Mood: ‘Home’ by Phillip Phillips
An Interesting Take On Life
Friday, January 31st was my brother Doug’s birthday. He would have been 62 had an aggressive cancer not taken him from me, my parents and especially his wife and daughter. I took my parents out to dinner at a place we know Doug would have loved and had a great remembrance.
Since, and as tends to be my wont, I have been on a mental journey on the things that Make Us. I have mentioned in @dicentra’s recent post how we are who we are today because of all the events in Life, good and bad, have shaped us over those years into who we are this minute.
There are something’s that I am not sure where they came from. My Creativity and wit, for two. When I was in my first decade I remember feeling a bit stupid because I made bad jokes and couldn’t really think creatively, falling back on favorite cartoon or movie characters if asked to make one up. Somewhere along the line, this changed. Certainly not overnight, but I think it was a joy of reading. I remember the Scholastic book days where many of Scholastic approved books for whatever grade I was in were set out on tables to buy. I’d be given a few bucks to do so. When I was old enough to be able to take the bus on my own I graduated up to actual bookstores and discovered the wonder of hardback books, something that used to mean ‘library book’ or ‘text book’.
Then came the original three-booklet Dungeon & Dragons RPG. A game that had no board? 🤔 It had dice, but how did that work?? Gradually, understanding dawned, but it was still because the older brothers with engaged imaginations led me by that hand through it. Gradually, I found players for my own campaign and found that my imagination was up to the task of DM-/GM-ing.
What Maturity Changes…
When I was 19 my uncle passed from pancreatic cancer. He was in his early 50s as I recall. He was like a second father to me, and his passing hit me hard, the first real such loss I had experienced to that point in my life. It rather shut me down for around a year, too, I really didn’t hang with friends, made no effort to be social in any way, just worked, read and stayed as solitary as I could manage. Eventually, something made me laugh and I realized it had been a while since I had, or at least that I could remember.
I rejoined regular Life.
In my 20s it seemed for a few years that every two weeks I’d find I lost another friend or family member to cancer or accident. This had a numbing effect on me after about a year. I cannot say I was expecting to hear someone else had passed but wasn’t surprised when I heard of ‘the next one’. Living in Alaska at the time there were only a few funerals to attend as most losses occurred out of state. I do not recall being so withdrawn from Life then, and it was actually at that time that I began running a fantasy RPG campaign that ran for some five years which, looking back on it, began my interest in writing and plotting. So, other than withdrawing from life, I think I accepted death’s occurrence but switched off the emotions surrounding the impact. Of course, it may also have been an emotional ‘defense’ against too much loss. At Amy road, it was an advancement in Dealing With Death for me, another step of maturity. If you will.
‘Finally’, almost seven years ago I lost my brother to that virulent cancer. This was folded a year and a half ago by the sudden loss of one of my very best friends. I am not really yet certain, but the maturing into a full acceptance has progressed into the Need for Remembrance and further accepting that it will mean feeling the raw emotions of loss and the weeping that comes with it. With my brother’s passing, and I am still dealing with this, has come outbursts of Anger, anger of such intensity that I scream obscenities and sometimes throw something. This has all been directed at myself, though, and in private; I have never once aimed any such at anyone else. The frequency of such outbreaks is less as time moves forward.
The other maturing that has been, I think ‘allowed’ best says it, is to cry when the need arises. This is almost always at anything that reminded me of my brother or best friend; a song, a book, a movie or incident that has significance to either. It is also difficult for me to hold back tears when someone else cries.
*Addendum…*
A few days ago, as of this writing, a plane was lost off the coast of Nome, Alaska. As it happens, the husband of a friend was on the flight.
All souls aboard were lost.
