Retrospective 2022

The year after my mom died really sucked. I wasn't ready to experience grief like that. I wrote that December just how awful it was. This is the end of the year after my father's death. The grieving process has been totally different. In 2016, the year actually ended on an up note as I landed a job I liked, a gig with a local band I admired and started a relationship late in the year. I can't say the same for 2022. It pretty much sucked all the way through.

LOSING BOTH PARENTS
I'm 54 years old now. I was 53 when Dad died last year and 47 when Mom died in 2015. You'd think a man that age would deal with the loss with a bit of dignity, grace and maturity. But you're never really ready to become an orphan. I think that still strikes you, or surprises you, no matter your age. I've talked to other adults who've lost their parents recently, and have heard similar sentiments from them. It's like losing your sense of belonging, of family.

In my case, that was exacerbated last year by the bad behavior of some bad actors, namely two of my siblings, their spouses and offspring. I had to cut these toxic family members from my life. So, in effect, I really DID lose my family. And that was a slow process that really started in 2015 after Mom's death. We all began to realize, even Dad, that she was effectively the "glue holding this family together." Many of us said it exactly that way, thus the quotes. In the aftermath of her death, we drifted and the fabric that held us all together began unravelling. 

It's not that we loved our father any less, at least my baby sister and I didn't, but he's still not Mom...the glue.

So when I talk about feelings of orphanhood, that really goes to the heart of it. I lost pretty much all sense of family. I'd already drifted apart from Dad's family and Mom's is slowly dying. We lost her brother, my Uncle Gary Larson, earlier this year. A couple of months later, we lost my Great Aunt Ruth Dunning, who was the last member of my grandmother's generation to go. The additional losses this year did not help.

My hope was to turn the tragedy of last year into some sort of renewal for me. I got sidetracked. Instead of using my meager inheritance to start over and move in a positive direction, I got stuck. I blew through the inheritance and ended up staying for months at my sister's house in Indiana. I wanted to be just about anywhere else (not because of her, read on).

LOSING HOME
I've always been a proud Hoosier, proud of my heritage and proud to call Indiana my home state. That has waned over time. Though I've dug into my pioneer roots for a couple of decades, that sense of pride I once felt about being a bona fide Hoosier, like since the time of when that queer nickname was coined, has faded. This is tied in with losing my sense of belonging and of family.

For more than 200 years, my family has called Indiana home. Mom's ancestors were pioneers of Gibson County, one of Indiana's original counties since 1814. Dad's roots go deep in Vincennes, the once Territorial Capital and home to U.S. President William Henry Harrison. We have ties to George Rogers Clark and distant cousins who served his brother in the Corps of Discovery (i.e. Lewis & Clark Expedition). All these connections to the pioneer past gave me a deep sense of belonging to this Midwest frontier.

But now that my family is splintering and fading away, Indiana no longer has the feel of "home." My soul has been longing for my beach...the one devastated this year by Hurricane Ian (Sept. 28th).

The adage says "home is where the heart is." My heart was broken back in September, but Fort Myers Beach (FMB) is still my heartbeat.

If my adopted family there will have me back, I'm coming in 2023.

But all that loss--the loss of life, of family, of home--has made this possibly the worst year of my life. The feeling of being stuck in a place that no longer serves as home, hasn't helped. It only exacerbated my feeling of isolation, loss and uncertainty.

Some of my choices were not made in the best headspace. I was still grieving my father (and my mother, for that matter). I was grieving the loss of family. I was grieving the loss of "home" when the water swept away most of my second home, FMB.

Tragedy and loss has certainly marked (and marred) 2022, as a whole. There are no words that can express the depth of grief or levels of despair, anguish and personal turmoil. This year has definitely tested my patience, my resolve and my personal growth. My mental health has hung in the balance at many times...and I've wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear.

This is me being raw and vulnerable...maybe in a way I'm not all that much on this blog.

I don't hold a massive amount of hope for 2023, but as they say, "it has to get better." Right?

Value and Worth

We ascribe value to so many things, important and unimportant. We apply labels--good or bad, sacred or evil, worthy or unworthy. Think about the activities you feel are worthy of your investment; the causes that are worthy of your sacrifice. These are the things that hold supreme value in our life. We call the ideals and attributes we treasure, "our values."

The problem in our thinking is the skewed perspective and faulty definition we hold of wealth. For instance, we consider Fortune 500 executives as wealthy simply because of their financial value. But think about that. What value does a dollar bill really have? Only that which we ascribe to it. There was a time when that value was based upon the gold standard, and our currency held value in direct correlation to the gold our government held in reserve. But the U.S. Dollar's value in correlation to world currency fluctuates all the time. So what is a dollar really worth? The paper it's printed upon? The ink and artwork? The time and manpower it took to print?

Currency is merely the paperwork that allows us to trade commodities. It is consumable. Some people hold more power than others, but does that mean they are wealthy? It does if you ascribe value to currency. Those Fortune 500 execs are certainly powerful and wealthy, if their value is only found in the amount of currency they possess. But what do we know about any of those people and their core values? Do they have great familial relationships? Do they possess humility, vulnerability and emotional courage? In essence, are they "good" human beings and do they possess a high sense of self-worth?

In my opinion, the people who possess a high sense of self-worth are those who feel loved and accepted. They have a sense of belonging. They are connected to others and to causes that are worthy of their time and investment. I would consider relationships highly important. Financial currency would be, on my classification scale, very UNimportant. Why?

Because as the old saying goes, "You can't take it with you." And even if you amass great financial fortune, pass that fortune onto your children and grandchildren, it will at some future generation lose value, depreciate and/or deteriorate until it lacks any value at all. Conversely, the values that you impart to your offspring will carry them through life. And if those values are cherished and honored, then they will be passed down for many generations without losing value.

Let me ask you this--how many funerals have you attended where the eulogy was all about the financial wealth of a person? How many obituaries or virtual memorials give a spreadsheet of someone's assets and liabilities? How many tombstones are inscribed with words like, "He amassed great financial fortune." Highly unlikely, right? In all my years of genealogical research, I've seen thousands of tombstones and they'll have inscriptions, such as "Beloved husband and father," or "United in life and in death" (for couples). And at the end of nearly every obit or online memorial, you'll read, "In lieu of flowers or memorials, please donate" to this worthy charity or cause. Because the value, the worth, is not in the unimportant things, like how much cash they left behind, it's in the important things like relationships and giving back to the world.

How we define wealth, defines us.

Are you ascribing value to things of great import? Are you investing in yourself and in others? You are worthy of love, belonging and acceptance. We all are worthy.

CHOOSE LOVE! Start with you!