What’s Your Agenda

“He who does not know the art of living cannot know the art of dying.  Mahatma Gandhi

My shift at the hospice started like every other.  I stopped by the volunteer office to check the volunteer log before my shift to look through notes from the previous volunteers to see if I could spot anyone who needed more attention that night.  I noticed there was a new patient; a fairly young man from Jamaica.   The notes were the usual volunteer notes, “chatted for a while, served him tea, he was sleeping, he had visitors.”  One volunteer’s note caught my eye and it said “is having difficulty with the family dance.”  The note was subtle but I understood it immediately.  Reading through the volunteer log, this gentleman had lots of visits from family and he was having a rough time with it.

Every family has their family dance and when someone is coming to the end of their life, the family dance can intensify.  When death hangs in the air, there is no room for fake, manipulative, pretentious behaviour.  You simply can’t get any more real than death and only authentic and honest mannerisms will do.  However, there are some that use death as their playing field leaving families and the person dying in a precarious and vulnerable state. I headed out to the floor, checking on patient after patient, helping them eat, removing their finished plates, fixing sheets and hanging out in their room for chitchats.   I got to the new patient’s room and he was sitting in a wheelchair watching tv.  He had finished eating and I asked him if I could take away his plate and get him more tea, coffee or water.

He nodded and as I picked up his tray and asked him if I could get him something else he said, “yes you can get me $5000.00.”  I laughed and I said  “if I find some cash, I’ll send it your way.”   He looked at me and said “good answer, but of course you’re a volunteer and you people have all the answers.”  His tone of voice was not nice and it stopped me in my tracks.  I was standing beside him with a tray of dishes in my hands, and as I looked down into his eyes, he was very angry.   I said “hey the tone of your voice is not nice, what is up with that comment?”  He seemed surprised by my honesty and he shook his head and said “What’s your agenda?”  Still standing with a tray of dishes in my hand, I was perplexed by the question.  “My agenda, what do you mean what’s my agenda?”  “He raised his voice and said your agenda, you’re not here out of the goodness of your heart, you have an agenda like every other bloody person in this place, everyone here has some kind of political bullshit agenda, what’s yours?”

I stood with the tray of dishes in my hand and stared at him for a moment longer, at that point I had never faced this type of bitter and angry attitude at the hospice and his forcefulness threw me somewhat.  I slowly lowered the tray of dishes onto a side table by his bed and pulled up a  chair beside him so I could be at eye level.  I looked him straight in the eyes and  I said “let me tell you a story.”  “Years ago my stepfather had a massive heart attack and ended up brain-dead and laid in the hospital in a coma for months.  My mother and I visited him every day but there was nothing we could do for him.   One evening while visiting my stepfather there was a new patient in the bed beside him.  The man was crying so I walked over to see if I could help, I noticed that his food had been delivered and he was unable to open the packages due to extremely swollen hands from arthritis.  I opened his food and helped him eat.  He simply was hungry and extremely frustrated by his situation.  I chose dinner time hours for my volunteer hours at this hospice because of that man.  So often family members find it hard to get to their love ones in hospices or hospitals at dinner time,  so I felt this time was the time that I could help out the most.   If you call that an agenda, then that’s my agenda.”

He stared at me for a while and I saw it.  It was a subtle change in his eyes, but I watched as his eyes and face softened.  He gave me a bright smile and leaned into me closer and said “are you Irish?”  I said “yes I am of Irish descent, my Grandparents sailed from Ireland to start a life here in Canada, why?”  He said “Because I have only met one other volunteer I like here and she’s Irish too.  You remind me of her and now I have two volunteers I like.”   I laughed and said you know what they say, “Don’t mess with the Irish.”  He laughed and said “Don’t mess with the Jamaicans.”

I spent most of my time talking to him that shift and he told me many things about the family dance, his political views and when I didn’t entirely agree with him we argued.  He loved the debates we got into and he said to me, “I talk to people about this stuff when they come in here and they don’t stay, they just want to talk about the fluffy stuff.”  Some of his views were strong and he would not back off when you told him what you thought.  My older brother has very strong views and if you challenge him, he will go right back at you, so I am use to that kind of exchange and it doesn’t bother me.  However, as I told this patient, “most people want to live on the surface, they don’t want to venture too deep as venturing too deep might open some doors that they don’t want to open, so you have to trail lightly my friend.”  He said, “Johanne, I am living in a hospice, I am not going to trail lightly, if someone can’t handle it, go away.”  “Touchè  I said, you have a point.”

As we continued to talk he said to me, “I was given two weeks to live and it’s been three months  since I was given that news.”  He then showed me a the different alternative medicine products by his bed and he said “I swear to you these medicines are keeping me alive.”   I didn’t dare say it but I know it’s true.  They say to beat cancer it is 10% treatment and 90% attitude.  This man has the attitude, he is feisty, gusty, full of hope and has immense faith in God.   He mentioned that the doctor came by the day before and I am assuming that he told the doctor that he wanted more blood test to see where the cancer was.  Apparently the doctor said to him,  “We don’t do that here, people come here to die.”  His answer, “suit yourself doctor, but I came here to live and I will live fully no matter where I am and I’m sorry if you don’t like that but that is what  I intend to do, I intend to live and God is my saviour not you.”

Before I left that night, I gave him a hug and said “I’ll be back next week” and he said “I will be here.”  As I walked across the parking lot to my truck after my shift that night,  the thought that crossed my mind was “I’m certain he’ll still be here next week.”  I passionately believe that souls cross each other’s path for reasons.  To listen to him was inspiring and exhausting at the same time. He brought to my spirit an awareness, an awareness of how precious time is and how important it is to live life to the fullest and to tell those that you love just how much you love them.  There isn’t a minute to spare, and the dance of living and dying goes on every single day.

 

 

The Journey

“In the end she became the journey, and like all journeys she did not end, she just simply changed directions and kept going.”  r.m. drake

A journey to self health does not only mean eating well, exercising and getting enough sleep.  The journey to self health means you must take the list that you are using toward making your body healthier and stronger and apply that list to dig deep into your soul.  If you have been tolerating toxic habits that are hurting your body, you are most likely accepting and tolerating relationships that are toxic to your soul and hurting your journey.

If I am to be completely honest, my journey started forty five years ago when my father, for reasons of his own, decided he needed to leave his family and start a new life with a new wife and another family.  It was beyond hurt, it felt like someone had taken a knife and sliced me in half down the middle.  To my child self I felt acutely aware that he had made his choice, and his choice meant I was not part of his journey.  The path was not easy as there was much anger, mistrust and complete chaos between my parents.  I’m not sure if my parents thought about how this chaos was affecting their children, in hindsight they must have, but to my child self I felt alone and my parents didn’t realize that with each harsh word and every court date, I was building my wall, my wall of what my existence meant to this world.  I realize now as an adult that the words I was using to myself at that time  were;  I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t a person worthy of love, only negative things happen, there is no such thing as love and every time these words ended up in my head, the wall became thicker and thicker until the words could no longer reach me.

As thick as a wall I built, those words stuck with my being and I questioned everything I did, school was difficult because I never felt completely accepted, I was always someone who was looking from the outside in.  Teachers never understood me, yet they liked me because I was never a problem.  I just sat in the back doing my thing and I made it clear that I wanted to be left alone.   Forming healthy relationships with this foundation was difficult, but I managed to form some great friendships, friendships that have lasted a lifetime.   However, in my life I have accepted and tolerated friendships that I thought were friendships of mutual respect and admiration only to realize the friendships were very one sided.

Going back to the words I used as a child, not worthy of love, I have realized that these words have crept into some of the friendships I have formed, by allowing someone in my life who has not accepted me as my whole self, rather this person sees me as less than, and even though she calls me sister what she really means is elder, she is someone who knows more and is far more distinguished than I could ever be. 

How do I know this, I know this from comments and actions I have fielded for years.  As mad as some of these actions have made me, I have to accept responsibility for allowing and tolerating this attitude.  I realized a long time ago that if I accepted this persons limitations of me, then I am accepting these limitations of myself and it was time for me to change that direction and love my whole self.  I knew it meant that I could no longer be around this person in the same way.  To explain this to someone who clearly is lost in her own limitations and development is difficult, so I chose not to, I just kept working with my being and knew that the journey would go in the direction that it was meant to.

The word tolerance is an interesting word:

tol·er·ance

ˈtäl(ə)rəns/

noun

the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.

“the tolerance of corruption”

The definition of tolerance sounds so civilized doesn’t it.  Within this definition alone, I realized that my tolerance level for acceptance of elitist and repressive behaviour in my life goes back to my childhood days when I tolerated the level of chaos within my household simply to survive my childhood.  I’ve had to accept the fact that I tolerated behaviour that was less than kind to my existence simply because I thought I was being a friend.

I have come to the realization that I must befriend myself first or else my journey will never take the twists and turns that makes journeys joyous and harmonious within the realm around us.

The opposite of the word tolerance:

• patience
• resilience
• strength
• toughness
• endurance
• guts
• hardiness
• opposition
• stamina
• steadfastness
• steadiness
• vigor
• staying power

The opposite words of tolerance are worlds apart and doesn’t necessarily seem as civilized as toleration, however the soul does not need tolerance, the soul needs truth and the only way to truth is to be the opposite of tolerance and acceptance of anything other than truth is to accept an abrupt end to your journey, leaving you in a place of contempt for your being and your existence. 

Where my journey lands, I don’t know, all I know is that I have to apply the same trick that I learned a long time ago when I took up running and I was trying to increase my endurance to become a better runner.  I simply stopped looking at the long road ahead of me and concentrated on taking one step at a time.

Johanne Fraser

Embracing Ordinary

“Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for the illusion.”  Judith Guest, Ordinary People

Before I hung up the phone she blurted out “Good luck with your boring life, maybe you should get a life.”  I did not say a word as I hung up the phone, there was no use, she would never understand.  There were many responses circulating in by brain, but for once in my life I shut my mouth as I knew she was hurting and the hurt was within herself, something she could not process so she attacked me personally.

I was certain the verbal attack on my so-called boring life gave her some immediate satisfaction and the anger toward me sustained her in the life she was currently living.  However, I knew beyond a doubt that the train she was riding was going to crash and crash hard.  I said a simple prayer that she was able to jump off the train safely before the train tumbled off the tracks.

That unfortunate conversation was the last time I talked to her for five years.  I never once picked up the phone to see how she was and neither did she pick up the phone to re-connect with me.   A friendship that had been since high school over in one instant.

For ages I knew that our friendship had drifted, she was living a completely different life than me, a life that I simply couldn’t watch from the sidelines.  I needed to come clean about how I felt about her self-destructive lifestyle.

The alcohol abuse started innocently enough, one drink, two and another and another and she started to really enjoy being out of control.  I, on the other hand, had seen enough alcohol abuse amongst family  members and I was always in full control of my mind and body.  Eventually the alcohol wasn’t enough for her and she started experimenting with cocaine. It didn’t take long before she was completely out of control and trying to talk to her about the path she was taking was fruitless as she was not ready to listen to reason, she was hell bent on riding that train.

Five years after our conversation about her abuse and the consequences I believed she would face, the phone rang.  I was in a rush and on my way out of the house and I quickly stopped to grab the phone.  The first words out of the woman’s mouth on the other end was “don’t hang up, please don’t hang up, just listen to what I have to say and then if you want to hang up then you certainly have that right.  It was her and I could hear the desperation in her voice.  She told me that she didn’t want to talk over the phone and would I consider meeting her for lunch.  I agreed to meet her for lunch and set a date for the following week.

We met for lunch and the start of the conversation was awkward as we sat across from each other not saying very much.  I had already decided that I wasn’t going to talk  as I really wanted to listen to what she had to say.  Finally after ordering our food and we put the menus aside she said, “now the reason why we are here.””The road I was on was so bad and I’ve been so low and hung out with people who were at their wits ends.  I was there too and I realized that once I hit rock bottom, I needed to experience that place  in hell in order to get myself back on my feet.  Once I was on my feet and taking control of my life, I thought of you.  Everything you said to me, the way you tried to help me find myself and the way you tried to build my confidence.  I wasn’t ready, I was on my way down and no one could stop me.  I hated you, I hated what you said to me, I didn’t want to hear it and I hated you for saying it.   I want you to know that I no longer hate you and I’m slowly finding my way back and I hope you would consider being my friend.”

I sat in complete silence and really didn’t have much to say.  She said she wanted my friendship but what she really wanted was my forgiveness.  After we sat and stared at each other for several minutes, I told her that I was never angry with her and always considered her a friend and that I thought highly of her.  It was because of our friendship that I told her how I felt  during that unfortunate phone conversation and I  told her I just could not watch a friend destroy herself.  I told her she owed me nothing, she didn’t owe me an apology and that everything she owed she owed to herself and that I hoped and prayed  she found happiness.  As far as our friendship, I said “we’ve always been friends, we  just took a little break.”

We both laughed at that comment and we talked for hours catching up on our lives.  Not once did I ask her about her fall from grace and not once did she go back to that last phone conversation.   As she talked about her life, I realized that she had embraced ordinary and her now “boring life” as she put it, was her saviour and healer as she cleansed her spirit of the dark forces that almost destroyed her from within.

THE TRUTH HURTS

“It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and few by deceit.”   Noel Coward…..

 

A major setback for me has been that I’m too honest.  Sad but true, people would much rather listen to un-truths than an honest person.  I will be 50 years old this coming November and it’s taken me this long to figure out why people would rather listen to phony, bullshit people rather than an honest, straight-shooter person; it’s all about egos.  People want their egos stroked, they want to be told how great they are and they want to be able to say things, even cruel or stupid things, without consequence.  It’s that simple!  Enter an honest, straight shooter into this game and there is bound to be problems.  I’ve never been very patient with bullshit, ego-boosting people or “look-at-me” attention driven nonsense.  The behaviour annoys me beyond belief and I’ve had to dig deep into my psyche  and ask myself  “why do I care?”   It’s occurred to me that maybe all of this annoys me  because it’s more than possible that I am really ego driven and looking for the attention that seems to pass by me or maybe I am  jealous of the fact that these people seem to have easy-going relationships, and friendships.   Let’s face it we are all somewhat self-centred and at some point we will ask ourselves “what’s in it for me?”  I remember listening  to Dr Phil saying to a patient,  “Is that working for you?”  He was talking about the behaviour of this patient and how it was working for her in her life.  In other words she was gaining something from her behaviour on one level and not dealing with the consequences of the behaviour on another level.  

This is what I notice, people do and say things that are hurtful or plain wrong and as soon as someone says something to the contrary or points out that their words or behaviour is wrong, they don’t want to hear it and do anything to justify their stand, including choosing the victim route, “why me?”, the passive aggressive route or the ego route(“how dare you, do you know who I am?”).  When you really think about all of this behaviour, it is amusing and I believe laughter is the best medicine to all.  When I dig deep into myself I’ve come to the conclusion that I feel annoyed because I am a fairly simplistic person who lacks patience.  I simply don’t understand why someone can say something that I may not agree with or say something hurtful and I can’t voice my disagreement in an adult manner.

I once had a boss who would ask me my opinion on certain things he was dealing with.  The first thing I always said to him before I gave him my opinion was “are you sure you want my honest opinion?”  “Yes, that’s why I’m asking you.”  I would then tell him what I honestly thought and he would get annoyed with me and say something like “I knew you would say something like that!”   I would be annoyed all day and think to myself “why did he ask me if he didn’t want my opinion?’  This went on for a while as I worked for him for years and eventually he would be in my office asking for my opinion and the same banter would happen.  Finally I asked him “why do you ask me for my opinion when you don’t really want to hear what I have to say?”  He look surprised and said “but I do want to hear what you have to say, I know you will be blunt  and honest with me no matter what I say and I appreciate your honesty even though I don’t always agree with you.”  It was then that I realized as a boss most people just went along with whatever he said and didn’t tell him the truth, they just told him what they thought he wanted to hear.  I once read an interview with Bono of U2 and he made a comment that during his rise to fame, and still to this day, he listened to people who thought and said opposite of his thinking pattern,   “listening to people who tell me what I want to hear, isn’t going to get me anywhere or help me grow as a musician or a person,” he says.  Very honest words.

I’ve been blessed to have a few good friends in my life, friends I can be myself and not be afraid to be honest with them.  At the same time I depend on these friends to be completely honest with me, when I ask them for their advice I want their honest advice even if it means that I don’t like what they have to say.  One such friend has been my friend for the last  25 years and she has helped me more than she knows.  During conflicting times with my family or friends she always bluntly points out maybe this situation has happened because I’ve said or done this and maybe I need to think this out more, or maybe I need to be more patient or maybe I need to be a little less me!  I love her honesty and I love how we can tell each other the truth.  Not that we haven’t had our arguments over the years, we’ve had plenty but we always come back to our friendship in complete honesty and count our blessings that we can count on each other  for loyalty, honesty and trust.  Funny thing is I don’t see her very often, not nearly often enough, as both our lives are crazy busy,  but we are always there for one-another in times of need and times of celebration.   Just one friendship based on this kind of loyalty, honesty and trust is worth more than 20 friendships based  on phony, ego stroking and telling you what you want to hear.

Unfortunately, I’ve lost too as the truth hurts.  I’ve lost what I thought were friends and relationships with family members.  In each instance I’ve done some deep soul-searching and I’ve come to the conclusion that in my quest for complete honesty there will be some sacrifices.  I’ve already made some sacrifices and I’m bound to make some more.  I won’t change who I am to meet someone else’s needs, I will always be myself.  I’ve also had to wrestle with the fact that at times I’ve trusted when I shouldn’t have trusted, making me reluctant to trust again but then I think of my trusted friend and if I hadn’t opened up my true self to her, our friendship wouldn’t be what it is today.  The same goes for my husband and my children, they may get mad at me at times but they depend on me as, as I depend on them, for truth, honesty and loyalty.   Even when the truth hurts.

IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME..

 

His name was Wayne and I met him years ago at Manning Park, BC.  My mother-in-law has a cabin in Manning Park and my husband and I spent many weekends at the hill when the boys were younger teaching them how to ski.  Wayne was the bus driver, he drove guests from the hotel to the ski hill daily many times a day.  I never really had a chance to stop and talk to him at length as he was always dashing from here to there.  I would run into him on the way out of the cafeteria as he stopped for a quick coffee or on the way out of the ski school office as he gathered up his passengers.  Every time I walked past Wayne he would give me a huge smile and stop for a second to ask how I was doing, how Drew was doing and the boys – never once did he not stop.  After our ski day was done we would all pile into our vehicle and head down the narrow mountain road back to our cabin only to drive by Wayne in his bus as he was heading back to pick up the last group of skiers to take them back to the hotel.   He would whip right past us but not without a big smile, honk of the horn and a greeting.  That was Wayne, he was a bus driver during the winter and in the summer he worked in the park’s campgrounds.   While camping at Manning one summer, a staff vehicle pulled up to the site across from us and I noticed it was Wayne.  When he realized it was our family he gave us a big warm smile and came over to ensure we were all well.   After talking to Wayne you were always left with a special feeling, Wayne just had that way about him.  He was genuine, he wasn’t kissing your ass, he wasn’t phony, he wasn’t trying to find out the latest gossip, he was just a really nice guy.  A couple of weeks ago I was saddened to hear that he suffered a heart attack and passed away.   Wayne’s memorial was this past weekend and my mother-in-law attended.  When she got home, Sunday afternoon, she told me that the memorial was packed with people, “wall to wall of people” she said.  Staff members, customers, people from the area, people from far away – they all came.   My mother-in-law said that some of the staff of Manning were surprised that so many people came.  I burst out laughing and my mother-in-law laughed right along with me.  Society can be so trivial at times, people are impressed with positions, money, fame and so many people are only kind to people who can get them somewhere.  Wayne didn’t care who you were and he never worried about positions or money.    He genuinely liked people and people genuinely liked Wayne.  I didn’t even know Wayne’s last name until the memorial was announced on Facebook, but when someone mentioned Wayne at Manning  you just knew what Wayne they were talking about.  As my mother-in-law was waiting to enter the room where the memorial took place, she recognized the man standing beside her.  This man has been coming to Manning Park from the States for a ski vacation for years.   “I’m surprised to see you here” my mother-in-law said.  With tears in his eyes he said “I had to come.”  Wayne built a life out of love, kindness, simplicity, honesty, empathy, compassion and people came.

A LESSON IN EQUALITY

It’s been a while since I’ve thought about Ron, but for some reason I’ve been thinking about my dear friend quite a bit lately.  The friendship that Ron and I shared was unlikely.  Ron was twice my age, married with teenage children, he was from a foreign country and wise beyond my years.  I was a single young woman, working to pay my keep and essentially had no responsibilities except what I was going to eat that day and meeting my friends for movies, dinner and whatever my heart desired.  When I first started working at the school I’m still employed with, I started out as the receptionist and Ron walked into the office to pick up a car for one of our staff members.  Ron had two girls attending the school and he was a mechanic with his own shop.  All the staff members went to him with their automobile mechanical problems.  He fixed everyone’s car.  I would see him at least three mornings a week as he dropped his girls off at the school and picked-up someone’s car to fix.  I was driving an old Datsun 210 at the time and I asked him if he would tune up my car. Always obliging and sporting a beautiful smile, he took my car for a tune-up and the friendship began.

After his girls graduated from the school he would ask me to pick him up in the mornings to drive him to the school so he could pickup staff members  cars and then I would drive him home at the end of the day.  This commute several times a week led to many great conversations, which led to dinner invitations to him, his wife and two girls to my mother’s place where all of us would laugh and talk for hours.  Ron was from Trinidad and he talked faster than I could listen at times but he always made me laugh.  When he left Trinidad he went to England and it was England where he told me of his first experience with snow.  He said he was walking down the street and all of a sudden this white stuff was coming down from the sky and as he looked up to the sky, he saw big flakes and he caught his breath as the snow landed on the skin of his cheeks and then melted seconds later from the sheer heat of his body.   He stood in the middle of the street with his hands and his tongue out to catch the most glorious feeling he had ever felt.  He said he was giddy as he was running from one side of the street to the other.  I could picture him with his big boyish grin running from one side of the street to the other laughing as he caught the glorious snowflakes with his tongue.

Ron was such a bright light, a light filled with wonderment and joy.  To this day I’ve never met a spirit like him, he was a joy to be around.  The cultural difference between us was never mentioned and I never really thought about it until one morning on the way to work, he mentioned that his daughter had applied for a job and that she didn’t get it.  He was disappointed and he felt she didn’t get the job because she was black!  I was shocked because Ron never pulled that card before and being me I told him that I was surprised to hear him say that and did he really believe that she didn’t get the job because of the colour of her skin.  He said “of course it’s true Johanne, you wouldn’t understand.”  I asked a few more questions about the job she was applying for and it became very obvious that she was not qualified for the job and I mentioned it to him.  I said “Ron it doesn’t sound like your daughter had the qualifications for this particular job, I bet that has more to do with it than the colour of her skin.”  Ron mumbled a bit and said “no it’s because she’s black.”  I said “come on Ron you don’t really believe that, there are times when minorities get the job because of their minority.”  “I really think she didn’t get the job because she’s not qualified, end of story.”  The rest of the car ride was very quiet and I felt like I had spoken out of turn and lost a friendship, after all what did I know about this subject, I am very white and never really thought about what it’s like to be a different colour, a minority.   I don’t have that kind of history and I couldn’t help but think how arrogant I sounded.  However, after asking Ron a few questions about the job his daughter was applying for I really didn’t think she was qualified for the job and I would like to believe that’s why she didn’t get it.

We left the conversation in the car that day and never re-visited the subject and I’m glad to say that our friendship didn’t suffer.  One day while Ron was waiting for a staff member’s car, our office manager was talking to him.  The two of them had a great sense of humour and they use to carry on and make us all laugh.  This particular day there was a five-year old boy sitting in our office area waiting for his mommy as she was seeing one of her older son’s teachers.  This little boy was watching Ron and the office manager as they joked away and all of a sudden he got off of his chair and walked over to the two of them and loudly exclaimed,  “are you two brother and sister?”  Everyone stopped dead to stare at this little boy as Ron was a Trinidadian and the office manager was this short little red-haired greek beauty, painfully obvious that they were not brother or sister, yet this little boy wanted to know if they were related.  Finally after a few seconds of silence, Ron said “do you see any difference between us sweety.”  The little boy stared for a a few minutes and then he crossed his arms and stared some more and finally he said “yes I do see a difference, your hair is a different colour.”  That’s the world we should all live in, that little five-year old’s world, a world where we don’t see colour of skin, a world where we only see spirits and the light shining between them.

Ron continued to be one of my best friends for many years.  His daughters did a reading at my wedding and my husband often laughs when remembers the first time  he met Ron.  My husband and I were engaged and when Drew met my brothers – both of them said to him “are you sure you know what you’re getting into?”  Yet when Drew met Ron, he said to Drew, “you better be good to that girl or you’re going to have to answer to me buddy.”  Ron’s light went out several years ago. He was diagnosed with a brain tumour and only lasted  a few weeks.  I miss our friendship but it was one of those friendships that came into my life for a lifetime not a season, he was the real deal friend.  A friendship that enriched my life and there were no strings attached.  A friendship that came about despite age, culture and family differences.  A friendship for a lifetime and beyond.

blogging 101

TIME TO MOVE ON….

Thought you were a friend,

a friend who cares,

a friend to laugh with when there’s not a care in the world,

a shoulder to cry on when there are too many cares,

for a time I believed that you were just that friend,

but anger, envious and jealousy,

you’ve let move in,

always worried about what the other has or hasn’t,

instead of seeing the beauty

that exists within,

there is no talking or changing,

your very stubborn mind,

it’s time to move on,

forget, forgive and let live,

however, the friendship I thought we shared,

like an elastic,

has been stretched too thin,

just like the saying goes,

reasons, seasons and lifetime,

only time will tell,

which friendship ours is….

momwhearingloss