When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings

    

    My dad died on February 29, 2020. Leap Day. Departing on a day that only comes around once every 4 years suited his personality perfectly for he was a stoic man. The kind of man who'd appreciate the idea that he'd effectively quartered the number of days in our lifetimes that his death anniversary would pop up on our calendars. Pretty cool trick if you can pull it off. And he did. Of course he did. He may have been stoic, but he was far from dull or boring. He loved to laugh and make jokes, and he had a quick wit that made other people feel at ease and happy around him. I loved making him laugh more than just about anything. 

    I was several years into the process of religious deconstruction by the time Daddy passed which is fortunate because processing the musings of fundamentalist evangelicals as to his current whereabouts would have been all the more difficult to stomach had I not already come to find it all so ridiculous. So, when the Baptist preacher at Daddy's graveside service in Sulphur told the little crowd gathered on that sunny day in March of 2020 that my dad was so fine a man that those in his family were all certain he was now up in heaven taking care of the horse that Jesus would be riding in on at Armageddon, I didn't so much as roll an eye. Let them have their inappropriate apocalyptic fantasies. Disagreeing or providing a different point-of-view would, oddly enough in that particular setting and in this part of the world, make ME seem like the crazy one. Too smart for my own good and lost to the devil. Given over to a reprobate mind. Shit like that. Oh well. 

    The truth of the matter is that funerals are held for the benefit of those left behind, and far and away the majority of the people at my dad's funeral were super cool with the idea of him tending to the horse of the returning King. I mean, when you put it that way, it does sound pretty cool and a bit Lord of the Rings. It's a compliment. I get that. A compliment based in a delusion, but still, they mean well.

    For the record, my daddy was a real cowboy in every good sense of the word, so I'm quite open to the possibility and certainly the hope that wherever he now exists, and I do think the human spirit is eternal, that there are also horses of an eternal nature. It's not like I've given up entirely on the concept of an afterlife. I'm not an atheist, but I may as well be in the view of Christian fundamentalism. And I'm 100% okay with that. 

    My partner, bigby, played the guitar and sang at my dad's graveside service. It was so sweet and so perfect. Nothing else that was said or done really mattered to me. It was a sweet, fitting service for a great man who I was fortunate enough to have as my Daddy for 57 years of my life. During the last years of his life, I told him about my changing religious beliefs. He always listened receptively, seemed intrigued, and never expressed any concern or doubt in my ability to figure it all out for myself. He was cool with it. My dad was the kind of person who didn't have to fully understand you to love you.  I'm thankful every day of my life that I got to be here with him and be his daughter. 

    I didn't feel like I could go on writing here without writing about my dad. I feel him near me quite often, and I'm not sure if it's just the part of him that lives on in me or if his eternal spirit is actually hanging around here somehow. Either way he's living on, and that seems to be the crux of pretty much all religion. 

Here's a link to the song bigby sang at his graveside. When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings

Thanks for reading,

grace

    

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Deconstruction Sucks. Yippee ki yay.

    

    As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I moved back to my hometown of Duncan, Oklahoma 3 years ago. Duncan is a small town in Southwest part of the state just 30 miles north of the Texas border.  I think it's pretty typical as far as small towns go, but it's not one of those "mind your own damn business" small towns like the one Tim Walz kept talking about during the presidential campaign. Oh, if only. Here in Duncan, minding other folks' business is 2nd nature for some and something of a hobby for others. I keep my head down an mind my own business pretty much all the time. 

    Duncan became my hometown in the spring of 1963 when I was 3 months old and my sister was 5. My parents moved our family here from the even smaller and more rural town of Sulphur, Ok, just an hour's drive due east of Duncan. I graduated from Duncan High School (Go Demons!) in 1981, and left for college that same year. 

    Flash forward an entire 40-year lifetime and BAM, it's September 2021, and I'm right back where I started. You might think after 3 full years of living life here, I'd no longer be stopped in my tracks by a sudden feeling of panic while driving down pretty much any street. But it still happens more often than I find acceptable. It's like my car landed on the "go back to start" square in the cosmic game of life. How did this happen? How did I end up back here??? What the heck is going on? Is this real????

     While everyone else at any given 4-way stop may be simply waiting for their turn to proceed, I'm also reliving that time my 70s era, candy-apple red Toyota corolla fell into a giant sink-hole at one of the busiest intersections in town, or the time I rear-ended the car in front of me on Hwy 81 because my high school crush honked at me from the southbound lane, or the time I got stranded high-center on a mound of dirt in a construction area that's now considered one of the older neighborhoods in town.    

    My parents were only privy to two of those particular incidents, and I could go on with lots of others. The one where I fell in the sink-hole landed me on the front page of our local newspaper, and the fender bender smashed up the front of my beloved little Richard Scarry-looking car. While I consider these good memories that bring me joy and laughter in the retelling, especially when reminiscing with childhood friends, my state-of-being when they occurred was, as it turns out, not good. Being HERE physically somehow makes them more than just beloved memories. It throws my mind and body back into those moments in a way that feels uncertain and scary as if I'm actually reliving my childhood. 

    I didn't anticipate these feelings when I freely and willingly made the decision to move back here, but here we are. Because of this, I don't get out as much as I probably should. I'm not sure how long it will take or if I'll ever get used to being here, but I can't really worry about that anymore. I just have to do the work, continue the healing, and assume that the turning of time brought me here for the right reasons. 

    I've finally reached the point in my religious deconstruction where I can comfortably and wholeheartedly hold on to some of the truly helpful tenants of the indoctrination I received as a child. One of those is  "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)  I may have a heretical view of a good portion of that bible verse, but the first 6 words are the most important to me. It will all work out for my good, eventually. I do believe that. But it still sucks to go through it.  

    If I showed you a few pics of the families of my two biological sons, including 4 gorgeous grandsons who live here, you'd understand right away what motivated my seemingly irrational choice to move back to Duncan after my retirement from teaching in 2020. I'm here for them, and I have no regrets. The healing and deconstruction are just a bonus. Yippee ki yay.  

    In other news, and just to update a bit, t-dub and his husband miggs will be flying in from their home in San Francisco at the end of the month for our full family Christmas. All four of the boys, their wives, and all 5 grandsons will be here. I'm looking forward to it more than I can possibly describe. We haven't all been together at the same time in 2 years, and that's way too long. The important thing is that our family remains, and continues to grow and change just as all families do. And I'm not all alone here in Duncan. I have my partner, bigby, here with me. We've been together for almost 12 years, and I'm so very grateful for him. Particularly his willingness live in Duncan, and his patience with me as I continue the hard work of healing and deconstruction. Yippee ki yay.

More later! 

Thanks for reading,

grace

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Grace Returns Back

Many years ago, a friend told me, "a blog isn't a place to heal," and I remember feeling a bit defensive because writing about my experiences with t-dub felt like healing to me. Live and learn. My friend was right. A blog, or at least my blog, never was a good place to heal. But it did make me feel heard and understood and gave me a sense of release from some of the inner ramblings of my mind. 

 So here I am. 18 years after the split with t-dub, feeling once again a desperate need to feel released from the ramblings of my mind. That seems to be as good as it gets as far as blogging and writing in general goes. But that's enough. And there's always the chance that I'll be heard and understood, which would be a nice bonus. 

 And the healing. Well. The healing is still very much in progress and has been for low these many years. It's been a slow and arduous process with much to unravel. The religious stuff. The personal stuff. All the stuff. And the process has ramped up significantly over the past 3 years because I've moved back to the small town in Oklahoma from whence I came. The place where it all went down. Duncan, Oklahoma.

More to come...

Thanks for reading!

grace