Ahhh, discipline.....

Because we are sick parents, we decided that on top of a good one month grounding, the kiddo needed to think about a thing or two and write us an essay.  Basically, she was caught trying to plan something dangerous and got caught.  We told her to write us an essay on who would be affected and how should she die.  Morbid, yes, I know. 

I was NOT getting anything more than a laundry list of things and felt there wasn't enough sincerity in it.  So, I wrote my own take on it.  I wrote how losing a daughter could affect me.  I imagined what it would be like, although only a parent who has buried a child can know this.

Anyway, here it is, my imaginative situation, thank God!  But I wanted to share it with you:

I can still smell her perfume. Her hairbrush was left on my sink.  Her school work spills onto the table.

Her presence seems real although it isn’t.  It is just a fleeting feeling that she will walk through the doors and come home.

As I open the pantry, I find an empty box of pop tarts, something she used to do.  She would never through away the box.  I think her pre-teen brain just got distracted easily.  Nonetheless, I would give anything to find another box next week but I won’t, she is gone.

Her dirty socks spill from the laundry hamper in the hallway, something she would get to “later” there was always a later, now there is none.

I’ll never hear her pray for us at dinner anymore and laugh because it was always a funny little prayer.  “And thank you Lord for little turdbucket,” a term of affection for our chocolate standard poodle Ruger Silas.

There will be no more clanking of plates as she unloads the dishwasher for me.  Silence.  She is gone.

The kittens remind me of her because she always loved to hold them and tell me which one was her favorite which seemed to change a lot. 

The hallway on a Sunday morning is quiet, no clop clop of her boots that she loved so much.  Church will be lonely without her sitting next to me.  My daughter is with Jesus today.  I can’t help but wonder if she sees me sitting there and is there with me. 

I will donate a few of her books and keep the ones that remind me of her.

I decide to wait a bit before opening the door to her room and then I brave it.  Her sheets smell like her and there’s a pre-teen girl innocence in the room.  I feel as though my heart has been ripped from my body and I cry out WHY WHY WHY!

I cannot go through her things yet.  I wonder if I will ever be able to.  Does the hurting ever end or does a mom just learn how to manage the pain?  I have trouble even hearing her cat Oscar squeak his little “meow” in the hallway.  I feel like there is sadness in his eyes too.

Forget going to Chad’s parent’s home, the ranch in Karval.  If it was hard to be there and remember our dog Zeus, it will be next to impossible to be there anytime soon.  This is where our little girl learned to ride a horse, learned to love her cousins, cows, everything farm and ranch and even chores with Grandpa.  He is so devastated by the loss and no work is done.  Aunt Nikki comes to feed his cows.  Uncle Travis helps with anything else.  Grandma Sandy has gone to Yuma, Co to be with her twin sister because she wants to escape the memories if only for a little while.

My next trip to Oklahoma will be alone without her and the cheese fries at Eskimo Joes will not be the same.  How does a parent just live with all of the memories flooding their heart on a daily basis? 

Children are NOT supposed to go before their parents.  It is un-natural and just out of balance.  We are supposed to go first to leave them on this earth to live their lives.  We are supposed to be the ones leaving behind the keepsakes and the legacy.  We are not supposed to out-live our children.  Why did this have to happen?  I ask God Why and I don’t get an answer.

I just want one more day with her….just one more day.  Can’t we just rewind?  What did I do wrong?  Why didn’t I see the dangers ahead?  How could this have been prevented?  Why?  Why?  Why?

I slip back into extreme sobbing and expel enough tears that I feel as if I will choke.  I have a thought for a second that if I did, and I did die too, would I be with her again?  Is heaven that close?

I cannot sleep, I cannot eat and I cannot feel anything except complete and total numbness and sorrow.  

She wasn’t supposed to DIE!!! She was supposed to live and follow her dreams, marry a wonderful man and have a beautiful family, a privilege I was blessed with.

I will never have the answers and I will never stop searching for them.  The peace I knew the day before is gone.  The peace I took for granted has left.  The peace I had with my family is no more.  It is gone and it is done and I am forever changed because of it.

 

Boo! Just Boo, that is all.

Enough! 

Enough already with the Halloween stories on the news. 

Look, no one gets it better than me.  I used to be a journalist so I remember the news director advising us all to find a new Halloween story angle because it MUST be covered.  I turned on the news this morning to see great gobs of endless segments of cute little ghouls and goblins in their costumes.  Awhhhh how sweet! And then the story on the “how to be safe while trick or treating”  followed by “check your child’s candy when they come home” and finally “consider feeding your jacko-lantern to farm animals because that’s more eco friendly”  Can I just barf? Really?  Who hasn’t seen these stories?  I can almost just recite it nearly word for word sitting there drinking the coffee that apparently wasn’t strong enough to stomach this garbage this morning. 

Love him or hate him, but New Jersey governor and GOP presidential hopeful Chris Christie got it right when he called out the media on their trivial questions the other night at the debate.  He basically stated that we’ve got bigger problems and he’s right.

I think the media likes to spoon feed us the mac and cheese because it’s easy.  And viewers can easily handle the light stuff, the news fluff.  I mean who wants to wake up to the truth that our debt is out of control, more people are out of work, healthcare is its own crisis, and ISIS and other terrorists groups can’t stop chanting death to America;  and they mean it!

I cannot advocate that we force people to give a damn but wouldn’t that be nice if everyone still did?  

I’m done. Really.  Having a hard time being as pissy as I need to be while in bed as sick as a dog but that’s another blog altogether.  Be well.  Take your vitamin C and zinc and stay away from hospitals.  That is all.

Carry on!

~Anne

Pope N' Polls, y'all!

Cartoon by Dave Granlund, find more at www.davegranlund.com

 (Disclaimer:  No harm or disrespect is meant to the Pope, his followers, Catholics, the Vatican, or anyone else.  This is JUST a blog)

I’ve already been on the phone to my trusted friend who will listen to me moan about literally anything but here goes to y’all…or all y’all.  Yes, I did that on purpose for all of you grammar people.  That’s Okie and it is plural.

Pope Pope Pope,

kinda over hearing about it.  The news reporter deep down inside understands the need for the media giants to spaz out and run wall to wall coverage but the human mother in me wonders if there isn’t “other” news today.

Gretchen Carlson gets my admiration for being that reporter talking about the other news today.  The other news was Presidential race stuff, like polls.  Polls are really kind of interesting.  They change as quickly as we change our underwear.  We all are doing that regularly, right?  Ok, just checking.

Carlson had the expert on about how we interpret the polls.  Trump is on top followed closely by Clinton in the “likely candidate” poll.  Her resident expert explains the difficulty in just getting an accurate poll taken today because of cell phones.  Forty percent of American households no longer have a land line phone.  So these folks are just using their cell phone that makes financial sense in so many ways.  But one thing that makes gathering relevant information difficult is that people are able to screen their calls.  That smart phone displays the number so many choose NOT to answer their phones.  You have to wonder how accurate the poll is since just a handful will actually answer. You have to wonder WHO is answering these calls.

This just brings me to another thought I had.  If it matters to us who is ahead in the polls, are we really selecting our candidate because he has our values and morals and best interests at heart?  Or perhaps we just want to be on the winning team.  So it really shouldn’t be important for us to know who is ahead, right?  I mean it is interesting and certainly provides some coffee shop talk in a small town but does it really matter?  I guess it might matter to the candidate and their team because they might use that as a guide to know when to call it quits.  You might as well not spend your money running a race you can’t win.  

But….what if?  I mean, what if candidates just ran the race, stayed true to why they’re there in the first place, and didn’t give second thought to polls and numbers?  What would that look like?

When Hannah started running track events at first she never looked back and seemed surprised when she came in first.  Then as time when on, she slowly became interested in how MUCH she was winning by and would look over her shoulder.  This always provided a chance for the number 2 runner to get that much closer to her.  “Just run” I told her.  “Don’t look back; focus on you and your job to win it!”  You can always revel in how slow that poor sucker behind you was later as you’re hanging up your blue ribbon.  

Maybe that would make for a better Presidential race.  What if Donald Trump got up, drank his fancy coffee, secured that gargantuan tuft of desperate hair into place and hopped onto his favorite jet without concern for where he is right now in the race?  Hmmm. And Hitlery Clinton, (no, I did not misspell that so bug off) rolled over and into her socialist slippers, poured herself a cup of organic fair trade environmentally safe sustainable tea and sat quietly checking (and deleting) her e-mail without a care in the world as to where she’s polling?  Would the media care less?  Would we care less?

I would like to live in a world where a few things are still a surprise.  How would that be?  Oh, I know there is a lot at stake in the nation’s highest office and candidates today need to be prepared.  Probably true but I’m just thinking out loud here.  

You should’ve known I have trouble finding my inside voice.

~Carry on,

Anne Taylor

I'm so sorry, yes, I am, I am wrong and you are right and I'm sorry, sorry, sorry

I am certainly having a moment of CRANKY today!

Lucky you, I’m sharing it.  But I think many of you will agree with me.  I hope you do agree for that would give me more hope for our planet.

This started a few years ago with my beautiful pre-teen daughter was only a toddler in pre-school.  She came home one day and did something to upset me, not sure what I don’t remember.  Anyway, she muttered the word, “sorry.”  “What did you say sweetie?”  “Sorry” I am just thinking I didn’t hear all of it correctly.  She said she learned at school (of course she learned it the proper way at home) that when you do something wrong you’re supposed to say “sorry.”

So friends this is the point where you’re thinking I’m just nuts for not being appreciative of such a fine gesture as an apology but I wasn’t and here is why.  When a human messes up something so terribly that an apology is warranted, they should feel remorse and own the mistake or misstep.  How does one OWN a mistake?  I think by including the personal pronoun, I, in the heartfelt apology.  Picky, picky, picky, go ahead, let me have it!  But I think that acknowledgement of a wrongdoing needs to have an owner and it needs to be said out loud for the would-be offender to hear, absorb and chew on and the alleged victim to hear.  Go ahead and try it with me, “I’m sorry for the way I offended you.  It was wrong of me and I apologize, will you accept my apology?”

Kids can’t construct such verbose apologies, I get it.  But can we at least start UN-teaching the teaching of it is ok to half-ass your way into forgiveness.  “Sorry.”  NO!  “I’m sorry.”  Ahhhh, that’s much better, right?

It makes me think the generation who learns to say “sorry” will grow up to be ok with pitiful apologies from politicians who say “sorry” when really what they mean is “sorry I got caught.” (click on that link to see a little goodie I found)  I think we all know who this is; you’ve watched the news this week, right?

And there are different kinds of apologies, right?  “I’m sorry I wrecked your car, I’ll pay for the damages,”  “I’m sorry I’m late, I should’ve called you,”  “I’m sorry that I drank the last beer.” 

 

So I’ll just do the right thing right now while I have your attention and apologize to you.  I am sorry for the way I will correct America’s future generations when they say “sorry” by explaining to them that they need to own their mistake.  

Actually, no, I’m not sorry. 

I’m sorry that I didn’t write this sooner.

Carry on!

~Anne Taylor