What Sadness is This?

My baby brother, Gunnar, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor...first I heard he had one year, and now I hear he could be cured at the Mayo Clinic (he lives just a mile away from it) He is in his forties, the youngest of all seven of us. He has two children, a daughter, a senior in high school, a son, off on his own now. He had a brain tumor when he was a young teenager, and it was stopped with radiation at the Mayo Clinic. Strange that I just blogged about personal planned obsolescence of the body that houses the spirit. Did I know on some level what was coming? probably.

I haven't been around him much at all since I left home at 18. I moved around from state to state, doing my thing, getting married, living on a commune, being an artist selling my jewelry and paintings, having children and such. I remember raising him, caring for his every need, dressing him and all things a big sister can do for a sweet brother when the mom is occupied in her own struggles and not around to take proper care. I moved home for a few months with my Dad building a work bench for my jewelry production so I could continue creating my line and selling to galleries. I took Gunnar to his cobalt treatments when he was fighting his first bout with a brain tumor. After he won that battle I was off and running again. I remember when I would pop into town to stay with the parents and my two youngest brothers, Jan and Gunnar still at home. I would pick him up from high school and we would go for fast food. One time I went into Dunkin' Donuts as he waited in the car. He was the quiet, slightly sardonic sort, not often smiling or showing emotions. He told me to get him the biggest donut they had for him. I went in and they had a novelty donut in the display case, as big around as a large cake, glazed and ready for me to grab up for him! I took it back out to the car in a white wax bag and dropped it onto his lap. As we were driving back to Mom and Dad's, he opened the bag and said it was big enough, hardly cracking a smile, but I knew he was delighted at the absurdity. He started chomping. I was cracking up as we drove on.

Mom and Dad continued on with their personal struggles, and I was usually there to help out with Gunnar and sometimes Jan when necessary. Jan was off with his friends most of the time. They came to stay at the commune with us for a summer when Mom and Dad were having a hard time. I still have a clay elephant Gunnar made and gave to me, with the nose broken off, some of his art work he tried selling at an art fair with me and my jewelry, and a small carving he did of an old man, little tokens of a endearing relationship. He never talked much, but I always cherished knowing him. Since I left the Midwest for good when I was 30, counseled by Mom's therapist that I should go live my life and that Gunnar and Jan would do fine without me, that they had to find their own ways, I have only seen Gunnar maybe 4 times and talked on the phone maybe 20 times at most. Our family does not keep in touch and I do not know why, but we have not made it a priority to visit each other. Life is so short and now he has another grand fight ahead. I have hardly known him and that saddens me, as I do love him so very much. He is a dear sweet soul, very hard working and respected, and loved deeply by his wife and children and by us all. Life is too short and too sweet and full of sorrows at times to balance out the joys, I guess. I am sure some great magic will take hold and he will make it through this to stay on Earth for yet another time, delighting us all. I do project that for him and know that every day impossible, amazing things do happen.

Obama, Change and Life

Obama won! How cool is that? Maybe there is hope for the world after all. I can't wait to hear from my Ausie friend. She is away traveling with her Mum so I must wait to hear from her. Did you hear about the spoof phone call from a Canadian radio station to Sarah Palin, where they pretended to be the president of France and he told her how much he liked hunting and killing animals? Ha! She actually said, well, we should go hunting together. Oh my God, we are so fortunate not to have her so close to the White House anymore! The world rejoices in that I am sure. It has felt like a Holiday, as great as Christmas, waking up and knowing what a glorious thing it is to have Obama as our new president! I went out to get a New York Times last night and they were all gone. I went to three places, to no avail. Then on the news they informed us that the papers are selling on Ebay for up to 199.00! I should have gone out earlier. I just wanted a couple to save for my children. drat.

I thought this morning as I awoke to my somewhat aching body and my ringing left ear, that we have created these bodies that bring on the signs of aging and decay to serve our purposes, planned obsolescense, though we have forgotten what those purposes are, either by design or indifference, or a combination thereof. This seemed a significant realization to me, though I know that I knew it already, but had somehow been feeling put upon by age and it's unwanted physical bothers. We don't really want to be hanging around Earth too long, so we designed our time limit to encourage our continuing on to the next world at an appropriate time.

I had a close friend in high school. We escaped our individual worlds, she hers of being very popular and heading for homecoming queen attendant, me mine of weirdo quirky artist, unaccepted by the in crowd, and walked and talked for hours. I am sure her friends asked her what the hell she was doing hanging with me, but that never bothered her. She was a Baha'i, and that was a common bond, as I hung out with the Wright family, just three doors down from our house. Mrs. Wright, Lorraine, was a sweet lady that helped me through so much of my rather unhappy childhood (I was sex typed mercilessly to be the slave in a family with six brothers), was also a Baha'i, as were some of her children by choice. There aren't too many Baha'is about so Sue was also close to Lorraine and her family. I was being raised a Lutheran at the time. This is a lot of build up, but I allow myself that as probably no one is reading this and if they are it is because they enjoy my perspective and will muck through it un-bothered. Sue died, passed on, shortly after graduation in a head on collision outside of Denver Colorado. My Mom let me know. I was pregnant in North Carolina unhappily married to my high school sweetheart. Her passing struck me hard. She appeared to me in a couple lucid dreams shortly thereafter. I was talking with her, as I sat up in bed, and she told me never to be fearful of death, as it was a joy, and I have never been scared of death since then. She also appeared to her two sisters and another close friend I found out from her mother, quite by chance. Lorraine Wright knew of these dreams and asked that I contact Sue's mom when I was home for a visit, after I told her of my Sue dream.

Still I certainly have been concerned with not wanting to become terminally ill or die before my time. I have wanted my time here on Earth, and still crave it at the age of 60. I feel myself getting younger every day, as I heal from the loss of my oldest child. I am losing weight and have new teeth, and am ready to take on the world for another time yet, with my daughter building me a new web site for my vintage clothing in hopes that I can escape Ebay someday. Seth says no one leaves earth until they are ready, though I wonder at those with cancer and other maladies, as they fight so hard not to leave. Cancer is the body reacting to our self-imposed need for change. When we drag our feet and refuse to do that changing which we came to Earth to accomplish, the cells in our bodies go crazy and attempt to change for us, growing uncontrolled ever moving forward, as we throw all of our creative energies into fighting that automatic well-meant response. We would do better if we moved forward, took a trip to Africa to help with hunger or went to live in Paris to write, then the cells would cease answering the call to change. One wonders what would have happened to America if we had not elected Obama. Would the cells of America have gone wild creating even more havoc promoting the change we were denying, bringing on more storms, floods, illness, and financial woes? A close friend, Annie Love told me when I talked to her of the Seth explanation of cancer, that she had heard that cancer was all the lives we had not lived, which fits. She is a Jungian therapist, so allows herself access to edgy reading materials. These are my morning ramblings, thoughts the two days after Obama's election. I offer them up for what they are, and may add more as time allows. If they serve no other purpose than to move that horrid photo of Sarah Palin with her real-women-kill-moose bag further down the pages of my blog, then
that is okay. They have served me well.