FRIENDSHIP

Make those who are near happy, and those who are far will come.

So today I need a friend, if only to listen, tell me I’m nuts, write me off, whatever they chose. I realized something today, I no longer have that friend. You know, the one person you go to with anything, and they won’t judge you. They know you’re not perfect, but they love you anyway. I miss that so much. I was walking my dog tonight, something I do when I need to listen to my thoughts, and realize that life just hurts, not just sometimes anymore, but a lot of the time, too much of the time. If I had known, I would hurt every time my child would hurt. And no matter how old we get, or they get, we will continue to hurt when life gets tough on them, I’m not sure I would have had such a large family like I did. Honestly, if I have to hurt when my life gets tough and every time one of them hurts, well, how much can one take before they simply fold?

I like to write my thoughts, as you may know by now. I find it hard to “say the words” easier to write them. So, my daughter is an alcoholic. My beautiful daughter and I’ve known this for years now, tried to fix her, confront her, cure her, get tough with her and finally, I shut down and remove myself from her. I had too, so I would survive with some sense of normalcy. It’s raising its ugly head again, it has to be dealt with again, and I don’t want to. So, I walk my dog a lot, it’s good for him, it’s good for me. I can’t talk about it, so please don’t ask me to do so. I suffer in silence because for some reason I need to do so. Perhaps a mother’s pride, or failure after all, don’t we all want to have perfect families? I know I did, but it’s not, and of course, it must be something I did or didn’t do right. I worry about my grandson, the love of my life and hers. It’s not fair to know that someday she will see and probably never forgive herself.

Once I knew a man. A very kind man, gentle man, who had two alcoholic parents. As an adult, he shared with me the things he went through on a daily basis. They were horrific and finally when he turned eight his father shot his mother in a drunken rage. Then himself, they both lived, but he and his sister were taken away from them both forever. He told me a story about his mother making him a sandwich for his lunch box. It affected me so much because I could see how much he still loved her and how much one simple act of kindness could surpass all evil. It proved to me that a child’s love is truly unconditional, and I hope that my grandson will find that in his heart as he gets older.

Many years ago I wrote often, stories, poems, whatever I was moved by at the moment. I wrote this for my friend as he shared his story with me.

THE LUNCH BOX

It was most always empty,

lost somewhere amidst piles of debris,

thrown into the darkest corner of the closet,

perhaps her way of forgetting me’

One day, just one day

of hundreds in my childhood,

you filled it.

As you drank your morning scotch, and smoked your cigarettes,

stale bread you put together

became your shining light in my eyes.

So proudly I walked to school,

a precious sandwich made for me,

my trophy of normalcy.

One day, just one day

of hundreds in my childhood,

my mother loved me.

It makes me cry now as I read it, who would have known, that one day just one day of hundreds in my life, I could relate to this…