Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Answer Man: The Movie

Did you ever watch a movie that reminds you a little of yourself? Though I have been married raising at least one child under 15 continuously since 1974 and a single parent from July 1977 until March 21st 1980, pretty much I have been married except for that short period since April 1974.
So in this sense the movie isn't like my life. But the movie with Jeff Daniels reminds me of my somewhat reclusive life since my last divorce and remarriage in 1995. My children are now 35, 21, and 14 and my 14 year old still lives with my wife and I. And I have 2 step children, 2 god daughters and have been pretty much retired since 1998 when I turned 50 due to an almost fatal heart virus. In fact, I was the only one I knew of at that time to survive a heart virus.

However, the movie really touched a chord in me. Maybe it was the grand piano that he had stopped playing because it reminded him of his Dad that lived with him until he died. For me, it was my mother who had an operatic voice of a coloratura soprano and who used to sing duets with me until about 1999 or 2000 when she began to get senile dementia which is the fatal disease that she finally died from in 2008 while I was taking my wife's fathers ashes to Saint Louis to be buried with his parents. We were at L.A. international airport in California and changing flights for Saint Louis when the news came by Cell phone. I had known she was dying as she had had a "death rattle" when I visited her last. However, she was in a coma and hadn't known who I was for several years before. My priority had to be my wife and daughter's sanity through the death of her father. So I had my mother's body be put on ice until I could return and cremate her body. When we flew back I met the mortuary workers at the crematorium so I could identify my mother's body. She was basically a human popsicle. So I kissed her goodbye on her forehead and pushed her into the furnace and turned it on and then walked outside because it was so very loud and watched my mother go up the 1 foot wide smokestack into the air. I thought that she would have liked this a lot mostly going up into the air. Then after her ashes cooled I took them and put them on my grand piano and left them there until my son who was very close to her came home from college and was ready to scatter her ashes in the ocean about 1 year later. We rented a sailboat when all my children were present along with my wife and my older daughter's live in boyfriend and I had my son scatter her ashes near where John Denver crashed his plane into the ocean years ago.(My mother loved John Denver's music).

This movie helped me a lot to move on in my life. My experience of and with God is much different than the character in the movie. My experience of God is much more personal than his.
Though I can experience fear like everyone else I don't in regard to God because I experience how God has created us to be perfect microcosms of (Him,her, the Being). Because of this I don't have the kinds of fear in regard to our creator that most people seem to. However, I do have a lot of compassion for people that have this kind of fear because I once did too, especially as a 12 to 15 year old when I thought I was dying when I had childhood epilepsy. However, the very thing that almost killed me also increased my intuitive abilities that allowed me not to be afraid and to experience God 24 hours a day as long as I choose now. It is easy to choose peace whenever I can now even though if I let myself I can also be afraid. So whenever possible I choose to feel God as being afraid most of the time I don't experience as useful.

Yes. Fear is there for a purpose to keep us alive and on the right track. But if we let ourselves get carried away with it: Fear Kills!

So, I guess it is my experience like FDR said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself!"

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