When you have hurt someone that you love, your world comes crashing down around you. You see yourself being the worst possible version of who you are. Your eyes cloud over and your ears ring with the silence that you have made where there was once joy. You want to take it back. You want to know that it can be fixed. It is torture to see the person you love with a face that is crumpled in sadness and anger, and was like a joyous, vibrant being. You beg to allowed the fix it, but you cannot.
I have found myself here all too often. I have beaten myself to a pulp for the things that at the time I felt so right about but, in retrospect, know were so very wrong. It may be that we all find ourselves there, but it does not feel that way. It is a lonely solitude where comfort flickers out of reach.
Then you curse that you are feeling sorry for yourself because you should just be feeling the hurt that you have inflicted upon another. Is there anything that you can not manipulate into making about yourself?
Why can’t I separate the hurt from the blame? Am I incapable of feeling empathy without injecting myself into the equation? I don’t think I am because I caused the hurt. How can I feel for someone’s pain, when it has come from me, without holding myself to account.
You say things like, “I didn’t mean it that way.”
And a tear-stained voice answers, “Yes, you did.”
It rattles in your mind like a projectile that you are cruel. That maybe you are naturally that way. But you don’t want to be naturally cruel. You just can’t stop thinking about how wrong it was to hurt the person that you love.
Because there are different kinds of love, there are different kinds of hurt. There is the hurt of disappointment, when you did not live up to the expectations that the person you love has or had for you. Hurt can change expectations. Once you have disappointed someone, there is the possibility that you will do it again. Sometimes, there is even the expectation that you will do it again. This is difficult because the expectations that someone you love has for you are often high. Can that person still love you even if you cannot live up to the expectations that your love engendered in them? Can you still be loved in spite of your flaws? More projectiles that carom around your head and heart.
There is the hurt of betrayal. This pain comes with different projectiles. If you know that you have committed an act of betrayal; if you know that you harbor feelings of betrayal; if your betrayal was deliberate, you have spit in the face of love. The once pure love is broken or tarnished and you understand, painfully, that it can never be as it once was. That you can never be what you once were to the person that you love.
Forgiveness washes you but there is always some of the residue that lingers. There is always the longing for the time before the betrayal. Perhaps you can say that your new love is stronger because you have been able to forgive, but until you can accept being forgiven, that strength is fragile.
If you love, you must accept that you will be hurt, but you must also accept that you will be the one who does the hurting. This part is harder for me. I ask myself why I need to explore the mystery of love and hurt. Is it possible that you love someone more after they have hurt you?
I do not understand why this is true but I have experienced it. Is it because if you are hurt, you and have forgiven that hurt, you will be given more latitude when it is your turn to do the hurting and the asking for forgiveness? Is being hurt somehow banking your pain so that when you hurt someone you feel that you deserve forgiveness?
I do not know the answers to these questions. They revive hurt when I ask them. Perhaps hurt is a stern teacher of reality.

Everyone Goes to Heaven

In a dream, I saw a flood of souls moving to and from life with fluidity. The creative spirit self-assigned them each according to belief. The heavens were numerous. Everyone was on the same journey but their paths differed like tributaries of water. Seeking the sea, each moved in their own directions. Heaven looks different for everyone.
The scoundrels were there too. But greed was no longer a motivator. There was nothing for greed, except the wish that your soul was stronger. The seductions of power, wealth, lust and comfort had vanished. What had become of the souls who were driven by these needs became so real. They were droplets stuck in mud with no hope of reaching the sea until they were reabsorbed, lifted, and allowed to rain down once more.
I woke up thinking that it was fanciful dream. Could life really be that simple and complex at the same time? Could the repeating, intricate and yet simple patterns that we see in both the macro and micro universes, the same patterns we see in some perceptions of the world, be the exact same journey for our spirit?
Such foolish insights our dreaming selves create! But then, I am struck by the notion that once something is created, it has a life of its own. Whether it is an impression, a story, or the inspiration for another’s story, it goes out into the world and changes and grows, dissipates and dies. Or maybe it is just transformed into something else.
If heaven is eternal life, we all go to heaven in some form or another. This idea should comfort me more than it does. I am still too selfish to be ready to enter that cosmic mosaic.
When music moves me, I am transported to another world where I dance and spin and sometimes, “beneath a diamond sky with one hand waving free,” I am at one with everything.
Experiencing something is so different from creating it. When I create, I fuss over detail. I search for color. I can fly. I can expand or contract at will. Sometimes I worry about what will happen at the end of the flight because I am now responsible for how things work out so. How they resolve is a reflection of me. I was at least, in part, their creator.
In my dream, was I was given a glimpse from a different perspective or am I still an experiencer who feels the dance but does not know why?

I am lucky enough to have been married for more than forty years. In that time, my wife and I have seen our careers mature and then move into retirement. We have seen each other through the death of loved ones and the physical challenges that come along with living. We have travelled the world together, owned homes, endured losses and celebrated triumphs. We are fortunate that we have always been able to talk to each other about our lives. We enjoy the melding that occurs when two people commit themselves to each other. In our seventies now, we have the discussion about of us will be the first to die.
This is a conversation that many avoid and call maudlin or morose, but it is not just an esoteric question. It is also a question that involves legacy and the dispersal of assets. The romantic wish is that we expire together, but we know that is not likely. One of us will probably survive the other.
When the topic first arose, it was dismissed as being too depressing and frightening to discuss. Neither of us wants to leave the other alone. We made the promise of a lifelong partnership. How then can one imagine life continuing without the other?
Aging requires that we make some decisions. There will be plenty of time to think about one of us dying once it has happened. Why spend time thinking about it now? We know each other’s hearts. Instinctively, we believe that we will know what to do when the time arrives. But the subject comes up out of nowhere, like a mushroom that grows in the dark and just appears without announcement.
Cancer runs in my wife’s family; heart disease runs in mine. When my wife contracted cancer, she thought about the end of her life. My goal was to redirect her thinking towards recovery. When a heart condition was thought possible for me and they put me in a cardiac unit at the hospital, she did the same thing. But silently, we both considered the inevitable.
We are both spiritual people but neither of us is a churchgoer. Although going to church was part of each of our upbringing. There is a desire to somehow return to that certitude that came with a child’s belief in eternal life. That belief that we will reunite with our loved ones and that the reunion will be eternal. I am not sure that will happen. I am not sure that there will be a me with whom to reunite. Valerie believes otherwise. She has more faith in God than I seem to be able to muster. There is a line from a popular song that sums up my situation. “I am not sure what I believe, but I believe.”
What are beliefs anyway? Are they more than a desire to have things a certain way? Are they the place where mental constructs and emotions meld? We are satisfied with the notion that says what was once mine is now yours? For property and money and other possessions, we each know the exceptions.
My wife has an extended family that she would wish to have remembrances of her. I do not. We have a daughter and a granddaughter that we would want to see enriched by those things that we did not have a chance to use. We trust each other to carry out these seemingly mundane requests.
There is an ultimate intimacy in this conversation. It is about what is to be done with the rest of us. We do not wish to be buried alongside one another. We have each expressed the desire that our remains be cremated. But what to do with the ashes? Perhaps they should be mingled with ashes of departed family members. Maybe we should be spread across graves, and either be blown away or turned into fertilizer. I have the fantasy of being buried at sea. But I sincerely hope that I am not alive to experience it. We can say these things to each other and smile a chastened smile at their implications.
We have considered how much of us will stay with the surviving partner. It would no doubt take time and work before either of could embrace that sweet sadness of fond remembrance. There is the element of anger when either of us sees the other faltering in a desire to go on. “Don’t you dare die on me. I will never forgive you.” This can be both an expression of love and admonition.
This is not a discussion we can tolerate unless we are both present. I cannot see discussing it over a drink with a buddy. I do not think she can either. However, if we both are present, our living selves contradict the inevitably of the subject matter. We are able to hedge with this perception of truth.
So, the conversation is ongoing, not every day or every week but it is there. My wife, who specialized in gerontology, tells me that the decade of one’s 70’s is the most difficult to endure. Strength fades. Not everything is at the fingertips of memory as it once was. These are harbingers. She tells me that once a person reaches the age of 80, those fears seem to subside and an acceptance of life and death is easier. I hope we live long enough to experience that.
I want to believe that there is a place to which we travel. I want to believe that my soul is eternal. I want to believe that all our souls are eternal and that life is just a dream inside of a dream, but I have my doubts. Maybe it is because I live inside of this finite body that I cannot grasp eternity. Maybe there is no eternity to grasp. I guess we will all find out.
For now, I live in hopes and dreams, but perhaps I have always done that. It would be the delight of forever to find her there with me. But then we would both be living dreams, wouldn’t we?

The DNA of places
I have been lucky enough to visit some of the most fantastic places on earth. But whether it was the desert or a rain forest, I got to visit these places. I did not get to know them.
There is a hilltop clearing in back of an old farmhouse where the sky opens up and birds play in the wind currents. It is up in the wooded hills and you must make your own path to get there. Then my internal compass encoded and I no longer consciously needed to look for markers. Emerging from the trees, the valley opened like a blanket that had been pulled back. It was a small outcropping, a bald spot at the top of the hill. It gives me a sense of belonging.
There is a point that juts out into a lake where the water glistens at sunrise and sunset. The moonlight on the water seems to know this place and shows you a path on cloudless nights, when the moon is strong. This place embraced me.
There was a house by the highway, just north of a creek that flooded. Its windows looked out over the land that the creek claimed with a marsh; where the hum of traffic harmonized with the chirping of crickets. I would sometimes dream there.
Any place can feel like home, for a while.
Places speak to me. They invite me to stay. They are far more consistent than people. Sometimes people want to see you and sometimes they turn you away. A wanderer learns the places almost always ask you to stay. The ones that can heal you and share your joy. The ones where you blend in. They are part of our memory but they are steady as rock.
I wonder about when my feelings seem to come from outside of me. They are seldom intruders and sometimes just need to visit. Plants and trees are like that. They cannot come to you but they need you to come to them. Maybe it is simply a need for connection. Maybe they recognize something in you that has touched them. Maybe they are messengers through time. Is that related to what we call de ja vu?
The other day I thought that perhaps they are forms of reincarnation. Maybe ancestral instincts are manifestations of the reincarnations that we are. I don’t believe in popular reincarnation where everybody gets to be Cleopatra or Alexander the Great. But maybe some lives have been barren and we stuff their reincarnations so deep that they can never surface.
When the feel in the air or the light filtering to the street embraces you like a homecoming, and you have never been to that place before and you have this one time to meld with it. When this one time, place, or creature connects with you and both ingest like sustenance, something special happens. Something deep in you responds. What is that instant?
Sometimes I think it is in my DNA. I wish I knew more about the nature of DNA. I studied its effect on learning for years. But it was moving too fast and changing into its components, like the atom or fleeting love.
Chromatin has my interest today. It is a substance consisting of DNA and protein. It is part of our chromosomes. Is it the dwelling of our ancestors? Scientific articles say that they are essential in maintaining the function of memory cells throughout the life of the organism. Is it possible that they go further? Do they speak to generations yet to come through their connections? Is it an expression of reincarnation?
That all sounds so farfetched. It is like a desire for eternity.
Places are relatives but different because the life of the organism is undetermined. It is more of an ecosystem than creatures appear to be, but that is only on the surface of things. In some realities, creatures are all echo systems. The purpose of the system is survival. Metamorphosis comes into the picture. A place can be reborn, and I guess so can a person. A place can remember who it was and so can a person. But it cannot be proven; it is only sensed.
Our memories are also in our senses. All of them can transport us through time and distance. Sensory memory. Isn’t it clearly transported in other creatures who have the innate desire to migrate to a specific place they have never been? A part of them may have been there before. I like to think that it happens with plants and trees too. How does it look in people?
If everything is connected, mustn’t science connect with spirituality? Mustn’t conscience connect with the soul? Do they all connect with the senses? May they all not connect through generations?
Some things are so primitive that they are complex. Does the nature of the primitive embrace complexity and simplicity?
Does science not reveal the microscopic structure and megascopic structure to be related? Or is it just our perceiving the surface of things more closely and from farther away than ever?
My chromosomes have taken a detour with me; they’re haven’t gone anywhere. Unless there is some other way to pass along my chromatin? To become part of what appears to be the fiber…
When I reach out for these answers, I am met with only the sense of be here now. Simplicity and complexity without a care for forever. The rest will work itself out.
There have been places that I have travelled where I have felt strangely at home, although I have never been to the place before. England was one such place. I had never been to England before but when I visited, everything seemed just as it should be and I felt that I was where I belonged. Did the fact that my ancestry came from this land have anything to do with this feeling? It could be that I have read so much about England that I was familiar, but I did not have this sense of belonging in Greece and I have read as much about their culture and literature.
I know that this is a common experience but the reason for it intrigues me. I sometimes do not feel this way in my own country. Florida is a place that I have visited since boyhood and yet it holds no such feeling for me. The same is true in California or New Mexico. I am supposed to feel this way in Massachusetts, but I do not. I am convinced that some places do have a genetic effect on me.

Lessons I Learned from the fears of my mother

My mom suffered from agoraphobia. This is often defined as a fear of open spaces, but that’s not entirely correct. For her, it was a fear of being away from home. She would be certain that something awful was going to happen unless she stayed home, or at least got home. In the 1950’s, this condition would have largely gone unnoticed except that she was also a divorced, single parent who had to work for a living.
Our world was rather small. She worked across the street in a diner, where she could see her home from work. I did not know why my mother had never taken me to school, like the other kids’ mothers did. My first day of school, I tagged along with a neighbor’s kid and her mother. After that I went by myself. It took many years for me to figure why my mom never went to school or ever picked me up. That was just something that other parents did. My home was different.
Until I was nine, my mother had a boyfriend who she wanted me to pretend was my dad. I refused. I remember her crying and saying, “You don’t understand how much we need him.”
Divorce only happened in New Jersey when both parties agreed. Her boyfriend’s wife was very Catholic and would not agree. The boyfriend wanted to take her to Las Vegas, where he could get a quickie divorce and they could be married. My mother could not manage to go. If he was divorced and remarried in Nevada, the state of New Jersey would recognize it. However, they would not recognize the divorce in order for her to be married in our state. He told her that because she could not go, he had to leave her.
I learned how much she needed him after he left. My mother was put into the hospital; she lost her job. We lived on the support checks from my father. Unemployment paid $12 every two weeks. There were nights when we ate with relatives because we had no food. A dinner invitation was a relief. It was my job, to go to unemployment every two weeks to stand on line with her. She would tell me that I did not have to go to school.
Her ex-boyfriend allowed her to buy back a car that she had helped pay for. My mother borrowed the money to buy it. Wherever she went, it was my job to go with her. When she would start to shake and cry, it was my job to tell her that we were going to be ok. It was my role to say that she could do this. That I knew that she was going to win this time.
On the same day that we went to unemployment, we went to Presbyterian Hospital, where my mom saw a psychologist. The waiting room was bright with a few soft chairs, but mostly hard-backed wooden ones. I was allowed to go to the cafeteria and have an egg-salad sandwich. I like egg-salad to this day. They would let me sit there and no one would know that my mom was damaged because I could be there for any reason. Maybe somebody old and very sick would not allow children in the room and that was why I was in the luncheonette that day.
I would always wind up on one of the hard chairs though. Once I tried to go to the gift shop, but they watched me and approached me and then asked me to leave because I was touching things. I didn’t go back because I was afraid that somehow if I got reported that my mom would get in trouble with them. Once in a while, the therapist wanted to see me. I was never sure what I was supposed to say. Was it my fault that my mom was always afraid? I tried to make it better.
I watched them watch me. It was weird then. You’re a kid and your body does things that you aren’t thinking about. But inside, I knew that was because I was a kid. They had all the advantages, so I might as well use being a smart kid. It was my only card to play. It worked. They always said good things to my mom about me and she was proud. I hated it. Silence made the time go even more slowly, like being made to sit quietly at your desk with your hands folded.
When my mom was well enough to work again, I missed a lot of school going with her to look for work. She worked in a jewelry store and then she worked in a clothing store. She got herself to work in the morning by scouting the bus stops and making friends with people who were there at the same time. At night, it was my job to get her home.
There were times when my mom panicked and left early because someone offered her a ride. Sometimes I was already on my way to meet her. I knew that she would never do that to me on purpose, but the fear had been too great. Her fears went back so far.
As a small girl, she had no memory of her father. Her mother died when she was only nine years old. My great-grandmother and her daughters designed a fantasy about how their poor sister lived and died, but my mother had island memories that conflicted with their stories.
She remembered her mother’s larynx had been removed and that she made gurgling sounds when she had to replace the tubes. She remembered that she could not smell or taste rotted fruit and that peddlers took advantage of her. She remembered that there were men with rough voices and actions. She was told that her mother died of lung cancer but she didn’t believe it.
She asked around until she found the men who had known her father. They were in prison. She went to the prison, in Rahway, alone, and visited them, but was told more lies. “Your father escaped but now he is dead.”
She began to search the library records for old newspapers stored on microfiche. She learned that her mother was beaten to death and bled out on the street. She learned that there were few records of her father’s existence and that they led nowhere. She kept at her search for the next thirty years, but did not ever find her answers. Her father had been someone who everyone was willing to forget except for her.
When my mom remarried, a new nightmare began. My stepfather and I did not get along, ever. I had given my love to her other boyfriend’s family and when he abandoned her, they abandoned me. I was not about to make that mistake again. Besides, they were not interested in a sullen, solitary boy who was not one of them. I was twelve, I had been without supervision for a very long time and was not about to accept his or theirs.
He did not know how to handle my mother’s fears. He screamed at her and she screamed back with a strength that was rooted in her fears. My job was still to get her home from work every day. I had a system down. I could race home from school and play hard. Anything to get the anger, that had been converted to energy, out of me! Then I would race home and try to make myself presentable again and hop on the bus.
I liked the bus as it rumbled down Broadway until it merged with Bloomfield Avenue and became Broad Street. There was a large bank called the National Newark and Essex Bank at the joining of these two roads. It meant that I was almost downtown. The bus was always at the stop under the train tracks for the longest time. There was a news stand there and the drivers would sometimes jump off for a few minutes to take a break.
Downtown was a different world. There were a dozen movie theaters, cafés and store after store. It was endless. If I was early, I would get off at the train station and walk the length of downtown. There were the old stores, some of which had barrels on the sidewalk in front of them. There were lots of new buildings. They seemed so much stronger. There was endless traffic on the streets. The many walks on all the streets of downtown Newark helped to mold me. It was my identity. It showed me who I was. That is what is meant by street sense on a physical level. It becomes part of who a city street-kid is.
My mom had been a sheltered city kid who went to church. Going to church was a place where my mom felt safe. I liked church. I liked Jesus because my mom was so devoted to the need to go church. I was a young star at Sunday School because I could memorize the longest pieces to recite for the congregation on special occasions.
But then my great-grandmother, in whose arms I lived as a baby, with whom I shared a room died when I was seven. Two years later, her church closed up its doors.
While I was in my sophomore year of high school, my mom engineered the unthinkable, we moved. Glen Ridge is an upper middle class suburban town, two towns out of Newark, but an entire world away. Nobody dressed or thought like I did. These kids came from rich families. They viewed me as someone from a strange land with a different culture. My mom told me that getting of Newark was something that she had done to make a better life for us all. It was a difficult transition.
But she was right. There were no street-corners for me to hang on anymore. Riots broke out in Newark the year after we moved. The kids in my new high school talked about Newark as if it were Mars. My mom told me that it was behind me now and that I needed to make new friends in a new town.
It was around then that my mom taught me to steal. I became a stock-boy at her clothing store and we worked scam after scam to take money and clothing. We were never caught.
Next to the police station on the corner of my street was an old-style A&P. It was a throwback because it was run by one clerk who had worked there for his entire career. The bakery deliveries came about 11 pm. My mom would send me down to swipe cake and other bakery items that were delivered at that time. I carried money and if I was caught, I was to say that I was leaving the money behind to pay for what I took. I was never caught and never left any money. My mom was proud of my skills but cautioned me never to tell anyone what I was doing.
My mom opened her first business in a store on the corner. She found a new psychologist who lived a few blocks away and saw patients in his home. I was no longer needed to get my mom home or to get her to therapy. I was free but stuck in a place that I did not understand.
My mom’s fears taught me to do the one thing that she could not do; they taught me to be alone. They taught me to live inside of my own head. I could live without friends and that was good because I didn’t have any.
Every child learns from their parents, if they have them. I learned that adults could be more afraid than children. I learned that it was my job to not be afraid so that I could protect my mom.
My step-father was a printer. They printed a tabloid called The Enquirer among other things. This weekly publication was sold on Newsstands and in grocery stores. There were no newsstands in Glen Ridge and they were dying out everywhere.
My mom read a story about a woman from England who had not left her house for twenty years. They began a correspondence that lasted a long time. They sent each other caseate tapes instead of writing letters. For a while, my mom had the dream of one day going to England to meet this woman. She never did.
She also wrote to people in prison. One such woman had gone on a killing spree with her boyfriend when she was a teenager. She was about to get out of prison after serving more than twenty years. My mom invited her to come to see us. My step-father was outraged and refused to allow it. He demanded that my mom stop talking to people in jail. Later in her life, my mom conducted a prison ministry, writing to people on death row and advocating for them. My mom was stubborn about her dreams.
She found a new church and became active. It was there that she meant Millard Fuller, who eventually went on to create Habitat for Humanity. Fuller had not done that yet and was visiting the congregation in Glen Ridge. I am sure that he was looking for donations for his upcoming project, but my mom made friends with Millard and his family. They shared meals at our house. My mom begged me to stay home for these visits.
“You know your step-father hates to talk. I need you to carry the conversations at dinner. You know how to talk to a man like Millard Fuller, your step father will just offer him drinks.” So, I stayed for these dinners and we spoke about the Bible and Christianity. Fuller prayed that “a mind like yours will find its way back to God.” I responded that I was pretty sure that God did not want me and that if he did not want me, I saw no reason to worship him.
“Why do you think that God does not want you?” asked Fuller.
“Because I disagree with all of his people so completely,” I answered.
“Why?”
“Because you have stolen people’s cultures. Missionaries took their songs and gave them Christian meanings. You teach that people are never good enough but good is defined as being like you.” Strangely enough, they enjoyed talking with me. I have never really understood that.
As she grew older, computers helped her to stay in touch with people from all over the country. She turned down offers to speak on behalf of the distribution of Chicken Soup for the Prisoners Soul. She was surrounded by people and always had someone that she trusted with whom she could leave her house.
My mom now had a big house with more rooms that she ever went in. There was always plenty of food and my mom was generous about sharing it. She had many people around her.
It was like I was a small boy again when I told her that when she went to the hospital everything was going to be ok. I calmed her and then she slipped into a coma. I only know that I was there for her last days, I’m not sure that she was. When I eulogized her, I told the Parable of the Talents. I asked that the servant who had been afraid and hid “talents” for fear of losing them not be punished. My mom was not that servant but she understood his fear.