WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
And so marks one year that the Dailykos community has made it possible for the tradition of "What's Your Fucking Problem" to continue by running on a strictly volunteer engine! On January 13th of last year ElizabethD signed off as hostess and the sign up began. I reluctantly blanked out the bad word in the title tonight as ElizabethD had previously given me specific instructions when standing in for her to spell it out as her predecessors had done. However, the F word on the front page has been discussed and rules have been set.
Many thanks to musings for continuing to track the volunteer group and to the community for its ongoing support. If you haven't signed up but have been toying with the idea, give it a try! And to ElizabethD, wherever you are, we miss you and hope we've made you proud! You were right, WYFP and the other community diaries are the "heartbeat of DailyKos."
MFP
Maybe it was that oppressive fog this week as I was wending my way home from work, pinching my nose and leaning in with chin on wheel to make out that "How-Many-People-Have-To-Die-Before-You-Fix-This-Curve?" in the highway that takes me home. Maybe it was that post New Year feeling that dredges up bits and pieces of years full of promises one makes to oneself that are still unmet. Perhaps it was this and more that made me remember a January some years past where my father, en route home from the hospital, could only greet me from the backseat of the car parked outside my home, no longer able to make the trip up our steep flight of steps. He had plans for me and I couldn't quite discern what it was he wanted me to tidy up, rectify or put in order. I often could not quite make out what he wanted from me until much later, which makes me wonder to this day what other bits of fatherly lessons and concerns were put out into that space between relationships that I will one day grasp and hold with a sigh of relief saying, "Oh! THAT'S what you meant!"
My sons' karate instructor once told me he thought parents put little bits of themselves inside us and they explode like little tiny parental time bombs full of revelation and maturity. I wondered, as I drove, what tiny bits he would have for me today if I were sitting across the kitchen table gazing, as I often did, at the gold band wedged deeply into his finger serving as a constant reminder of his once thin and youthful physique. How would he respond to my wordy laments about business and family? About which steps I'm planning and those upon which I'm afraid to act? I glanced at my wrist as I held the driver's wheel and imagined wearing a bracelet etched with "WWDS?" (What Would Dad Say?) Perhaps it would help me divine the answers I long to know; it could serve as a conduit from his place to mine.
The alarm sounds its stupid cell phone sound that I can't figure out how to change and before I am fully awake I know it is there, somewhere in the corner of my room (or is it my heart?) I see a little silhouetto of a man, scaramouche, scaramouche will you do the fandango? We've grown accustomed to one another, Grief and I. I recall the first time he showed up just days before my father died, standing at the foot of my bed in silence and darkness. I also remember when I awoke and it was minutes before I realized he had not given me his somber greeting that morning. I soon learned he is the type who likes to pop in unannounced and uninvited like a relative dropping by when you have two days of stacked dishes in the sink and laundry strewn about. He is also quite reliable; never missing an anniversary and keeping vigilant watch over my mother. One could say they have become companions.
I recall the "Birth and Death" course I took at the alternative high school in 1977. For avoiding pregnancy and educating the young girls we turned to Our Bodies Ourselves and for all things death, we turned to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. I saw my father deny and bargain, eventually slipping into acceptance and sleeping peacefully. I can recall my own stages of grieving these last seven years except for one: anger. Perhaps it was unintentionally mixed in with the divorce papers I filed that same year or it's hiding somewhere and will burst out and knock over some unsuspecting waiter who forgets to bring my soup before my entree, "What do you mean you forgot?? I came here to enjoy myself! Treat myself to an evening free from cooking and cleaning and you FORGOT my soup?? Don't you know my father's dead??"
Closing the books for a company this week, I make the final year-end journal adjustments. Line after line of credits and debits. It occurs to me that life is so much like bookkeeping. We give, we take away. We receive and we spend. We gain assets and we depreciate. Where love is the investment which brings the gain, grief is there to offset and balance the loss of those in whom you invested your love. Everything must balance in the end. As the years move on, the column containing grief is split into different accounts with names like: Laugh-Filled Memories, Pondering Reflections, and Teaching Moments. When I have a week such as this, where the longing to hear his voice and touch his skin aches inside me, I make the entry simply under the account: Missing You.