God is, I am

For my children on the sudden passing of a 24 year old friend--

        Your (original) Aunt Cathy was 'taken away' when I was fifteen and she was 12.  I have never recovered from that passage, and that is the message (for me).  That was (if my figuring is correct, and I have avoided thinking about certain aspects of this until now) in December 1962.  Before that I had unquestionably accepted the precepts of St. Paul's Episcopal Church that had been my upbringing and several times weekly focus (Edna Bakley was my youth group leader, and the organizer of the "living nativity scene" that ended in the death of the little girl cast as the angel).

        Thereafter, I found that traditional "Protestant" religion, and "Christianity" in general, despite the purported focus on death (and as I read recently, worship of an ancient device of torture) was absolutely unfulfilling in terms of dealing with someone close to you actually dying.  The whole bit about heaven and hell was exposed as little more than a children's game of behavior modification.

        It took me years to reach equilibrium in terms of finding and accepting some more functional belief system. A "seeker," I went through many possible alternatives, including fratboyism, nihilism, atheism, escapism, alcoholism, agnosticism, potheadism, existentialism, skibumism, rosicrucianism, longhairism, coupleism, familyism, and more.  Suffice it to say that your Uncle Richard, who was more closely connected to the actual mechanics of our sister's passing (the driver, he spent 6 months after the crash in a hospital bed) has, to my knowledge, never come to an equilibrium (your uncles John and Jim never bought into St. Paul's to begin with, and neither have they found anything else, besides Physics, which seems a cold comfort to me).   

        My confusion wasn't all about god or religion, of course.  In the process many of my other unquestioned beliefs were shown as illusionary as well.  For instance, I had been brought up to consider myself White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP), so it was something of a shock for me to learn that my background was actually German Jewish and Catholic Irish. I also came to redefine "middleclass" and "normalcy" to be more closely related to mediocrity than achievement. I still am struggling with the concepts of career, marriage, and fatherhood.  Yet I have established a strong framework of beliefs about "what it's about" that works for me.  "Faith," to use that much abused term, I have come to understand as more telling, more important, than "truth."

        My "Eureka" moment I can trace to a revelation that came to me in the midst of a psychotic episode in 1978 (yes, it is probably significant that this was after your birth, which had been a yearslong very difficult and ambivalent pursuit--though it's possible that I am incorrectly assigning this date to this revelation, as thinking clearly about my history of psychosis is not something that I have been anxious to pursue, especially now, when it has again become a fearsome issue of attack from an ex-to-be). 

        Here's the scene: I was lying in a hospital bed in a private room in the state hospital, heavily medicated.  Having recently arrived, I was totally lost and confused, struggling to understand who and where I was and why.  There was a light directly overhead, focused on the pillow, controlled by a switch on the wall that I could barely reach from the bed.

        In turning that light on and off, to lie in the spotlight and in the darkness, I became aware of the undeniable presence of god.  God was in the light, in the darkness, in the electricity, in the wires, in the walls, everywhere. I had the absolute power to flick the switch and shut off the light.  God was still there, even in the darkness, but if it seemed more efficacious, or less painful, I could turn off the light, turn away from God. Or I could turn it on, even without a switch.

        Probably that seems silly or trite in this retelling, yet I certainly would not wish for you to require a similar experience to "grok" the truth and faith that has remained with me from that moment through many trials.  I have tried to explain to you before the absolute fact that "What you believe is true."  The subtext, of course, is that regardless of any denial, everyone believes in something. It is imperative that you deliberately choose to believe in something that is positive and works for you rather than against you.

        For me, it is undeniable that spirit is oneness.  It is moot whether God created man, or man created God, but it is evident that life is at once separation from, and required passage back toward, the One.  My belief is that Tim is on respite, that his spirit, his soul, unless it has already completed the coursework necessary and thus graduated and surrendered the illusion of individuality, will at some point take on a new body in this earth to complete further work toward the goal of ultimate reunion.  And so it goes.

Gail Karr seeks to reclaim her lost youth

Having previously "gone blonde" (to match even better her favorite blonde jokes?), and spent $2k refurbishing her 70's era Colorado mountain vehicle, Gail dug out some of her old time favorite duds to dress up for a "hippie" themed party in July, 2005.
She was less than thrilled when her aunt, who, only 6 years older, had been a drug trip companion in those years, commented on seeing the picture, that it was not only a hippie, but the most tasteless hippie ever.

Advice sought

        I just finished a novel called “the Zahir” by Paulo Coehlo.  It affected me deeply and when combined with the wind breaking my gates--which I had put up partly to try to hide the marginality of my existence from my neighbors (and make them less anxious to sue me or drive me off in another way)--and with my divorce hearing that was just cancelled, and my domestic violence appeal hearing that  also just got cancelled, has left me at a total loss and hoping for some sort of guidance from someone or something or somewhere.

        I don’t want to burden you or take you places you don’t want to go or get you involved in things you would prefer to avoid, but I am thinking that it may be helpful for me to address this to you, regardless of whether you are moved to respond or to just read it and put it down, or to just delete it unread.

        My current situation with my soon-to-be-ex-wife, Gail, has forced me to revisit my first divorce, and as a result I know that I can be better off for having gone through this painful passage, as I was better off despite the suffering surrounding that earlier one.  Yet I can now also see, from the distance of 21 years, that hooking up with Gail, while it made my situation much better then and for the intervening time period, at the same time it made that divorce (and custody) process much worse than it needed to be with regards to the fruits of that marriage, and any continuing relationship with that ex-wife.  Worse, it allowed me to avoid facing some personal issues that have now resurfaced in full force, for some of Gail’s stated complaints and problems about me seem very similar to those of the mother of my children, though Gail actively belittled those things in my first ex.  Gail’s insistence on seeing things only in black and white, and her apparent need to win at whatever cost, is (without some sort of intervention) clearly destined to make this passage even more damaging than the first (for all of us, including her). 

        Betsy, my first wife, gave me two beautiful children and then took them from me.  Though it wasn’t the head on my shoulders that was doing the thinking at that point, I was not so totally distracted as to be ignorant of the fact that Gail was attracted to me as much by my children as by my less than diamond in the rough persona.  Yet it has taken the years and this new split to help me to fully understand that Gail’s standard unflinching unreason in fighting for my children (indeed in any fight she takes on, which seems a constant), and my allowing her to control the tenor of that years long custody struggle, made that situation much worse than it needed to be or could have been.   Yet, ultimately, I have maintained a strong connection with the children of that marriage, something that doesn’t look possible with regard to the fruits of this relationship.  For her part, Gail has been striving to continue a relationship with my female child (though this has slacked off lately), while discounting and discarding my male child along with me.  Apparently she finds no contradictions or conundrums in that path, which is at least in line with her acknowledged overall dislike of men in general.

Together (though she would prefer to deny the primary importance of my involvement), Gail and I have birthed a rental property, a beautiful large solar house, and the building project lot where I am left living in the aging motorhome I bought to be my construction office.  (We also created a 501c3 corporation together, but that is something somewhat separate from the divorce, and is not a subject of this rant).  I was also a major participant in helping her grow her arts and crafts business, but that matter will take care of itself.  Long ago at her request, I signed papers giving up all rights therein, purportedly to prevent my ex-wife from getting any value from it in terms of child support, so there isn’t much to discuss there.  I know that she cannot continue her business as it was without my participation, and perhaps in paying someone else to try to do some of what I did for her, or learning how to do her own books, as she claims to be doing, she may belatedly come to some understanding of my discarded value.  Or not.  That is the crux of the matter as I see it, and I am writing this in hopes of gaining a larger perspective than what I can already see.  The custody of our “children” is currently all consuming, and heavily burdened by her bogus domestic violence charges.

        Gail, as you may know, continues to be in total denial about the condition of her failing mother.  In absolute contradiction of her siblings, father, medical authorities, and the insurance company which provides full time live-in care, Gail refuses to believe that her mother has dementia.  Rather, she claims that her mother withdrew in the face of her father’s overbearing demands.  This is related to the current discussion due to two facts 1) a neurologist (her brother) has told Gail that she will invariably follow her mother down that same path, and 2) her father was the first of many men who physically battered her.  Perhaps Gail is not going down that path, but as the person who was closer to her than anyone, I was very concerned about some of her behaviors which seemed to indicate that possibility was growing.  When my research informed me that in addition to her brother’s prediction of a genetic probability, Gail had many of the other known precursors of dementia, including brain damage, chronic pain, and a history of smoking and inhalant abuse, I became even more concerned.

        There is more, about her, and more problematically for me to see clearly, about me, but let me take this thread to its end rather than confusing it by adding anything else here.  Gail remains in denial about her mother, so while she was willing to promote her brain damage for the purpose of trying to win her lawsuit over her auto accident, that she absolutely refuses to credit the possibility that there is something lasting and increasingly wrong with her own mental functioning is an absolute requisite for her ongoing denial of both her mother’s and her own conditions.  Moreover, just like to her, her mother’s condition is her father’s fault, it follows that as long as she can prevent me from making her “withdraw” like her father did to her mother, she can avoid following her mother’s path.  So it follows that the only way she can save herself, to prove the truth of her denial, is to blame anything and everything related to that possibility on me.  And so it goes.

        I could be wrong in that assessment, but I don’t think so.  If you have any insights to pass me, please do so.  Post here or email to kenkast@yahoo.com.

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