By Invitation Only

November 14, 2023

My faith was solidly intact going into this horrible ordeal. I cannot say that my faith was shaken. I will concede that everything else about me was shaken and turned upside down on its flippin’ head.

Becoming oriented toward life as it is now has been a lot more than challenging. The words that most people would speak to me during that season came not out of any sort of common personal frame of reference but were more like well-rehearsed clichés that simply fell on ears no longer tuned to clichés or similar responses. Most people don’t want to feel your pain. Thank God that there were a few close people, and them harshly grieving the loss of Shirli themselves, who were not afraid to enter into this world of pain with me. They have been literal life savers for me.

It boggles my mind still. Those who I tell, find it hard to believe when I tell them the number of my biologicals that took the time to call or otherwise check on me after Shirli died. That number is pitifully shameful in anybody’s scheme of things. I’m not going to say that “none” is the number. It’s possible. I was in a bad way for a LONG time. One or two may have contacted me and I simply am unable to remember it. I do recall a couple of times that I initiated calls because I needed somebody that bad.

Where was my FUCKING FAMILY when I was languishing so fucking low that I was seriously contemplating ending it all with the squeeze of a fucking trigger just to put an end to the fucking pain! So, the most graceful way to say it is that I simply do not remember it. But, knowing myself as I do, had anyone made the effort, I feel certain that I would remember something as monumental as that. Oh, my language? Poor sensitive eyes and ears that you see and hear through. I believe it was Mark Twain who said, “Sometimes profanity offers a release denied even to prayer.”

I thank God every day for my little Tribe and some heart-kin that were daily peeking through my window blinds. What would I have possibly done without these in my life?

I have, of late, reacquired the attitude expressed in a line of a song that I wrote years ago for a former wife. We’ll call her Mrs. Number Three. The line simply says … “When the phone don’t ring, it’s me again.” Some things simply must be put into the rearview mirror. After a few curves and hills, they find themselves relegated to a file folder up there somewhere in my head labeled “Leave Alone Henceforth!”

It simply must be this way and with no apology from me. 

I have nothing to apologize for, thank you. The onus in the apology department is on that other side of the fence. There is no just picking up and going on as though there isn’t the proverbial elephant sitting on the couch.  And, lest anyone forget, rebuilding bridges rarely happens. So, with the bridge building thing in mind, I have no expectations of the aforementioned. They are already in a folder being slowly pushed to the back of my mind … there to remain collecting dust.

Their neglect hurt me very badly. I forgive them one and all. I harbor no grudges or relish any kind of ill-intent toward any of them. I too, you see, am but a mere fallen creature likewise in dire need of grace.

“So, bury my ashes down by the pond

Where that stone is etched with our names

It’s there I want to rest ‘til the Great Resurrection

With the one who truly loved me and left wearing my name”

I’m again thinking of something. I was thinking on this a long time ago. It’s no new thought. It is, rather, an old thought. It is one that I entertained for years. It’s one that is nudging to be brought forward.

In rethinking it, I’m really diggin’ it. More than I dug it when I first started diggin’ it back those way more than several years ago.

What is it?

It’s that final service where people will gather to comfort one another and especially to comfort my children and dearest loved ones. What’s so beautiful is that I have the capacities to pull it off. I sense within me that it is something that I should pull off. Is there a divine appointment in this making it "something that I should pull off"? This is some kind of heavy duty thinking on things. Important thinking on important things. 

I know the funeral directors personally and have for years. They are friends of mine. The owner is a dear personal friend of mine. One little visit and a note in my folder and it’s a done deal. And what a final statement it will make. My funeral service will most likely be “By Invitation Only.” 

There will be plenty of time to mail out the invitations. By then, all that will be left of me will be an urn of ashes. If you haven’t “shown” your love for me while I was living, don’t come to my funeral service to pity my dearest ones or to assuage your conscience.