Trying to help...

Eight years ago, one of my most beloved friends committed suicide.  It broke my heart.  I was inconsolable.  Still today, I am heart broken over the loss of such an amazing, sensitive, soul.  This September, I am walking to raise money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.  I, have personally struggled with and survived years of depression and a two suicide attempts.  Please, dig deep, any amount helps...

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I hope you've found peace my dear friend...

Arlen Barr

Happy Fourth of July!

A Mirror with no Reflection

Most people don't know that I am a twin, was a twin.  My sister died in utero, during the 2nd trimester. Her death caused all sorts of complications for my mother, in the end resulting with my birth via cesarean section.

Lately, I've been really wondering how and if her death effected me in even the slightest way, and if a lot of the strange phantom emptiness is caused by that.

Starting early, I was a weird kid.  Off, slightly gregarious, slightly shy.  Very easily picked on, and always felt a little like something was missing.  I embraced my darkness, and it drive my mother insane.    I loved ghosts, monsters, death was so interesting to me.  I would hide in my closet or under my bed hoping that the monsters that other kids talked about would come out and play with me.  I wasn't afraid of them, I just assumed they were different like me, and just needed a friend that understood them.  I was picked on mercilessly all through elementary school and high school.  By the time college rolled around I just had accepted my solitude and while I had friends, they were from the land of misfit toys as well.

My mother didn't confess to me that I had been a twin until my 20's.  She didn't want me to feel I had lost something, yet, I already felt like that.  I had been feeling like that since I could remember.  I thought I was kind of crazy in thinking that a loss that happened so long ago and in utero could effect my personality and soul so much.

So I have decided to learn more about what it all means.  Did that loss make me a little more left of center than I normally would have been?  Has it effected me so deeply that I'm feeling all sorts of strange feelings and emptiness that I never would have felt if she had been born?

I'm on a quest...

Chasing Nostalgia

This past week has been full of amazing connections.  Not new connections, but just old friends who have delved deeper into friendship.  It's amazing.

 It's also been a crazy weird week where in, I had to go get a snake from my in laws.  It was a three foot corn snake.  Beautiful.  In an effort to try to find him a new home and not release him into the wild, I kept him in the house and he did escape.  It was an interesting 48 hours while he was missing.  I was more afraid of him getting hurt by one of the dogs, but he showed up last night, safe and sound, perhaps a little pissed off.  I scooted him into his container and bungee'd the lid down and decided that it was time for me to take him somewhere to be released.

This brings me to last night.  It was after nine, I had gotten dressed and put the snake in the car, and headed east.  I drove for a while, the cool breeze blowing through the window, the night, so very dark. I had forgotten a flashlight, so there I was, in the dark woods with a Tupperware container full of snake, tromping through the woods in flip flops, tripping through the brush.  I got him far enough away from the road and let him go.  I assume he slithered away, before I heard crashing in the woods and my brain freaked out.  On  the drive home I took the long way through the back roads of Dundalk and through Essex.  It brought back a flood of memories, of crazy late night times.  Driving though eastern Baltimore County in any of my Gilman boyfriends fancy cars.  Silly, whimsical, goth girl in love with jocks.  I would sit in the front seat of the car, my Dr. Martens propped up and hanging out the passenger window.  Billows of smoke from my Camel Lights drifting on the breeze.  I would roll my eyes as the current trust fund boyfriend and his friends tried to figure out ways to steal the Essex Cube or jump out of the car to pick up traffic cones for no good reason.  I would sit there, watch, smoke, and pick holes in my fishnets.  I still remember what it felt like to have each individual thread slide under my purple fingernail and pop.

Does this mean anything?  Nope.  I had just forgotten how much I love sense memory and how amazing, smells, sounds, and temperature can really make us recall certain moments in time.

A Family Undertaking

Most of you know that I find the aspect of modern funeral practices to be barbaric, and disturbing.  When I lost my grandfather, who died at home, in the care of my family, I vowed to myself, that a funeral director and home would be minimally involved in my after death care.  The feeling of handing my loved one over at such a time of pain and relief (particularly after a long illness) was hard.  Even though our funeral director was very kind and considerate of us being able to sit with my grandfather for some time after he had passed, I still felt this void when he was whisked away not to be seen until the grand unveiling at the funeral home in a few days.  While Charlie did an absolutely beautiful job making my grandfather look like a healthier version of himself.  He still looked like a manikin and was hard, and clay like, not at all what he felt like after death.  It deeply disturbed me, it always have when I've had to go to viewings.

A blogger and mortician from LA, Caitlin Doughty (www.orderofthegooddeath.com) mentioned a PBS documentary entitled, "A Family Undertaking".  I put it in my netflix queue and it arrived this weekend.  I watched it this morning.  What a beautiful, eye opening film.  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in caring for their own dead.  It was moving and very informative.  It tells several stories of families caring for their dead and one elderly man's involvement with planning his funeral and the gentle, kind way that his family cared for him after death.  Watching people take on the process of death and dying on their own terms is beautiful and very emotional.  I will admit that I was so very moved by the amount of personal care these families put into giving their loved ones exactly what they wanted after death.

I know this spring/summer, I will be undertaking the building of my own coffin for use when I finally leave this world.  I look forward to it, contemplating my mortality and accepting where we all end up.

a little hiatus

I've taken a break from things.  But life, aside from the last week or so has been pretty good, albeit a little stressful.  I've taken on more responsibility at work and got a promotion.  I love where I work, it was truly kismet that I found Apothecary when I did.

This past week has been a little crazy making.  My FIL has been in the hospital since last Wednesday and hasn't been doing well.  We thought we had lost him for good several times.  It's been an insanely emotional week.  I hesitate to get overly optimistic, but the progress that's been made in the last 24 hours is positive.  I hope it continues in the upward swing.

Since, I've been on hospital grounds, I've seen a lot of shoots and buds coming out of the soil.  This makes my heart happy, because that means that sunshine and warmer weather is on the horizon, which means, open windows and animal disembowling!  MY goal is to completely clean out my freezer this Spring/Summer, which means lots of maceration and mounting of skins.  I may have duplicates of bones if anyone is interested in doing some trading along the way.

I am going to get down to the ferret project finally in a couple of weeks.  That is the least crazy making of projects, at least initially.  Just a little update to keep y'all in the loop...

Happy Thanksgiving!

May your day be filled with wonderful times with loving family and friends.  May it be filled with gratitude for life experiences, good or bad.