one year on...

he stared at the screen and wondered that perhaps some of the readers who regularly read the blathering bollocks on his web site were going to groan again when they read that day's entry point on the aetherspace-time continuum--and he felt it fully understandable if they did roll their eyes and think, "there he goes again"--but writing about that particular subject was a catharsis of sorts for him, a way of hopefully putting to rest some troubled thoughts about certain subjects in life.

it was tuesday, april 11, 2006, a few minutes to midnight and the culmination one of the most difficult and chaotic years of his 38 was just about over. it was one year previous to that day that peggy, his mother had died.

if the reader is thinking, "he just wrote about his mother less than two weeks ago," the reader would be right. unfortunately, peggy's birthday and the day she died were within less than two weeks of one another and her birthday just past and that day's anniversary of her passing marked the first time he had passed those days without her. he figured that some of the readers out there had experienced the feeling he was feeling--losing a parent or sibling or even a close friend--while he also thought that there were still others who hadn't yet experienced that type of loss. nearly everyone does, of course, during the course of their temporal existence on earth experience such things before their own passing and he would be forgiven for being allowed to indulge one more time in such detail.

catharsis was mentioned above in the first paragraph and it's important to denote that. the frequent mentioning and sharing of those past couple of weeks were born of two separate, yet equally powerful, burdens that he bore. the first--and oldest--was the suicide death of his best friend more than a decade earlier, still untalked about in any great detail, yet still a powerful presence in his life. the second one, of course, was the fact that he hadn't seen his mom in the last three years of her life, that his mother would never get to meet his incredible wife, or that his mother would never get to play with her future grandchildren. throw in the wedding to his wife five days after his mother's death, the foregoing of their honeymoon in lieu of attending a funeral, and the tenuous testiness of his relationships with his remaining family (a cousin or two aside) and it's a wonder, he thought, how he still had an intact marriage with his wife and friends still around him.

the first four or five months after the wedding-funeral gauntlet had tormented him and brought so many onrushing memories, unsolicited reminesces, indefensible guilt, and years of bottled emotion that he felt less than 100% nearly 99% if time. that he had made it a year without seriously damaging the oh-so-important relationships with his wife and multitude of friends was a testament to good fortune, good karma, and, thankfully, the great people he had had the good sense to choose as friends and the even better smarts he had shown by choosing the wonderful woman as his wife (choices about which both he had not always smartly selected in the past).

so, as the day drew to a close, as he and his bride performed a traditionally korean--though decidedly untraditional, as well, as only he could have done it--rite of ceremony in memory of his mom (see photo above), his thoughts and unflinching gratitude were with his wife, his cousin, his friends for being there for him when he was such a lout, with peggy (of course), and with helen--somewhere in the world and unreachable in recent days because two weeks had passed since her last update on her web site--whom he had known when helen was living in korea and whose mother, gill, had died on the very same day as peggy one year previous.

thus, as second person is upgraded to first person, i would be remiss if i didn't say thanks to my wife and all my friends for putting up with me and if i didn't also pay tribute to helen and her emotions on this day, as well.

here's to you, helen, and--on this day, at least--more importantly, here's to peggy and gill:

you ladies are sorely missed as people and, of course, as mothers. hoping all is well on the other side, we remain your loving progeny...