Download

My connection with spirit has always been strong.  Many a time I would wander the house when I was home alone because I could hear spirit calling my name and I went looking to find them.  I never could see them, but I could certainly hear crystal clear.

A couple of weeks back, I was given a LOT of information.  In the modern vernacular, I downloaded a lot of understanding about what happens when we die.  It bears little recumbence to anything I’ve ever read or heard recounted.  

For example, I now know precisely what hell is only to find it’s very different to the fire and brimstone monstrosities preached to terrified children from any pulpit on the planet.

I know what happens when our bodies give up and I know what happens to people who cross into the light.  I know what we do there, and I know how precious it all is.

What I’ve not yet been told is if I’m allowed to convey all that information to anyone else.  I am assuming that information will be forthcoming once I’ve processed it all a little more. 

For the time being, I don’t feel that I have permission to share details and I’ve well learned not to go off on my own flight of fancy on these matters.  Until I have permission or the game plan, I am already saying what I can share.  I just wish it could be more although I have faith that in time, it will be.

I know that the night I got it all, I spent the entire night heaving the deepest, most painful sobs I’ve ever been given to expressing.  I doubt I was crying from overload.  More like I was crying because the understanding was so acute and deep.

Information like that isn’t given lightly and I still have to ascertain what I’m supposed to do on the basis of it.  If there’s one thing I know about spirit, they do NOT choose the recipient for this kind of thing lightly nor at random.  There’s going to be a reckoning and a purpose that will be made known in the fullness of time.

After so long on this planet, one thing about spirit that I’m absolutely rock solid about is that they will do things in their own time and cannot be rushed.  I’m afraid this is going to be one more lesson in cultivating patience. 

Sadly, I’ve never been very good at the Zen thing, so this will be an entirely exasperating wait.  Like most people, when I see or hear something exciting, I want the full enchilada and I want it NOW.  I have a feeling spirit aren’t going to be very forthcoming in this regard in which case, I’m in for a lot of frustration while I sit and twiddle my thumbs. 

Of course, it might also be extremely interesting to see how things unfold as things play out.  That’s another thing I know for sure about spirit.  They might take their time but once they get a wriggle on, it’s rarely a dull ride and the perfection of it all is simply stunning to behold.

Count me in.  I’m already eager to see what comes next.  Let it roll.  I am more than ready for the next download.

Legacy

I have been deep in thought these last few days.  Mostly, it’s centered around Dad and his mother.  I never knew what happened between them.  It was simply a totally forbidden subject in our household.  He never mentioned her and it was clear, asking even the most innocent of questions would put him into a dark, dangerous mood for days.  So, we never mentioned it.

It wasn’t until 2010 that I finally got a copy of Dad’s birth certificate and that was when I learned my grandmother’s name for the first time.  I was 44 at the time.  Yes, I can hear how ridiculous that is but it’s the truth. 

She was listed as a hotel waitress and no father was listed.  She gave her son her own surname.  I know her name is specified on my parents marriage certificate but there is nothing to tell me if she ever attended the wedding.  I feel that her name was merely a matter of record given what I learned from my maternal grandma before her passing in 2001.

She only told me the story once of how my father had once discussed his mother with her.  The story was grim.  At some point, when my father was still quite young, his mother had packed him up and taken him to live with her own mother.  It seems that she had a boyfriend at the time and he and my father were not getting along.  The story seemed to be an act of cruelty and coldness.

The way it was related to me, my grandmother had to choose between her son and her live-in boyfriend and she chose the boyfriend over her child.  If that were the case, I can easily understand how hurt and abandoned he must have felt.  I can also well understand why he never forgave her and never wanted her name mentioned or even vaguely referenced.  These were things he refused to discuss.

Until now, I had believed the story as it was told to me.  I had no other frame of reference to dispute it.  In recent days, I find myself wondering if there might have been another explanation.  I mean, I have spoken to family still living in England and not one of them has a single bad word to stay about her.  Not one.  And you’d think if she had been some kind of ogre, it would have shown up in more ways and people would have seen it.  But, nothing.

So, it occurred to me a few days ago, what if she didn’t take him to her mother because she’d chosen her own lifestyle over her child.  What if something else had gone on?

My thoughts and suspicions have run to wondering if the live-in boyfriend was really a decent man who had her best interests at heart but just sadly clashed with her son. 

Back in those days, things were very hard.  Dad was born in January 1918, 10 months before the end of the first world war.  It was a different era.  Even if you allow 10 years or so, 1928 wasn’t great, and the depression began in October 1929.  After the war, there wasn’t a surfeit of men available to help keep a woman and her son.  It’s entirely possible she had to settle for what she could get, as horrible as that sounds.

What if, and I’m hypothesizing here, what IF Dad was having issues with the live-in because he saw his other being mistreated and was trying to fight to protect her?

What if, when she took him to her mothers to live, she wasn’t abandoning him but trying to get him out of the house before some genuine harm could come to her son?  If that were the case, her act was not one of cruelty but of love. 

Of course, one cannot expect a child to understand such a complex situation and I’m sure his own grandmother never spoke of it because people just didn’t back in those days. 

Unlike today, there were no counsellors or any services to intervene and correct any misunderstandings he might have had, and I find it so sad that he went to his deathbed at 73 angry and badly hurt over something that happened about 60 years prior.

It really speaks to me of the need to communicate and ensure that growing generations are informed about things that happened and why when they’re old enough to understand.  Until then, the key information they need to hear is that no matter what they saw, heard or what happened, it wasn’t their fault.  It was adult stuff that they didn’t cause and have no blame for.

How I wish someone had taken my father by the hand and told him that at some point.  I think it would have made a lot of difference to him.

What I can say is that my grandmother is one of the reasons I look forward to my own death.  I have a long list of people I want to look up and talk to.  I want to hear all their stories and the things they learned.  I want to hear what they regretted, what they want me to know about all that stuff and I want to tell them all of MY story.  These are people worth knowing and talking to.

It might all happen after we’re all in spirit but better late than never, right?

Secret Soapies

Let me get it out there right up front.  I am NOT a Home and Away fan.  I did watch back in 1988 when it first aired but I quickly found it boring.  In recent years, I have caught an episode here and there when I flicked over to the chancel while waiting for something else to come on.  I found the acting to be tired, half hearted and weak as dishwater.  IMHO, it should have been axed decades ago.

That said, I am curious as to how many will be tuning in tomorrow when Lynne McGranger (Irene) makes her exit from the series.  She’s been with the show since 1993 and that’s a fair chunk of change when you consider.  32 years.  Many of us haven’t held a job for that long so personally, it’s a milestone for her. 

I wonder how many of us will be checking in just to see how the goodbye unfolds.  Closet H&A fans who sneakily tune in on the sly so see how the story arc plays out just for our own satisfaction.

The same crowd that tuned in to see the weddings of  Vicki and Simon, Angel and Shane, Jo and Michael, Scott and Charlene, or even any of Sally’s three weddings.  And my all-time perennial favourite, Des & Daphne.

And what about the deaths?   Maggie Doyle, Claire McLeod, Donna Manning, Meg Bowman, Shirley Gilroy, or the absolute headliner of them all; Molly Jones.

Face it.  That underlying curiosity to see the end of a character (for any reason) is exceptionally hard to refuse.  It lingers.  It rankles.  It’s like seeing the mystery ending to a bestseller right in front of us and trying NOT to take a peek. 

If any of us had the final chapter to Picnic At Hanging Rock in our hands before it was finally and conditionally released upon the death of the author in 1984, would we have been content to let it sit there on the shelf, untouched?  

Or would we have finally caved to temptation and read it quietly and secretly at a place and time when nobody was around?  After all, it was published in 1967 and 17 years is a long time to wait to read those final alluring pages.  Would anyone be able to resist it they had been in temptation’s way?  I think not.  We’re human, after all, and curiosity is a huge part of our psyche.

A more recent example would be 9-1-1.  They teased us for weeks with how one major character would die and they set up a near miss for each character in the episodes leading up to it to drag it out.  Was this the episode?  Would this beloved character be the one?  They finally killed off Bobby Nash, the fire captain, and then spent weeks show us how the rest of the team came to terms with it and were able to pick up the pieces and move on.  They didn’t get just a couple of episodes of it.  They got nearly a full season!  That was sheer, marketing genius.

The fact is that a lot of us are closet soapie fans.  We tune in for the occasional highlights and BIG moments, and forget the rest.  I don’t blame anyone for that.  I do it myself.  But we never tell, do we?  We subscribe to the general chatter about how those shows are ‘mindless garbage’ and how only ‘pathetic old biddies with no life’ watch them.  And yet, when something big is unfolding, we silently tune in and we tell no one to ensure our cover as a worldly-wise cynic is secure.

I’m not proud, so I’ll go on public record.  I’ll be recording the episode and tuning in when I feel the urge.  I’ll do the same when Ray Meagher (Alf) finally signs off.  I saw where Alf’s story began and I’ll be curious to see what kind of a send off he gets. 

The actor is 81 after all and that’s well past retirement age for most of us.  He’s lucky he can still score a job at his age.  If his character hadn’t been so beloved on H&A, he’d have hung up the scripts long ago.  So when he finally decides to bow out, you bet it’s going to be an event and we’ll all be tuning in to see it unfold.  We’ll tell nobody and we will certainly sneer down at anyone who admits having watched it, but that doesn’t mean we’ll have given it a miss ourselves.  Secret soapie behaviour.  Things we watch and never tell.

I remember being heavily into The Young & The Restless when I first left school.  Then I got a job and missed a couple of years.  When I tuned back in whilst on holidays, I could swear it was the same scene and plot going on.  I felt like I’d missed nothing.  Too many soapies are the same.  Do a storyline, then rinse and repeat with difference characters until the series is finally axed.  * yawn *.

And yet, when the TV tells us there’s going to be something big happening, are we able to curb our curiosity, or merely settle for reading about it in a gossip rag afterwards?  Or do we secretly record the episode so we can watch it later when nobody is around?  Our secret soapie addition we utter to no one.

But I AM curious about this one.  Whether openly or clandestinely, how many of you will be tuning in to see how Irene says goodbye to the Bay?  After all, she’s been on the show for 37 years.  Watching her leave is like saying goodbye to an old friend.  Who would miss that?

As a post script, she’s also up for the Gold Logie this year as the most popular actor / actress.  What’s the bettering she wins that, too – and none of us will admit to watching it?

Smothered

Back in the 80s, I was hugely into science fiction and became part of the fan scene.  I went to meetings the first Saturday every month at St Luke’s Hall in South Melbourne where Star Trek fans met up, and then joined mot of them later in the evening at the National Mutual Theaterette in the city for a Star Trek Marathon, where we’d sit and watch 5 episodes of the classic series (19666 – 1969) back to back.  I always enjoyed it immensely and made some great friends. 

It would have been a lot more enjoyable if I hadn’t had heavy baggage dragging me down.  By this, I mean, my mother.

I was a grown adult and should have been able to head out for an afternoon with friends on my own.  As usual, my mother couldn’t help herself and she absolutely HAD to interlope and fuck it up as best she could.

She claimed to ‘enjoy Star Trek’ and insisted on coming to the monthly meetings with me.  She never really interacted with anyone there.  She just kind of lurked around like an idiot.

The problem was, she had no friends.  She was so brilliant at alienating people that she had no friendship group of her own to go places with.  Thus, she latched onto me and poached MY friends as her own.  It might have been amusing if it hadn’t been so suffocating, insulting and offensive.

It was bad enough to be grilled every time I wanted to step a foot out of doors, but physically interloping on MY life to such a degree was majorly offensive.  Any time I wanted to go anywhere, I copped it.  Where was I going?  How was I going to get there?  How was I going to get home?  Who was I going to be seeing?  What was I going to be doing?  Who were these people?  Blah blah blah.  I had to answer ALL her questions before I would be granted PERMISSION to go.  That would have been understandable if I’d been 14 or so.  However, I was over 1888 and the time and being treated like a mentally defective child.

So, here I was, a grown adult, not allowed to have a friendship group of my own because this miserable old biddy had no life of her own so she decided to appropriate mine.  No apology, and certainly no thought that at 18+ I might have deserved a bit of freedom without my mother tagging along.

And the thing is, she didn’t really like the show.  She wasn’t any version of a fan.  She just had nobody to go places with and decided to live vicariously through me. 

If she wanted to go to a concert or a screening of a movie (or anything really), she would demand I accompany her because in her mind, it was unthinkable that she actually take herself to these things.  No.  In her twisted universe, if she didn’t have a companion to go with, then she couldn’t go – period.  And I was the patsy who got dragged along to these things to keep her happy. 

Personally, I’ve never heard such a complete and utter load of crap in my life.  However, she made pretty much every second I lived at home a complete and utter misery.  Had I dared to refuse, he simply stepped up her mind-fuck tactics by about a 100 times and I stood no change.

I didn’t admit myself to a psych unit in 1990 for no reason at all, you know.  When I say I was suicidal and about to lose it entirely, take me at my word.

Of course, she couldn’t even let me have that situation to myself either.  When she got the phone call to say I’d admitted myself, she cam tearing up to the hospital ad demanded to see me.   She was ropeable.  Beyond ropeable even.

She sat me down in the common room and stared daggers at me while she snarled, in a low enough voice so the nurses couldn’t hear, that “SHE would permit me to continue with this silly, dramatic nonsense providing none of HER family ever found out about it because she was NOT going to be humiliated by me AGAIN.” 

Thanks for the loving support, Mum.  May I go and blow my brains out now?

Of course, the problem was that I’d gone off script and she wansn’t in control anymore.  The only way she had of getting corol back was to convince me that everything was happening under HER permission.  I didn’t have the power to make any choices at all.  I could only stay on the ward as long as SHE approved. 

The actual truth was that she had no say at all.  I was an adult and didn’t need her permission to admit myself.  She also lived in fear of the nurses finding out what really went on in that house and being judged negatively  for it. 

The same thing applied to her interloping on my social life.  She tried to palm it off as though she were doing me some kind of favour by coming along.  In fact, she was a smothering presence and it was embarrassing to have to tell people that she had come along.  I didn’t see any other grown adults being followed around by their parent and I didn’t feel it was fair to make me the first.

She came to the afternoon meetings sin the hall, then she came to the Star Trek marathons (which is what we called the screening of 5 episodes)   Having her playing tag alone was just humiliating and embarrassing.  Trying to palm off her presence as justified because “I’m a fan too” was so far over the line it was just pathetic.

However, taking her to toss on it was impossible.  I had to live in the house and she had a million ways to make my life even more of a misery than it already was.  So, I had to suck it up.

Mind you, when I moved out at the start of March 1990, all of a sudden, she wasn’t such a die hard fan and stopped coming to those gatherings.  It was blessed relief from my point of view.

The sad fact is that the one thing she does (and has always done) brilliantly is alienate people.  If we had the neighbours over for drinks at Xmas, she pick an argument over some political thing or the other just so she could argue the other person into submission.  She didn’t engage to hear their opinion.  She had no interest in them at all.  What she wanted was to WIN – and naturally, people got fed up with it. 

I saw this pattern year after year.  Neighbours would turn up for a pleasant, social evening, and they got bollocked until they capitulated into silence and then have to watch as she sat there with a smug look on her face having beaten them into submission and ‘won’ the argument.  What she never seemed to understand is that nobody came there for a fight and certainly not to be beaten into pulp so she could congratulate herself and feel superior. 

Is it any wonder she had no friends of her own to hang out with?  I wouldn’t be signing up for that either.

Even today, she tries to pry into my life in order to pass judgment and ‘win’.  It’s precisely why I tell her nothing – ever.

Am I okay?  Yes.

Do I still work at the same place?  Yes (even if I don’t).

Have I been anywhere lately?  No, just life as usual. 

Do I get together with friends?  Occasionally. 

What do we do?  Just stuff.

You get the drift.  If she has no details, she can’t pounce on me with her carping bitching and tear my life to shreds for her own satisfaction.  While it’d be nice to be able to have an open conversation with her, it’s not possible. Rather than beat myself up over that and be hurt about it, I accepted the situation decades ago and just withhold all ammunition from her.  It’s not about being mean.  It’s about survival.  The last thing I want is to badly vivisected by her that my only option is to put myself back on a psych ward – again.

I finally have space where I can get together with MY friends and they’re not appropriated by her because he’s incapable of making any of her own.  I can go out without being interrogated about where, how, who, what and anything else she can think of to make the whole intended even a misery of truly biblical proportions.  I don’t like it but I can’t change her and I refuse to sacrifice my sanity on her cruel altar.  I deserve better.

I’ve done my time trying to have a life which is only as broad as SHE will allow it to be.  Sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself, claim your grown and never concede a single millimeter, because the alternative is unthinkable.

Reminiscing

It occurred to me that I still haven’t heard from Mum.  Apparently, she still has no use for me or she’d have been in touch by now. 

As most of you would be aware, I journal EVERYTHING, and I’m a demon for it.  If anything of note happens, I’ll have a journal entry about it and will be able to tell you not just what happened, but the exact date and time as well.  When I say I document my life, I mean, I DOCUMENT. 

I have been journalling since my early teens and I have always found it to be a very helpful tool to externalize the stuff that goes round and round in my head making it almost impossible to function.  Writing allows me to ‘out things down’ and clear the mental slate so I can focus on the important stuff I need to do.

Therefore, since there is almost nothing that I let slide without writing about it (particularly if it has upset me), thus I’m pretty rock solid on the following information which comes from 2023.

• October 14 – I had a message from Vital Call to say that Mum had fallen.

• October 30, I had an email from her to say ““All okay but can’t get stuff to work on email love mum”.  She went on to say that she would be in touch and blamed her inability to be in touch on her bad eyesight.  The email was sent after 5pm when there are no carers with her.  How did she write the email without a single spelling mistake at a time when no carer was present?  In other emails there have been errors when her sight has been particularly bad but not this time. 

• October 14 – 30 – Her carer’s had told me she was at home after being checked at the hospital but I had been unable to contact her despite repeated attempts to call.  She simply didn’t pick up the phone to me.

• December – I sent her a card for Xmas.  I got no card, email or call from her.

• April – I received no call, email or card for my birthday.

• According to my notes, the last time I spoke with her was June 26.  I had rung and a carer was with her who answered and put her on the phone.

To this date, over two years since I last spoke to her and almost 2 years since her last email, I have not been favored with any contact whatsoever. Not a card, call, phone message or email.  Just total radio silence.

I have always put that down to the fact that she had been in hospital after a fall in June 23 and really hadn’t liked it.  She didn’t like the noise, the endless waiting around, the blood tests, the poking and prodding.  She hated it all and wasn’t keen to go back.

When she fell in October, I called her carers to let them know so they could follow up if she needed to see her own doctor or even if she just needed monitoring so they could pick up on any thing untoward which they might have missed had they not known about the fall.

She was furious with me for telling them about the fall because the ambulance had taken her to hospital on this occasion also, and then after coming home, she had more fussing from the carers fussing which she clearly wasn’t in the mood for.  So, I got the silent treatment.

She figured that I would keep call her and at a time of her choosing, when she had punished me enough, she’d answer the phone.  She hadn’t figured on my deciding that I really don’t need to chase her for her attention which is clearly what this was now all about.  It had gone from enquiry about her health to a power play to get me to chase after her.  I find that to be absolutely pathetic and I refuse to do it.  I spent decades of my life indulging her ego.  These days, I’m done.  If she wants people fawning over her, start a religion and she can command her acolytes as she will.  I won’t be joining them.

However, I digress. 

In the intervening years, my back and legs have been killer sore.  I have nerves pinching badly in my lower limbs particularly the left leg.  I am now permanently on a cane and when I go out in public, I use a walking frame as I am no longer stable on my feet and can overbalance in a heartbeat.  Back in 2023, I had the pain and was on a cane but I had no diagnosis as yet.  They were still doing tests to see if I’d done an injury and if so, what.

During the first half of that year, up to June 26 at least, I had spoken with her on the phone many times and I had mentioned the pain on each occasion.  She always showed little interest and changed the subject each time to her choice of her three favourite topic changers: 

1. Talking about her own issues and problems so the conversation then becomes all about HER
2. Bitching and backstabbing Dad – again.
3. Telling me she has to hang up because she’s been on the phone a while and is now feeling unwell.  This is always said in an overly dramatic, injured voice even though she’d been bright and bubbly and would be so again instantly if I mentioned something she either wanted to milk me for information about or if it involved her directly and suddenly had another chance to talk about HER again (see choice #1).

The bottom line is that I refuse to chase her.  She said in her email that she would be in touch shortly and that she was fine.  I have taken her at her word.  She is fine and didn’t want me bothering her, so I haven’t.

When I get a call from Vital Alert, I let her carers know so they can follow up but I no longer try to ring her to find out how she is.  She made it very clear in October 2023 that she gets angry if I do this but I find it to be the only responsible course of action.

 There have been times when she’s had a fall and deliberately NOT mentioned it not the carers because she’s scared that they’ll try to force her into a nursing home and that’s the last thing she wants.  Actually, they’re not trying any such thing but I can see where she’s coming from on that point.

However, since I call and tell them, and she seems to feel that this is ‘snitching’ on her, every time I make that call, I’m in the bad books – again.  Thus, trying to call her would be pointless.  She does not pick up the phone to me. 

The only reason she sent the email was because after two weeks of no contact after her fall, I rang the carers to find out how she was.  That’s how I knew she’d been home during that period and not staying with one of my relatives up there, which I had felt must be the case since I rang at differing times during the days and she never answered.   

The email was a dead giveaway that she was giving me the silent treatment.  Figure:  it was written at a time when she had no assistance available to her.  It was compiled on a tablet which apparently, she couldn’t get to work (except that she did).  Not a single mistake in it anywhere when previous emails were full of them (which I would expect from someone with sight issues). 

If she’d bothered to pick up the phone to me any of the dozen times I rang, sight issues wouldn’t have been ANY kind of an issue.  You don’t need eyesight to operate a telephone.

What I do find interesting is that Dad will have been dead for 34 years.  He died in 1991.  They were married in 1957 and he was her spouse for 34 years.  So, this is some kind of a landmark year in that respect.

I’d really like to call and have a chat because I do miss him but given her attitude, it would not end well, so I have to scratch that idea.

She railed about him and denigrated him every chance she got.  Even though he’s been gone as long as they were wed, she hasn’t lost her taste for the sport.  She bitches about him mercilessly.  In fact, everything that ever went wrong during their marriage was HIS fault.  She had no contributing part in it – ever.  She always depicts herself as the hero in the story.  They got through everything because SHE saved the day, blah blah blah.

I actually had a really good think about this earlier; I cannot recollect one single occasion in my lifetime when she has said something nice about Dad.  She has always run him into the ground and beaten up on him mercilessly.  Even now, when he’s been dead for so long, she still stabs he knives into him with exceptional malice.

So, of course, she’s not someone I can pick up the phone and call when I am missing him.  I have no tolerance for listening to any more of her mean-spirited Dad-bashing.  It’s really soul destroying to listen to that kind of vitriol.  If she’d occasionally say something nice about him, it might not be so bad, but as I said, she never does.

I also note that in the past 2 years, even though she knew I had something going on causing me massive pain, she has not once picked up a phone to ask me how I’m doing.  She always changed the subject at light-speed if I mentioned it in the first half of 2023, and it would appear that she’s still just as disinterested. 

Considering that I’ve been in and out of hospital over this and are taking some top shelf pain meds that I have to go through the Pain Team to get, it’d be nice if she’d demonstrate any concern for me whatsoever.

Her whole concern regarding me is that I’ve not called HER and really, why the hell NOT?  How dare I?  The concern is not for me but for her own selfish needs. 

Right now, she’s trying to wait me out and see how long it is before I break and call.  It’s the ultimate game of ‘chicken’.  Since I don’t want to listen to her beating up on my father and snarling at me that I’m just like him as though that were some kind of sick and ugly disease, and I’m really not in the mood to have her dismiss my physical pain entirely so she can talk about herself, any phone call to her will be a long time coming.

Alas, that leaves and unpleasant hole.  I can’t talk to her simply because she doesn’t want to talk – she wants an audience to whom she can rant and rave.  I would like to share happy memories of Dad and spend some time visiting with him in that regard and it’s best done with people who knew him.  Alas, she is poison in this regard.

I can’t talk to my brother who still hasn’t called me to find out how I am or what the outcome of the emergency gastroscopy was after I told him that I might have stomach cancer in 2013.  He’s clearly not interested in find out out if I’m even alive.  He wants nothing to do with anyone in his immediately family under any circumstances and that includes me even though I’ve done nothing wrong.  His problem is entirely with Mum and since my voice resembles hers, I’m on the scrap heap with everyone else.

My sister died in 2000 so she’s out.  Even if she were alive, we had a really bad relationship and saw nothing of each other so I wouldn’t have been speaking to her even if she were alive.

So, who does that leave me with?  The cats is the only answer that springs to mind.  While I love them to bits, they’re not very good in this particular situation.

I want to reminisce.  I want to dig up some of the few happy old memories I have and chew them over once more.  Since it’s the only method I have of being with him now, it’d be nice to sit with people who knew him and swap stories. 

Well, that won’t be happening any time soon and I couldn’t be more disappointed if I tried.