Now it's here. And it's all the blogs I've ever had combined into one. No more segregation!
I'll be deleting this one later. Anyway, I had to mess my pretty template all up to move everything over to the new site and now this one's kinda ugly.
ALSO, apparently when I messed my pretty template all up, I lost all my links. So if you go to the new blog and you don't see your blog listed over on the right side, let me know what your address is, ok? Cause I haven't been able to find you again yet.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 03, 2009
Sorry for the Morbid...
I have been so bad about blogging. I just haven't felt like writing anything, and so I haven't. But today I do.
My uncle Walter died this morning. He had cancer, so it wasn't exactly sudden, but I always put off really thinking about peoples' deaths until after the fact, even when I can see it coming. Ok, that's not entirely true, I thought about my cousin Heath's death a lot before he actually died, but that's because there were ISSUES, and I was ANGRY with him. But I didn't really think about Uncle Walter's until now.
When my brother and I were little, we called him Uncle Walter Mondale. We thought it was hilarious. He seemed to find it pretty funny too.
And one time we all drove to North Carolina to stay with him and Aunt Nelda for a week during the summer. When we arrived, he was not at the house because he was out in the woods rescuing a wounded owl.
He loved his boat. We went out on it once. My brother and I napped in the little cabin below deck and when we woke up, we drew comic books about two spots--"The Red and the Blue". Then we went upstairs and the sea was so rough that Dan had to go back down to throw up for about an hour, and I sat on Aunt Nelda's lap being squeezed by her arms tight around my middle (which made ME want to throw up too) so that I wouldn't go flying off into the ocean, and Uncle Walter laughed and laughed about all us landlubbers worrying about a few little waves.
And that's about it. That's pretty much all the memories I have of him. I'm not close with my mom's family. I never really understood most of them, couldn't connect, and anyway there are just so many of them. But Aunt Nelda and Uncle Walter I always I liked the best. And so I can't exactly say I'll miss him since he was so small a part of my life. But I guess I feel sad that he wasn't a bigger part of my life, that they always lived so far away.
I've always kind of longed for the type of family that's really...tight. Heck, longed for the type of family that I could even tolerate. And so every time I lose one of the few family members I actually like and respect, it reminds me of the distance between the rest of us.
Today I've been reading a book called Looking for Alaska by John Green. The main character is a guy who collects peoples' last words. And a friend of his, a girl he loves, dies, and he doesn't know what her last words are. But the last words that she was the most attached to in life were Simon Bolivar's (at least according to The General and His Labyrinth): "Damn it. How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" In the margin next to this quote, she has written, "Straight and fast." And that's exactly how she dies.
I suppose the death of anyone you know (and some people you don't know) makes you think about your own, at least a little. And it makes me think about my death a lot (seeing as how I spent an entire year of my childhood completely and overwhelmingly consumed by fear of my own death, to the point of...well, I really probably could have used some heavy-duty counseling, but my parents never noticed). I've mostly grown out of that fear, and over the years I have decided how I would ideally like to die:
1) I want to KNOW I'm dying. I want to go to my death fully aware of it and to be able to face it bravely, or willingly, or...just acceptingly. I want to be able to make peace with my own death, in a way that I never could when I was a kid (or, occasionally, even now as an adult) and so, SO petrified by it. I don't want to walk into death AFRAID. Lots of people hope to die in their sleep. But I don't want to be cheated of my last moments of life. I want to be fully ALIVE in them. Fear feels worse than anything, and I don't want my last breath to be filled with that.
2) I don't want to die inside a building of any sort. Especially not in a hospital. I want to die out in the open air, feeling connected to all life in the place where I feel most connected to all life IN life. I want to lie on the grass and just...let go.
That sort of death sounds beautiful to me. And I'm all about aesthetics in life, so why not in death as well? It may not be practical or probable, but that's what I'm hoping for anyway.
I don't know what Uncle Walter's hopes were for his death, or if he had any, or if he even really thought about it (maybe I'm just weird that way). But I hope that he died in a way that was acceptable to him. I guess that probably sounds stupid...you're dead, right, what does it matter? But it DOES matter. Somehow the idea of not being satisfied with the way you die seems like such a horrible thing to me.
And maybe that's because I am still a little afraid, whether I like it or not.
So, anyway, yeah. Sorry for the morbid.
But morbidity on occasion can be a good thing. I think...
My uncle Walter died this morning. He had cancer, so it wasn't exactly sudden, but I always put off really thinking about peoples' deaths until after the fact, even when I can see it coming. Ok, that's not entirely true, I thought about my cousin Heath's death a lot before he actually died, but that's because there were ISSUES, and I was ANGRY with him. But I didn't really think about Uncle Walter's until now.
When my brother and I were little, we called him Uncle Walter Mondale. We thought it was hilarious. He seemed to find it pretty funny too.
And one time we all drove to North Carolina to stay with him and Aunt Nelda for a week during the summer. When we arrived, he was not at the house because he was out in the woods rescuing a wounded owl.
He loved his boat. We went out on it once. My brother and I napped in the little cabin below deck and when we woke up, we drew comic books about two spots--"The Red and the Blue". Then we went upstairs and the sea was so rough that Dan had to go back down to throw up for about an hour, and I sat on Aunt Nelda's lap being squeezed by her arms tight around my middle (which made ME want to throw up too) so that I wouldn't go flying off into the ocean, and Uncle Walter laughed and laughed about all us landlubbers worrying about a few little waves.
And that's about it. That's pretty much all the memories I have of him. I'm not close with my mom's family. I never really understood most of them, couldn't connect, and anyway there are just so many of them. But Aunt Nelda and Uncle Walter I always I liked the best. And so I can't exactly say I'll miss him since he was so small a part of my life. But I guess I feel sad that he wasn't a bigger part of my life, that they always lived so far away.
I've always kind of longed for the type of family that's really...tight. Heck, longed for the type of family that I could even tolerate. And so every time I lose one of the few family members I actually like and respect, it reminds me of the distance between the rest of us.
Today I've been reading a book called Looking for Alaska by John Green. The main character is a guy who collects peoples' last words. And a friend of his, a girl he loves, dies, and he doesn't know what her last words are. But the last words that she was the most attached to in life were Simon Bolivar's (at least according to The General and His Labyrinth): "Damn it. How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" In the margin next to this quote, she has written, "Straight and fast." And that's exactly how she dies.
I suppose the death of anyone you know (and some people you don't know) makes you think about your own, at least a little. And it makes me think about my death a lot (seeing as how I spent an entire year of my childhood completely and overwhelmingly consumed by fear of my own death, to the point of...well, I really probably could have used some heavy-duty counseling, but my parents never noticed). I've mostly grown out of that fear, and over the years I have decided how I would ideally like to die:
1) I want to KNOW I'm dying. I want to go to my death fully aware of it and to be able to face it bravely, or willingly, or...just acceptingly. I want to be able to make peace with my own death, in a way that I never could when I was a kid (or, occasionally, even now as an adult) and so, SO petrified by it. I don't want to walk into death AFRAID. Lots of people hope to die in their sleep. But I don't want to be cheated of my last moments of life. I want to be fully ALIVE in them. Fear feels worse than anything, and I don't want my last breath to be filled with that.
2) I don't want to die inside a building of any sort. Especially not in a hospital. I want to die out in the open air, feeling connected to all life in the place where I feel most connected to all life IN life. I want to lie on the grass and just...let go.
That sort of death sounds beautiful to me. And I'm all about aesthetics in life, so why not in death as well? It may not be practical or probable, but that's what I'm hoping for anyway.
I don't know what Uncle Walter's hopes were for his death, or if he had any, or if he even really thought about it (maybe I'm just weird that way). But I hope that he died in a way that was acceptable to him. I guess that probably sounds stupid...you're dead, right, what does it matter? But it DOES matter. Somehow the idea of not being satisfied with the way you die seems like such a horrible thing to me.
And maybe that's because I am still a little afraid, whether I like it or not.
So, anyway, yeah. Sorry for the morbid.
But morbidity on occasion can be a good thing. I think...
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