TRIBUTE TO MURRAY

A few months ago, I wrote about my dog Murray, and facing the issue about if and when to have his life ended.

It is amazing the amount of euphemisms we have for death - to pass on, pass away, go to one's final rest, depart this mortal coil (was that ever used before Hamlet?), give up the ghost (does that only apply when you die on Halloween?), go to met your maker, kick the bucket (wouldn't that be a hanging?), expire (yes, just like a warranty), take your last breath..

And on and on and so forth.

It's interesting that with animals, there is a HUGE difference between what we call the death of domesticated vs. 'farm' animals. Our kitties and puppies? They are put down, put to sleep, put out of their misery, going to the great big kennel in the sky - we go major guilt trips.

But cows and pigs? Slaughtered, butchered, bleed out, stunned... we don't think twice about it the next time we eat a hamburger, have pork chops, fry some bacon. They are 'just animals', after all.

Murray was part of my family - a very furry child - and a wonderful example of Christ-like love.

I am going to miss him, but I am also so thankful he is free of his pain now. 

And all of you who get up to heaven before me? Tell him hi for me, okay?

THROUGH THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

Why is it SSSOOOOOOOOOOOOO much easier to be nice/ compassionate/ helpful to complete strangers but not your own family?

Because you know that your brother/aunt/nephew has 1) gotten themselves into this scrape through actions of their own, 2) numerous times before been in the exact same situation, and/or 3) actually deserved the emergency disaster they are in.

My husband today has cheerful and willingly spent literally HOURS helping the daughter of one of his sergeants (who is currently in Germany) cut through the military-health care-through-a-civilian-hospital for emergency stitches on her hand, and also told the previously mentioned sergeant to come home immediately if necessary and not to worry about completing the inspection she was over there to do.

But now our actual/biological daughter's apartment is up for an actual inspection by the manager's of her complex, and it's difficult to get up any enthusiasm after literally years of "if-you-don't-keep-this-apartment-clean-you-are-going-to-get-kicked-out", purchasing cleaning supplies for her, about every six months breaking down and at least cleaning off her kitchen counters (which are buried under piles of pizza boxes, microwave dinner boxes, and discarded newspapers).

Have you ever wondered if the Good Samaritan helped this particular guy because this dude wasn't related to him?

It is much more pleasant to help almost anyone else in the world rather than someone you are related to.

(Of course, unless they live in Hawaii - then it is pure charity)

HAPPY AND CHEERFUL AND GAY

My father was a musician.

Named Bruce.

So perhaps it is evident that I would be raised without an abundance of homophobic tendencies.

Or was it simply innocence, naivety, or sheer blindness on my part - because it never ever occurred to me that certain people might be gay?

We had a neighbor to the west of our house, a Mr. Porter.

He taught high school Spanish somewhere in southeast Los Angeles. He kept his yard very tidy, was never upset when a ball batted or thrown or kicked from our backyard ended up in his. We could use his driveway to practice our skate-boarder or roller-skating techniques (mainly how fast you could speed down the sloping concrete and still make the 90 degree turn at the bottom onto the sidewalk) with nary a complaint.

And it wasn't until years later, when my own dad mentioned the regular flow of young single Hispanic males in and out of Mr. Porter's home that it even occurred to me that he might be a homosexual.

Frank was a salesman in Michigan at a music store where my dad taught.

He had beautiful flowing black hair (I have always had a thing for men with long hair), the perfect beard, and Frank could talk to anyone who passed the store entrance with just a fleeting thought of purchasing a piano or organ into walking out with a delivery contract for a full-size grand or a theatre-size Lowry.

It was only when he died of AIDS in 1981 that I realized he probably was gay (this was back when AIDS was still very much only a homosexual disease).

I had a supervisor at a job in Maryland, Toni, who had underwent a radical double mastectomy in her early thirties. She and Beth, another supervisor, bought a house together while I was at that job, and once again, it never registered that they might be a 'couple' that way.

Why do I mention all of this?

Because it doesn't matter if someone eats buttered popcorn with sugar, sitting on their own couch, watching their DVD of "Pride and Prejudice" with two panting dogs for company.

It isn't important if a person will sleep with only 400+ thread count cotton sheets on their bed, memory-foam pillows, and Shabby Chic comforters.

If you like to wear black ankle socks with your white tennis shoes, you might not be photographed in Vanity Fair (is the magazine still around? anyone know?), but why should you be censored in general public in any manner?

Should laws be proposed to keep you from wearing black ankle socks? Even in the privacy of your own home?

I become more annoyed than is healthy with people who get frantic about gay marriage slash relationships slash eligibility for health insurance coverage under their partner's employment.

Number one - since it seems like the great majority of these anxious individuals call themselves "Christians," is it just a convenient lapse of memory that the whole "not judging others" bit is forgotten? When were they called to be judges and juries of private lives?

And number two - why the hell aren't they more frightened or terrified of all the child molesters? Sexual predators? Abusive spouses?

Talk about a threat to the basic family unit - that previous paragraph list scares me, at least, a lot more than the gay couple that lives at the end of the road, peacefully, happily, and can always be counted on to bring the largest salad to the community pot-luck dinners.

Thanks. I just needed to vent.

TOO MUCH BULL OVER THE YEARS

What's the expression, birthdays are good for you - the more you have the longer you live?

My three siblings and I all have birthdays within a one month period. We are Taurus - er, Taureans? Tauruses? Taurui? Well, which ever one of those that is correct - I'm going to root for Taurui.

I have always loved being a Taurus - they list qualities like loyal, endurance, stability, patience... okay, okay, let's forget that last one.

And Taurus, although the sign if that of the bull, is a feminine sign in astrology, which tickles me no end.

Our weaknesses? Stubbornness, tendency to be overly possesive and materialistic.

My siblings and I are spread over a couple of decades - my oldest sister and I are 22 years apart in age - we have different fathers, we grew up in radically different circumstances, and we haven't really kept in touch very well over the years.

Today, I was actually thinking ahead... okay, truth be told, my MSN calendar reminded me that my first-in-birthday-order-sibling's.

I got all organized about 8 years ago and put in everyone's birthday - my family's (it is embarrasing when you forget your own kids' birthdays), my animals (try to explain to a cat why you didn't get him a present), my dentist (hey, do you wanna tick off someone who can pull your teeth out if he wants to?).

The nicest things? People's birthdays don't change. Although I know some women who change the YEAR of their birth from time to time.

So I began addressing the envelopes for the birthday cards to send to each of my siblings - one to California, one to Wisconsin, one to Michigan.

And suddenly I was crying.

Because April 27th doesn't talk to May 17th. May 17th doesn't talk to April 27th. May 11th and May 13th chat about once a month, but May 11th hasn't spoken to either April 27th or May 17th in about, what, thirty years? Maybe longer - I don't know.

So it's more than California, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan. It's that our parents have died. It's that we're all getting older. It's that it shouldn't be this way.

And if wishes were horses, then beggers would ride - if wishes were fishes, we'd all cast our nets - right?

FALSE FEELING OF FELICITY

It's been kinda an emotional day for me.

A very nice kind person sent me one of those critically-ill-child-orphan-dolphin who will get 3 cents-five-dollars-a-lifetime-supply-of-ill-operating-Vista-PCs-directly-from-Bill-Gates if you only forward-this-email-repeat-a-prayer-or-help-the-king-of-Nigeria's-sister's-uncle's-half-grandfather-god brother.

Can you tell I don't like these things?

This one was about and included a photo of a severely-burned young girl in Poland who needed this email forwarded to cover her medical needs etc. etc. etc.

And it hit way too close to home to let me simply hit the delete key.

My older sister and her two girls were horribly burned in an auto explosion when I was eight or nine. My sister was in the burn unit for six months; my nieces, both over a year. They have all had extensive plastic surgery, and although both girls are happily married and have children themselves, they will always be extremely physically scarred.

So I wrote back a very sedate, calm email, ccing everyone whom this lovely person had emailed this particular email to (note: another reason to always put email addresses under bc instead of send) that this was one of those partially true emails, noted the snopes.com site with information about it and other such emails.

To begin with.

I even put "and you do not need to read anything else."

And THEN I imploded about how instead of allowing yourself to feel righteous about forwarding a *^%#&(!@# email, you should go volunteer at a hospital, support your local fire department's fire safety programs, go read at a nursing home, donate your furniture to Habitat for Humanity...

It brought more emotional memories back than I had anticipated.

MY SISTER'S KEEPER

I have to reason myself into attending church services. As in almost every single Sunday.

My nice warm bed can smoothly sweet-talk me into staying under the comforters (my husband takes the dogs out and feeds the horses for me on Sunday mornings, bless him) and remaining unconscious until late afternoon.

And it isn't like I hate church. I always learn something - and yes, normally something that I've heard 3,275 times before but still need to more fully incorporate into my life - and I get my spiritually weekly fill that I so desperately need, as much as I hate to admit it (note to self: review lesson on humility once again).

However, today, after dragging my sorry behind to services, I heard an remarkable suggestion just before church ended.

The lesson was about living in peace and harmony with others. And the teacher freely admitted that when she had first reviewed this lesson a few months ago, she realized that she needed to mend some of her own family relations to be able to teach this lesson.

So she challenged us to mend any strains we might be having with family members.

Which prompted me to call my sister tonight for the first time in a long time.

And I'm glad I did. Because it turns out my brother-in-law decided that they needed to sell their home in Pasadena and move back to Michigan. And she was packing.

And I probably wouldn't have known about it for quite a while.

Thanks, Heavenly Father, for getting the message to me, and I'm sorry I make it so difficult sometimes.

I'll try to do better from now on.

FAMILY TIES

I received a Christmas card yesterday from my oldest sister. It's one of those individualized cards, covered with photos of family and places, with the greeting nicely printed out as well as the signature.

It brought both cheerful discover and clear-cut regret.

Cheerful discovery, because quite a few people in the photos I have never met. Clear-cut regret, because quite a few people in the photos I have never met.

My oldest sister is some 22 years and 16 days and a hour or two older than I am. Jan was married and already had one child by the time I was born. We have different fathers, dissimilar views from politics to parenting, and an extremely non-sisterly relationship.

I stayed with her family during various times of marital upheaval at home, played with her kids much as cousins would instead of an aunt and nieces & nephews, went on water-skiing trips with her family, learned to drink beer at an extremely young age since there was never enough soda pop.


Harold, my brother-in-law, caught me doing something wrong at his house when I was about five, and threatened to spank me, which is how my nieces and nephew were disciplines. I stood tall and told him he couldn't, I was his sister-in-law. He didn't, but probably should have.

My two brother-in-laws got into some kind of argument that no one even remembers what it was about, but they and my two sisters have not spoken in some 30+ years.

My second sister and I had an incredibly close relationship growing up. I was 'the mistake', change-of-life pregnancy and all that, but Jo just swept me up in her teenage arms and took charge.

So when she suddenly disappeared from my home and reappeared married to some stranger named Bill with a new baby girl, I didn't know what to do. I grew to love Cindy and Chris as much as I did Jo, but Bill was always a little bit frightening stranger who had taken my only sister away.

And Bill gradually slipped Jo further and further away from our family. They took all their summer vacations back in Michigan, spending time with my mother's first husband - I try to believe for his winning personality and not the large amounts of money he accrued after the divorce. He joined a church which did not celebrate holidays - not just Christmas and Thanksgiving, but birthdays and anniversaries.

And whenever I visited Jo at her house, Bill would always be 'around.' I am not hinting that he was monitoring all of her conversation - I am STATING that he was monitoring all her conversation.

We've kept in touch - mainly through the Internet and occasional cards. I drove up to Pasadena last time I was in California, and was saddened to see a resigned, defeated, abused sister in place of the bright-eyed girl who taught me to read and take my first step.

Christmas is supposed to be the time for families to gather. Mine, at least, simply continues to drift further and further apart.