The Countdown to the Rest of My Life

December 26, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I had a surprising and surprisingly pleasant Christmas. As it turns out, I did not have to spend the holiday by myself in this echoingly empty house. My dance teacher and her husband adopted me for the holiday, which gave the Yule a family-like aura.

I even went to church with them on Christmas Eve. I was nervous at first — it’s been decades since I set foot inside any church — but it was nice. And powerful. I could feel the belief of those present, and it seemed right to be celebrating CHRISTmas with them. (Particularly since I have recently taken ole Mr. Claus in such distaste.) I felt a bit envious of the congregation’s belief, and nostalgic for the days when I too believed. I had just enough belief, though, to picture the knowing looks on my parents’ faces as together they looked down on this unexpected visitation of mine.

Now begins the countdown to the rest of my life, though I still have not a single clue how it will unfold. I am still going through my stuff, sorting out and packing what I will keep and getting rid of what is no longer important. (I found a cloth fodownload (1)r cleaning vinyl records that I bought probably around the last time I went to church, along with some of the adaptors for 45rmp records. The records and record player are long gone, of course, but somehow until now it never occurred to me to get rid of these unnecessary trinkets.)

Sometimes the sorting becomes an end to itself, and it is only when I pause for a break that the reality hits me. I am not packing for anything. webster_chicagoNot packing to go home to my life mate/soul mate, not packing for a wonderful adventure, not packing for a new life. Just packing.

I always knew this time would be hard. My stay here at my father’s house was merely a transition from my shared life with my soul mate to . . . whatever. Now that they are both gone, it’s just me heading into an unknown future.

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions. I have a list of things that in an ideal world I would do every day, and I will continue to strive for as many of those items as possible. (Things like getting enough water, enough sleep, enough exercise. Dancing, stretching, lifting weights, eating salads. Trying not to get hungry, angry, lonely, tired because they contribute to sorrow and feelings of futility.)

But this year, I will be making one resolution — to be courageous. A person can’t leap into uncertainly without courage, and I will need all the courage I can muster.

***

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.

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Christmas Wishes

December 25, 2014 — Pat Bertram

ZMAS***

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.

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Christmas Eve With the Living

December 24, 2014 — Pat Bertram

This will be the fifth Christmas since the death of Jeff, my life mate/soul mate. (I had to count, because it didn’t seem right. The fifth anniversary of his death isn’t until March. But yes, five Christmases — 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.)

We never did much for Christmas except by default. Since the rest of the world was busy with the holiday, we were left to our own devices, so usually we strung some lights around the living room (he Christmas lightsloved Christmas lights), heaped plates with finger foods, and watched favorite movies. Since his death, every Christmas Eve I’ve been taking him for a walk around the neighborhood to show him the light displays. (I figure if he still lives in my heart as people tell me he does, then he will see what I will see.)

This Christmas Eve, I will be forgoing this new tradition. A friend invited me to a family Christmas party, and I accepted. An eve with ghosts or an eve with lights, laughter, and lots of Polish food? Not a hard decision to make.

Tomorrow, I will spend the day as we always did, though it will be only me watching our favorite movies, eating delicacies, and drinking a toast to the life we once shared. Despite the conceit that he lives in my heart, I know he is gone. He came, brought the light of knowledge to my life, and then he went back to wherever it was he came from. (Stardust, perhaps. I wish there was a way of sending his remains out to the stars, but his ashes will be forever earthbound).

It seems fitting that I spend one more Christmas in this house, my father’s house. This has been a house of transition for me, a place of refuge to live out my sorrow. But my father is gone now, as are my mother, the brothers closest to me in age, and Jeff, of course. During the next month or two, I will be embarking on a new life (one I have yet to envision), and for the most part, I will be leaving my ghosts behind, with only an occasional tear to remember them by.

But now is not a time to think of those who are gone. I’m going to go put on my sparkly clothes, and spend the evening with the living.

***

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.

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Cleaning Off My Desk

December 23, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’m cleaning off my desk, sorting through the accumulation of the past few years in preparation for my eventual move, and I came across a stack of notes I’ve been saving. I’m not sure what I’ve been saving them for since I haven’t looked at most of them in more than a year, and in many cases have no idea why I have the notes.

For example, I have several snippets of paper with kickstarter.com on them, and one for fundRazer. Apparently at one time I considered crowd funding, but have no idea what I was planning on funding. And one for this fascinating website: http://venusfebriculosa.com/

I found a note to myself: If it isn’t important, make it important. I have a tendency to discount things that aren’t important, and since there’s not much that is important, I end up with nothing. And I want to/need to end up with something. It’s a good reminder, but doesn’t do me much good if I never look at the note.

One paper simply says embrac100_1046sme/remembrance. Apparently I was struck by the similarity of these words, and intended to write a blog post about them, but whatever I planned to say is lost in the far recesses of my magpie mind.

I have a more recent note for bardo/vardo. Within a couple of days, I heard both words, and considered doing a blog post about them, but couldn’t find a way to connect the two since their meanings are so disparate. Wikipedia says the term “bardo” refers to the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth. According to Tibetan tradition, after death and before one’s next birth, when one’s consciousness is not connected with a physical body, one experiences a variety of phenomena. These usually follow a particular sequence of degeneration from, just after death, the clearest experiences of reality of which one is spiritually capable, and then proceeding to terrifying hallucinations that arise from the impulses of one’s previous unskillful actions. For the prepared and appropriately trained individuals the bardo offers a state of great opportunity for liberation, since transcendental insight may arise with the direct experience of reality, while for others it can become a place of danger as the karmically created hallucinations can impel one into a less than desirable rebirth. Yikes. Vardo is much more pleasant — it’s one of those lovely and colorful gypsy wagons. Maybe one can use a vardo to escape bardo.

I found a list of typos I’ve made that sounded interesting, perhaps to use for a character who makes up her own words. Wrod, swampled, fits like a glow, friendshop, wold (for some reason, every time I try to type wolf, it ends up as wold), fung, Zmas (instead of Xmas)

A couple of notes about characters — figure out what they regret and what they are proud of. Also, what do they win by losing and what do they lose by winning.

This little ditty to promote Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, that I never used:
In the desert
The quiet desert
A killer lurks tonight.
In the desert
The quiet desert,
Riley dies tonight.
In the village,
The peaceful village,
No one sleeps tonight.

And quotes:

Life is a myth we tell ourselves.

Everything I’m not makes me everything I am.

Be like thunder — be dangerous and unpredictable and make a lot of noise.

Surprise yourself. Don’t assume you know everything there is to know about your life.

You are a splendid butterfly. It is your wings that make you beautiful. And I could make you fly away, but I could never make you stay.

And finally, just these words on a paper The Symphony of a Life Gone By. That was the title of a blog post I wrote three years ago that I’d forgotten about, and when I came across it by chance, I was so struck by the post’s beauty that I wanted to remember it.

Well, now that I’ve made a note of these notes, I can just as easily not read them on this blog as I could on the scraps of paper.

***

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.

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It’s a Must-Eat-Must World

December 22, 2014 — Pat Bertram

It seems as if lately I’m running into a lot of “must”s that do nothing but make me want to head in the opposite direction. This is not a “must” world. No one knows for sure why we are here and what we are supposed to be doing, otherwise there would be no religions, no philosophies, no psychologies, no debates of any kind. We would all simply do whatever it is that we must, and that would be that. There are certain things that we take as musts, such obeying laws, paying taxes, nourishing ourselves, but even those aren’t musts. We don’t have to do them, though there are consequences if we take that risk.

Since this is a mustless world, we have to make it up as we go along, and none of us has the right to thrust our musts on anyone else.

MUST-1For example, someone I’ve done some online work for tells me I must not be negative and tell him something won’t work or that I don’t know how to make it work even if I know what I say is true. And yet, when I asked a woman who manages the management company that manages the office space of such high profile companies as Amazon and Google if she would consider such an assessment to be negative, she said no. That she valued honesty in her employees. That if she knows what doesn’t work, she can head in a different direction and find something that does work. Yes! Exactly. One person’s must not is another person’s must.

Then there is this quote I saw today from Stephen King. He wrote: “You can approach the act of writing with excitement, hopefulness, even despair. You can come to the act with fists clenched and eyes narrowed. You can come to it to change the world. Come to it any way you want but lightly. You must not come lightly to the blank page.” Must not? Must not? Who is he to say what I must or must not do? For some of us, coming lightly to the blank page is the only way we can entice those shy ideas and bashful words to come out to play.

And worst of all, I recently saw a T-shirt with a a picture of santa claus (Not a typo. I’m purposely demoting him/it to a state of non-capitalization) and the words, “You must believe.” Must believe? I don’t think so. In fact, because of this thrust to make me believe in something so patently absurd, I no longer have any affection for the creature at all.

In a recent advice column, a woman wrote “When I have kids, I don’t want to do the whole “Santa” thing. I’d rather tell them about the real St. Nicholas and what it means to give rather than to receive. Even though I’m not religious, I’ll tell them about the birth of Jesus (even though he wasn’t born in December), and tell them about the winter solstice.” Sounds admirable to me, but her friends told her she was a scrooge for taking her children’s innocence away, which is why she wrote to the columnist for another opinion. The overwhelming online response was that such a woman shouldn’t have children. Even those who agreed she had a right to her stance suggested that “just for fun” she wrap a couple of small presents and put them under the tree “from santa.”

What the hell is going on in the world? Aren’t there more important things to worry about than a must belief in santa claus? The world takes away children’s innocence by starving them, by making them old at a young age (no more dolls for preteens except hooker-like dolls), by creating fearful atmospheres in schools, by television programs that show them things no child should ever have to see, and yet, oh yes, we must make sure they believe in a mythical creature to keep what innocence is left. Cripes.

So, let’s make a pact for this coming year. I won’t must you, and you don’t must me.

***

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.

 

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Happy End of the Creeping Darkness!

December 21, 2014 — Pat Bertram

6:03 pm ET marked this year’s winter solstice, ending the creeping darkness. “Solstice” comes from two Latin words, sol meaning “sun” and sistere meaning “stationary” because on this day, in the northern hemisphere, the sun seems to stand still, as if garnering it’s strength to fight back the darkness.

Technically, the winter solstice marks the moment when there is a 23.5-degree tilt in Earth’s axis and the North Pole is at its furthest point from the sun — from here on, the days will get longer, gaining us an additional 6 and 1/2 hours of sunlight per day by June 21st when the days begin to get shorter again. (This is reversed in the southern hemisphere, so today those down under will be celebrating their summer solstice.)

Though neo-pagans have claimed the solstice for their own, this is one of those natural holidays (holy days) that we all should be celebrating. The end of the lengthening nights. The triumph of light over darkness. We don’t even need the metaphors of light=good and dark=bad to find reason to celebrate this day. It’s simply a day of stillness, of hope. A day to give thanks for the promise that even in our darkest hour, light will return.

My celebration was simple. I lit my bowls of light and went outside and toasted the pale winter sun with champagne. Well, it was really sparking apple/pear cider, but the sun didn’t seem to care. It slid beneath the cloud-shrouded mountains without even a wink or a nod to acknowledge my obeisance. But it will return with greater strength tomorrow. And so will I.

Wishing you a bright and hopeful end of the creeping darkness.

***

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.

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It’s Christmas, Not Santamas

December 19, 2014 — Pat Bertram

J. Conrad Guest, author of A Retrospect In Death and A World Without Music (plus several other books) just posted a blog about tolerance, and how there seems to be so little of it, especially now during the Christmas season.

Guest wrote: I’ve long remained publically mute on the subject of Christmas, but this year I voice my opinion. You’re offended that I celebrate Christmas as the birth of a Messiah. You tell me he is but a myth. I have news for you. Santa isn’t real. He doesn’t make toys at his home at the North Pole, nor does he circle the globe on Christmas Eve to deliver toys down the chimneys of billions of people—many who don’t have chimneys. I don’t push on you my belief in God, even though, in my mind, there is a greater chance that He exists than does Santa. But go ahead, put up on your front lawn your inflatable Santa, and the sleigh and reindeer on your roof. I can tolerate that, even if you can’t tolerate the nativity scene on my lawn, and petition City Hall to make me take it down.

nativityHis words struck a chord with me. I get annoyed with having to pander to the intolerant at this time of year. It’s CHRISTmas, for cripes sake. That’s the whole point of the day. No matter what non-Christians are trying to make us all believe, the day is not Santamas. I am sick of the constant message that we must believe in Santa Claus, sick of having that stupid myth foisted on me, sick of the eternal seesawing there is/isn’t a Santa Claus. If people are so willing to accept Santa as an icon of the season (an icon who so obviously isn’t real) then what difference does it make to them if some people use crèches or some other image to personify the day? Crèches are the spirit of the day and more fitting than santas and elves and those stupid flying reindeer. Taking that red-suited image to the height of absurdity, a neighbor has a nativity scene with a Santa praying over the baby. Huh?

I simply don’t get it. Since the non-Christian world adapted a Christian holy day for their own, then they cannot complain about the religiosity. (Supposedly the Christians co-opted a Roman holiday, so it’s ironic that the same thing is happening again but to Christians this time.) Sometimes when I see one message too many about how we can no longer say, “Merry Christmas” because it offends some people, I just want to scream, “Get over it, folks, It’s CHRISTmas. If you don’t like it, start your own damn holiday.”

The Santa myth is particularly odious since the obese gent so obviously favors the rich. It makes poorer kids feel bad that they weren’t good enough to get the rich-kid stuff they wanted. And why engender a belief in such a ridiculous myth in the first place? I knew a guy who fought in Vietnam. There they were at Christmas, hunkered down on some God-forsaken hill that they had just taken for the second or third time. They got to talking about the most disillusioning moment in their lives, and almost all of them said it was when they found out there was no Santa Claus. Why are people still perpetuating such a lie and for no particular reason?

Oops. Sorry. Didn’t mean to get on my soapbox, but as I said, J. Conrad Guest really hit a chord. Wishing you all a tolerant and happy Christmas season.

***

Related post: What Do You Say to Someone Who is Grieving at Christmas?

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, andDaughter 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.

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Raining Deer

December 17, 2014 — Pat Bertram

This is the season where deer seem to rain down on us by the bucket loads, where they reign in various decorations, where they are often seen yoked together by reins.

You’d think reindeer would refer to those reins but the “rein” part of reindeer comes from the old Norse word for the creature: hreinn, so a literal translation of reindeer is actually “reindeerdeer”.

Reindeer used to run wild in Britain, but became extinct long before the Celts and Anglo Saxons showed up. Now they live primarily in the Arctic tundra and northern boreal forests (boreal seems to mean just south of the arctic, but I don’t guarantee that definition.)

But where did the idea of flying reindeer come from?

Some folks have postulated that while reindeer don’t make the fabled winter trip, people do. Donald Pfister, a biologist who studies fungi at Harvard University, suggests that Siberian tribesmen who ingested fly agaric may have hallucinated into thinking that reinddeereer were flying. Making a correlation to Santa is the idea that Shamans in the Siberian and Arctic regions dropped into locals’ teepeelike homes with a bag full of hallucinatory mushrooms as presents in late December, and since the doors of these places were often blocked by snow, the shamans came down the smoke holes. Add to that mix the fact that the mushrooms were red with white trim (spots, not fur) and the possibility of the shamans taking on reindeer spirits, you have a story not exactly fit for children. But it could explain why Santa lives at the North Pole — that’s where the story originated. (I always thought he lived there because if he lived anywhere else, Denver, for example, it could be easily proven that there is no Santa Claus.)

In 1821, the first known reference to flying reindeer found its way into the Santa myth (an interweaving of St. Nicholas and the Dutch Sinterklaas). The author of the poem “A New Year’s Present, to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve Number III” was kept a secret, but the editor of the piece claimed the author heard from his mother, an Indian of the area, that reindeer could fly. (“ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” was published in 1923.)

Well, I hung my stocking by the chimney with care (I had to, otherwise it would have fallen down), though I have no hope that some red-suited fellow will soon be filling it. In fact, I hope he doesn’t. Would scare me half to death to see a stranger inside this house.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire,andDaughter 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.

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Bowls of Light

December 16, 2014 — Pat Bertram

When I was sorting through some of my things in preparation to packing them and putting them in storage, I found a whole slew of Christmas lights. It seems ridiculous to store the lights considering how cheap they are, wasteful to throw them away, and silly to drag them to a thrift shop, so I decided to use them up. I put bowls full of lights all over the house, and oh! What a festive air!

bowl of lights

bowl of lights

bowl of lights

cookie jar of lights

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire,andDaughter 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.

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An Epic Adventure

December 8, 2014 — Pat Bertram

During the past couple of years, I’ve been blogging about my yearning for an epic adventure. I’ve talked about walking up the Pacific coast, thru walking the Pacific Crest Trail, getting a small camper to roam the country and visit all my online friends. The last I might still do, but the first two are supreme athletic feats for which I simply do not have the feet. (Or the body, either!)

To me, an epic adventure is more than an athletic feat. It is a transcendental experience, one that allows us to transcend our daily experience, going beyond what we know, and somehow being transformed in the process. Such an endurance test would include physical challenges and encompass the whole range of human emotions.

And such an epic adventure came looking for me.

My Hawaiian dance class was invited to participate in a dance concert put on by the local college. Our teacher picked out two numbers — “Green Rose,” a Kahiko chant, and “Nani Wali Nahala,” a dance using bamboo sticks. (Have you ever seen Donovan’s Reef where the dancers danced with sticks? Our dance was faster and more complicated, but you get the idea.) Then we practiced. And practiced. And practiced.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that I’m musically challenged. My ears hear all the various strains, themes, and tracks of a song as a single entity. It’s very difficult for me to pick out a beat or single note from the mélange. And yet, I was chosen to lead the class out on stage. (It had nothing to do with expertise. It was more of a height thing — the woman at the other end of the stage was the same height as I was, and I happened to be there for all the practices.)

I did learn to pick the right note, count the requisite number of beats before heading into the limelight, and keep time while leading the way, yet it was always an adrenaline-filled, nerve-jangling moment when I made my entrance, whether in class or in dress rehearsal.

This epic adventure spanned five days. Our class’s dress rehearsal on Wednesday. The dress rehearsal for the entire cast on Thursday (a nine-hour endurance test, mostly boredom interspersed with moments of heart-pounding and palm-sweating nervousness when we lined up for our turns). Two performances on Friday. One performance on Saturday evening. A Sunday matinee.

By the end of the day on Thursday, and even after the first show on Friday morning, some of us were wondering if the whole thing was worth it, but by Friday night we got into stride (it helped that as soon as I stepped on stage, we got a big round of applause. Sure made smiling easier!). Saturday slipped by as if this were our new life, and Sunday, though fun, was simply another day. The stage had become our life. Then it was over and somehow we had to come back to our normal lives.

Or maybe not.

Such an epic adventure, encompassing as it did the endurance test of waiting for our turns, the physical feat of dancing, the emotional highs and lows — fun and boring, exhausting and exhilarating, challenging and nerve wracking — had to have changed us somehow. Well, changed me anyway. The others have done such marathon concerts before, but it was a first for me. (Me? Dancing on stage? Seems unreal, to be honest.) Change ripples into our lives, creating a new reality. The odd thing is, I might never notice it. Change might rock our world, but since we rock with it, we are always on sure footing.

Oddly, the thing that made it all seem worthwhile for me during that second interminable day of dress rehearsal, is that whenever any of us questioned why were we doing such a thing, I’d look at us and say with a smile, “but we look so adorable.” And maybe something as simple as that is what keeps one moving ahead on an epic adventure. Because, of course, we did look adorable. It might even have been part of the adventure. We are all long past the “adorable” stage of our lives, and yet, here we are (I’m the second face from the right):

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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.

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