Tragedy begins at home.

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Paris is burning, but Megan is on the bus home from her second job at 2am and hardly knows today’s world news. She’s thinking about what she can make for three school lunches that need to head out the door in a few hours, how she will pay her overdue rent and if she can get just three hour’s sleep before leaving to her other job.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
I know John has been up most of the night not because he’s a night owl, but because he’s an 81 year old vet whose gas was shut off last week. He’s cold and can’t get a warm meal until next week sometime when his $700 check arrives to pay the bill, the rent and a ride to the food bank to pick up leftovers others have donated.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
And here I sit in shiny black shoes and a borrowed suit at 430am at my office, because I know they’re awake and they are the important things and because I think I’ve crafted a plan that might help their tragedies.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
I’m always in the office at this time of the morning. It’s quiet and I’m alone to think about these important things. I’m not generally wearing a suit and shiny shoes, but tonight I will be at an event with over 400 people who need to hear about what’s important.
I honestly don’t care about winning, but I do care about the possibilities it may bring to our little non-profit in old Henderson and how, if translated correctly, some important people tonight might pause and hear about people like Megan and John and 10,000 more like them. And maybe they’ll give a dollar to help.
Our agency was nominated for Outstanding Non-Profit of 2015 and the winner will be announced this evening over a gourmet dinner in a room full of suits at a luxury hotel. Win or lose, all nominees will win something for the people they serve every day. A voice.
People don’t like sad stories, but sad stories can move the right people to do the right things to help make fewer sad stories. I believe that’s important.
So I’ll sit there for a few hours, maybe win, likely not, but I’ll have the captive ears of a privileged few who need to know the important things that are happening in this world, right here at home.
And taking off this suit and uncomfortable shoes, I can sleep well tonight, knowing I went to bat for the tragedies which begin at home and end with charity.

LMSM, Don

the uninvited.

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Uninvited, he slipped in. Undetected.
It could have been any unguarded entry but at this point, it didn’t matter.
He was unwelcome.
But he was insidious.
Scanning the surroundings, looking for place and opportunity, he found both.
It was there he began his evil conversion, enveloping others, a serial killer, slow enough to go without notice, fast enough to do the job.
His host: clueless.
His strategy was brilliant. He was a fast mover, acting like he owned the place, which indeed, given time, he would.
All seemed to be okay for a while, but he would soon become the most feared and hated guest at the party, and far from the life of it.
The silent intruder gained momentum and his impact was first noticed on that Friday morning by a man in white who recognized him and called out his name for the first time to my father, who was told this party would soon be over.
“Cancer.”


This coming Friday, Mike Miller will have been gone from our family for his first year. Ultimately, the invader was unsuccessful, for dad’s legend and legacy are still very much alive and celebrating at a party which never ends and where every guest was invited.

Life means so much.
Accept the invitation.

Invisible.

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I’m not online, in a tweet or on a post in Facebook.
I’m not at the store, don’t shop from home or at the mall at all.
I’m not on the road, in the car, catching a bus or ride to anywhere.
I’m not at work, on the job, working hard or hard at work.
I’m not at a movie, out to eat, at a friend’s or having a drink.
I’m not around and nobody is looking.

I am invisible.

I haven’t much time, but enough for you.
Rich in history and stories true.
I haven’t much money, but I’ll give to you
A rich adventure before I’m through
If you seek me out with time to spend
To make me visible before the end.

And you might find that I am priceless.

Enrich your life. Make a new friend and hear their story.

Friday August 21st is National Senior Citizen’s  Day.

checkered flag

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Big drops,
falling,
landing.

Faster now,
they race
for
standing.

And driving down
in revving sheets
in bouncing frenzy
each competes,

then
I
lost
count
when the river won.

So I sat
and watched
the cool summer rain
applaud the earth.

it’s a coupled world

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It’s a table for two or a couple of drinks, with pairs everywhere, sometimes it stinks.

Always plural or double, left unjoined in a nuptial, in a bubble, being single can be trouble.

There’s two-fers and deuces, running short on excuses, rarely place for the Ace, no space.

Twosomes are winsome and duos harmonious, it’s teams making sport while one comes up short, erroneous.
Talk on the phone? You can’t do it alone.  Pairs are a duo, never uno but deux, oh the groan.
 
Lovers make love, pairs of gloves not one glove, to cuddle or spoon is once a blue moon, no cocoon.
Twos can schmooze mixing booze and at parties they mingle but the one’s in the corner with the blues, very single, no tingle.
 
But pity them not, for they still have a lot, Though they ain’t tied the knot, it might not be sought and alone isn’t lonely. It’s not.

 

empathy

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I would have placed you masked on a dark journey to understand the perils of blindness.

I would stuff your ears and send you into a noisy world to understand the piercing silence of the deaf.

I would strap you to a wheelchair to navigate a busy street to know the traps of the disabled.

But to understand the plight of the truly homeless, hungry and impoverished,

I would simply leave you alone and invisible to die in a blind, deaf, immobilized world

where nobody sees you, hears you or comes to your aid.

Happy 76th Birthday, Mom!

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I first encountered this poem by Jenny Joseph 30 years ago when I was in college.

And while 99% of all the stories I publish here on my website are my creations, original and true, occasionally I will pass on something like this one that changed my life in some way.
Today, I present to you a special gift to my mother on her 76th birthday.
Warning:  When I am old I shall wear purple

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

-Jenny Joseph

Almost buried treasures

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Almost Buried Treasures.
24,000,000,000 computers in the world and not a single one will ever carry the story of Lois, the 91 year-old award-winning poet, prairie woman, and mother of ten. The ranch is gone, the children are gone and her binders of rhymes on the living room shelf will soon be tossed in the dumpster behind her studio apartment, as forgotten as the unclaimed plastic box of her soon to be cremated remains.
Underneath, people, like icebergs on a slow melt, aren’t always as they seem. White and pale for years on the surface, so many layers of translucent centuries-buried colors are concealed, rarely seen by mankind. Like pages of a novel dissolved away by a surf of disinterested waves, the iceberg and its colors will soon be no more. And no one will know any different.
I had done her a small favor.
Lois had lost most of her sight in her old age and had tired of pouring watery canned julienne carrots over her pasta, mistaking it for a can of sauce. Her tiny food pantry was mostly proceeds from food banks and she could no longer tell the difference between a label of carrots over one of marinara. So I’d printed 48 point Helvetica Bold stickers and arrived to organize her pantry so she could now tell the difference with a flashlight and the large magnifying glass she kept within easy grasp at the window sill.
She offered me toast and marmalade as her thank you which I declined mostly because I didn’t have the heart nor stomach to eat what she believed she was serving me. Mental note for a return visit: refrigerator labels.
While I needed to soon return to my regular post at the senior center outreach where I’d left a note “Back in 45 minutes,” I didn’t know then it would be at least two hours before my return.
A slow stroll behind her walker toward the sofa for a brief chat before leaving was almost unbearable until I noticed the many white notebooks of poetry on the shelf, labeled Olivia, Jenny, Christopher and names of several others. Inquiring, she invited me to take ‘Christopher’ home for the weekend knowing I was also a writer though somewhat less a poet. “I think you’ll like that one, Don.”
She went on to explain she’d written poetry as a young woman and had been published more times than she could remember. Many of her poems had become greeting cards for Hallmark and before that, smaller card companies across the nation and abroad. The bookends bracing her impressive collection were various trophies for writing and poetry whose engravings had long since blurred and tarnished over the many years since she lost her sight. She could only rub to read them, which she’d done probably thousands of times since.
We talked of many things, including her ten children for which each of the white binders were named, her little farmhouse on the prairie, the brevity of her fame before losing her sight, and her enduring fondness for capturing inspirational moments in recitals of prose. So immersed in her colorful stories of the past, I looked at my phone to see time had already come and gone to return to my post. We said our goodbyes and it was my Friday, so I took Christopher and headed back to the office to pack up and enjoy my three day weekend.
The saddest story in all of history will always be the one which went undiscovered and untold to no person nor pen and was buried alive eternally in an old soul.
These were the words that came to me while I sat on my bed and had coffee with Christopher for three hours that Friday evening. Reading the poems and prose, I didn’t cry once, but a half dozen times or more. The richness and antiquity of the words of that 91 year old prairie woman melted my soul, imagining that someday, with no one to claim them, the orphaned binders Christopher, Olivia, Jenny and the seven others might end up in a dirty dumpster and a landfill, and probably very soon.
It was the weekend, and the days when I take care of my own aged mother .
Though 15 years Lois’ junior, I wondered what stories I will have missed of my own family history if I hadn’t taken the opportunity that weekend to chat with Mom on her on the sofa that rainy afternoon. I primed the pump with a few nostalgic recollections of our family and we had a few laughs as she played solitaire on her Kindle. I could tell I’d begun brewing something more. Her game slowed as small oral vignettes of her own family history emerged piecemeal and at random until she was telling me complete stories of times growing up in Storm Lake, Iowa on the farm. Each story she told seemed to revive another she’d perhaps never told another. The kids she played with in the church across the street and a scolding from the pastor for playing hide and seek among the pews on a Saturday afternoon. The memories of her parents and aunts and great grandparents were flowing in alternating waves of sadness and laughter. Though they weren’t poetic, they were the stories of her life, and by distant relation, those I were valuing as my own.
Each of us has a story to tell. But in these electronic days, few take the time to listen in the way stories should be told. Indeed, storytelling, the old fashioned way that families passed on their histories, values and expectations to the next generation, is a lost art. And out of 24,000,000,000 computers in the world, only a handful will find it important to pass on the stories of people who will otherwise soon be buried with them undiscovered and untold forever.
 
It was Monday morning again, and my day to return to the low income senior center where my outreach first introduced me to Lois and her shelf of many children. With Christopher tucked neatly under my arm, and a handful of refrigerator labels, I closed up and affixed a note on the door.
“Back in 2 hours.”
There are so many older Americans whose fame was never counted by measures of celebrity, celluloid screens or column inches in fabulous magazines, but whose life stories are noteworthy nonetheless. And I have found that the aged ones who never sought audiences for them, sometimes have the most engaging stories to tell..
Especially if you will take the time, ask, sit back with a coffee, marmalade toast, and listen.
And bring your computer.

$6.72

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It was on a Sunday.

While I don’t remember all the converging circumstances of the moment,  my entire paradigm shifted about five years ago while eating a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

If you’ve never really had nothing, it may be difficult to grasp the power of the instant  you realize it. Since, I’ve had countless recollections and dreams  of sitting at that table chewing on that sandwich until now when for some reason, the significance of that moment has become amazingly clear.

I’d been clean only a few months after eight years on a methamphetamine diet when eating a sandwich was something you did only because people said you were getting too skinny as meth often does.  I had been an unemployed and unemployable mess for so long, I’d stretched my last $300 down to just $6.72 and the shame of who I’d become after all those years had eaten through any remaining pride or self esteem as I walked to the store to spend it on the ingredients for what I believed was my last meal.

On the cusp of poverty and homelessness,  that bacon sandwich changed my life.

I had always considered myself a sympathetic man, thinking of the plight of others before myself.  The many epiphanies I’d experienced during my cold turkey withdrawal from the drug months before (see “My 9-1-1” story from September 2013 below) were just the beginning of a deeper, more profound purpose and direction for which my life was now headed.

I vividly remember each bite and swallow, the feel of the hard chair on my bony ass and the cup of warm tap water I used to wash down the agony of each bite.  I was flooded with emotions and realizations of what my life had come to.  I was a poor man. Once rich in spirit and life, I’d become a shambled, lonely, pitiful mess of an addict in recovery eating his last supper.

I was not at all unlike so many other newcomers to my recovery meetings who, having abandoned a life of drugs, theft, porn and sex, were clean but poor and yet without aim.  I now believe this is why so many return to the destructive lifestyle, lacking something bigger than themselves to grasp onto in exchange.

I say again, by the grace of God, I was saved by a bacon sandwich.

At that table, on that chair, at that last bite, I literally felt my head twist to the right a little and buried it in the crumbs on my plate, having realized what my life was meant to be.  It wasn’t going to be drugs, poverty or a mere bacon sandwich anymore.  I was being called to become an agent of change for the drugged, the abandoned, the homeless and the hungry.

I think I fell asleep at the table for a long while, waking with the crumbs of the past stuck to my face and experienced my first real glimpse of hope in many years.  I would like to say I remember the dream I had during that upright sleep but I don’t.  I can only recall the waking and the twisted change it had made in the way I have since viewed my single, celibate, drugless and solitary existence.

Several events occurred in the days following.  My house got cleaned, I reached out to friends and associates from long ago, I redrafted my resume, and I began writing again.  Soon after, I was very graciously hired as a janitor at my church and eventually worked into my current position with a charity that had been waiting  patiently for my occupation.  I again now count myself a rich man.

To this day, I am the highest  when with the lowest.

They say that finding your purpose in life is an alignment of what you’re good at, what you love to do, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

For me, it was revealed in the most unlikely of places.

A divine moment on a Sunday afternoon between two slices of white bread.

For Addison

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Dear Addison,

I won the bet and you’re my little prize!

Happy birthday, Sweetheart.

Unlike the rest of the family, I didn’t have to guess when you’d be here, how much you’d weigh, how tall you would be or even who you would look like. I had a little help. And up here we don’t call it cheating. We call it “divine guidance” and everybody who uses it, wins. Every time.

Let me tell you a few things you’ll need to know.

First, your family is crazy and it’s mostly my fault. It’s sort of a male trait and your grandpa, your dad and your uncles are all equally afflicted. A couple of your aunties make pretty good nut jobs, too. The sooner you catch on, the more fun it will be. I had a wonderful life and want the same for you.

Second, while the world you were born into is the same one I exited only nine months ago when you were first conceived, things are going to change. I can’t go into much detail here, that’s the Boss’ job, but the years ahead of you will hold great things and you need to be ready for it all. Your mom will show you how to take care of your little lady self, your dad will show you how not to be afraid, and all your family will be in your business and around you at every turn to support you and show you the way through it. And, of course, me and the Boss will talk to your little heart every day as we have been all along these last nine months. Listen to all of us and enjoy this great ride called Life.

Third, be a fearless little girl, a fierce young lady and a feisty old woman. In every coming generation of your life, the world will need someone like you to stand up for what is right, good and noble. You are an instrumental part of God’s plan (i peeked), just like Mr. Bailey was. Your grandpa will thoroughly enjoy filling you in on the details of this every Christmastime and teach you how to never give up and to fight like a little angel for what you believe.

Finally, write everything down. Everything.

I used a paintbrush all my life. Pick your instrument and create a history of where you go, what you do, what you’ve learned and where your dreams have taken you, so when you’re an old great grandma (give her a kiss for me), you’ll have left a trail for your own little ones to follow.

Welcome to the world, you beautiful little girl.
You’ll always be my prize.

Love,

Great Grandpa Mike