Three Difficult Topics

To be honest, I have had a very good life. However, no life is without some degree of difficulty. Therefore I will endeavor to tell you about three topics which could be hard for me to write about.

The first would have to be the day I arrived in Washington state after having lived in Oklahoma. The weather was thick, damp and brewing when we arrived. Dark clouds and persistent rain were a perfect reflection of the way I felt about moving. It was beautifully green, but in an odd depressing sort of way. My father being in the Air Force and all, I came from a line of people who tended to be good with transition. It was only in my later years that each of my family members separately told me how much they hated that particular move. It is also a difficult topic to write about simply because there is much I do not remember about it. Its all very hazy to me, almost like a dream or something, it has so little familiarity with what my life has been since and what it was before.

I am writing these topics in no particular order, for if I were this would most certainly come first. Of all my grandparents Baba was the closest to me and had the largest impact on my life. My grandfather (who we called Baba) had Alzheimer's disease. This is a wretched illness that seems to take away the person you love long before their body wears out.  I was actually there when he passed away. I saw how his appearance changed from one second of life to the next of death. In one of my journals I wrote a more detailed description of the event, but this forum does not necessarily call for that. Needless to say, it was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life so far. I believe I will see him again.

A third and final difficult topic for me to write about is when I had a very serious decision to make. I was confronted with it right after I began my first semester here at ASU. I had two options that had very real consequences and I was sick over which one to choose. This was not a choice between doing something morally right or wrong. It was more between two suitable decisions. That was part of the difficulty. This particular dilemma would be a hard subject to adequately explain in writing, which is why it made it on this list.

Love and Panic

I was five and we were visiting our cousins in Texas. Being so young and fully aware that I was not home, a distant fear of losing my family constantly threatened to put me in hysterics. It was for this reason that I was averse to everything about going to Sunday school class with my cousin April. Everything was new--a terror to kids like me.

The room was boxy. The walls were pasty white. The hard metal chair beneath me was starkly different from my home's rocking chair. Dislike filled me as I looked at the flannel board with fuzzy characters patted on it. Seeing this, familiar as it was, brought no relief to the certain dread that my family would forget me here. Somewhere in the teacher's lesson she said something about going on a field trip. Shock pierced my little heart. Whatever she had said left me with no doubt that we were to leave now and that I would leave this church building without my mom and dad and siblings and I would never see them again. What horrible vindication to my suspicions! I started to cry. The strangers tried to reason with me. I remember the teacher reaching for me with a concerned look and high voice used by all adults to soothe children. Suddenly there came a quiet knock.

Around the side of the door, my father popped in his head of black brown immaculately military style hair. When he saw me, he smiled and said, "I thought I heard that cry." With a wink to the teacher, he came into full view from behind the door. He put his rescuing arms out to me and I happily jumped in. He spun around and headed for his original destination--the water fountain. The rest of the day I sat with him. Better than that, I learned something that would have a profound effect on my view of life forever: someone had heard my cry.

Existentialism

When I walked in the room, I knew that something was off. Colors seemed to be muted and lines were blurry around the edges. More importantly, I think that the door had four handles at one time and even more at another. All that was certain was that one would give me passage through it and the others sudden death. I was very sure as well that the decision was to be made quickly. As I weighted my options a pressing fear paralyzed me.  But a saving grace came. In a deep corner of my mind I heard a voice that sounded much like my own voice of reason. It told me this had to be a dream. And I was comforted.

Suddenly I was awake and grateful to be so. Awareness had a certain palpability that was the reason I knew the door I was glaring at would not grow more handles. I looked at the quiet white door through my moonlit bedroom. Slowly, as if it had followed me out of my slumbering thoughts, an idea crept in my mind. Am I still dreaming? How could I ever be sure if I am or not? 

My stomach dropped into an endless pit and my brain seemed to collapse on itself. I never could know. I felt alone and even the companionship of my sister in the bed next to me seemed a cruel trick, one where she was an apparition or a character in my dream to be ripped away if I ever did wake up. Silence. My heart was pounding. I didn't want to dream, but seeing that I might be anyway, that voice of reason told me my only real option was to go to sleep. I would wake up in the morning to a shining sun and a new awareness.