7 Years ago tonight, I received a call from my aunt saying "Your Mamma’s gone." I collapsed in a heap. I went to work the next day. There were important things that needed to be done.
It wasn’t until later in hindsight I realized what the loss meant to me. The analogy I’ve used is that if I went & shot up my next door neighbors, my mother would still have defended me & loved me just the same. Without her, I would never have that genuine unconditional love again. It left a hole, a need, I didn’t realize I had.
It’s a political blog, but this is my story of how I changed in my views of the world that have led me away from the GOP & a new home. When I was 8 years old I asked my father what the difference is between a Republican & a Democrat. He said Republicans are for the rich people, Democrats are for all the people. I decided at that moment to be a Republican. I was determined to be rich, having seen how my parents struggled. Also, my father & I got on poorly & I knew this would upset him. Thing is I meant it. It wasn’t until 20 years later that I ever even considered differently.
I didn’t respect my father & instead found other people to look up to in my youth, people with what seemed like everything in their lives sorted out, people with answers & clarity, people who were successful. Republicans. Orange County, California was where I would live & like these people I knew I would have everything I wanted & learn to detest those that had less or wanted to take from me through taxes what they couldn’t earn themselves. And I accomplished those goals. In their last years I supported my parents financially. As such, I didn’t feel that I needed them in any way, but that I was doing my duty.
My father died a couple years earlier. My mother was away for the weekend and asked me to check in on him, as he was often ill & couldn’t take care of himself but in a limited sense. I agreed. He called one evening and I pushed him off the phone. We still didn’t get on well & he was a nuisance to be tolerated but not infringe on my oh so valuable time. That was a Saturday. On Monday, I had a call at the office from my girlfriend at the time that he was dying. He’d taken ill & sat with it until my mother returned. I wrapped up what needed to be done at the office, and three hours later left to the hospital. He was gone when I arrived. I wanted to leave straight away, but felt that I had to be responsible to the company first.
Promising to learn from that awful choice I had made, I spent more time with my mother as she grieved. Yet, as the months passed this would lessen. Soon I was back to a normal 100 hour week schedule, partner at a large mortgage company & focused solely on it’s growth. I allowed myself a trip to Salt Lake a couple years later to see a concert, Morrissey hadn’t toured in years & was playing a club & I wanted to see him in such a small venue. It was my first trip out of California as an adult. I was 27. My mother took ill, but I was reassured it wasn’t too bad. She was released & when I returned I had her stay with me for a week, first time I had done such. I’d thought of having her live with me, as I had a 4 bedroom house to myself, but was quite used to living alone. At the end of that week, she had done my laundry & I saw some items I knew were buried in the closet. So I yelled at her for going through my things.
I felt guilty & could tell she was sad as she left. I had a moment inside knowing I could insist that she stay. I didn’t. She was back in the hospital a couple days later. It was bad, pneumonia was setting in. My girlfriend (same one, back then) went to visit her the next day. And the next. I had important work to do & although I knew my partners would understand, I just couldn’t let them down in my mind. The next eve I talked to her on the phone. I told her I would visit her that Saturday, 2 days away. She began to labor to breathe. She told me she was scared. I never heard that in my life from her. And for the first time ever, she ended a phone conversation with me. I could have gone out right then, but I had to be up in the morning.
The next say she slipped into unconsciousness. There were no expectation that she would revive. So I finally visited. That night, after returning home I received the call from my Aunt. I didn’t fucking visit my mom in the hospital & it was serious so I could be at work.
It’s not conservatism that led me to these choices. That may be a beginning, but I had freewill & my work, the office, the responsibility was all I could see day to day. I grieved briefly, but feeling that they were not a need, did not provide anything tangible I never considered that losing my parents & particularly my mother would affect me.
A few months later I had become very self-destructive & decided I needed a vacation, since that’s what people do & I hadn’t had one in 6 years. Not because I couldn’t have one, I just wouldn’t. No idea where or what though. I had a notion (another story) that I wanted to swim with dolphins in the wild & figured I had the money to do so, since it seemed like a quite extravagant thing. I did a web search & found a group going to do just that in the Canary Islands a couple weeks later, so I signed up. It was called ‘Dancing with Dolphins.’ I tend to have interest peaked in something, particularly online & go right for the price & decide...without reading the detail. I thought the title was a metaphor. It wasn’t.
I knew the bullet points from the website & photos, island, beach front hotel, dolphins, cool. I imagined a bunch of free time chasing exotic women. So, passport acquired I took off & arrived at what I thought was to be a beach front resort...along a gravel road, along a Cliffside in the middle of the night to find a bunch of people hanging around & no one to take my bags! I was in a Gucci suit & had been looking forward to some great roomservice. Should have read the whole website. It was indeed beach front, but not a hotel (although there are rooms & such) but a "community" self-sustained grow their own food (vegetarian which I am not!). And here I am looking for the bellhop & surrounded by hippies! At last someone, a peace maker (I was getting a little hot) asked if I wanted a beer. Yes! The next day, the other’s in the group began to arrive & before long I learned it was a dance workshop I had signed up for, with side boat trips to see the dolphins (couldn’t even swim with them in the Canaries, that was another trip...details I missed). I don’t dance, tried twice to impress girls in high school...and didn’t, and never tired again. Actually, it was a practice called 5 Rhythms Dance, more of a movement meditation than anything with steps you might imagine. So here I am stuck & I figured I could fake my way through, it’s just a bunch of Euros & me. But you get to know people. And I did fake my way through. One day at lunch, the teacher, my teacher initiated a conversation. I don’t recall how it went, but she was asking questions, not building rapport but really asking & I was answering. And as she dug deeper, it hit upon my mother, like a volcano erupting. I truly had no idea that her loss was effecting me so. I had no idea that his was why I was becoming so self-destructive. I felt alone, guilty & nothing, nothing at all could assuage it & it called into question my whole life & how I chose to live it.
Things started to shift & I did connect with the group. As the week neared an end I realized that I’d never been so myself, so comfortable in my own skin around any people & these were strangers. No one ever asked how much I made. No one was impressed or cared about my clothes, or my job, etc. It was truly about myself as a person. It was also at this time the run up to the Iraq war, so people talked about that & were very concerned, hoping we wouldn’t attack. I was having my first ever misgivings about my party (yes, I believed Bush would be a great President, believed he was a moderate ‘compassionate conservative) because I studied history & cultures & never believed for a moment that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, for Saddam was a survivor & wouldn’t allow a second power base to operate out of his country...something a candidate would also say in 2004, but that’s later on.
We had an exercise at the end of the workshop, to take various materials provided & fashion a mask. The mask we wear to the world to keep it out. I went through the magazines & clipped all the Rolex, Gucci, Versace, etc. ads & wore them, for my success was the mask I wore & it did keep the world out. Then we had to dance through the room wearing the mask & being the character we play for the world. It shattered me. Making eye contact with the friends I had made & knowing that I would have judged these people who had opened up to me & accepted me so wholly, would have judged them immediately inferior & not worth my time because of their income or lifestyle, dress, etc.
I returned home & was unable to function in my life anymore. I couldn’t see the value in working so long, in trading money for really living. So I went on my own, stayed in the same business but on my own from home to reclaim my time. I also learned the power that one person can have to change things. My life was truly changed by one person caring, my teacher Kate. My eyes were also opened to a larger world, outside of the bubble I had lived. I could see people struggling, not lazy people but good working people who by chance or skill or whatever couldn’t make ends meet, couldn't afford healthcare which I took for granted & I could see that in abundance I could give more & it would create a greater whole rather than just be a loss for myself. I reexamined all of my beliefs, what was just programming from youth & what was true or in between. Not every belief changed, but enough.
In 2003, I knew we needed a change & I watched every last debate, every interview, studied candidates, etc. for it was incredibly hard to consider Democrats & allow for believing what was being said without the pre-programmed assumptions coming to the surface that I’d had for so many years. In the end, and it took months, I had always been drawn to Gov Dean & when he was on Hardball & said that he’d bust up the large media conglomerates I knew he was telling the truth (IMHO) because there were no points to be scored with that & many potential negative fallouts.
I wished I could share with my parents that I was supporting a Democrat, they would have been thrilled. My father was born in Cedar Rapids, so the best I could do was fly myself out to Des Moines & drive to Cedar Rapids to present myself at the campaign headquarters to knock on doors. I’d never done such a thing & it was just a pure joy to be totally giving. But, after the result & the subsequent fallout & New Hampshire I felt I could do more. It came back to the feeling that one person can make a difference I had learned & so it’s not silly to at least try. One night I couldn’t sleep, literally, thinking about what Gov Dean’s candidacy meant to me & the simple phrase came to mind, truth and hope. That’s what it was for me. So I got up & searched to see if the url was available & it was. So I had to do something with it. And I did, and more importantly so many others did & made it possible which is still the case today.
So, that’s the full story. I have these little bio’s on the website or press releases which say former Republican, etc. but I never took the time to tell the whole story like this. It’s the anniversary of losing my mother & this is what I can do to honor that memory. I still dance the 5 Rhythms, but now I am teaching it. I needed to give it back, what was given to me. It saved my life. It gave me hope & new possibilities, and so does this community, so did Gov Dean, so does Barack Obama. It all started when I lost my mother. I’m so thankful that I have the life I do now. But I do wish it weren’t at such a cost. I wish she could see how happy I am now. I wish I could say I’m sorry. I wish I could say thank you. I miss her so much.