Pat Bertram

I Am Darkness!

May 28, 2014 — Pat Bertram

A friend did one of those ubiquitous quizzes that show up on Facebook on an almost daily basis, and not having anything better to do (except find a topic for today’s blog post since I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about my possible epic walk), I did the quiz to find out what element I am. Most of the questions had no meaning for me, so I did the best I could. For example, one question was about colors that speak to me, and I don’t have any favorite color — what fascinate me are the way colors complement and contrast with one another. And even if I did have a tendency toward a particular color right now, such as purple, it wasn’t listed. So I just went with the best answer for the moment. And of course, none of the deadly sins pertain, while all of the virtues do. (Or maybe it’s the other way around.)

So what is my element? Darkness! I wasn’t aware that darkness was an element, but what do I know. According to the quiz maker, I’m not reflective enough. (I guess that makes sense in a “pun” sort of way since black absorbs everything and reflects nothing, though I thought I had a tendency to think too much.) They said:

Your element is DARKNESS. You are often misunderstood and judged quickly. Yet if people only took just a bit of extra kind effort to you they would see something wonderful. Mysterious yet much more simple then others misperceive. You get many things that just don’t click for others. You see the truth for what it is and you embrace it while others sugar coat it. You have low tolerance for ignorance, though you may come off a bit arrogant yourself. You could stand to reflect a bit more and you will find a lot of your isolation issues are due to self-sabotage. Though you may enjoy your alone time, no one truly enjoys being alone. Don’t fool yourself. That aside you are a rare beautiful truth in this world of fake.

I’m making fun of the quiz and of myself for taking it, but there is much truth in their analysis. Or at least I hope there is. I like the idea of being mysterious. And I like the idea of being a truth. I guess that’s my arrogance coming out.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in being me, internet. Tags: darkness, Facebook, quizzes, what element are you. 1 Comment »

Searching for a Cause

May 27, 2014 — Pat Bertram

When I mentioned to a hiker friend that I am thinking of walking up the coast from San Diego to Seattle, she suggested that I walk for a cause because if you have a cause, people are more willing to help supply food, water, a shower or even transportation if you need it, and they might even get others to help.

It’s a great suggestion. The Peace Pilgrim walked for peace. She was walking in response to a spiritual awakening, and she’d taken a vow to “remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food.” Her pilgrimage began in 1953 when she was 44 and ended with her death in 1981. She carried only a pen, a comb, a toothbrush, and a map, trusting to those she met to supply what she needed, though she never asked for anything. (She was also the first woman reported the have thru-walked the Appalachian Trail, which she did in preparation for her pilgrimage.)

Following her example or following their own spiritual wakening, others have walked for peace. Some women have walked for women’s freedom since so many women (perhaps rightfully) are afraid to travel, hike, or camp on their own. These women want to show that it is possible to claim one’s freedom and follow one’s adventurous heart. And then there are short walks/runs to raise money and awareness for all sorts of causes and organizations.

My friend suggested I walk for widows or the grief-stricken. Widow Walker. Grief Walker. Or . . . whatever. Her other suggestion, which actually is a fun idea, is to hang a small portable chalkboard on my pack, and change my “cause” as I felt like it.

Having a cause would give people a personal stake in my quest, but I wonder if it’s a bit of a cheat. If the idea of the cause came first, then the walk would be because of the cause. If the idea of the walk came first, as it did, then the cause would be because of the walk.

Still, I would need some sort of support group because I want to walk, not hike, which means no heavy backpacks, no bulky gear, no great stores of food and water. I do understand the need for taking more than The Peace Pilgrim’s sparse kit because I do not want to walk to certain death, but I simply do not want to take everything on a hiker’s “must” list. Of course, if I hike along the coast, there would be plenty of towns or beaches to get provisions and find a motel (and a computer!) for the night if necessary, but there will also be long stretches of wilderness, and in one case, a fifty-mile stretch of highway-shoulder walking.

Grandma Gatewood, like The Peace Pilgrim, was a minimalist hiker, the first woman to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Although she hiked the Trail three times, beginning when she was 67, she had no special gear. She wore Keds sneakers and took only an army blanket, a raincoat, and a plastic shower curtain which she carried in a homemade bag slung over one shoulder. My kind of hiker! Nor did she have a cause — at least not one that I can find. She simply thought it would be a nice lark. Sounds like my kind of hiker.

My true cause is a soul quest, a mystical journey, a response to a barely heard question deep inside — “Is this all there is to my life here on Earth?” I would like to find a deeper connection to both myself and the world, maybe even to go through some sort of spiritual transformation. I originally planned my journey as a car trip, which is still on my list of possibilities, but walking might give me more of the mysticism I am looking for. (Feet on the ground trumps feet on the accelerator pedal any time.)

So, here’s my question. Do I need a cause? And if so, what should that cause be?

***

Posted in being me, culture, life. Tags: Appalachian Trail, famous women walkers, Grandma Gatewood, soul quest, The Peace Pilgrim, women hikers. 4 Comments »

Nomadic Women

May 26, 2014 — Pat Bertram

There are so many women in my grief age group — those who lost their mates around the same time mine did — who are starting nomadic adventures, or who dream of starting them, that it makes me wonder how many of us rootless women there are roaming the world.

Richard Grant, author of American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers and Bullriders, estimates that 500,000 people travel the US without a permanent home. (Others estimate there are over a million nomadic Americans.) To be honest, I wouldn’t include people who travel around in $300,000 motors homes as “nomads.” They might not have a fixed address, but they do have a home, and a luxurious one at that. They just take it with them. Still, the nomadic life appeals to people at both ends of the financial spectrum, some because they have the means to live on permanent vacation, and others because they can’t afford any other lifestyle, so I shouldn’t judge on the basis of income.

A good percentage of modern American nomads are women. Some women simply want to see the world, so become rootless by choice. Other women started out looking for a different life after a divorce, a death, or other loss uprooted them, and so ended up traveling the world. (Being nomadic must be a popular obsession — not only is it a designer brand, there is even a perfume named “Urban Nomads.”)

It seems to me women are the ones who become nomadic after the death of a partner. Men generally stay put, and often remarry quite quickly. (This is entirely anecdotal, of course, gleaned from my interactions with other bereft, but the Census Bureau does estimate that 10 times as many widowers as widows over 65 remarry, though there are fewer older men than older women. And there are fewer widowers than widows. I couldn’t find remarriage statistics for younger people, or those in their late fifties and early sixties.)

Oddly, it seems that traditionally men were the cave dwellers while women roamed about, making me wonder if this male “cave” instinct, more than a need to be taken care of, is the impetus for widowers to remarry. By the same token, a nomadic instinct could be what takes grieving women out of the nest, leads us to adventure, and maybe helps us find a new life.

I have no interest in being a nomadic RV dweller. The upkeep alone seems more trouble than it’s worth, though I can understand the pull — wherever you are, you are home. To be honest, I don’t really have an interest in being any kind of nomad, but I have no inclination to settle down, either. For one thing, I wouldn’t know where to settle or why to settle there — without my life mate/soul mate, one place is the same as another. For another thing, settling seems too much like stagnation. It’s entirely possible that by the time I’m free of responsibilities, I will also be free of my disinterest in settling down, but I doubt it. It will be so much easier to put my stuff in storage and hop in the car or start walking, than to find an acceptable apartment somewhere in the country, move all my stuff into it, set up the utilities, get my computer connected, change addresses, and all the other necessities of moving. Nope. Too much trouble.

Either way, whether I take to the road or settle down, I’ll still be rootless. My life mate/soul mate was my home, and with him gone, the only home I have is whatever home I can find within.

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Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: finding home, modern American nomads, nomadic instinct, Richard Grant, widowers remarry, widowers vs widows, women nomads. Leave a Comment »

Four Years and Two Months of Grief

May 25, 2014 — Pat Bertram

In two days it will be four years and two months since Jeff — my life mate/soul mate — died, and even now I can feel the effects of his goneness. I still have occasional grief surges that bring a quiet bout of tears and a great yearning to see him once more. Chances are, I will have will have such upsurges for the rest of my life, though perhaps at a continually diminishing rate.

I keep busy, so I’m not subjected as often to the desperate loneliness and aloneness that plagued me for the first three and a half years of my grief, but holiday weekends, when everyone else is involved with family, brings the loneliness home to me. (I’m not strictly alone, but my 97-year-old father is involved with his personal end-of-life rituals, and my dysfunctional brother is . . . well, let’s just say I am much better off when he leaves me alone. Neither man sees me as real, so although I am not strictly alone, I am actually more alone than if I were truly alone.) Sometimes I wish I had someone for my own, but I’m not interested in getting involved. Not only is it too soon for another connection, but a connection would pull at me, keeping me from doing what I want/need to do — whatever that might be. So I deal with the loneliness as best as I can.

For thirty-four years, I was connected to another human being on such a profound level that when he died, it felt as if half of me went with him, as if I were straddling the line between here and eternity. I don’t feel the nearness of eternity any more, don’t feel the awesome gap between life and death — in that respect, my life has gone back to “normal.” But even after all this time, something in me yawns wide and cries out to be filled. Sometimes I try to fill the emptiness with physical activity. Sometimes I try to fill it with chocolate and other treats. Sometimes I try to fill it with reaching out to others. But it is always there, an itch beneath the surface of my consciousness.

Despite Jeff’s absence, despite my brother’s presence, I am happier than I ever thought possible, and yet . . . Jeff is still gone. Still dead. Still, strangely, a part of my life.

I went walking in the desert today. I haven’t been out there for a while, keeping my ambulation more as a means of transportation than recreation, but it felt right. I used to talk to him in the desert, used to feel close to him in the vastness the open land, used to show him the steps and positions I learned in my various exercise classes, but today I just walked. Felt the ground beneath my shoes, felt the heat on my shoulders. Just . . . felt.

(I did ask Jeff if he’d watch over me when I took my epic walk, but he didn’t respond.)

I know he couldn’t have stayed. I know I couldn’t have gone with him (except for the part of me that died when he did). I know I’ve had and will continue to have many adventures I never could have had if we were still together. I know, though I seldom admit it, that when I am finished with my responsibilities here and head out on my own, my life will be better without him and the demands of his illness.

And yet. And yet . . .

***

Posted in grief, life, relationships. Tags: effects of grief, four years of grief, grief and loneliness, grief upsurges, loneliness, walking in the desert. 4 Comments »

Midnight, Meteors, and Mockingbirds

May 24, 2014 — Pat Bertram

There was supposed to be a meteor shower last night, the first of its kind. Since I’d never seen shooting stars, I made sure to go outside at 11:00 pm PT to see what I could see.

Clouds. That’s what I saw. No shooting stars. No stars of any variety, for that matter.

I went out again at midnight. The clouds had moved away by then, and I saw the usual scattering of stars. (The city lights out here are too bright to show the true beauty of the night sky.) I didn’t see any part of the meteor shower, though perhaps I gave up too soon. Instead of the spectacle of hundreds of meteors an hour the news media had tantalized us with, there were actually only about five to ten per hour. Maybe if I had known where to look, or that I would have had to be out for longer than a few minutes, I would have waited.

Still, it was a joy to be out in the midnight air since it’s something I seldom do. I stood in the middle of the driveway, and listened. There was no sound of cars, no human voices, and oddly, no dogs barking. Most of the houses were dark. It was just me, the chirping of crickets and other incessant insect noises, and . . . birds singing.

Birds singing? At midnight? I’d never heard such a thing. I’m used to birds singing reveille, urging the sun to rise above the horizon. I’m used to birds singing sporadically through the day, or calling as they pass overhead. I’m even used to a few warbles as the sun goes down, but when night falls, the birds fall silent. (I just though of something — the sun falls below the horizon at the end of day, so how can night fall, too? Shouldn’t night rise?)

Hearing birds at midnight was so out of my ordinary, I checked online for night birds in this part of the world. I’ve heard owls, of course, but owls tend to hoot or screech. They don’t warble, and they don’t crow. (Besides the warblers, I heard ravens. I don’t remember ever hearing ravens crow at night, but that doesn’t mean they don’t.)

Apparently, what I heard were mockingbirds. Maybe there were no ravens last night. Maybe the mockingbirds were pretending to be ravens. For all I know, the mockingbirds were the whole dang chorus — crooning, cawing, and chirping.

The noise level surprised me, making me wonder about the feasibility of taking some sort of epic walk. I’d stay in hotels when possible since I’m not much of a wilderness sort, but there would be times I would have to find a place outside to bed down for the night, and how the heck would I ever be able to sleep with all that racket? And what about all the other nocturnal creatures slinking around without making noise? Could be more than I am prepared to handle.

If I remember, I’ll go out again tonight to look for meteors. It’s possible, some astronomers say, that the shower didn’t fizzle, but was simply delayed. I’ll also listen for mockingbirds and enjoy the unaccustomed sound of birds singing at midnight.

***

Posted in culture, life. Tags: birds singing at midnight, epic walk, meteor shower, meteors, midnight, mockingbirds, night noises. 7 Comments »

Stale Plot Devices

May 23, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’m still researching mystery clichés to use for the novel I’m planning to write, probably because researching is easier than actually sitting down and writing. To be honest, though, I don’t need to research clichés. I’ve read thousands of mysteries of all kinds — suspense, gothics, detective stories, cozies, police procedural, legal thrillers, medical thrillers, crime fiction — which certainly qualifies me as an expert on stale plot devices. In fact, when I started writing, I thought these devices were a necessary part of the genre because they were so common. It was a real joy to discover that I could write whatever I wanted — I didn’t have to follow in the fingerprints (I’m trying unsuccessfully to be non-clichéd here, using “fingerprints” rather than “footprints”) of those who have gone before.

Besides, mystery clichés seem to be everywhere. I’ve been watching tapes of “Mystery Woman,” TV movies originally released by Hallmark Channel, and these are the absolute most cliché-ridden mysteries I’ve ever had the misfortune to watch. The only reason I have the tapes is that Jeff (my life mate/soul mate) taped them before he died. (Well, obviously he taped them before he died. As far as I know, there aren’t any VCRs where he is. Come to think of it, there aren’t that many here anymore, either.) The movies are so bad they were funny when we watched them together, but somehow the humor escapes me when I watch them alone. If the clichés were presented in a whimsical manner, as I hope to do in my story, then the movies would have been redeemable, but presented as they are in all seriousness, oh, my. So not fun!

For example, though the location doesn’t seem to be specified in the scripts, the movies were filmed in Simi Valley, and the real bookshop is in Pasadena. Big areas. And yet every mystery the mystery woman gets involved with, the police chief himself shows up. No underlings. Just the police chief. He is such a bumbling idiot that he doesn’t know the first thing about law, doesn’t know when it is acceptable to arrest someone, doesn’t know how to interpret the evidence. He needs the assistance of a DA to keep him on the right track legally, and the assistance of the mystery woman to interpret the evidence. How the heck did he ever become police chief if he’s so ignorant, to say nothing of being rude, cocky, and boorish?

Not only does the police chief show up for every murder in the city where the bookshop is located, when the mystery woman discovers a dead body at a spa sixty miles away, the police chief shows up there too. This silliness makes it seem as if there is only one person employed in law enforcement for sixty miles around. Even if he were the police chief of a one-cop town, he would not be investigating a murder so far from his base. That privilege would fall to the county sheriff.

Worse yet, when he threatened to arrest someone (the wrong person, of course) he said he’d take them “downtown.” What cop talks like that? “Downtown.” Sheesh. When cops arrest someone, they take them to the police station. Or to jail. Not “downtown,” whatever that means. I tried to find the origin of this cliché and couldn’t, but my guess it is that it could have come from either Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series or perhaps Dell Shannon’s Luis Mendoza mysteries.

Just as bad, in the movie the people who owned the spa sixty miles away had hired the mystery woman to film a brochure, which is why she was on the site to find the body. And yet it had never been established that she was a photographer. So why didn’t the people at the spa hire a real photographer? How did they hear about her? And why would they hire someone who was notorious for solving mysteries since they had something to hide?

Worst of all, the mystery woman has a caretaker for her shop, an enigmatic character who can do anything, and if he can’t, he knows someone who can. He can find any bit of information, hack into any computer, has access to the DMV, IRS, CIA. In itself, this is a bit of a cheat. Anything she wants to know just falls into her lap without effort. Well, almost anything. In one episode, where the mystery woman’s DA friend won’t let her see a will even though wills are public record, the mystery woman had to break into the deceased’s house to steal the will. Apparently, her caretaker can find out anything except things that are public record.

Maybe I’m going to have to rethink the whole idea of spoofing mystery stories for my book. After watching these movies, clichés no longer seem fun.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”) Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in books, writing. Tags: cliché-ridden mysteries, cop clichés, downtown, mystery cliches, Mystery Woman, research vs writing, take downtown. 6 Comments »

Something Fun

May 22, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday a fellow author said her muse had deserted her, and she asked for suggestions as to what she could post for her blog. I sent her this list of possible topics:

Something fun — a favorite photo, a special recipe, a secret (and impossible) dream.
Something that makes you smile, that comforts you, that makes you want to dance.
How writing changed your life or how it made no difference at all.
Your muse. Who or what is it normally? Maybe post a photo of your muse. Or write a letter to your muse begging him/her to come back.
The one letter you wish you’d never written, the one letter you didn’t write but wish you had.
Something you should have thrown away a long time ago, but can’t part with.
Your wildest non-erotic fantasy.

She didn’t use any of my suggestions, but ironically, my own muse has deserted my today. Well, not really — I don’t have a muse, but I am sitting here with such a blank mind that a ready list of blog topics is nice to have.

So, something fun . . .

One day when I was out walking in the desert, I saw this television sitting right there on the path as if posed for a photograph, so I took the picture, then I pasted the photo itself onto the television screen because the idea amused me. Hope it amuses you, too.

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Posted in blogging, photography. Tags: blog topics, muse, something fun, television in the desert. 8 Comments »

Maybe I’m Not as Sane as I Think I Am

May 21, 2014 — Pat Bertram

For the past few months, I’ve been researching mental disorders, trying to find a classification for my dysfunctional homeless brother to see if there would be some indication of how I could get him out of my life. I thought he was bi-polar since he does suffer from depression, manic episodes of anger, and grandiosity, but he exhibits too many strange, sometimes terrifying, and often irrational behaviors to have a simple mood disorder.

A good indication of his problems has been the names he calls me, and the disorders he accuses me of having. So often people — even so-called normal people — project their problems onto others. And I seem to be my brother’s projection screen. He tells me I have a dissociative personality disorder. He tells me I’m a paranoid schizophrenic. He tells me I don’t care about anyone but myself.

Sounds like a good place to start looking for what ails him. The closest thing I’ve found to describe him is schizoaffective disorder with some OCD mixed in. Or a paranoid schizophrenic with bipolar disorders and OCD. One of the indications that he’s had a break from reality is his spitting. Such a simple thing to create chills — that ptoo-ptoo-ptoo makes me want to run far, far away. I’ve had a hard time tracking down the symptom since it doesn’t seem to be all that common except in certain cases of bipolar disorder and narcissistic rage (and wow, does he have rage!), but recently I’ve found instances where some paranoid schizophrenics spit for the same reason my brother does, to “get rid of the poison.”

I’ve learned a lot through my researches, especially how prevalent mental disorders are, which makes me feel so very lucky, but finding some sort of name for what is wrong with my brother helps not at all. He’s still swinging from one mood, one personality, one delusion to another. (Though oddly, he seems to save his invectives and delusions for me. He seems to react normally — normally for him, that is — with other people.)

I’ve been taking my blog readers’ advice into consideration and researching various options, but there aren’t many. Current laws say that the most you can institutionalize someone without his consent is 72 hours. Perhaps they could keep him longer, but once the episode passed, they would probably let him go with a prescription for drugs he would not take. And after all the hassle, I’d be back where I started. I could also call the cops, but here they just warehouse the mentally ill and do nothing to get them help. And again, after all my efforts I’d be back where I started because they’d just let him out since he hasn’t really committed a crime except harassing me. In addition, someone who used to be a chaplain for correctional institutes told me the other inmates tend to beat up those with mental problems, so the jails try to get rid of them as quickly as possible. I can understand that — I have my own times of wanting to beat my brother just to get him to shut up and leave me alone, though I’ve been channeling my frustrations into less violent activities such as researching.

As inhumane as it might be to consign him to the garage (it’s not much different than confining the insane to an attic), it’s the only way I can live with the situation. It gives me comfort knowing he is locked out. He won’t break into the house because even at his most psychotic, he is careful not to do anything to anger our 97-year-old father. (He seems oddly protective of the old man, but that is probably just another of his delusions since he thinks I’m trying to strangle our father and inherit this house. But I don’t inherit the house. In fact, once father is gone, I will be temporarily homeless. Well, without a home base. That’s a better way to phrase it.)

I can see, though, that there could come a day when I do run away. He’s starting to get demanding and threatening. Right now it’s “get me a beer, bitch, or I’ll let all the air out of your tires.” I’m not getting him a beer, of course, instead I’m researching portable air compressors. (Most of the cheap ones plug into the car’s cigarette lighter, and I don’t have one in my car.) I’d get a room for the night to give me some respite, but then there’s my father to consider. If I leave him alone, and something happens to him, I could be arrested for elder abuse. Cripes. The situations I get myself into. Maybe I’m not as sane as I think I am.

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Posted in life, relationships. Tags: bipolar disorder, mental disorders.schizoaffective disorder, narcissistic rage, paranoid schizophrenic, spitting and mental illness. 10 Comments »

Wake Up and Die Right

May 20, 2014 — Pat Bertram

At an exercise class today, we talked a bit about the murder mystery I’m going to write about the class (assuming I get myself in gear), and then we did warm up exercises while the teacher sorted through her music to find the recording she wanted to play. When she couldn’t find the right DVD, she muttered, “Wake up and die right,” which stopped me in my tracks.

“What did you say?” I asked, not sure I heard correctly. She repeated the phrase, and I laughed. I’d never heard the saying before, and coming as it did right after a discussion about our fictional murder, it seemed even more amusing. And a bit gruesome.

Wake up and die right. Oh, my.

Odd words, phrases, and sayings often stay with me, rattling around in my brain until I can make sense of them. (In fact, just yesterday I railed against the appalling sentiment, “He deserved to die.”) The more I thought about “wake up and die right,” the more it made sense. We die right if at the end, we have no regrets. We die right if we’ve lived life to the fullest and used ourselves up, if we’ve danced and laughed, if we’ve enjoyed the company of those who enrich us, if we feel the sunsets and smell the rain-washed air. (If you live in the desert, of course, that rain-washed air comes so infrequently you better smell it when you can because it might be many months before you get another chance.)

Wake up and die right. Oh, yes.

Apparently, the saying came from World War II. Soldiers who let their attention wander were told to “Wake up and die right” — to pay attention, to fight, to get a grip, to die like a soldier if necessary. The adage migrated to the general population and seems to have been prevalent during the late forties and early fifties, but its use faded as memory of the war years became supplanted by other invasions with other jargons — the Beatles, the Viet Nam “police action,” the drug wars.

Today, more than sixty years after the maxim had been laid to rest, it came to life once again. I suppose in a way, it’s reminding me to just sit down and write the book about the class because, of course, I would regret not having written the story. I just need to wake up and do it so my designated victim can die right.

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Posted in culture, history/myth, writing. Tags: dying right, living life to the fullest, odd sayings, wake up and die right, WWII adage. 5 Comments »

He Deserved To Die

May 19, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I watched a movie the other day, not paying enough attention to be able to tell you the name of the film or any of the plot, but one line caught my attention. “He deserved to die.” We’ve heard that sentiment so often that it’s become all but imperceptible, and yet, for that brief moment, I actually heard the words and now the phrase keeps rattling around in my head.

He deserved to die.

The “he” in question was a bad guy, that I remember. So is death a punishment? Is that why he deserved to die? Since most people seem to believe in some sort of paradisiacal afterlife, it would make more sense to say that he didn’t deserve to die.

Either way, there should be no “deserving” when someone talks about death. Death comes for all of us — young, old, middle-aged, saintly, wicked, average. We don’t really know what is in people’s hearts and mind, so perhaps everyone is deserving of death. And yet, stillborn infants have not done anything to deserve death — have not done anything at all, in fact — but they are doomed to die before they’re even born.

If the dead deserved to die, does that mean the rest of us deserve to live? But there is no deserving when it comes to life, either. We’re simply born. What we do with our life is up to us — at least in theory. Often we have no choice as to our circumstances, so we do the best we can.

Deserved to live.

Deserved to die.

After the death of my life mate/soul mate, I used to get lost in the conundrum of death, wondering which of us got the worst end of the deal. If life is a gift, why was it denied him? If he is in a better place, why am I still here?

I still don’t know the answer, but I do know he didn’t do anything to deserve to die, and I did nothing to deserve to live. It’s just the way things are.

Deserved to live.

Deserved to die.

Strange words that don’t mean much of anything.

***