Family unites us; but it's also a challenge. All about fighting to stay together, and loving every moment of it.
(Note: This is an edited version of another story I've posted, featuring more original photographs and videos. Enjoy!) Things that, when I experience them, instantly take me home without need of a plane ticket:
With them it was always “if we get together you can’t tell anyone about us” it was never “let me take you out”, “let’s go to dinner and a movie” or just simply “let’s just hangout and see if we vibe” I was just the girl who the just wanted to have sex with until they found something better. Someone better than me. And it wasn’t that I had a reputation or giving it out for free because I wasn’t that type of girl I was just a girl who was cool to hang around with and who could make you laugh, who could listen to you and offer you support for your dreams or whatever you were going through but I was never good enough to be offered a date but mainly I was never good enough to be someone’s partner. Someone’s girlfriend. I guess it all starts with home. I was my father’s last baby out of two kids my brother and sister plus a bonus child my sister. I was a daddy’s little girl. He made me feel special with our out of town trips, ride arounds or simply watching tv together. But everything change when my father started cheating and my parents got a divorce when I was 12. My father was kicked out and thought it was a brilliant idea to “hurt” my mother was to abandon me for his whore not thinking that it would hurt me when I needed him the most. Being a 12 year old getting bullied and mentally, emotionally and rarely physical abuse both at home and at school plus being ignored by both dad and mom for their partners when they’re around really fucking suck for a kid and not being uplifted or given words of encouragement or love or to simply say “you are beautiful” “you are smart” “you are special because you are not meant to be like them you are meant to be you and you alone” I had none of that. And my siblings on my father’s side were on their own doing their own things while my sister on my mother’s side was not only taking care of me, but working to help pay bills with my mother bless that 16 year old’s heart. My father would spend time with me (once a month) and mostly with his whore Black Jelly Bean and as a child I found out how the word and feeling of HATE could go so deep, because I HATED her. I hated how she hurt my family, how she never encouraged my father to spend more time with me, how I was supposed to accept her with openly because she made my father happy. From then on I swear I would never be like her, I promise myself if I would not be a home wrecker, that I would not sleep with married men and that for me to continue to be friends with a man that I was friends with I would have to make friends with the wife. And if I did sleep with a man and he gets married I will no longer speak to him unless in front his wife or friends not alone. I am proud to say I’ve kept that promise and will continue to do so for as long as I live, because as a 25 year old regardless on how the world is today I still believe in marriage and still respect marriage. Before I became a sophomore in high school I dreamt of my father’s death and woke up crying , because I didn’t hate him nor wish him dead. The only two things I wished for to have my father and family back together. Less an a month I was given an assignment to read Tuesdays with Morrie an old man dying with ALS and here’s where life gets crazy a month into my sophomore year my father was diagnosed with ALS. In case no one knows what ALS is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a terminal disease A" means no. "Myo" refers to muscle, and "Trophic" means nourishment – "No muscle nourishment." When a muscle has no nourishment, it "atrophies" or wastes away. In other words your body is a candle and the flames is ALS slowly killing you taking away your ability to walk, to feed yourself with solid food, my driving and your muscles. It is one of the worst death sentence I have ever seen that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. To watch someone you love, who means the world to you despite how much they have hurt you die slowly is absolutely the worst feeling in the world and knowing that I was gonna lose him again this time forever was heartbreaking. So from the fall of 2011 to the summer of 2014 my mother and I along with friends and some family members took care of my father and his girlfriend aka Black Jelly Bean left his life and never came back. My father had the one woman who stood by his side through thick and thin, for better and for worst. My mother. She allowed him back into the home we all once shared and sacrifice and took care of him for me. I could never repay her for what she did for me even though sometimes we didn’t get along because at the end of the day she give me my family back. When he died I didn’t cry I felt numb, broken and more alone than I ever did in life. I felt pieces of me missing. I had lost another part of me. At the end of his funeral I cried so hard, because I now realized the truth my father was gone forever and I had to say goodbye. I was forever missing a piece of my heart. I was saying goodbye to him seeing graduate from college, him walking down the aisle, our father and daughter dance at my wedding and his first time holding his grandchild. I was saying goodbye to a little girl’s dream that would unfortunately not come true. To the young lady who needed her father that most I’m sorry that you were let down. I’m sorry that you had to experience your first heartbreak with your father. I’m sorry that in the next few years you will experience one of the worst pains that you will never forget. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel just keep fighting.
It was their third day of hiking on the Appalachian trail. Paul was an older man with graying hair and a moustache, around the same height as his teenaged son. Distraught as his mother passed away the week prior, Mark was finally able to regulate himself. Having his green T-rex plush and chewing necklace with him at all times certainly helped. Both Paul and Mark were autistic, so being away from the rest of the society and exploring the beauty of nature is what brought them peace.
She had dreamt of a Wa huhu that autumn night. It had been a cold one and she had asked her mother for an extra fur for warmth to cuddle under. Her belly had been full of the delicious stew made from corn, beans, and venison which her beloved Elisi, her mother's mom, had made. The campfire gave them all comfort as her father and the other young men were off on a hunting trip that would last for several days. And before she had said her goodnights, her Edudu, her mother's father had taught her of the seven grandfathers. The lesson that evening had been on truth.
She didn’t even know how she got on this nursing assignment. She hated doing working at night, especially at this place way out in the boonies. But the extra money would come in handy. It would help her pay down her student loans and give her the experience needed to work somewhere closer to home in a hospital with a set schedule and better pay.
The blue was all around me, cool and quiet. I felt myself sink deeper, weightless, and yet pulled further into the void below. A light flickered above me, and I reached out my hand as if to grab hold of it, but suddenly a noise jolted me awake. I slapped the alarm clock and rolled back onto the pillow, letting the fog lift as I wiggled my toes and rubbed my eyes. I have gotten used to waking up alone, maybe too used to it, but this time I wished more than anything John wasn’t working the nightshift. I had not slept well, and I was not looking forward to what the day would bring. It was all too much to think about.
It was late in the evening when the crescent moon started to peak through the heavy rain clouds, poking its way to illuminate the damp, wet streets, bushes and buildings below it. The deem orange, green and red coloured lights from the nearby airport, which were constantly on throughout the day and night were more luminescent in after the rain. Smaller lights from security vans driving beside the runways shimmered lightly as the wet spray from their tyres caused a coloured mist of deep-red and warm yellow. Usually, the large planes packed with passengers from overseas travelling over would have their lights beaming across the runway and taxiway. Causing a racquet both visually and audio-wise for any overnight passengers trying to sleep in the nearby hotels. Trying to catch the last bits of sleep before having to wake up that was before the global pandemic. All air traffic had been reduced internationally to barely three planes each day arriving. Even the large freight airline companies had reduced their flights in response to possible quarantining restrictions for pilots. It had been a very usual, disruptive and stressful year when the outbreak happened for many returning travellers. Especially for one returning passenger who was still wide awake in the nearby hotel by the airport, one Oliver Maunu, a return traveller placed in hotel-quarantine from his returning trip aboard in Northern Ireland.
“Hey there Loo Loo, what are you reading so intensely over there?” Said the exuberant receptionist at the chemo unit of the General Hospital.
There’s a fence line that runs around my property. It’s 37-acres of primarily grass seed and hay, with about a quarter acre for a personal garden. Or was a personal garden. Now it’s just a bunch of boxes filled with dirt. It reminds me of those apocalyptic movies—where the metals twist toward the skies, cracks in the concrete, and repugnant weeds push and curl upward, out of the ground. Only here it’s the old wood from a torn down deck, and the metal frames are the cages for tomatoes. The only thing that grows there is the bindweed.
The smell of peanut butter pancakes crept into her nose and pulled her from the comfort of the California king-sized bed we found ourselves in at the end of most nights. Thoughts running through my head on how I should say what needs to be said, and if now was as good a time as any. Were the possible repercussions worth it?
How on earth had she seen me do it? I thought I was surely covered by the sea of people praying on those dark benches, and still she saw me do it. Even Mrs Evans with her never ending glacier glasses that made her eyes seem like large ink pools, didn’t see me to it. With those magnifying glasses she could even notice when one sweet petal had begun to fade on the Sunday alter, or one speck of dust had settled on the stained-glass cross. Yet there was the hand ever so slightly gripping the back of my neck as we headed home, marked with the well- known mother’s touch of an all-seeing, all-knowing force.
No one knows the things I have seen. The countless lives that have passed right by me. No one takes notice of the old barn owl sitting in the tree. They all go on with their lives; falling in love, moving on, some staying and dying. I’ve seen crops fail and farmers fall to their knees screaming and begging for the rain to come and wash prosperity and life back to their fields; I’ve seen children running and screaming with glee, unaware of the responsibilities I know are coming their way, and I’ve seen lives end only to be buried under this old oak tree I call my perch.