‘Yeah, It’s One Of Those Things; Things Like That Happen’

Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee…  I tilt my head to my right shoulder, listening… watching, studying… life; everything that is life; everything around me.  I wonder, I think, I feel, care, love; even hate, dislike……… I grieve, no matter what I do; no matter how happy, sad.  I go on with life knowing my son, my only child is gone… forever.  Not only do I grieve for myself… my heart is big enough to grieve for the pain of others… I grieve for you, too.

 

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‘Yeah, It’s One Of Those Things;   Things Like That Happen

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

The little boy sat quietly by his mother.  She sat beside him in relief… relief that her son was alive.  She had relaxed enough so, that she could drink her bottle of water.

 

I watched as a woman walked up to the two; she reached down, drew the little boy to her huge bosom.  Tears streamed from her eyes as she held the child.  She let go of him, reached for the boy’s mother; began hugging her tightly.  I never knew the relationship between them… maybe she was a grandparent, teacher… ?

 

What drew my attention, as I sat with tears streaming down my own face, was…. the little boy.  I always look where no one else is looking… I notice things other people don’t.  So… I got to see this little boy being ‘normal’… after what he’d just survived.  I smiled at the same time as my heart cried for them.

 

The little boy looked up at the tv camera, went back to his little boy world… took his little hand, began to wipe first his right cheek where the lady had placed her wet kisses.

 

He went on to wipe the other cheek;  then, he began wiping his whole face all at once to get rid of the ‘wet’…. As I cried inside, I laughed at the same time.

 

It was beautiful; bittersweet… the little boy was being a little boy after surviving a massive EF 4 tornado that hit his school. He was on the news… he didn’t notice; he was just a little boy.

 

Yesterday, a massive EF4 tornado with winds from 166-200 miles, struck Moore, Oklahoma.  Moore is located near I-35 South… you can drive through Oklahoma City on I-40; drop down on 35, be in Moore in just minutes.

 

I know someone who was traveling through Oklahoma City, Oklahoma just less than a hour before the tornado struck.  I noticed while we talked on our cellphones… he kept mentioning the sky.  The sky looks bad; it looks like a tornado.  I felt … alarm.

 

He was aware while he was driving in Oklahoma… (yesterday)… that another tornado could strike at any time.  Not only that, he had just driven through Shawnee, Oklahoma where a tornado had struck the day before!  He described to me on the cellphone what he was seeing as he drove through.

 

He saw big houses torn to shreds; trees split apart.  Cars, pickups were overturned in people’s yards… their homes destroyed.  Everything tossed… mangled.  I wonder ‘why’?

 

I’m told I have no right to … question ‘why’?  If I want to wonder ‘why’… I will.  I realize that I won’t know the answer to ‘why’… no more than I’ll know the answer as to ‘why’ my only child, my son… Tommy, collapsed at the beach while playing with my grandson… to die.

 

‘Why’?  Oh… don’t tell me I don’t have the right to question… I don’t feel you have the right to say that to me.  I turn my back on you…  I can ask while at the same time… know that my question can’t be answered.  I’m intelligent enough to know that.

 

You, or nobody else, even the smartest person in the world can… tell me ‘why’.  All ‘you can say is what you think; what you’ve been taught to believe’.  You don’t know ‘why’… I have my own beliefs just as you do.  I don’t think yours are better than mine… or mine better than yours.  Do you know what I honestly think?

 

I think that as long as we ‘believe’ in a good way, and our hearts feel it’s right… I think that most important.  More important than not believing at all.

 

As long as good things stem from our beliefs, make good things happen for ourselves, others… life is good.  Love, caring for each other.  Don’t even argue with me… that’s my belief… I’m sticking to it.  I don’t have to defend, nor debate my beliefs.  I respect yours… you will respect mine.

 

Shawnee, Oklahoma is only 40 miles from Moore, Oklahoma.  He spent the night in the western part of Tennessee last night.  He woke up to a storm early this morning.  He got up, began driving to be in North Carolina, tonight.

 

I am watching the news on tv… in 10 minutes they will begin showing more in detail what has happened.  What I see touches the very core of my heart… my soul.

 

What bothers me is when you tell someone about such… out of their dumb-ass mouths are these words:  ’yeah, things like that happen; it’s one of those things’.  How callous people have become ‘today’… no feelings left for anyone other than their own lives.

 

They can’t see any further than as far as their hands can reach…. dense-minded.  Uncaring, unfeeling…. but… if you want to see them go into action… let something happen to one of their children; or to their life.

 

You will see screaming, gnashing of teeth… crying, whining, b___…. you’d better listen to ‘them’.   Only if something dared to ‘touch their lives’… would they care.  They only care about themselves… I ‘watch when it happens to them’….

 

I pay attention to their reactions.  I am holding my head over to the side… watching through puzzled eyes, studying…. to see how such a person will react.  I want to know one thing…. ‘when it happens to ‘them’… is it really… just one of those things; things like that happen’, to them?

 

I say what I think a lot of times; I say what I see, feel or think.  I don’t think people like it ‘every time’ I do it.  I don’t mean to hurt… I just wonder aloud; or …. if a person has mistreated me in the past… and the next time is nice to me, trying to impress someone else… I ‘call them on it’… I don’t play games… yet, I just lied… I have to play the game of life…. just like we all have to.

 

We can’t be 100%… honest.  Don’t you agree?  Would you be lying… if you said you never told a lie?  We all know… we all have to lie at times in our life… you know, those ‘little, white lies’.  It’s uncomfortable to think about it, I know.  I feel the same way.

 

I realize some people have the world by the tail; have all the money, material things they could desire… they aren’t going to care about anything other… than themselves.

 

They are going to b____, cry, whine about ‘how hard life is; how much they have to go through’. They have everything to make their life happy… but, they’ve screwed it up by getting an addiction… how can life be good anymore?  ’I reckon it would make you whine, cry, b_____; moan, groan how bad your life is’.

 

I think their problem is that they feel bad all the time; their health has changed from all the bad things they’ve done to their body ‘in the name of seeking happiness, pleasure’.  I know I could be wrong… we ‘know’ those things don’t hurt people… it’s got to be something else.

 

They become bored with having everything; quit appreciating all they have… become alcohol, drug, sex, smoke-addicted… among other things.  When they go too far with that; they become bored again… they have no where to go, have anything to do anymore for entertainment.

 

It makes one think they will to do ‘something crazy’…. next.  Something that make them feel again… get the adrenaline flowing; God, to see what ‘feeling good feels like’… again.

 

They’ve got everything in the world… only they can’t feel, love, care any more.  They have numbed themselves… and can easily say when something ‘bad’ happens to others…. ‘yeah, it’s just one of those things; things like that happen’.

 

Think of all the lives…. the people they come in contact with during that time… God, think of the feelings they’ve hurt, stepped on because ‘they didn’t feel good’… they are ‘too washed out’; they can’t be bothered by other ‘mere people’.

 

In their minds, maybe they’ve ‘become God’….. so, they strike out with their own unhappiness, their own unwell feelings; they make anyone who comes in contact with them… unhappy, devastated from their nasty words, their uncaring.

 

They begin to thrive on their power to … create storms in others’ lives… ‘Watch this!”  That can bring a little grin to their faces!  How do I know?  I’ve seen this all my life…. and…. more.  You wouldn’t believe… but, I know you do.  You’ve either done it… watched it happen to others; or have been a victim.

 

What’s so bad is… when these people are in management of a company; when they are a ‘boss’ over people.  Maybe it’s the dominant spouse in a marriage; the one everyone has to listen to… to obey.  You know… the ‘head of household’ person.

 

People ‘under them’ are in a position always… to ‘be knocked down’ when that person doesn’t feel good; or his family life is awful.  So, they just go ‘screw up Billy-Bob’s life by talking harsh to him; make his job/life hard for him’… when Billy Bob’s life is already hell.

 

Maybe Billy Bob has had a heart attack; his wife committed adultery; maybe his child just died.  Maybe Billy-Bob’s health is bad, he is trying to make a living for his own family the best way he knows how… and has to ‘eat ___’ along the way, to survive.

 

A family sometimes, never knows what a man goes through to feed their hungry mouths, to dress their spoiled asses; make them look good so, other people will ‘think they are somebody’.   You know… make it possible for them to ‘keep up with the Jones’… ‘dress to impress’.

 

The man suffers so, that a family can live, eat good.  They never know the grief he goes through.  Or… the mistreatment another man does to him… he has to swallow his pride, keep from whipping that man’s a___… so, he can keep his job.

 

His boss says, ‘yeah, I know how it feels… it’s just one of those things’.  How in the ____ does ‘he know how it feels’?  He has never suffered the loss of anything in his life; he doesn’t know how it is for the average man to struggle not for himself… but, for others; his family.

 

What’s so bad is… when half the family doesn’t deserve all he goes through.  The wife is dressing in beautiful clothes on his hard-earned money to go sneak out to do things she shouldn’t; his kids are taking advantage… never giving that poor man a second thought.  They all are focusing on ‘pleasure; what makes them feel good’.  The father is thinking all along what he’s going to do, to make his family’s life better.

 

Sometimes, when I write… I let my mind absorb other things as they happen… and incorporate it into my stories.  This began solely about the tornado, and its victims.  All I can say… that’s ‘me’… when I’m writing for my blog.

 

Since then, I heard some very callous remarks made about the victims of the Moore, Oklahoma.  It angered me to know, see how uncaring, unfeeling, cold another person can be… they can’t even imagine.  Their minds ‘are too thick’…. you can’t get through to them.

 

I would love for Victoria Fairchild to step up… shake up some of these people’s lives.   (She is my main character in my ongoing series… update:  I’m in process of writing book two… The Saga Of Victoria Fairchild).

 

We all wish for characters like Victoria Fairchild… she will step where even the devil is afraid to step.  She would deal an eye for an eye… a tooth for a tooth.  She would make sure someone learned a lesson or two in their life… ‘if’ they didn’t, then…. she’d simply do what she had to do; do what it’d take… to make things alright for the victims.  No matter what……………………….

 

Don’t we all wish for someone like her… to take up for, defend all the weaker people, animals in this world?  Characters like this would ‘do anything it took’… to make the world good.  That’s why I always say… we need bad in the world just as well, as good.

 

This is strictly a ‘Gloria opinion’… and I have lots of them; I hold my ground on each unless… you can show me differently.  I’m very open-minded.  You think what you want to… I’m not going to try to change your minds… I respect you.

 

Not only that… I always hope you are open-minded to learn… just as I am.  I’m not so, opinionated, that I can’t … budge.  I’m not so ‘feet planted firmly on the ground’, that I can’t move.  I’m not going to let pride ever stand in my way again… make someone think ‘I know everything’… so, that I don’t learn new things.  Teach me!  I will listen; just don’t ‘push your beliefs on me’……..

 

Teach me in a kind, good way… I don’t respond well to negative people.  Nor… do I listen to them at all.  I don’t have the patience to waste my time… you and I aren’t going to ‘see eye to eye’… so, go your way, and I’ll go mine.  I won’t waste your time either.

 

See, life taught me this.  It taught me so, much from seeing things, hearing things, knowing things from a child up… to be like this.  Things people protect little children from… things a young person should never know, even be aware of… things we’ve learned as we become older… that we can’t change, hurt us.  Life is like this…. you know it is.

 

What is that old saying?  I’m always good for getting old sayings ‘backwards’ (maybe I try to change them to be ‘my’ way )).  Let’s see, I think it is something like this:  Lord, please help me to accept the things I can’t change.  I am grinning… I’m wondering if I said it right or not… I’m thinking to myself… there are some things I don’t/wont accept… but, pretend to…. always looking for a way to change them… all in a quiet way.

 

To be ‘Gloria’…. you either like me, or you don’t like me… or sit on the fence post all your life… doing both, changing your mind constantly; trying to decide.  Or… you go on, live your own life, ignore me… and I do the same… ignore ‘you’.  You never know I’m there; I am a quiet person… private.  I mind my own business; you won’t mind my business.  Life is like this… you know it is.

 

Oh, to be ‘you’… same thing.  I think just like you.  I either like you, don’t like you… or am in a constant state of liking you one minute, disliking you the next… or, never knowing if I like you.  You don’t have anything on me.  Life is like this, too… you know it is.  :)))

 

I say don’t waste time… I’m nobody but, me.  I care, love, feel for people… animals.  I live real life; I know what it is to struggle… I’ve known how it feels to be ‘rich’… been there, done that… oh, I wish I was again!  :)))  Maybe ‘one day’…. we all never give up hope, no matter what.  That means ‘you’, too.  Anything ‘really is possible’… you know I’m right.

 

The elderly woman stood there, speaking to the reporter.  I watched her eyes… they were seeing something we could only guess at.  She was speaking about her experience surviving the tornado.

 

She said that through the years, it was known what to do ‘if’ a tornado was coming.  That was to go to her bathroom… she did.  The elderly woman, and her dog went into the bathroom… where she sat on the stool hugging her dog.

 

The tornado hit, the stool began to move; she was falling all around.  She said, “I never lost consciousness”.  When all became still… her dog was no longer in her arms.  I saw grief in her eyes of shock at what she’d just come through… my heart twisted in my chest.  Tears filled my eyes, obscuring my vision.

 

The words she said next, twisted my heart a little more; I just closed my eyes, I couldn’t see anyway.  This grieving mother felt pain for her… she turned toward the rubble of her home, said…. ‘he’s in there, somewhere’.  Her dog was… dead.  His body lay somewhere in that pile of… her home.

 

Her eyes… her eyes.  My shoulders shook as I cried for her; her little dog was gone.  I don’t know this… but, it could have been all the family she had left.  If it were me… I only have my husband, and our Pups left in this world.

 

I sat here, imagining her feelings ‘right this moment’… oh God, the pain I felt.  I already know how it feels to lose my only child; I know how it feels to lose at least (I quit counting) 19 loved ones… the very family I loved most in my whole life… they are… gone).

 

I’ve lost everything several times in my life; the last being a house fire that took all our belongings.  I’ve suffered many ‘bad’ things in my life… I know a lot about ‘bad things happening’.  Don’t feel sympathy, sorrow for me… I’m very strong now.  I’m like the redwood trees that stand battered, beaten from past storms.  I lift my limbs up to the sky to embrace the sunshine… life.  I love life!

 

I know how it feels to lose my beloved dogs;  even cats… I’m not a cat-lover but, I watched through time the feral cats I came to know, love, feed… die.  You wouldn’t believe the pain I felt… they each had become a part of my life.  When I love an animal, person with my heart… I truly love with my… very heart.  If I love ‘you’… there’s never any doubt in your mind that, I do.  If I don’t…. well, that’s another story….. ))

 

I’ve known grief, lived grief for so long… I think it’s a part of ‘me’… I know it only too well.  Okay… okay… I hear ‘you saying’…. “yeah,its just one of those things that happens; things like that happen”.  Guess what?

 

You don’t even know what’s happened in my life to make me grieve… you won’t say that to me… and get by with it. I don’t discuss it ‘in person’ with anyone… anyway.  I’m not going to push my feelings, life ….on you.  Never have, never will at this late day, time.

 

My private life is …. mine… I don’t share it with anyone.  I do talk about everything else…. here.  Sometimes, I do write private things from my life…. but, don’t try to ‘talk’ to me about them.

 

I’ll say this… when you lose your child; it’s a grief unlike any other.  It was almost ‘the end’ of me…

 

The elderly woman stood there as the reporter spoke to her; asked her questions in a caring voice.  Her eyes…. I heard excited voices!  Something was moving, making some of the rubble move… “Bowsy!”

 

The woman began calling her dog by his name, as people lifted pieces of debris off him.  He began struggling to get out.  The elderly woman was going toward him, calling his name; her hands reaching out for him.  Her precious dog was… alive!  Now… did you feel how wonderful that was… to learn her dog was alive?

 

My heart didn’t twist watching that drama unfold… it ‘flip-flopped’ in happiness.  I was glad no one could see me… I cried tears of happiness for that elderly woman.  No matter that she didn’t have anything else in this world… she had her dog.  Dog-lovers… are like that.

 

To you, and I… we know how much it means for good things to come from bad things.  We are happy when we see good things happen.  We wish for good things to happen to us, everyone.  I told you above about ‘those people’ who just say …’yeah, it’s one of those things; things like that happen’.  They wish only for good things to happen ‘in their lives’.

 

They wouldn’t care… unless it affected ‘their life, their loved ones’.  You think like me… they wouldn’t… but, they’d ‘scream like little girls’… if their child died; their pet died; their spouse died; their parent, sibling, loved one… died.

 

‘You’….. would be the ‘cold, uncaring person’…. if ‘you’ didn’t feel for them; never mind them telling you when tragedy strikes in your life… ‘yeah, it’s one of those things; things like that happen’.

 

Oh… the person traveling through Oklahoma was… Skip!  Only people who wish good things for others would care about this.

 

I know that people who would say, ‘yeah, it’s one of those things that happen; things like that happen’…. wouldn’t have cared.

 

 

 

 

 

Related articles

• Moore, Oklahoma tornado May 20, 2013 (earthsky.org)
• Devastating scenes in Oklahoma City area (cnn.com)
• Photos of the devastating tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma (doobybrain.com)

Death… Shock and Everything Between… Until Tommy Died, I Didn’t Know It Hurt This Much

This is all I have of Rick-Rick… his ashes are in this beautiful chest… Rick-Rick’s Chest.  It sits beside our Mother‘s Rose Chest, in my happy art room…….

 

Death… Shock and Everything Between…  Until Tommy Died, I Didn’t Know It Hurt This Much

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

 

Today… my little brother, my most favorite brother, died… eight years ago.  He died May 19, 2005… not even 5 months after our home burned down, destroying all.  Just saying that, hurts me deeply.  I loved him with my very heart… Rick-Rick was the family member who would ‘come through hell’ to me, his sister.  I knew he loved me very much… this is the only family member I ever ‘knew’ truly loved me.

 

I remember standing there in shock, watching the house burn down… there was a crowd of people all around… all of a sudden, Rick-Rick’s face appears in front of me… his eyes were streaming tears… tears for what had just happened to us.  I was trying to hear his words as he cried… telling me he was so sorry, he cared.  He was so, distraught.  Ricky seemed to ‘pop up’ for me to let me know he cared with his heart… when bad things happened to me.

 

Ricky was there, always… to help me many years ago.  He worked on my car, never charging me for anything, excepting to buy the parts.  I can ‘see his hands’ when he’d repair my car in the winter-time… when he’d scuff them up, cutting them… I can see the blood in my mind’s eye.  I can even ‘feel’ the little ‘shock’ that runs through me when I see someone is hurt.  I couldn’t bear for his hands to get hurt working on my car.

 

When I almost died, in the hospital after major surgery that saved my life… I woke up while still in ‘that other world of being heavily medicated; not knowing what’s happened’…. I saw my brother, Rick-Rick… he was looking at me with tears in his eyes… he was crying ‘for me’.

 

I don’t think he knew I could somehow, see him… I saw him quietly leave the room.  I know he didn’t hear me calling him back… I think I didn’t make a sound.  Rick-Rick would just ‘pop up’ anytime… no one had to ask him to come.

 

Getting back to the house fire… I tried so hard to hear what Rick-Rick was trying to tell me.  Have you ever tried to ‘hear someone’s voice’…. when in shock?

 

Have you ever been in shock so, many times in your life… trying to take in what’s happened, trying to hear….. to see someone’s mouth moving… not hearing a sound they made?  I have… so, many bad things have happen in my life… I can tell you, each time it happens… I haven’t become used to it; I still can’t hear someone talking.

 

How many times have I stood, sat… watching someone’s mouth move… and have this thought?  ’I see your mouth working… I can’t hear what you are saying’.  Shock does that…. you can’t feel, think…. hear.

 

Our home burned down on December 28, 2004… several days after that, my first cousin, died in a most horrible crash… a log truck hit her head-on.  I wish I could relate some things here about that… so, surreal when they happened… you would think it was in a book.  I can’t bear to think about that right now…. it involved what I saw.  All served to push me into further… shock.

 

She was helping us to get back on our feet; she gave us money, household things for the place we’d found… she and I had promised that ‘no matter what’ we’d be close for the rest of our life… we were for several days.  She died before we got to see if we could be ‘forever’.

 

We were going to keep it secret… there were family members who couldn’t stand to see anyone close… they’d keep on until they ‘busted that up’.  One aunt in particular hated us; she had caused a rift between us in the past.

 

Jealousy, hatred for the other sisters’ daughters… to understand… you’d have to be in ‘the family’… too many women.  Everyone knows ‘each woman wants to be the Queen‘…. in fact, if that particular aunt was on the phone with my mother when I came to see her… my mother would tell her so, she could get off the phone… my aunt would become angry with her, and say something about ‘the Queen’ being there.  She would punish my mother by not calling for some time, to upset her.  She caused such grief through the years.  I forgot to say… I grew up with very vindictive family.  You couldn’t dare show them any happiness you were feeling… in fact, if you came around some of them with brightly colored balloons… they’d take pleasure into walking up to you while smiling… and prick every one of them.  Not only that… never  understand ‘why you would be upset at them’.  The pleasure…. you could always ‘see that pleasure’ they got in their eyes.

 

She was angry because her own daughter had turned against her; never had anything to do with her again until the day she died.  I watched, listened to my other family crying, telling me how she would blackmail them for something that ‘happened 20 years ago’.  If one was smart… they’d hide being close; hide letting her know they loved ‘another family member’…. she wasn’t the only one who hated to see ‘love’ in the family.  They instantly go to work to ‘undermine’ it….

 

In my family… we all know that it ‘can’t be’… that’s okay, we all are fine that way.  We learned to be.  It doesn’t mean you have to ‘hate’ the other… though, I’m sure some do.  I don’t hate at all.

 

We ‘don’t need’ each other.  Now.. that I don’t have family left… I’m glad I was brought up that way.  I love the family members I have now…at a distance… I want them to stay at a distance… because I… realize I don’t know how to appreciate having ‘real’ family at this late day and time.  I ‘don’t know what to do; how to act’… it’s my fault… life made me that way.

 

I know…     ‘I don’t have family left’…..     ‘the family members I have, now’…    one contradicts the other.  It’s my life…. and all I can say… that’s just the way it is… no more, no less.  It is what it is….

 

It’s not their fault, they tried to reach out to me… I just can’t do it… I just can’t do it.  I don’t need ‘extra pain’.  I don’t ‘know how to be family’…. I can’t love ‘up close’… I can only ‘love at a distance’, when no one can get into my personal life.  It’s the only way I know; it’s the only way I grew to be through all these years when ‘no one was around for me’.

 

Why… how could I change now?  I tried to.  I failed at it miserably… just plain-out miserably.  I guess I’m a failure at that… I know I am.  I don’t like to hurt people, I don’t mean to… I want to keep them at a distance from me.  I can’t love ‘family’…. up close.

 

I’ve just ‘hurt family’… by putting distance between us.  It’s probably a permanent distance ‘now’… that’s okay, I’ve been walking in those shoes all my life.  I’m not like anyone in my family… I just can… not connect… I don’t know how.

 

Not only that, I see it in some of my other ‘family members’… they are so afraid to trust, that they won’t even say where they live, afraid our own family will destroy them with our past.  How anyone can blame or look badly at a child… when it wasn’t their fault at all, they had no choice in how they grew up?

 

I ‘know where they are coming from’… I understand why they are so suspicious, distrustful… I ‘came from the same place’… I walk in ‘those shoes’.

 

I can’t hold it against them… We all lived so far off from each other (several thousands of miles) through time… the last time we’ve seen each other was when we were little.  No one even has a clue ‘where the other has walked in life, the effects life events have played on the other’… ‘one size doesn’t fit all’.  Just because you are alright, doesn’t mean the other one is.

 

Just because they look, sound okay… that’s pride (you know…. where we want the other to think we have life by the horns; life’s good to us)… doesn’t mean it’s so.  We are so hurt when we realize… no one knew ‘that about us’… seems like ‘they’d know’…

 

We all are different… who in the world is going to take time, or the interest … to find out?  No one… it no longer matters.  We’ve ‘learned to go our own ways’… we don’t need, nor want the others in our life ‘now’.  Sad?

 

Yes, yes it is… life can be that way… it’s real life no matter what you, or I think, or like about it.  It’s going to be… and that’s just the way it is.  How do I know?  I feel the same way.

 

There were so many of us who experienced ‘Hell’… we all came from the ‘same place’ as children.  ’Hell’ burned scars on our minds that can’t be seen… but, whenever any one of us has contact… all you have to do is to listen… the scars have a way of showing themselves.  Our words, the way we think, feel… reflect them just as a mirror picks up all our flaws in a bright light.

 

I say to them… don’t be afraid of the other…. ‘tell the world first, if you have to… and go on living’.  This way of thinking came from watching as children… our mothers getting angry, blackmailing the other to get their way.  They did do things they shouldn’t have; they made the mistake of trusting a sister; it’d come back later to ‘bite them in the ass’.

 

No one thought ‘to tell the world what they didn’t want known’… they’d let themselves be blackmailed every time.  That taught me a valuable lesson… ‘if you threaten me… I will tell on myself in a heartbeat if I lose every friend in the world… and not only that… I’ll tell them ‘why’ I did something.  I’m strong enough… all that’s happened to me in my life has made me a for-real good person.  I don’t understand, yet… I do… why my mother and her family members would let themselves be ‘blackmailed’.

 

I ‘see fear’ in some of my family members… the same old thing I watched as a little girl.  Fear of other family members… because some don’t mind ripping another family member’s life apart.  In fact, quite a few of them … thrived on ‘drawing blood’.  Loved to ‘see what happens if they said this, said that’.  They wanted to ‘see what would happen if they pulled the spider’s legs off’.  I have never-ever wanted to be like that!  I can’t tell how many times I watched that through time….

 

The more pain caused… the bigger the smile would become… until they were ‘pure gleeful’.  It made the adrenaline rush… giving such a high.  I knew several family like this… ‘gleeful’ was how I’d describe them, as they danced around proud… that they’d just destroyed someone’s life. As a little girl, I’d be so fascinated watching such happen… when I was little… it appeared to me ‘like magic’.. just crazy, I know.  Little children try to make sense of what their little, innocent eyes see….

 

I’d see bright lights in their eyes, so happy they were!  I’d see, hear such a rush, see the set of their faces… know when they caused such pain to another… it made them high… on a roll.  They had meant to get someone back, and they ‘got his ass’… now, ‘who is Queen of the mountain’.. and ‘I showed your ass’!

 

This is what this person grew up seeing… I thought everyone was like this… thankfully, I didn’t trust as many people as I could have through time; sadly, I trusted some, shouldn’t ever have. To see so much of this in different family members… something had to be born into us… or it was learned from generation to generation.  One side of our family is known for having a ‘………….. streak’… the ones who ‘had it’… stood out when angry, or happy.  Definitely noticed by… everyone.  All my family know what I say is true… the ones living grew up seeing what I did… they didn’t get out ‘un-scarred’.

 

Most all turned out to be good people from what I know.  So… how can one hold mistakes against someone for things they had no control of when children, growing up….when you see such?  I can’t.

 

That may be because…. I’m not perfect, and if I’d been… I’d never know what I know now.  I’d still be making the same mistakes.  I’d probably be a drunk, addicted to drugs, a prostitute, a really bad person who’d do bad things… I’ve been around all as a younger person.  I saw how to do it all… somehow, I didn’t turn out to be any of the things I just named, or the things… I didn’t name.  All ‘combined’ made me want to be ‘me’… the person I am.  I ‘tried some of the dresses on’… but, they didn’t ‘fit me’….

 

I wanted to be good as I could be… things don’t bite you in the ass when you are… if any do…. the bite won’t be as severe.  It’s better to be as good as you can be… I promise that… take it from me.

 

I don’t know that life is ‘so much better when you are as good as can be’… because through time when ‘I could have been very, very bad’… I wasn’t… yet, I see people who are very, very bad… end up ‘having everything’ they could possibly desire in life.

 

My ‘good decisions’… made me ‘lose out on so much’…………. but, guess what?  I have a peaceful mind knowing I haven’t cheated to get material things; stolen or deceived someone when I could have easily done it.  We’ve had/have our hard times… but, though our minds aren’t peaceful when we do… they are… because we ‘do right’.  Peace of mind… is a good thing.  Not hurting others is a good thing.

 

We can’t help all that happened when we were young; nor the mistakes we made as we grew up not knowing any better…. the good thing is… getting off the paths we got on from ignorance; not knowing…  traveling good paths in life.  The words make it sound like it was so easy ‘to just learn quickly, jump onto a good path and go off into the sunset to live happily ever after’.

 

That’s not so, at all… I can’t tell you the years of hell, grief of trying to learn the hard way; there wasn’t anyone to teach me…  how it affected my life so much… it’s a wonder I’m not dead, or in a prison, or have disappeared somewhere.

 

I learned the hard way also, because of pride… too much pride.  I didn’t want someone to think ‘I didn’t know something’… I made mistakes ‘until I learned’.  I learned from them so well… because I felt the pain from learning them the hard way…. oh why, couldn’t I have asked someone?

 

Oh… I’ve learned this in all my years, know it to be true…. when you do good things for others… it really does come back to one in …more ways than one.  I’d like to do more good than I do… sadly, there are people who are ‘always there’ to take advantage… greed, getting something for nothing.  We got fooled not long ago, when we gave away a lot of nice things we’ve had stored up, never using.  We wanted them to go to people who really needed….

 

One day I will write about my younger life… for now, it’s not the time.  Only then… will I write about… my life.  I can’t write for the others……. my words will be my own words, about me.  They will have to write about their own life… I can’t do it for them; nor do I desire to.

 

Getting back to my cousin’s death when she was killed in the crash… and our home burning down.  It was so strange to be reading through eyes that made it almost impossible to read… for the tears, about ‘both’… our home burning, and my cousin dying in the crash ‘at the same time’.

 

I remembered thinking that when we were little, we never knew I’d be standing there reading in a newspaper about our home burning down, much less at the same time, reading about her death in the log truck crash.  Can you even imagine such?  I couldn’t wrap my mind around it… I just couldn’t believe it.

 

To read about someone who was the only ‘real’ sister I had as a little girl, my own cousin I loved dearly … while we were digging through the rubble where our house burned…. I remember as I read the small town newspaper, I stopped, stood for a while just staring off into space… remembering her; seeing us play as the little blonde-headed girl, and me, the little brown-haired girl.  That was when I liked … to cook… I never did as an adult.  :)))

 

We made all kinds of chocolate pies… from mud.  We had our own little kitchen, playhouse. We kept it very clean (we were taught to clean… so, we were taught something).

 

Our kitchen/playhouse was behind Grandma Alma’s house, on the side of George’s out-building under the ‘Catawba tree’ where somehow…. worms ‘grew from that tree’!  I was too little to understand… even now, I would have to research it to know… ‘what made me think worms grew from that tree’.

 

I was several years older than my cousin… I remember when we began thinking about ‘how pretty’ we were.  We began to ‘pose’ in our photos… just like we saw our mamas do.  They were beautiful… we were on our way to being … beautiful.  We knew it… we were taught this too, by watching, admiring all the many women in our family.

 

Our family was known for ‘the prettiest women; the prettiest girls’.  Today… is no exception… there are some beautiful young women in our family ‘now’…  Not only that, their daughters are …just as beautiful.  Truthfully, I don’t know many ‘ugly women’ in our family… the ones I ever saw, let themselves get old, bitter, angry.

 

I’ll never forget how I found out about my cousin’s death.  That day when we heard all the sirens… lots of them… we had no idea.  We even followed at a distance up hwy. 56… stopped at the bottom of the hill, looked up at the top.  From there, we could see the white car… never suspecting it was her.  We could see the log truck…..

 

Skip and I turned around to go back, salvage any little thing from the house-fire…. people were stopping, stealing anything they could find that wasn’t damaged… taking it with them.  We were trying to find our things if there were things not ruined… before someone else got them.

 

Sometimes… people we knew, stopped to get what they could… we were told about them; we said they would give those things to us… we were sure that’s ‘why’ they searched through our things.  We are still waiting for them… to give what they found… to us.  Maybe they just … forgot; I know they didn’t mean to keep them.  I’m sure they don’t know ‘we know they did that’.

 

When we’d drive by, we would see them standing there, picking things up.  Our friends close by told us who they saw.  People we knew would drive by, see people carrying books, any piece of furniture they could find… with them.

 

I didn’t know people came like vultures to steal your things before you could come back to go through all…. when your home burned down… I never thought of doing such…. I never thought about trying to steal someone’s things like that… nice people, at that….

 

That evening my cousin died in the crash, Ms Nancy drove up… she began speaking to me… I went into the second shock; it had only been several days our home burned down.

 

She told me about my cousin being killed by the log truck…  she wanted me to hear from someone who cared about me… instead of hearing it from someone else.  She told me, herself.

 

The cellphone rang before Ms Nancy told me… it was my cousin’s husband asking if my cousin was there… he knew she might would come by… she hadn’t got home yet.  I didn’t know at that moment… moments later, I learned.

 

How many times did I go into shock during that time?  I stayed so numb… all the things I saw was behind an ‘invisible wall’… one that tried to protect me from so much pain.

 

Just a couple of months before the house fire, my cousin’s death from the log truck crash… her brother… ‘committed suicide’… I heard a lot of conflicting stories.  I won’t go into that.  I don’t know what really happened; only what my cousin who died in the crash… told me.  When we were little, he was my brother… though we were first cousins.  He protected me in my first grades in school… my own little brother had disappeared out of my life.  He was taken to a different… Hell.

 

Since Tommy died, my mind goes to my mother’s sister… their mother.  I keep seeing her face… no wonder her face looked the way it did… I have a photo I put on here, of me, just last week… my face had the same expression.  It was a photo I don’t remember being taken of me just after Tommy died.

 

One can ‘see’ I was in another world… I couldn’t bear to be ‘here’ for the pain; though, my physical body was.  I understand, and have since Tommy died ‘why’… no one can understand unless… they walk in the same shoes.  You’ve got to have a child who has died… in her situation, oh my God… think about it, she had 2 children died within 4 months.

 

I can’t even imagine what it feels like with two children dying so close together in such horrible circumstances.  I only know how it feels when my only child died… guess what?

 

It doesn’t matter how a mother’s child dies… just dying, going away forever, changes her whole life.  If they died by someone’s hand… someone did something terrible to them… oh my God, it would keep tormenting the mother.

 

I can only think of the ‘double’ grief… my aunt suffered.  In my mind, I see her face.  She’s gone now… but, honestly… I almost know from my own experience that no one could have ever possibly known the extent of her mental anguish, the grief in her mind.  I didn’t know at the time…. I just knew she has lost both children, how awful for that to happen.  I knew that it hurt her.  Until Tommy died … I didn’t know it … hurt this much.

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Finger Toes… Wearing Gloves For Shoes With Soles On Them

Silly doodles go with silly thoughts… a girl’s got to have fun sometimes… especially when they have an imagination such as mine… sometimes, the silly thoughts have to escape.  Where, better than here?

 

 

 

Finger Toes… Wearing Gloves For Shoes With Soles On Them

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

 

 

No, they aren’t pretty.  Each one is short, a little plump.  Looking at them, I see each one is a cute, funny shape.  My toes… my little, cute, most treasured toes.  They are all I’ve got… they mean the world to me.  They aren’t pretty, but… they work good!

 

I look at everyone’s toes… don’t you agree, that we all wish our toes were prettier.  I admit, I have seen pretty toes… I envied them.

 

I’ve seen toes as long as my own fingers!  I have short fingers, but… if they were toes… I’d be wearing gloves for shoes.  You might would say, “that’s just not right”!  I’d have to put soles on the bottom of each glove in order to walk in them.

 

I’m imagining them… you know, the colors you could have would be endless.  More colors than shoes have!  I can see so many colors in my mind; beautiful designs.

 

Each ‘finger toe’… could be done individually… I was thinking of something… what about a ‘high heel‘ glove?  Nah!  I can see those big, long toes flopping in the wind.  It wouldn’t work…. at all.  One might trip on their own finger toes.

 

I can see where having toes that long could make a positive difference in my life… at times.  For instance… while I’m drawing, or writing… and I’d like a sip from my glass of tea… my foot could just reach out, grab that glass up… put it to my thirsty lips, tilt it just so, I wouldn’t have to miss a beat drawing, writing as I satisfied my thirst.  I just don’t think I could scratch my back with them, though…..

 

Also… if I could knit, or crochet… I don’t know how…. I would be able to do that to relax, while I used my hands to work.  I’m thinking I might would need another head… it’d be hard to think with my finger toes… without a mind of their own.  With so much I could do with finger toes, I don’t know if this head up on my shoulders would be … enough.  Why?  Because I would have to think… twice enough.

 

Another head would make it possible to read, learn extra things to do with my finger toes… it wouldn’t even have to bother the head on my shoulders while I did what I normally do.

 

I might would need another head… but, I don’t want to go there.  Thinking about this is twisting my brain around… enough.  See what I mean…. one head is enough for the toes I’ve got… if they were finger toes, it’d be time for another head, brain to think past …this one brain.  That’s why I’m having a hard time trying to tell you about this… I have to imagine.

 

I was thinking having finger toes could give more strength, power to us.  All the things I could do while my hands were busy…  suppose someone tried to grab me, run away with me?  Why I could reach out with those long finger toes, grab something to hold onto… you get the picture.

 

If I were driving, and you drop something in the floor… I could pick it up quickly with my finger toes, hand it to you.

 

If you needed me to add something up… I’d have 20 digits, not just 10 fingers… I could add good!

 

Okay… okay…… I have a headache with this one head I have.  My imagination, you know.  This comes from imagining something really one would need two heads to think about….. because who has ever heard of ‘finger toes, and wearing gloves for shoes with soles on them’?

I Don’t Know How To Be Homeless…

 

 

Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

I Don’t Know How To Be Homeless…
By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

I opened my eyes, they are even with the ground
At this position I can see every grain of white sand
I’m glad it’s white sand, not dirty

I want to close my eyes, go back to sleep
My body, mind are so tired… tired to the bone
I know I have to get up, so no one will see

So no one will see me, sleeping here on the ground
They might report me, I be made to leave
I’m afraid to go into the homeless world

I don’t know them, they don’t know me
I don’t know the rules upon entering such a world
I’ve just entered the homeless world, I don’t have a home

Every minute, every second I have to look around me
To see what to do next, decisions made in a split second
With the barest of thoughts

What do I do now, where do I go
Is there any one who will befriend me, care what happens to me?
Dare I ask for help, God… what do I do?

I sit on the bench vacated by a homeless man
He left the newspaper that covered his body while he slept
I sat on it, hoping to feel warmth from it

I sat straight, wanting to appear normal
I still knew how to do that; I still have pride
I don’t want to be homeless… I don’t know how to be

I’ve got to pee… oh, where do I go?
I want to brush my teeth; wash my body
I don’t have a toothbrush, I don’t have clothes

Where do I find a bathroom, shower?
How do I get a toothbrush, find clean clothes
I don’t smell bad… not just yet

Please Lord, help me to know the way out of this world
I’ve only been here 24 hours
If I stay here, I’m not going to survive

I sat there, looked around, watched an old woman
As she tottered by in her worn out shoes
Watched her until she went out of sight, pushing her shopping cart

Two bums were arguing close by, my attention was drawn to them
One shoved the other, he fell to the ground
Where I laid just a short while ago

I got up, walked over… I didn’t want them to fight
I asked them to please be all right
“Mind your own business”, the one standing… told me

I thought to myself… I’m not strong enough yet
To enter this world I care about
I’m going to have to become stronger, learn what to do

I thought I could just come here, enter easily
I can’t… there’s more to being homeless than just what I’ve seen
For now… I can’t imagine what is past the knowledge I have

For now, I decide not to sit down anymore
I turn around, begin walking down the sidewalk
Walking to my truck, opening the door, driving away

 

TRASH… That’s What You Are; Don’t Hurt Me Anymore

TRASH… That’s What You Are;  Don’t Hurt Me Anymore

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

(2 photos taken by me… Gloria Faye Brown Bates)

You sit there on your park bench in your tattered clothes, your wrinkled, dry skin.  I don’t want to see your eyes filled with despair; I don’t want to see the pain in your eyes.  You are… disgusting.  You are no more than the piece of newspaper, I see blowing down the sidewalk.

Don’t look at me… don’t you dare look at me!  Inside my chest, my heart turns … away.  You are not touching my heart; I won’t let you.  I stand here at the door of my warehouse … oh, my wonderful warehouse of my most prized possessions.

I remember when it used to be in my little closet.  That’s where I began to collect my most treasured things.  I kept them safely there; and from there… my collection of possessions… grew.

Over time, I became so rich, successful… my collection grew.  I collected things so valuable.  If I even considered taking just one little thing out of my warehouse… and sold it, gave it to you… why, you would be wealthy.  Just one little prized possession could bring you, a homeless person… such happiness.  I’m just not going to do it!

I can’t part with not one possession in my warehouse.  No matter that it sits here, collecting dust, I ‘can’t let go’.  I mean to take it with me to my grave… I don’t want to help anyone.  I want everyone to envy me, wish for what I have… I’m so rich!

I love to look at you sitting over there in your filth, stinking of your enviroment.  Do you know ‘why’?  Because I know I have the power to help you if… I chose to.  If I helped you, how else could I be entertained.

You aren’t real; you aren’t anybody.  You are no more to me than that piece of newspaper blowing in the wind.  Trash… trash… that’s what you are.  No one cares about trash… they only want it… thrown away.

As I look at you, I catch a glimpse of something shiny in my peripheal vision.  I turn to look behind me… oh my, I feel such happiness looking at my huge warehouse… full of my wonderful possessions!  Happiness is what I feel inside… I couldn’t bear to part with even one thing…. the idea of it makes me feel panicky!  No, ‘all this is mine, mine, mine’!

I smile as my eyes caress the object that got my attention.  It’s a jeweled horse; actually the whole carousel sparkles in the ray of sunlight that shines through the opened door.  Just looking at it takes my breath away!

I stand in the doorway of my warehouse, letting you see me savor the wonderful feeling of owning so much.  You sit there in your stench, with your rheumy eyes, stringy hair… you can’t even comb your hair; you don’t own a comb.

My eyes move back to that shiny carousel… just one horse from it could make your pitiful life wonderful… selling just one horse from that carousel would make change your life… you would think a fairy God mother stood in front of your nasty ass… waved her wand with the shiny star on it… was giving you the world!  You aren’t going to get my horse!  I would miss it… mourn for it!  It’s mine, mine, mine!

I look with such pride at my carousel… oh, the most wonderful colors on it.  The detail… look at the perfect hues of pink, blue, aqua, yellow, orange, red, green, purple, lavender… each color separated by gold-colored lines… real gold at that!  All I can see is beauty. It shines, it speaks to me; speaks to my very soul!  You can’t have no better than … that’s to be able to afford the best!

Beauty from so many wonderful colors… from so many jewels on the saddles, and such… on each horse.  Those jewels are… real!  Oh, you have no idea how much each horse is worth!  They are mine… mine… mine!  Just one diamond could make you rich!!!  You’re not getting it… I’m greedy for my ‘good stuff’… I have more, I have better than anyone else… I don’t want to be bothered by… trash!  Blow away, you worthless piece of trash!

I look at the horse closest to where I stand; where the spark of light came from in my peripheal vision.  I can’t see any farther than this… it’s beauty has filled my eyes.  I want to absorb it into my body; into my very soul… it’s so beautiful.  I couldn’t let go of it, if I wanted to.

I look back to you when I can finally make my eyes move away from that piece of beauty.  Damn, what a contrast!  Looking from the horse to you… hurts my eyes, my mind… it insults me!  You are nothing but, trash.  You smell; your clothes are torn, tattered.  I even hear you talking to yourself… you are crazy, too.

It never enters my mind to consider the possibility of helping you… see that trash receptable sitting beside the park bench?  You… are what it’s for… that’s where you need to be thrown… you are trash!  You need to be balled up, thrown away!  I can’t bear to see you!

I stand there, looking at you a little longer… I don’t know why I am wasting my time staring at you.  I don’t know ‘why’ my attention is drawn to you… a homeless person with not even one possession to your name.  You can’t even take a bath, much less find food enough to fill that bony frame of yours.  You are less than a … human!

Rage fills my chest as I look at something so… ‘unbeautiful’.  I only want to see the good things in life… I can’t be distracted by ugly, nasty things.

That’s not what this person’s life is about (me)… my life is meant to accumulate, store my wondrous treasures I find here on this earth, while I am here!

I will take them with me when I die, if I have to have the undertaker… shove them up my ass, somehow!  I can’t leave even… one thing.  It means too much to me!  I want more, I want more!

Did I dare hear you speak to me?  Don’t you know you can’t speak to me; do you know who I am?  You can’t just be speaking to me… you aren’t good enough.  I can’t let anyone see ‘you’ speak to me… to do that, you have to be rich, rich, rich!  You have to be ‘beautiful enough’ to even wipe the dust off my shoes.  I wouldn’t let you for no amount of money… you are trash!  You ‘might wipe off on me’!

Stay away from me!  No, don’t you dare walk over to me; get away!  The wind is blowing trash toward me… don’t let it touch me, touch my life!  Get away!  Get away!

What’s that you have in your hand?  No, I don’t want it!  It’s nasty from being in your hand; there are millions of germs on it.  Don’t contaminate me, you piece of trash!

Eyes?  Clear blue eyes?  Beautiful eyes?  I didn’t mean to look into your eyes… damn!  Damn, damn, damn!!!  I don’t want to see beautiful, clear blue eyes smiling at me from… you are nothing but, trash!  I am turning my head… I feel my heart inside turning away.

I hear the softest voice come from the pile of trash standing in front of me.  Get away from me, you are distracting my attention away from my beautiful life, my wonderful possessions!  I don’t want to hear you!

I stood there, looked away… I’m in deep thought.  I’m going to close my warehouse door now.  I’m going to shut you out on the other side… why you might give me a disease; the wind might blow germs off you, putting them on my wonderful things here in my warehouse!

Get away, you piece of trash!  I am thinking this as I catch a spark of something shiny in my peripheal vision once again… it isn’t coming from inside my warehouse.  It’s coming from… no, it isn’t possible!

I don’t want to look!  What is that emotion I’m feeling inside my chest?  Why… am I feeling something wet on my cheeks!  What is that falling on my hands as I look down at them?  Why do I feel the need to look up… to look back… at you?  You are not worth my attention… you don’t shine like my possessions do!  You are just… trash!  I’m not looking at you!  I look up…

There you are… smiling softly at me.  Oh, the softness in your eyes, such beauty there.  I stand there mesmerized… I don’t mean to look at you; I can’t help it.  You are shining like a star… there’s a glow about you.  I sense goodness, peace from your presence…

You speak again.  What did you say?  My ears have been trained not to hear trash when it’s blowing near…. What?  I’m wanting to hear you!

I can’t see you for the curtain of tears that are filling my eyes.  Why do I feel that feeling… in my heart?  What did you say?  I just can’t hear you… I shouldn’t even try to… who listens to trash?  Trash can’t talk!

I close my eyes, as I do… I feel wetness squeeze from my eyelids.  The wind begins to gently blow, making my cheeks feel coolness from them.  I want to cry….

I feel a strange emotion inside, rusty from never being used since I was a little… poor girl.  Oh my God… I’m feeling… The emotion twists itself in my chest like a sharp knife, making my heart hurt… am I having a heart attack?  What is happening to me?

I open my eyes… the wind has blown the trash away!  Where did you go?  Come back, trash!  I want you to come back!

The emotion in my chest comes to the surface, I begin to weep.  Sobs shook my shoulders… I haven’t cried since I became… rich, since I began buying so many things to make ‘me’ happy.  I never took time to look at anyone else along my way to acquiring my possessions; my wealth.

‘I, me, myself’… only mattered to me.  I never looked back; I never helped anyone along my way; I never listened to anyone who wasn’t good enough to talk to me… a very rich, successful person.  Everything became ‘trash’ to me if it didn’t benefit … ‘me’…

Lord, I am standing here… wishing for that piece of trash to blow back to me.  I want to hear it, I want to talk to it… I want to see something so ugly, nasty… yet, so …

Beautiful.  Who are you?  I saw beauty in you; the glow from you competed with the shine, sparkle of all that is my warehouse!  Your presence made me… feel calm, peace of mind.  Please come back, trash!  Please come back!  I want to put you in my warehouse!  I want you to be my possession, too!

I stand there… I begin to realize something I haven’t thought of for years.  I ‘know who you’ are.  I’ve realize that I have just been given a ‘life’s lesson’… oh my, I am crying… I am ‘feeling real feelings’… how long has it been!

I stand here in shame… How could I have let myself quit feeling for others, let material things become my ‘God’?  How could I have wasted all these years not helping others in life, as I grew richer?

My mind’s eye looks back into my Life Bubbles… my fingers turning this one, that one!  I feel a stab of pain in my heart each time a bubble is plucked, I look inside.  How many people have I hurt?  How could I do that to … something so real?  People… like me, who once hurt!  I am remembering that pain…

The pain of someone looking down on me, seeing only trash blowing in the wind… worthless to them.  No one ‘saw me’…. I became just like them…

God forgive me.  Please forgive me. How far I have strayed off the most important path in life… I’m running as fast as I can … I am getting on it as quickly as possible!  The path of…

Caring, loving, helping … people.  I feel the need to begin helping others; I, now, remember the pain of not having; suffering from the stress of not having money to buy groceries, gas, pay my bills.  I can remember ‘how it felt’.  Shame on me for forgetting… shame on me for thinking, calling another human being…. ‘trash’.  I forgot there were others in this world… my world was ‘me’.

One day I was standing in the doorway of my small, modest house.  I stood there with peace in my mind, a happy heart.  I felt so richly blessed… I didn’t have a lot of possessions any longer.

Where did they go?  The day I saw beauty in something so ugly, filthy, so ‘trash’… my life changed.  That was the day I began to ‘see people’ again… the day I remembered to love, care about someone other than myself.

That was the day… instead of seeing trash standing there in front of me… I caught a glimpse of something ‘shining other than my wonderful, most important possessions’.  The ‘glow’ I witnessed that day lit the path with such brightness… that within a short time, I was back on the path in life I’d strayed from so long ago.

That was the day I began to rid myself of all my earthly possessions, only keep what I needed to have.  I used the money to make the difference in others’ lives… oh, the happiness I felt in my heart as… I saw the happiness in their eyes!

I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy luxuries of life, I still do.  My life isn’t focused on only ‘me’… I found the secret to life.  The more ‘I give’… the more ‘I receive’.  The more I love… the more I am loved.

You say I’m loved because of what I can give?  I don’t let anyone know I’m the one giving most of the time… most ‘don’t know’.  I don’t have to go through life ‘tooting my own horn’.  I don’t need ‘brownie points’…

I give with a free heart… no strings attached.  I ‘don’t need something back’.

I give… I let go, never expecting anything in return.  I make sure what ‘I let go’ is…. ‘good’.  If one does that… good comes back.

No matter how ugly someone is, the life they are in… stop, take a look, ‘feel for them’.  Care.  See beauty in something ‘ugly’.  I don’t mean in things that can hurt, harm you, or others.

Look at people who suffer around you… feel for them.  If you have extra, make a difference in their life.  Pass on things you don’t need… sitting there to accumulate doesn’t help anything… even if it’s ‘shoved up your ass’… it’s not going with you; it will stay right here on earth.  The old saying is:  you can’t take it with you.

I saw beauty in what I thought was trash… a living, breathing piece of ‘trash’ that the wind blew here, blew there.  There was a glow about it… it even spoke to me… I didn’t want to hear it because it was easier to ‘not care’… not caring is easier than caring.  One has to give … when they care.  Give from their heart…

The soft voice of that ‘trash’ reached my heart, melted the ice around it… when it softly said to me, “Don’t hurt me anymore… each time you hurt someone, you hurt me; I died for you… look at my hands’…

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Bubbles Of Life… Colors Of My Life

 

 

 

Bubbles Of Life… My Colors Of Life

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

Yesterday, I sat thinking as I looked outside… from my desk.  As I watched the tops of the tall pine trees sway in the wind… memories, thoughts swirled around in my mind… just as if the wind were inside me… blowing them around.

 

A thought gently drifted by in my mind… I was thinking about Skip, how his birthday this year… has been ‘bad’.  He has been experiencing one thing after the other for a week now… with no let-up.  My thought about this… is that I’m very worried for him.  My prayer for him is to stay safe, sound.  He is my world; he and the Pups are my whole life, I have no one else.

 

A little thought, a little bubble of life, just whizzed by quickly, urgently… drawing my attention to it… my mind’s fingers plucked it out of the air.  I looked inside… it was a ‘Ms Nancy‘ bubble.  I could see her little mouth saying to me… “you have me, all you have to do is let me know; I’ll be there”.  I love you, Ms Nancy… you are most definitely the sister I never had.

 

I smiled as I looked into Ms Nancy’s world in that bubble… she really means that.  Ms Nancy is the family I have… I love her very much.  I’ve never had a friend like her.

 

Another thought floated by, a little higher in the air… my mind’s fingers reached up, plucked it down so, my mind’s eye could see it (I am grinning, I never heard anyone else describe their thoughts as I’m now, describing to you; put that way until I wrote it)…

 

As I turned the thought around, I looked inside… a thought is like a clear bubble ‘snow globe’ in my mind.  I can hold it, turn it any way I want to… study it for as long as I want to.  I can see, hear, feel, know everything that goes on inside it.  In my mind… I call it a ‘bubble of life’… I see hundreds, thousands of them floating, drifting around… all I have to do is, pluck one from the air.

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if one could take their own bubble of life, hold it in their hands, study it?  Why would they want to?  To look at their family, friends, all around them… so, they could ‘weed their garden’, get the ‘bad stuff’ out.  Life would be safer, more pleasant… don’t you agree?

 

Our thoughts would stay more positive if we could see them… so, if we could see the bubbles of life in our mind, manipulate what goes on inside each aspect of our life… special things could/can happen.

 

All we have to do is to think, see what we want… special things happen.  Maybe sometimes, they don’t… because if you are like me… I go through times that I’m not so positive.  I couldn’t hold onto a positive ‘picture’ in my mind when like that.

 

You could see ‘what’s sneaking up on you in life; you could see if Death is trying to sneak up on you in his vessel of choice.  It could be a weapon with a person holding it; or an accident such as a hit and run; a fall, hitting your head.  You would know what to do… to prevent it.

 

I see a slow-moving, big bubble of life… my mind recognizes it instantly.  I won’t take this bubble out of the air… hurts too bad.  You all know by now… what that bubble is.

 

Inside that bubble is the sadness, grief, pain of this grieving mother…. no, we won’t choose that bubble to look at.  I have to keep an invisible, protective covering over it… I try to do that… so, I can live with my pain; knowing my child is gone.  I can see inside it… I see myself sitting quietly on a chair, head down… weeping.

 

My mind’s finger reached up, gently tapped that bubble… it bounced softly through the air, away from me.  I don’t have time for that bubble of life… it’s taken almost 3 years to get to this point in time.

 

I can cope with my grief now, in a most positive way.  That’s not saying it doesn’t hurt me greatly… it’s saying that ‘I can live with this pain now’… just as I live with the physical pain in my body every day of my life.

 

It means my threshold of both physical, mental pain is very… high, ‘now’.  This comes from a person who ‘could never bear pain’.  I can bear it now; it’s a part of my life.  I would hurt, rather than see you hurt.  Why?  Because I’m stronger, more used to it… I can deal with it better… I’ve known it my whole life.  I’m fragile, but… I’m very strong.  Truthfully… sometimes, I’m really not… but, I don’t just let people ‘see’ my weakness… that would be a mistake.

 

Keep in mind this about me… when my body was wracked with such pain, I’d been through a major surgery, chemotherapy; I was still going through the battle of my life, was trying to get back to being myself again, just trying to live. I rode with Skip on the big truck.  You wouldn’t believe the pain… my words couldn’t do it justice describing to you… you just have to imagine.

 

Every bump the truck hit, I would almost scream with the pain in my body.  I didn’t.  Sometimes, I would moan softly… telling myself that I was getting stronger, I couldn’t let others see my weakness… feel sorry for me.  Everything was going to be alright…

 

We drove to the garage of people we knew, friends.  They hadn’t seen me since prior to all that had happened to me.  I knew they would be curious, and their eyes would be studying me to see how ‘all had taken its toll on me’.

 

Sure enough, when Skip drove us up to the huge opening in the garage… they all stopped talking, sat there looking at us come to a stop.  I looked at each of them… I liked every person sitting there; I didn’t want them to think I was dying… I knew I had to look strong when I stepped …into their view.  I didn’t want them saying, ‘yeah, Skip’s wife, is dying… it doesn’t look like she has long to go; poor thing.’

 

In my mind, I told myself that when I stepped down those steps of that big truck… I would do it slowly, deliberately….. strongly.  I wouldn’t let anyone ‘see my weakness’… they would only see ‘how strong’ I was.  Yes, one can give this illusion to others… if you want to.  I did it.

 

As I began getting out of the truck, every little movement I made… pulled on the huge, surgical area on my shoulder-back area.  I feel breathless, faint… weak….

 

I’d had a thoracotomy the ‘old-fashion’ way… a rib had been removed.  You would never understand pain of this kind… unless it happened to you.  I won’t even try to describe it… it’s with me for the rest of my life.

 

Nerves were severed… not only that; one year later, I had the same surgery ‘again’ on the other side of my body… you can’t imagine the daily pain I live in.  I’ve learned to live with it… but, I won’t let you see it.  I don’t talk about it… I write about it here, at times.  It’s a part of my life… it’ll never go away.  I don’t take pain medicine to relieve it… when I do, I’ve reached a ‘breaking point’.

 

Getting back to that day in the truck, to help you understand me… as I got out of that big truck, slowly stepping down to the top step, holding on to the handles for dear life… my body was the weakest it’d ever been.  I was screaming inside with the pain… I hadn’t ever lived with such pain ‘before’ that.

 

As I held on to the handles, the pulling on the fresh surgical area… trying to ‘move slowly, deliberately, strongly’…. almost made me faint.  I thanked God that from where everyone sat… on an old car seat on the cement floor, standing around… they couldn’t see my face.

 

The door hid the upper half of my body… I made my steps strong, slow, deliberate… I was ‘seeing in my mind what they were watching’… I meant for them not to see me ‘weak’…. I tried to do what ‘I saw in my mind’… I saw a strong, young woman… a warrior who was fighting to live; who meant to survive cancer.

 

I came down to the second step, I made myself smile… so, when I could bear to turn around, face everyone… they’d never know how ‘weak my body was; nor know the pain I was in… they wouldn’t feel sorry for Gloria’.

 

I wasn’t going to let anyone see how weak I’d become… probably they all ‘saw’ it, but… they smiled at me, never let me know they did.  I was grateful that day… I was trembling inside with the pain.  I didn’t want anyone to feel sympathy for me… because I was fighting for my life… I was strong, and I ‘knew’ I was going to win.   I stood there with a smile on my face… one of triumph, and pride.  I was feeling breathless from such pain; almost fainting, so weak… but, I did it!

 

Feeling sorry for me, sympathy wasn’t what I needed at all… that would have weakened me, and have… given power over me.  Some people may have taken pleasure that I was in that condition… I can ‘look back now’… I know ‘who you are… I haven’t forgotten you’…… we never forget people who hurt us deeply when they think we are at our weakest… or dying.

 

They think people who are very sick… ‘don’t know’… that’s when you ‘do know’.  Your senses are heightened…. you wouldn’t believe what I saw ‘from that darkness’ when I couldn’t see, going on around my bedside in the hospital.  I do remember only two family members who came by… their eyes… they cared with their hearts.  That was my brother, Rick-Rick; and my soft-spoken favorite aunt… Aunt Frankie.  I do remember a father, and a stepmother, and a niece…………..

 

Bubbles of life… are always floating around in my mind.  At a moment’s notice, one can just ‘loom up’ in my mind’s eye, force itself to be remembered.  I don’t like when that happens… those are the thoughts that can send one into a depression, feel unhappy, make one feel many different emotions.

 

I love the bubbles of life that bounce gently a long, like a little orange and white bobber on the end of a fishing line.  You know how happy it is to watch it on the top of the water… you know when it moves quickly… it has attracted the attention of something.

 

Same way with life bubbles… reaching up with the mind’s fingers to pluck one, bring it up to the mind’s eye… to study it; take a look at it.

 

Just like a fish when it grabs the bait, pulls the bobber quickly under the water.  Sometimes, the bobber comes back to the surface of water just as quickly as it was pulled beneath the water… the fish let go, got away… didn’t want to look back as it swam away.

 

Life bubbles… the reason I know so much about them, is because that’s what I’ve named ‘thoughts in my own mind’.  I’ve never heard them called that anywhere else… ))  I can make my own rules about them… they are ‘mine’.  It’s easy for me to tell you about them… I’ve always lived with them… always known them.  Bubbles of life…… my colors of life….

 

 

Look Into My Eyes… What Do You See?

Look Into My Eyes… What Do You See?

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

I have been wanting to put some photos side by side to see the change I know is there… the permanent change in my eyes.  It’s like ‘before’… ‘after’.

 

This is what life, loss of loved ones (many loved ones, the very people I loved most in life, nineteen people)…my only child, my son… Tommy, died…

loss of home/belongings/house fire, almost losing Skip in 2 wrecks  (both caused by women who hydroplaned … the other running a stop sign), battling cancer, Skip battling cancer… surviving congestive heart failure episode.

 

Anyway… those are a few things life has thrown at me… the others are too numerous, some too private to write here.  Life experiences… most people only experience very few of these things in their lifetime.

 

The purpose of this is to show how one’s face, eyes change… reflecting experiences in life… bad experiences.  I am an example… look, see the changes through time.  That’s ‘why’ people’s faces change so drastically through time.

 

The good thing about all of this is… though so many bad things have happened in my life since being a very young child… I am still a positive person.  I still believe in good things, I still believe in God, and I still know everything is going to be alright.

 

I have been fascinated by the change in my eyes… I wanted to share it with you.  I had to compare photos, especially as I just discovered the photo taken January 2011, a few months after Tommy died… I never knew it was taken… I didn’t know anything at that time… grief.

 

I put my finger beneath my eyes on each photo, so as to see ‘eyes only’… to look at the difference.  You might try it, also.

 

I know you have seen people change through the years, know things happened in their lives to forever change them.  I am an example of what life can do … when I began to come out of the darkness, I began looking for myself… chasing myself in the mirrors.

 

I didn’t recognize the woman I was seeing in my mirror.  How did I ‘get old’… ‘where did I go’?  I knew the only place to look for ‘me’ was in the mirror.  Now… I am older, and not only mourn the loss of Tommy… I mourn the loss … of my youth.

 

I wonder what do you ‘see’ when you look at my eyes?  I can’t believe the difference in my eyes… no matter how much I smile… they still ‘have that expression’… it used to be when I smiled, it would be in my eyes, they would sparkle with laughter.

 

I keep repeatedly coming back to the photo taken a few months after Tommy died… I don’t know ‘why’…..

 

January 2011… 6-7  months after death of my son, Tommy…

 

April-March 2013… 3 years almost since my son died.

 

Before most of my family I loved, died… before so many bad things happened in my life… before life experiences began to show on my face… in my eyes.

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Chasing Myself In The Mirror…

Chasing Myself In The Mirror…

 

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

 

 

January 2011… I found this photo taken of me … Tommy had died 6-7 months prior to this photo.  I don’t remember this photo… I was in ‘another world’… The Dark World.

 

I look at this photo, ‘see’ that my world had come to an end… I see that I could have forever become an ‘old’ woman if I made it through this.  I had quit life for the first time… I didn’t know I was in the world… I didn’t care.

 

This is a photo of a grieving mother 6-7 months after her child’s death.  At this time… she was still in the Dark World… not thinking about the present… how could she when she didn’t know it was there?  She wasn’t in the present… she couldn’t be for the pain…

 

I look at this photo that was so ‘unlike me’… I remember seeing an aunt looking like this photo before she died… grief, pure grief was on her face… just like I see here.  She’d lost one son to suicide, and her only daughter to a car/log truck crash.  Both children died close together… adult children.  ‘Now’… I ‘know why’ she looked like this, like my face in this photo… I ‘recognize’ it.  My poor aunt, my poor, poor aunt… no one knew how she suffered.  I do…. ‘now’.

 

This is a photo of the ‘walking dead’… not aware of anything… not even that Tommy died… I couldn’t bear knowing.  This is the one time in my life, I took some type of medicine from the doctor, I can’t even remember the name of it… and ‘begged for it’.  This is the one time in my life I wasn’t afraid to be addicted to drugs.  I wouldn’t have known the difference.

 

Looking at the above photo… I was … just lost in another world.  Sometimes, I could hear Skip and the Pups… most of the time, I don’t remember anything.  Sometimes, I could hear myself crying… I must have blocked that out, also… because all was quiet and dark where I was.

 

 

This photo was taken not long ago… March-April 2013… my eyes look different, but… one can see that I’ve come so far.  I have fought so, hard to look better… to only keep falling back…to get back up, dust my pants off, to start over again… and again… and again.

 

I’m determined not to ‘just be an old woman just yet’… I have lost 6-7 years due to illness/cancer… and to losing my only child.  I can’t remember them… I tell myself I am going to make up for these years… it’s not time for me to be ‘old’ …. not just yet.

 

I do have a problem… in getting my mirror to cooperate with me.  ))  I am always looking for a glimpse of the ‘real me’.  There are only times I ‘see me’… I begin ‘chasing myself in the mirror… with my camera’!  I try to capture those glimpses I remember of myself… that’s what I looked like ‘before’… I don’t recognize ‘me… now’.

 

It’s funny… it’s wonderful when I do ‘catch myself in a photo’… the ‘me’ I remember, knew so well.  I ‘lost me’ when Tommy died.  Have you ever went looking for yourself in your mirror?

 

This photo, and the ones since… is as close as I’ve gotten to ‘finding me’.  My eyes… my eyes… there’s something so different about my eyes.  It’s an expression that’s always there no matter how happy I am, when I smile.

 

You wonder ‘why’ I am constantly ‘looking for myself’… wanting ‘to be me’ again… wanting my ‘old self’ back.  That’s the way this grieving mother is… I have no idea if another grieving mother has experienced this, or not.  So, if you are a grieving mother and are doing this… know there is one more grieving mother who is doing the same.  Is it normal?  I have no way of knowing… but, I am normal.  ))

 

I think I’ve come so, so far during this past three years.  I think writing my grief… publishing my book ‘I CRY FOR TOMMY’… made all the difference.  I think I might have not come this far if I hadn’t… in fact, I might not ‘have come this far’… at all.

 

I speak honestly so, you can know how it really is with a grieving mother… this grieving mother.  I know of some who have completely quit life… the death of their child completely shutting them down.  They are only a shell of themselves… they walk around ‘dead’.  The living dead…

 

Skip, my hero, the love of my life, my precious husband… saved me.  He, and our Pups… kept on, and on until they made sure I heard them, knew they were there.  They never stopped… Skip knew which ‘buttons to push’… to make my fighting spirit rise up to the challenge… it didn’t die inside me.  I didn’t know when it rose up… to fight to live; that’s how far gone I was.

 

Since then… I’ve been chasing myself in the mirror… trying to find the ‘me’ I remember.  Today… it’s fun, because sometimes… I see myself … and I try to make ‘me’ pretty again.  ))

 

 

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Bittersweet Mother’s Day…

I had my own son… he died on May 29, 2010.  I used to be Tommy’s mother.  I miss you, Son.

 

 

 

Bittersweet Mother’s Day…

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

 

 

I have been waiting for this day… sort of with dread.  I’ve been waiting for it to… go by, be behind me.  Today, isn’t my day… anymore.

 

I didn’t think I would write at all this weekend.  So much has been going on in our life, most all stress… not the best.  You wouldn’t believe, I won’t even try to write it here.  It’s been really… a bad week, not only for me… Skip has had a bad time.  I worry for his health now…

 

Well…  today is finally here. ‘The’ day … Mother’s Day.  I’m not a mother any longer… I’m a used-to-be mother… I was a mother at one time.  Now… I’m not.  Can you tell… I tell myself this often.  I tell myself this with anger, sometimes.

 

It really does hurt thinking about it… the pain is still there.  I even feel anger because you see… I still know how it feels to be ‘Mother’, to be a ‘mama’.  I still know how it feels when my child told me he loved me, and he was glad I was his … mother.  I still know these things…. I’m like ‘memory wire‘… I don’t forget my shape.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot… about Tommy.  I’ve been thinking about what I wrote not long ago… ‘no matter what, everything will be alright’.  It’s true, no matter how much pain, tears I have… everything really will be all right.  I ‘know’ that now.  I’m going to make it now… pain or no pain… pain or … pain… or pain or no pain.  I’m past the danger point of ‘not making it’…

 

Today, in my mind I’m seeing in just a few minutes ‘everywhere’… families are, will be sitting down for a Mother’s Day meal.  I ‘see sunshine’ in my mind… reflecting happiness of my thoughts as I think of you….  Happy, Beautiful Mother’s Day to you!

 

I can ‘hear you all laughing, talking, happy to be with your mothers, mothers happy to be with their children’.  Beautiful… you don’t know ‘I’m here’…. nor are you aware… that I smile for you, am happy for you.  Not only that, my heart goes out to the mothers I’ve met… who have become… who were already like me.

 

See, my time has come and gone… I am an onlooker now.  I neither have a mother, nor a child… any longer.  I didn’t choose this, anymore than I chose to have non-Hodgkins lymphoma/cancer.  Life makes a lot of choices for us… I had no say.  Of course, if I could… I would choose not to have had cancer; not to have lost Tommy, and I’d still have my mother.

 

I am wishing you such special Mother’s Day memories, happiness.  Hopefully, you never go on to be like me… that is all I have now… those memories.  I pray that all of you will go on to ‘keep making beautiful Mother’s Day memories’.  Thankfully, I have special memories…

 

To look at, just as one would take an old movie reel out, crank it up, play the movies of the past.  Chevy Chase comes to my mind… as he sat up in the attic watching movies of the past, tears in his eyes, sad smile on his face…. bittersweet.  Bittersweet like … me.  I can hear the music playing, tugging at my heart, making me want to cry.  I won’t… I won’t cry today… I mean it, now.

 

I loved when he crashed through the attic… it stopped all the emotional stuff… making him ‘feel real life’ again.  I didn’t really like for him to crash through the attic… there’s some anger inside me; it is responsible for me saying that.

 

I’m not really mad… I just ‘feel mad’… is there a difference?  I think it is… but, I don’t feel like trying to explain.  ’I'm not really mad’… but, I feel like… being mad.  I wish Tommy were here… but, you know… I know, he isn’t/can’t be.  I can be mad all I want to, it makes no difference.

 

I realize I’m trying to tell you about ‘this used-to-be mother’… tell you how it feels ‘today, Mother’s Day’… when a mother’s child has died.  There, I said it again… when a mother’s child has died… my child died.  I have a problem ‘still’… I am always saying ‘when Tommy went to heaven; when he passed away; he’s gone now’.  When I say the word ‘die’… I’m most aware of it.

 

Today is a bittersweet day for me… it’s like putting parts of this emotion, that emotion into a blender… turning it on.  As it swirls to mix ‘all equally’… you see tears, you see anger, you see grief, you see a mother’s heart hurting as she remembers good things; sees smiles, hears her child’s voice in her mind.  When it all finally mixes equally… it becomes ‘bittersweet like me’… mixture of sad, good things.  It’s a happy smile tinted with sadness on one’s lips, in one’s eyes.

 

‘Bittersweet’… strange how that word stood out to me in a book many years ago, when I was a little girl.  I never knew I would go on to know what that word really meant… or have it associated with me.  I love the word, though.  It does describe me accurately… I’m a mixture of ‘bitter, sweet’… I think more ‘sweet’ than bitter.

 

This is a bittersweet Mother’s Day… an equal mixture of all emotions that I can… deal with now.  Everything will be all right, no matter what.  That doesn’t mean everything is ‘perfect’… only that it can be all right, because it has to be.

 

 

 

 

 

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Gloria ‘Look Alike’…

Gloria ‘Look Alike‘…

 

 I have laughed so much… one of my favorite friends sent me a photo her husband took of her ‘before’ she did her hair and makeup…

Yep!  Guess who it looked like!  ‘Me’!!!  At first, I thought I was seeing myself when I clicked on the email.  I began laughing out loud, drawing Skip’s attention to the computer.

I told him this ‘is my twin’… at first, he didn’t know who it was!  He laughed, too.

This was such a fun thing… I wanted to share it.  I won’t tell you who my friend is… you might not recognize her here, even if you know her… she is beautiful!

Not only that, she is a wonderful mother, wife, family person.  Skip and I have always thought they are such a beautiful family. 

I was honored when she sent the photo her husband took of her.  She looks like me at ‘her worst’… think how pretty she is at her best!  Thank-you for letting me share this with my readers!  

This has made me smile a lot… it has been fun looking at these photos.  I hope you all enjoy them… just as much as I have!