Sometimes, I think it is possible that we hold things in for too long, yep, even I am guilty of holding a fart  in  for too long… But I am talking deeper than gas. “Deeper?” you ask.  Yeah.  Deeper.

Honestly, I want to be proud of myself for handling death so well in my life.

YAY! High five, Mandie!

Errrrr, what?!?!

Yeah, I want to say, “YOU know what? I have had tremendous loss in my life, and it’s OKAY, it’s FINE.  I TOTALLY DEAL WITH IT, I have a different sort of relationship to death…” and then I walk away with a crazy look in my eye.

The fact is, I usually deliver those exact  lines with a very sweet tone, and walk off with a little bit of superiority over those who couldn’t possibly fathom  what it is to loose people close to you.

Great, I am using loss as a way to be self righteous… just as I was thinking I might be humble.

The fact is, I am going to call my family out, hell I am going to call out any of you who don’t discuss it… WE MISS PEOPLE BEING THERE IN PHYSICALITY.

We miss seeing people age, and grow, and evolve.  We miss late night conversations on the phone, advice, the sound of their voice.  Some of us just miss what we never really knew to begin with, and then we based our imaginative relations off of what was observed in the lives of others.  Some of my observations of YOU and your lives at times has sparked with in me jealousy… Oh yes, even you….

Tonight, I was thinking about my brother, who is now gone, and earlier I was thinking of the mother I lost.

And I was thinking about how pissed I am on one sense; that my brother left me in this awkward situation that almost feels like divorce where the kids split with each parent.  Kevin and my mom got to transition to, you know… some other plane of reality, and I got to stay here with my dad… on Earth? (Come  on kids you know I am a big thinker who wants people  to be Organically Super Human…)

I love my dad to all ends of the Universe and back, but it’s like Kevin got some other end of the deal… like all that missing and wanting I had for my mother, he somehow got to fulfill for himself.. before ME!….I feel it was a bit, preemptive.

I am the oldest, in all conventional thought; which I have not yet purged obviously, says: the oldest dies first.

That happens to be the struggle of any parent who lost a child.

My grandparents lost my mom when she was 26.

My brother was gone months before he turned 24.

No wonder no one wants to talk about it… Parents don’t like to discuss the sad fates of their children… and let’s  give my dad a double whammy for losing his wife at 26 and then going another  round with young death again 23 years down the road with off spring of his dead bride…

This may be tough to read, but it’s all true, and it’s been bothering me for a while.  Perhaps you understand?

I have a half sister, but I am what remains of the interaction that was my birth mother and my father’s DNA.  At 30, I have out lived them both.

My step mother and half sister, will never really understand how awkward this life has been, (for me.)  They have each other to talk to. They have their relationship that has a physical beginning and continuing evolution…

Perhaps a point of jealousy in my life, I use to commiserate with my brother about…

This stuff sucks to write “out loud” but it’s part of what has happened that makes me feel this overwhelming urge to cry, but really, I can’t.  It feels contrived, and fake.

I guess, really I just have to say it out loud.  It lurks at the back of the mind and the corner of the heart and festers.

It saddens me, but  only in the most conventional of ways.  I wonder if I would be making late night phone calls to guy friends with girlfriends, if maybe I had a brother, or maybe even a mother to call.

I don’t know.  Again I ask why it is, they got to leave?

Why is it that even in my darkest times, when I wished life away, still, here I stay, in physicality.

Why at times does it feel so lonely?

I have my own answers and I will continue to spread joy, but loss…. oh that loss of those loved, still lingers in the painful heart strings embedded in muscle, deep in my memory.

It is not an excuse to be a victim, or superior, rather it is the reminder to cherish  all that is in the moment, and those who share it with you.

I do have a different relationship to death, than many do.

However evolved or different it may be, does not restrict me from feeling that occasional tug at my heart and mind, that longing of companionship linked in blood and experience.

Hell, that’s why the “Reunion” is so popular. the gathering of shared experience and the sprinkle of time spent apart changing.

Enjoy one another, be blessed with each others presence.  Physicality is a special, and yet very temporary experience.

We will meet again, another time; another place, in some other form.  But this experience is; in a sense, one in a billion.

The light and the dark are each beautiful because each of you dance between those worlds bound in your physical body.  Bound to learn how limitless you actually are.

That is death; limitless, expansive energy. Reconnected to Source, and yet still present.

Music; memories, pictures, lessons learned and given are the remnants of physicality.

The Eternal Soul, is just that.  Conscious Energy going back into a system of Co-Creative Learning , leaving material signs along the way.  A sort of ethereal scribbling on the bathroom wall “I WAS HERE.”

My brother and mother inspire me, every day.  I did not know them “all the way.”  But their influence and muse runs in my blood and through my pen, or paint, or speech.  They were creative people with short lives… I am a creative being who still has life…

May I be blessed then, with the talent of all of us, THREE!  Responsibility for the art that was left un-manifest, but lingering in the imagination!

May nothing be wasted.

Blessings to you!