It is the end of 2015 and I have had an unhappy year. 2015 is an od numbered year. I will have a better one next year --2016--even-numbered. The year 2015 started with my trip to Iowa to see my mother in her last days. It was not a pretty sight as she had had an accident which injured her head. She left this world on a Saturday afternoon.
At the time of her funeral,which she had made so easy for us,I developed extreme tooth pain.
That damned pain has dominated this year,including an AMy August episode which I feel closely ended my life.
My business has been stressed, as have I.
My last years objectives -new thought-science of mind-unity has been so challenged that Icannot look at last year's Burning Bowls objectives (things I wrote down "to happen".
I seem to be one of those beleivers who believes in La-La land that things will improve and be better.
I am sorry to be a downer as I have a strong urge in my life that "Things will get better."
Sorry.Things ..don't feel that way.
I suppose you could say I am on a downer. And that's the truth.

depo

I am being called for a depo --deposition--that is a testimony for a legal case.
I have a check in 2015 for 38.00 dollars US to depose myself in a PI (Personal
Injury case)

Urban Myths of my youth (1950's)

 Spanish fly when slipped into a female's food or drink would cause her to go crazy to take anything inside her. Hence the story of the girl who mounted the stick shift of her boyfriend's Chevy.
                                                     ___________________
  Saltpeter when slipped into institutional (school) food would render males impotent.
                                                    ___________________
  The boy and girl in the park making out when they hear noises outside the car, then see a dark figure approaching the car. The boy driving starts the car, puts it in gear and floors it. When they arrive at a safe place and get out they see a hook-hand hanging on the door handle.
                                                     _____________________
  The woman driving home from her night shift arrives at home, hears something in the back seat, looks to see a large black man crouching in the back.                                                     _____________________

  The teenage boy inserts a finger in the girl who is known as "loose" She invites him to put his whole hand in. He fumbles with his fingers. The girl holds up her hand to show him that his thumb needed to be tucked inside the fold of his  and then penetrate.

My 2 Deaths

In June of last year I left telling her "I will see you in heaven." I hugged her bloated body.
Her last words as I passed through the door were "Wear your jacket on the plane."
I sobbed that she was thinking of my comfort when she was so near to death.

In October she was still living which surprised us all. She was relocated at the care
center to acomfortable private room where she could be somewhat independent
 andthe still have the skilled care she required with the assistance of young aides.
She thought at least one young male aide had a crush on her. Her bloat was gone,
her mind was mostly back. We celebrated her birthday. She was distant from me
and my two sisters.
Was that the result of a TIA (small stroke)?
I think not.

ODE to O.E.D. for Krista

I would rather have the O.E.D. with me than the Bible.
I should like to be buried, although  I shall be burnt,
That is my body, not my soul, and not I present to
Supervise, my remains with said book at hand.

Clouds

Be it plants, flowers, frost or clouds I am reminded of Mom.
She loved them all. Thanks Mom.

Sniper

The story the muscular sweating guy sitting in my passenger seat told me was so incredible I suspected he was a pathological liar. It was the Vietnam era and I was a travelling salesman
driving somewhere in the vicinity of Kansas City when I picked him up hitchhiking. He said
he was a sniper for the US military serving in Vietnam. He explained his duty was to shoot
the enemy at long distances --a sniper. He said as a sniper he was treated as an untouchable
king at his camp. He had anything he wanted to eat, drink and all of the women visitors he
could handle. He indicated his appetitie for female visitors was enormous.
  I could smell his body odor which was strong like an animal's. He said snipers were
selected because of their metabolic rates. He claimed his respiratory rate and heart rhythm
were far above normal. He said that in civilian life which he was now entering --he had
served his term of duty --he would be forbidden to own a firearm due to the bloodthirst?-
not his choice of words -- that his profession had created. One of the precautions for this
killing addiction was that he and other snipers were forbiden to count the number of "kills"
they had made. It seemed to me that in the next breath he was claiming 156 kills.
   "But if you were not allowed to count, how do you know you killed that many,I asked.
   His answer: "Since they were all head shots, I assume they were kills."
   As he left I felt as if I was rleasing an animal into the jungle of urban life in America.
   I never heard from him of course, never knew his name, but have read of many violent
domestic incidents in which the perpetrator is identified as "a fromer shiper."
   I have not seen the popular movie American Sniper but everything I have heard rings
true to the story that hitchiker told me 50 years ago.

Running away from home

At 7 or 8 I must have had a disagreement with my mother because I packed
a few things and made it as far as my backyard. I lay under a disguise of
some sort and hear my mother in a loud voice: I wonder where he IS?
After a while I responded, we made amends and I was back home.
_________________________________________________________
Perhaps this was a break from my calling and conducting family meetings.
I'm sure I got the idea from my Playmate magazine. I must have had a
subscription gifted to me perhaps by our neighbor, Dorothy. It was my
favorite. I read every page. It inspired me to start a Help the Needy Club
at my elementary school. At a meeting we decided to leave some items
anonymously in the desk of Charlene, the poorest girl in the class. After
just a couple of meetings I remember standing and saying "I resign"
because my peers were talkative and unbusiness-like.

Feb. 4, 2015 -another dream with my sister,Ruth, and myself and mother. I don't recall the full dream but my sister and I were visiting my mother who was aged and living happily in an apartment. We left and I said in a stressed way to my sister "I forgot to kiss her (my mother) goodbye. Then I proceeded up the stairs to kiss her goodbye. Unfinished business? I feel very complete with our parting so don't know why.

Dream of my mother, now deceased 3 weeks.
I had picked her up from a hospital. She was dressed entirely in white just as I had seen her many times when I was around 8. She was working at a candy store. It may have been her first job outside the home since becoming a single mother. Any way she appeared to be 50 - 60 and distressed to be in poor health. We stopped at a small diner where she got up and fell. I helped her get back to the table.
She was agitated and fearful. I will never be free of a wheelchair Will I she asked me.
I sat in front of her supporting her and thinking No you will never be the same. It was also apparent to me that her personality was not the same. She had most likely had a stroke and was not quite herself.
    In real life I had to tell my sister in October "Don't you realize she is trying to hold on to her sanity." She did, she did hold on to her sanity.

January 24, 1942 - January 24, 2015

January 24, 2015. Two weeks ago my mother passed away in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
the place of my birth. Early this morning I woke up and shed my first tears for her
loss to me. I may have heard her words "You know some day you're not going to
have me." Which she had repeated many times to me. I would acknowledge her
and reassure her I was ready to go on with my life without her. Of her death she
sometimes taunted me with "I'm going to raise up in my coffin as you pass."
Thank goodness she didn't pull that one off.
    Mine was not an easy birth. Mother claimed i was a month overdue, was a very
large baby with a full head of hair and long fingernails. I've wondered if I didn't
delay my birth because I didn't want to face a world at war which had begun with
Pearl Harbor maybe 40 days before I arrived. My mother claimed I was born with
a veil, that is a thin tissue that covered my face. Despite my mother's request to Dr.
Murray to keep  it he disposed of it. My mother was Irish and perhaps it was Irish
lore that led her to believe that a child born with a veil could use that remnant to
see into the future or have "second sight." I have often wished Dr. Murray had
saved the veil as well as the extra tissue he saw fit to cut away from my penis,
circumcision.
    Birth is never easy and death. I recently saw an old film Hannah and her Sisters
in which Woody Allen speculates, ponders and bemoans Why death? Why do we
have to die? Why is death part of the Grand Design? What happens after death?
It is a good and funny flick with genuine great questions.
    My mother's death was not easy. It began about five years ago when all her children
were called to her side at Mercy Hospital.  All four of her kids were there. She waited
for the two who came from California to Iowa. It was frightful to see her laid out
with her mouth gaping. Her chin (which was naturally prominent and sharp) extended
nearly to the ceiling. She was semi-conscious and aware she was Going Home. She
verbalized what she saw and felt. There were bright and beautiful colors as she ascended
 a Hill. She felt the presence of Jesus and seemed to be on a journey up the hill to reach
him. On the was she saw her mother, and other family members and friends who had
passed. She named each one. I and the other kids were comforted to know those who
we loved so much, now gone, were in such a comforting, beautiful place and that she
could be with them. My mother made it clear she was ready to go. God had other plans.
After her near-death experience mother continued to live another five years with my
step-father in Independent living housing for older folks. Then came Assisted Care and
after my step-dad passed two years ago ---Skilled care, that is the Nursing Home she
and all of us dread. Lily as the workers, cleaning lady, staff and administration called
my mom became beloved by all. She had a new family in her final six moths. She was
mentally sharp and could tell me in phone
conversations what my nephew in the military in Europe was up to and how each me member
of the military was up to. That is just an example of one of her dozen grandchildren and
many more great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews,sister and 104 year old Cousin Alice.
Her care there was deluxe and it was at this 'Care Center' that my mother made her final
"transition" as it is called in the Unity faith. I say final because there had been several other experiences that brought her close to death so that I made a spontaneous remark to a friend
that I had said my last farewells to my mother at least four times. He chuckled. He didn't
know I wasn't joking.
    Two weeks ago
     .