abercrombie on her web site,  Barbara Abercrombie 

Meanwhile, I'm reading the stories from my latest group's members and writing a book to provide guidance for facilitators of writing groups. My working title is Nurturing Life Writers: Facilitating a Life Writers' Group. I'm also recording my stories, published years ago, for an audiobook titled Life With a Buckskinner. The stories will also be an e-book.

I've already lined up a graphic designer, Becky Fox, to design the CD and book covers, and I'm trying to decide which company will format and distribute the e-book for to all of the places. The audiobook will be online for sale and downloading, and also in hard copy form, advertised in publications.

Thanks to my living situation, I'm able to live my life as a writer, cartoonist, songwriter, and vocal coach, which makes me very happy. It all came together a bit late in my life (understatement), but life can't get better than this--Right here. Right now.

Surviving My Ex's

This afternoon I had a dream about my first ex-husband. 

In real life, I was married to him for 17 months back in 1966-67. He was in medical school that his wealthy parents paid for. I was a first-year high school English teacher, commuting 25 miles to my job every day. I paid all of the living expenses--rent, food, gasoline, utilities, car repair--everything  with my $5,000/year salary. The Corvair, our only car, frequently broke down, leaving me stranded on the isolated country roads in winter blizzards and thick fog. My husband treated me with contempt and disrespect, and on weekend nights, he left me alone in our one-bedroom, sparsely-furnished apartment to go out to "male parties." 

Years later while writing the story of that relationship for my life writers' group, it seemed clear to me that he was sleeping with the girl he was still in love with who dumped him several years before we were married.

In 2003, I wrote to him on a whim. He was a prominent MD in a nearby area. I had legally changed my name 20 years before, and thought that if he ever wanted to be in touch with me, he wouldn't be able to find me. It was an upbeat 8 or 10-sentence letter in which I told him I'd had a happy life and I hoped he had, and here was my "new" name if he ever wanted to find me. 

I didn't include anything about how much I'd loved him and for all the years after I left him, I thought I saw him everywhere. I looked for him to show up where I was performing, and when I saw someone who looked like him, I'd nearly have a heart attack. 

He didn't reply to my letter, and I resolved to never intrude in his life again.

A year later, in 2004, someone sent me a letter with my changed name, with no return address. It was postmarked from the town where he and I had lived, typed on an old typewriter, and signed with the first name only of a woman who had been his friend back then. At least, I thought it might be her. In this letter, "she" told me that my ex-husband had just written a historical novel about his grandfather, with a love-interest character that reminded her of me, and that my ex-husband would be "very happy" to hear from me.

I wrote him, congratulated him on his book, and asked him if he wanted to send me a copy, or if I should order it. His jackhammer reply stunned me. He was in love with his present wife of many years. His life with me was a painful part of his past, and he never, ever, ever thought about me. If I ever contacted him again, he would consider it harassment. 

The words didn't sound truthful to me. I pictured his wife standing over him, dictating the words while he wrote them down. His wife is the only person who could have known my changed name and found me. I ordered his book. It was poorly-written, poorly-crafted--an awkward, even embarrassing entry into the world of literature. I thought about posting a review of it on Amazon and rejected that idea.

In my dream today, I was sending him the anonymous letter in registered mail to make sure that he got it and understood why I had written to him the second time. I wanted him to know what really happened. After waking up, I went to the computer and did a search for him. Surprise! The registered letter would have to go to a grave in a cemetary. He died in 2007, when I lived in Ohio. Hmm. Maybe he already knows about the letter and who sent it to me.

Now I'm wondering how I feel with two of my three husbands already vanished from life in their 60's. I'm a widow twice, and although I wasn't listed as a survivor in either of the obituaries, I am a survivor of those relationships. I think of how young we were when we married--I was still in my twenties for all three--how hopeful we were that we would create fulfilling lives for ourselves. I thought we would all live forever. 

I had the choice in all of those marriages to either submit to male dominance and live out my life in quiet desperation, or leave and have no one to blame but myself for my problems. When I left my third husband, after our band was no longer together on the road, I told him I had only one life to live--and it couldn't be his life.
 
Every time I get a new boyfriend, my psychiatrist of 20+ years starts shaking his head. His neck muscles jut out, and he reminds me between gritted teeth that I can't handle relationships like that and I must not start one. He's right.

These days I'm walking hand and hand into the sunset with myself. Since I couldn't be listed as a survivor on any other partner's obituary, I hope my friends and family will list me as a survivor on my own obituary. Wouldn't that just make us all laugh! 

Books that Raised Me, Part 2

This is another list of my favorite books. I've always thought my taste in books was eclectic, so I'm surprised to notice that most on this list are historical novels. These stories inspired me to write and taught me how to tell a story. They lifted me out of my own painful life and set me down in a place where I could open my heart and mind to learning, loving, understanding, and caring. You can find these books online, and many are available for the popular readers such as Kindle.

Memorable Stories from My Past 

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady 

Famous writers, Henry and William James, were brothers. William James was a  psychologist (Varieties of Religious Experience) and Henry was a novelist who wrote like a psychologist. Portrait of a Lady is impeccable in details and word choice, and sets an example of how to craft a story. I loved reading it!

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

This historical novel set in the bloody streets of the French Revolution is the greatest love story ever written. Remember when I said in a previous blog that I don't want to miss anything? The same goes for reading abridged editions of books. I won't. In 10th grade, in Pittsburgh, while my English class read a skinny abridged school edition of A Tale of Two Cities in large font, I was reading throughout the nights, every faded, tiny word on thin yellowed paper from an ancient, mangled, unabridged edition that an old woman had given me from her bookshelf when I'd visited her in Delaware several years before. I couldn't read thousands more words fast enough to keep up with my class, but listening in class allowed me to pass the weekly tests. I did fail those pop quizzes designed to prove I'd read the assigned chapter for that day, and when I told the teacher I was reading the unabridged version, she didn't believe me, or didn't care. When I got to the ending of that story, I cried for weeks every time I thought about it. Still do. I've read all of Dickens' novels, and for me, this one is his masterpiece. 

Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii

The same old woman in Delaware gave me this classic fiction novel, a dusty old edition from the mid-1800's. I loved the story, with fictional characters so carefully crafted, I deeply cared about what happened to them when the volcano of Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying their Italian city of Pompeii in 79 AD. To read more about Mount Vesuvius and the actual eruption, click on the link below. 
Mount Vesuvius Eruptions

Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

You've probably seen the movie, so you already know what the characters look like--Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara. The book, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, is a thrilling read. If you let your imagination take over in the scenes, you'll see an even better story than the movie! You can read about Margaret Mitchell's life through biographies and her own letters. Here is one biography site:  Margaret Mitchell

Stories that Taught Me About Adult Life

Grace Metalious and Ardis Cameron, Peyton Place

Probably very tame for this post-1960's society, but outrageous in 1956, especially to my mother who discovered it under my mattress, along with the flashlight.

D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

This is the story of a rich woman who has an affair with her gardener. D.H. Lawrence crafted a classic with this one--the perfect story for a young teenager ready to "come of age" before anyone could stop me!

Powerful Novels that Influenced My Thinking and Writing 

Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

Lamb opened this story of twin brothers, one of whom was schizophrenic, with a memorable horrific scene that won my full cooperation and focus to the last sentence on the last page. I'm sure if I wrote a memoir, I'd begin it with a dramatic scene to lasso the reader. Hmmm. Which one?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude

Born in Colombia, Marquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 for "his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and realistic are combined in a richly-composed world of imagination reflecting a continent's life and conflicts." His art is to win the reader's buy-in to a different reality of the impossible events that he uses to create this analogy of the history of Colombia, and the human race.

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

This story, again, on the pretense of impossibility, brings up so many levels of awareness! It still influences my thinking every day!

John Irving, The World According to Garp

Even if you saw the movie, read this and learn how to craft a story that pulls the reader along for hundreds of pages into one crashing unforgettable event.

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

Another of Irving's amazing stories. This one deals with religion and includes a very funny Christmas pageant where everything goes wrong. This is an excellent example of how to write humor as a movie of the mind. A real movie would be only half as funny. 

Barbara Kingsolver, Poisonwood Bible

The wife and four daughters of fiery Baptist Nathan Price tell this story set in the historical context of the Congo during its fight for independence from Belgium.

Lee Smith, On Agate Hill

I couldn't put down this story even after I read the last page. Set in the south in the times of slavery, the characters lived in my thoughts for months afterwards.

Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns 
Hosseini, author of the Kite Runner, set this intense, heartbreaking story of friendship between two women in the period of Afghanistan history from the Soviet invasion through the rule of the Taliban and post-Taliban rebuilding years.

John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

Ferling's thoughtful insight into the life of John Adams and how the government of this country was formed. You'll read about Adams' relationships with his wife Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other historical figures, and you'll better understand the personal and political issues confronting them. This is a view of history you can't learn any other way!

Phillip Roth, Everyman

I'm so glad my friend Georgia recommended this book! Roth confronts age and beauty in this simply-written, yet deeply-layered account that encompasses life.

Memoirs that Set the Standard for Memoir Writing

Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

McCourt writes this masterpiece through his child's eyes, seemingly without any punctuation rules.

 J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

Be sure to read the acknowledgements and writer's notes about how he recreated the characters and his memories to write this rich story. 

Augustin Buroughs, Running with Scissors
The movie doesn't take the place of reading this bizarre romp through Burroughs' childhood. Pay attention to how few words he can use to say so much!

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1

At Twain's direction, this is the first of 3 volumes to be released 100 years after his death. You can read the full book (700 pages!) online here: 

Mark Twain's Autobiography  

End Thoughts 

It takes at least three elements coming together to create famous artists: their courage to let their voices be known, knowledge of their craft, and opportunities afforded by others who lift and carry them on their shoulders. Famous or not, above all odds, we are ALL creators! 

I still have three more series of books to recommend--next time. Meanwhile, I'm going to turn off the TV and video games and let a book keep me company for awhile. Reading stories connects me to my imagination without someone else's creation of outside sound and vision. 

I keep reading and hearing that many artists do their best work in their later years. Maybe one day I'll write a book as valued as the ones I've listed here. Maybe you will, too!

Have you read any of the books on the above list? What would you say about them? What books have you read that are not listed here that you would recommend, and why? Feel free to write your comments below this post.

RIP, Dr. Kavorkian

Suicide is so easy to mess up. Just ask me! I've failed every time. Dr. Kavorkian died this morning. He was an incorrigible Voice, and a hero of mine. I so well remember him in the days when he carried through what he believed in, against all public opinion, in defiance of all laws. He was the first in this country to acknowledge a terminally-ill person's desire to choose death as a human right. He paid a high price (and that's an understatement) for his actions based on his convictions: eight years locked up in prison. I know more now about prisons. They're stressful, violent environments. Inmates are minimally fed and abused by other inmates and prison officials.

Some say Kavorkian was the reason Hospice services became widely-used and acceptable. Right now, 43 states still have statutes criminalizing assisted suicide. But, due to Dr. Kavorkian's courageous efforts to raise consciousness, five states do not have laws criminalizing physician-assisted suicide, and two states openly permit physician-assisted suicide: Washington and Oregon. (Too bad their climates are so cold!) 

When Dr. Kavorkian's efforts to change our thinking about death were televised, I watched everything he was doing. I particularly remember watching his interview with the woman who was in the early stages of Alzheimer's, before she pushed the drip-switch. She said that she would soon be putting her blouse on backwards, and she didn't want to go into that confusion or put her family through that.

The laws still largely reflect what might be a majority opinion that while it is humane to euthanize suffering non-humans when their quality of life is over, humans have to lie in bed and decay to the smelly end. Sure, dying humans often get a little secret help at the end with overdoses of pain meds. No one ever admits it openly, so you might not know it, except for the phone call you receive from a close friend who, in between sobs, says something like my friend Carolyn said to me, "My husband died last night at midnight. He was in so much pain (he had cancer of the throat)! His doctor kept telling me to give him another pain suppository. I killed him!"

If you're wealthy, famous, respected by the public, considered sane, and terminally ill, you might have a physician at your bedside and/or a "stash," and be functioning enough to choose your time and way to die, as some believe Jackie Kennedy did when she was in the end-stage of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

In February, I lay on the floor with my suffering Rottweiler Savannah and held her face in my hands. We looked in each others' eyes, and I told her how much I loved her while the vet injected the medication into her vein. When it was over, I told the vet that I wished my mother could have died this easily. 

Instead, my mother, age 90, who had suffered a stroke in the hospital and couldn't swallow, was evaluated by physicians, and reported to be unlikely to recover. I gave permission for her to be transported from the hospital to a Hospice house, where for 13 days, with a raging urinary tract infection, she "died with dignity." I begged them to give her an antibiotic to clear up the infection. They refused. I asked them to remove her catheter. They refused. Their whole aim was to "educate" me about how the dying must be cared for. They bathed her daily and turned her over on a schedule throughout the day. She groaned in pain when the nurses moved her. Three days before she died, a full week after she'd ceased moving on her own, or speaking, she managed to pull out her catheter in the middle of the night. This was all so unnecessary. 

Hospice, when all treatment for life has ended, is an acceptable way to die for people who have religious beliefs or superstitions against euthanization, but I have a better idea. I want to choose my own time and method of dying. What instructions can I give my loved ones in this choke-hold society to allow me to choose without them feeling guilty that they were responsible?

I appreciate what Dr. Kavorkian has done for us, but I would take that consciousness a step further and advocate for mentally ill people to be able to choose death, not just the terminally ill. Mental illness can be a life-long mental torture, with no cure. I've had times when I thought having my leg amputated with no anesthesia would be playtime compared to the mental anguish I was in. I've written end-notes to my family and friends, telling them that if they knew the pain I was in, they would want me to die. 

My friends told me that I loved my dog so much, I courageously chose a compassionate death for her. Do we love each other that much? Thank you for bringing us this far, Jack. We couldn't have gotten here without you. RIP.