Next week is my birthday so I’m jumping the gun a bit, here, but odds are I will make it. People in authority let me know about a year ago that I wasn’t likely to, so nahh nahh to them. Shows what y’all know!
I’m actually in a bit better health than I started last year, so that’s good, I guess. But when you hit 70 the original parts give it up as a bad job and if you don’t have some aches and pains you’re lucky, And probably lying about it.
Birthdays are always a bad time for me. I’m not saying that’s not my fault. I’m melancholic at the best of times and birthdays just seem to be a day to rub my face in my shortcomings and failures of the year before. And no, I’m not gonna take pills to blot my mind of what I am. This is me, not somebody else. Pollyannas need not apply.
It’s been a good year but not a great one. I survived and I’m not starving and homeless like I was some years earlier. After you’re two days from being evicted from your home with not even a car to live in your perspective on life changes, believe me. I am grateful to have food and a place to live, and if I had more money I would just give it away anyway. I have no real desire for more toys and I’ve seen enough of the world, thank you. One place is just about as sucky as another and travelling is uncomfortable and tiring.
Dying is no big deal, I guess. We all do it so it must be okay, and if it isn’t there’s nothing we can do about it. Hell, or heaven, oblivion or Universal Oneness, I’ll find out soon enough. As will we all.
I am concerned about those I will leave behind. It has been a hard year for them and I haven’t been able to help as much as I wanted to.
My friend in Ghana is still alive. He’s not yet forty and he darned near died more than once this last year. He has a chronic health condition that sometimes flares up and tries to kill him. What his future will be when I am gone I don’t know. But he’s a grown man, hopefully he will milk a few more years out of- I almost said out of the udder of time but that would be a bit too florid even for me, I guess.
We kept some people alive this past year. They would surely have died without us. And I say we, there are many who helped (you know who you are.) We have eased some pain and made life a little better. Some people who were homeless have shelter, some who were seriously ill were treated, some hungry were fed. Not enough, but some.
And there is Anabel in Ghana
When Anabel was three years old her mother, who took drugs, up and abandoned her. (The mother later died.)
Just look at any three year old child you know and then think of a baby that age just left on the street to fend for herself. I know it happens, life is hard, but….
Anabel is now four years old, living in a shelter for children and attending school. For now she is okay. But she is four years old and I am 73. No matter what the odds I won’t be around long enough to see her safely to adulthood. Worrisome.
Also there is only so much help to go round. I do not at all regret helping Anabel, of everyone we know in Ghana she is the most helpless because she is so young and has absolutely no one but us. We have other small children in need but all of them have at least one parent. But they are going hungry.
The boy Melbourne is two years old. His mother is trying to care for him while his father is in prison. Last summer he almost died of malnutrition. We helped him then but babies have to eat every day. I don’t know how he is doing. I worry about him a lot.
There is Vicky, who was born about a year ago, now. Her parents have nothing. They have asked for help but it’s been so long since we’ve been able to do anything for them that they have even stopped asking. I hope they are surviving but I really don’t know.
Then there is Joshua, the younger brother of my friend in Ghana, who wanted to be an artist. I call him my Vincent for Vincent van Gogh. I know him personally, though I haven’t talked with him in years. He is homeless, on the street and literally starving. He is not entirely stable mentally but he’s an artist so you have to make allowances. But he doesn’t even have money to eat and its hard to buy artist supplies when you’re hungry. I hope he’s not dead but he may be. And that one gnaws at me.
And there are others.
I know you can’t save them all but I wish we could save at least a few of them.
If birthdays are a time to take stock of the year before and plan for the future I guess that’s my stocktaking. We stagger along and mostly fail people who need us.
But at least there is Anabel.