Survival Strategies

It's amazing to me what I or anyone for that matter has to go through to make it to my present age of 63.

I can remember being in my 30s happily married and just really starting to live my dreams in a useful way when (boom) my father started to slowly die of prostate cancer. At the time thinking that my father could die was impossible. After all, he was only a couple of years older than I am now. But by the time I was 37 he was gone and this forever changed both my life and my mother's irrevocable forever. She was only 66 at that time and alone. She started to date a man who was a friend of my father's and hers who had also recently lost his wife but soon realized she couldn't replace my father and that it wasn't going to work for her to try to date someone new. She had loved my father too much. So I watched my mother become like a rudderless ship moving from place to place and whatever I asked her to do she would just do the opposite because I wasn't Dad.

When my wife started criticizing my Dad and just wouldn't shut up about it I realized that I was eventually going to have to divorce her because I couldn't be with someone who wouldn't just shut up about my father who had passed away.  My father, like me was a very outspoken person and this offends some people. I am more a diplomat than my father whose attitude was always a very "let the chips fall where they may"  kind of like in chopping down a tree. He was always very intelligent but also very opinionated the way only people who survived both the Great Depression and World War II could be. They were fundamentally tough and resilient people.

So, 9 years later my wife and I eventually divorced. So, I attribute this marriage ending directly tied to my father's death than any other one event. Do I blame my father for dying? No. That would be ridiculous. However, it was just a fact of life. Does my ex-wife blame me for the divorce? Yes. She is like women traditionally have been for thousands of years where they blame the man for everything. Do I blame myself for the divorce? I take half the blame but the other half is hers if she actually is an adult rather than a child. But it is like the captain of a ship if it goes down. No matter what crewman made the mistake or mistakes the captain always takes the blame like any leader. It's just the way life has always been and likely always will be.

Surviving that divorce wasn't the hardest thing for me. Dealing with my feelings regarding the children in this divorce was an impossible thing for me to deal with. The oldest 3 (my son from my first marriage and her two children from her first marriage) had to endure a second divorce which no one would wish anyone to have to endure. The only useful thing here was that they were all age 19 or above so they could be considered adults at the time. However, I also had a 5 year old daughter at that time (now 22) who I tried to get custody of and failed but did receive (thousands of dollars later in lawyer fees) joint custody of with her mother receiving primary custody and I was able to see my daughter about 9 weeks a year as a (weekend and vacation Dad). This was the hardest single thing in my life that I have ever had to deal with in not being able to raise and to protect my daughter from harm (psychologically, physically and otherwise). This was awful. However, I was lucky. I remarried within a year or two of my divorce and had another daughter and moved on in my life and my then 7 year old (when my new daughter was born) was really happy to have a little sister (even though they couldn't spend as much time together as they wanted. So the upshot of all this is that my father dying ended my marriage de facto eventually.

So, even when you have your act together the deaths of parents and friends can really screw your life up big time.



So, I had to wait and have my mother's body put on ice until I could return, kiss her on the forehead as a human Popsicle and push her into the furnace and turn on the burners. It was so loud that I walked outside and watched her body turn into smoke up the chimney and thought how much she would have liked to turn into smoke and to travel around the world on the air.  One year later after resting upon my grand piano we rented a sailboat and buried her at sea near where John Denver crashed his plane as she loved John Denver and his music. She wanted her ashes to be in the ocean always.

Now it is three years later and my wife and I are finally healed up in our emotions enough to successfully go on a diet to live on for our kids and each other and ourselves.

Life never brings you exactly what you want all the time. But if you are lucky you will find a way to enough happiness in life to stay alive and sane and healthy and to survive. So, survival strategies keep as all alive for each other and for ourselves.

Survival Strategies

I had the chance recently to drive from Death Valley National Park by Area 51 on Hiway 95 towards Las Vegas with a side trip up into the Spring Mountains to 8000 feet and 27 degrees where the windshield wiper fluid froze solid in an instant on my front window when I put it on as a joke for my son.

I think what I learned most from that experience is that it is not very comfortable driving by area 51(just driving by) because one knows immediately even just driving by the extreme level of security present on the land and air.

A few years ago when Google Earth first came into public view my son and I were looking at what seemed at the time like hundreds of nuclear test craters (satellite view). We realized then that the government has been doing some interesting things in Nevada since the late 1930s continuously through right now and that is one of the many reasons that the U.S. is still standing today and not just a crater presently (from sea to shining sea).

I started to think about how different it was growing up and how very much more now the average person on the street knows about what the U.S. has been up to all this time.

I started to think about how often bases are built under mountain ranges like the one in Colorado Springs under the Rockies. But I began to think about the Alps, many mountain ranges in Nevada and California and other places in North America and how those places have continued to help create North America being a free area on the earth.

I also realized that I really am not interested in going over near Area 51 anymore (once is enough) and if you drive by there on Hiway 95 you will understand first hand what I'm talking about.

Though, my cousin was telling me that he honeymooned with his wife up hiway 95 from Las Vegas up all the way up into Canada driving his XKE Jaguar around 1970 before his wife made him get rid of it when she got pregnant with their first child. When he described the drive up through Nevada from Las Vegas all the way up into Canada I felt like I really wanted to do a remote drive like that too because it is just so scenic. And even if you have a motorcycle that would be a good ride (temperature wise from about September until it gets too cold until April or  May. (check the weather and temperatures).

It's amazing how many changes there have been on earth since the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis when so many thought we all were going to die any day then. It's always good to have survival strategies in place whether you are a nation, a family or just an individual. Otherwise, none of us would be around very long.