April 30, 2004
Rememberance of Things Past...
The title is from the insufferable 6 volume work of Proust by the same title, never read it. Like as not I wont tho I do read a lot. I have so many books that I estimate that 25 percent of the net weight of the can we moved our stuff in to the Rock was my library...
But I digress. My subject is today's date. I toyed with calling this post "The Day of Endings". Today is a date of somber anniversaries for me...
Actually the whole month of April is one huge bummer for me and always has been. All of my life I have been ill to the point of bedridden much of the month of April. April is the month of the
Jacaranda in California...That lovely tree planted in every town in LA County...
"It is said that if you are walking underneath the Jacaranda tree and one of the trumpet blossoms falls on your head you will be favored by fortune." It says on the website... yah you best have a fortune as those lovely flowers ruin your car paint if they fall on your hood. Still I LOVE the trees and had planted on in my yard at "Midway'round the Bend"the name I gave my little house in Bellflower. Too bad Im likely deathly allergic to the things the pollen or something off them. I would get huge lung infections that would put me in bed... Id get hives and yes during the horrible year of 1996 I had a near death experience on April 25. Somethings up...
April is the month of Death and Taxes, layoffs and slowdowns, spring grades and road grading. April showers, never enought to squelch the pollen in LA, so much rain here that the tourists stopped comming to our side of the island in disgust!
It was April 29, 1988, that my first husband declared that we were through and he'd gotten a lawyer and he was throwing a party to celebrate his clever scheme of streching the truth about my sins as a wife. He had 100 people to our house and pretty much demoloshed it. I never quite got it cleaned up to where it was prior. He treated me as cruelly as you can imagine short of hospitalization...
He later confessed that he had hoped that the shock of this would cause me to commit suicide. He didnt have the balls to move out for 6 months after that, and was so cowardly that he never told his new girlfriend we were married and eventually he remarried without the benefit of a divorce decree amongst other things. ( It was quite a shock for her to have to get married again lol) His concern was money of course. He didnt want to devide the assets. He didnt want to support me, and I was a basket case, too mentally ill to work. I can remember the incredible dispair of abandonment, my family, all of our friends turned their backs and took his side in the matter until much later, when the truth came out that our wild lifestyle was his idea, and that he was a willing partner in a high rolling, sex drugs and rock and roll (literally) Hollywood groupee, free for all that embarassed the hell out of him when it all came out. He had a nervious break down and slept in his car for months a bag man, mid life crisis at 27...
Funny thing, when you hit bottom like that this is when God can really work on you. 5 months to the day later while walking on a deserted beach I had a audible voice experience with God. I thought that I had finally gone mad. I was on my way to therapy, and I went laughing hysterically with pure joy of the relieved. When asked what was so funny, I shared my "delusion"... Amy the Observant Jewish therapist confrimed to my shock that this was the real thing... The change in my personality from one day to the next showed that a conversion had turned me inside out and right side up. Her words still ring in my ears.."DRG, you have been visited by G-D, like Moses in the burning bush,... so what are you going to do about it?" I rose up and chose to live...
I have never regretted it.
Jeff did me a favor on April 29,1988.... Thanks if you are reading this.
The other big April 29 was April 29 1992, which was the day my Father passed out of this world of toil and misery (for him) and I want to believe, into life everlasting. It marked the end of an era for me.One where he and his mental illness had dominated my life, maybe overshadowed it, is a better way to look at it. I was freer to choose my own life paths, knowing that his care was not an issue. It was 10 years before I was really able to make that break and do what I wanted where I wanted to do it... Now if I can just get on with it here.
I guess I dont think of my Fathers death as a horrible thing when placed in the context of his life...It was a mercy as he was suffering all sorts of pain filled agonies ath the end there.
Another April 29 date (this date in History lol) came to mind. April 29, 1994.... I looked it up in my journals and sure enough. Woody first asked me to marry him on this date. I said NO NO NO I wasnt ready. Persistant little bugger that he is he asked me again and again often in public, usually at church. My girlfriends would chant "say yes!say yes!say yes!" This happened once when I was on the platform ready to lead worship... The mutual friend I was working with said "Well... Yes or No?" I said No, in the microphone, the Pastor interviened and the teasing ended... It was all a game to me until the ring showed up that December...We were like Pepe Lapew and Franchesca the Cat. Our courtship would have made great reality TV.
Funny how the roles have reversed....Woody and I had a long discussion this weekend about things and I am pleased to say that this week wasnt going to have another break up on the historical calender... but I dont rule it out in the future from what was said to me. I am becoming more resigned to it and perhaps that is why I have been bummed for the last few weeks... I see the signs along the way. Our separations every week show us that living apart may be more functional for both of us. I pray to God that this isnt so, but I also know that man has free will and while I may not like it I must remember this April that...
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
Im ready for a new month!
PS May 3rd I have been meaning to do this but after I posted this I realized that I had recently had another loss on April 29, 2003 a dear friend, one of our frist frinds on the island Sash Seguawa, Father, Wave Rider, Waterman, and bruddah, lost his battle with cancer at 42. Sash we hardly knew ye and we miss you still.
