Reluctant Embarkation.

My most significant and most recent (of many) ascensions happened as a result of my surrogate mother's death, and the laying to rest the remains of my biological dad’s ashes. The whole ethos of quantum healing called to me from a fever dream.  I went through what many spiritualists would call ‘soul loss’ resulting in an awakening akin to electroshock treatment - tortuous and not at all therapeutic.  I have experienced loss before, but never like this. I suppose if I were to be honest, my soul was leaking since my biological dad's death years before in 2014, and coincided with the scattering of his ashes on my travels in various locations throughout the world. His soul had gone to his good lord above, and mine was strewn along the Earth's ley lines in an attempt to make since of the death of my dad, a veritable demi-God.

At first, I continued along the same path I was on before he died, as a means to justify or ignore the glaring incongruities, only made obvious after his death.  I was hoping that my life of vagabonding vagaries and vicissitudes would be validated by a diehard declaration that I was “unhealed” or even "healing" at the time.  It was something akin to inertia.  I was already in motion moving forward in time (yet downward in purpose) with my main motivation being to simply avoid pain, which also meant avoiding life’s relentless responsibilities. 

Not resisting the slow moving train wreck that I was becoming, my father’s death represented not an excuse, but a sort of silver lining to my useless existence.  It was an alibi for all my self - betrayal, sabotage and alienation.  I was a heathen by belief in those days, but turned to God to save my father’s life, and then to save mine as well as the weight of all of my disappointments and heathenish deeds and decisions hung above me like “the sword of Damocles”; for if God would not save a devout man like my father, what hope did I have?  I am not sure if God was merciful to me in their decision to keep me alive, being that it has been a soul stripping process to claw my way back from the brink of madness.  I fell into many darkened depths of despair in my attempt to heal from this eventual metaphorical “mortal” wound.  I died many times, infact.  

My sanity seemed to desert me as I, and everything I knew, crumbled to “rock bottom”.  At the time it felt like one massive multi-car pileup and everything happened too fast to adjust or react. I mused that if a police examiner were to ask me: “What were the events that led up to the accident”, there would be a different reply every time as if I were a dozen witnesses at once, all with different perspectives and viewing angles to the tragic scene.  It was muli-dimensional and I could not find any way to anchor to parts of my foundational self.  Everything was in question.

When events would feel particularly disjointed or I would have moments of dumbstruck denial, the events do not flow chronologically, and Dad is still waiting to die - though his funeral has already taken place.  At other times,  he was never even sick until he ended up in the ICU (but no one is truly believed to be sick until the hospital enters the picture; or rather, until they enter the hospital).  And still at other times, my uncle’s death, mom’s tumor, multiple breakups with “Englishmen'', the illnesses of my two sisters and my younger brother were felt to happen at the exact same time-the quake of which caused a wave like tsunami that wiped out my father and drowned my own will to live. Yet even with this event distortion, the events; sadly, do not change in existence, only change in order.  

Perhaps I have no authority to speak of just how surreal and superimposed this journey through grief is, but I know enough to say that it is a lonely one.  There is no guidance along this journey from putrefaction, to petrifaction, to production, performance and eventual repatriation to society.  It is a ‘hero’s journey’ few have the vocabulary to admit to in its’ full interpretation.  I will not presume to do so here except that while the “indecipherable” and ephemeral try to find form on the tongue, I will shout my own personal glossolalia into the doorway of Babel with the hope that God will recognize my voice and add my name to the roster.  For the moment, I show up in truth on behalf of Ancestors past, present and future. 

I make no claims to have been the “best” or “favorite” to anybody (friend, sibling, niece, daughter, etc) but it seems to me, that if people are going to get sick, leave, or die on you, they should at the very least have the decency to give you notice or a “heads up” so you can clear your schedule. I know that is just "Life",  but Life should arrange the ‘badness’ evenly spaced on a linear time continuum with no overlaps in event and emotion.  I remember being told that when giving criticism, one should use the “pump, dump, pump” method so that the criticism (the dump) is neatly and palatably sandwiched between two compliments (the pump).  I reckon that if winning the lottery and finishing the Ironman Triathlon sandwiched my tragedies, there is a good chance I could have handled being “dumped” on with more composure and grace.  “Could” have does not mean “would” have.  Instead, the confusion and incredulity of it all felt like having hiccups that would not subside.  It was disruptive, annoying, incredibly painful and had me performing any number of wild methods to abate them. 

There were emotional hiccups as well.  Misplaced anger that was disproportionate to the situations, lapses in sound judgment, antics and antisocial behavior.  I realized that if I dealt with each individual sadness separately, I would find myself with a dull ache of sadness at all times trying constantly to wade through the endless waves of grief.  I decided at some point that when I found myself sad about one tragedy or another, I would just think of all of the sadness I possibly could in an attempt to get it all “out of the way”.  I didn't even stop at events happening in my own life.  I thought about war torn countries, animal abuse, once beautiful houses now in dishabille, improperly cooked and seasoned foods, seeing a re-run when anticipating a new episode- absolutely everything possible along the “sadness“ spectrum.  

Trying to kill many birds with one stone, or rather one devastating and debilitating meltdown vs. multitudinous moments of manic melancholia was exhausting.  These emotional piggy backs produced panic attacks wherein my breathing would quicken and I would find myself gasping for breath and light headed.  The emotional pain was so acute I could feel it all over my physical body and I would put my hand on my chest as if to stop my heart from hurting.  Of course my left breast was in the way and no amount of tugging or wrenching would move it and allow me access to the aching organ below.  I would settle for cradling my breast in my hand like a mother would cradle an upset baby and my heart would eventually resume its normal rhythm and the pain would ebb slowly and leave me emotionally and physically spent.  Even now in my "woe" moments, I place my hand over my left chest to cup my breast, and that comforts me to some degree.  I am hoping to unburden my head and my heart in this writing and atone for my sins within the safe confines of this document. ‘Confessions of a lifelong loser, a cautionary tale’, as it were/is/has been. 

My literary “voice” has never wavered as much as it does now, but I be DAMNED if my story be told or written by those who have only experienced it from the sidelines or not at all - only recounted from hearsay and gossip. This is my journey away from hurt and into healing; from confusion to conclusion.  At times I will be accompanied by either my father’s disintegrated remains, an excess of emotional baggage, or energetic beings (dogs and child) that either drive the plot forward or backward, as healing is not a linear process. Both ashes and emotional baggage I hope to be unburdened of by the end.  There will be some back story, some catching up to the present and some speculation on future events before they are planned, plotted and promised.  

The ending result can be read as a travel log, a story of strength and endurance; of love, loss and grief - or any number of emotions brought about by the burden of the human condition.  My memory is selective at best, but I will at all times stick closely to the facts; paralleling the truth with few tangential forays, lapses and leaps of creativity in this work of literary non-fictionality.  And it is “work”.  In your audience, you are not just witnessed, but will be pallbearers of my many dead selves. I am enlisting you, the reader, to be “in service” to my personal war -  and I ask clemency in this regard.  And so together, we embark on this I call 'Odyssey of Ashes'. #nofilter