Tag: just goofing around

Just Mine

Debby told me and Emi a story when we were all visiting Mom for her birthday. This was about twenty-five years ago. Debby had a habit of making a coffee drink at home in the morning and topping it with whipped cream. She’d then go out into her Florida home’s backyard to enjoy it. Trying to rebuild her life, she’d started going to college while working at night, leaving her children up north for their grandparents to raise them.

A squirrel approached her during one of her early mornings. Debby thought the squirrel was interested in her drink. Debby put some whipped cream on a spoon and offered it to the squirrel. The squirrel hopped over to her and lapped it up.

That started a daily habit. Debby and the squirrel met every morning to share a spoonful of whipped cream. Their ritual continued for four years. Then, one morning, she went into the back yard and found the squirrel dead.

Debby’s life had been a struggle since a brutal assault in Jacksonville had taken place in her early twenties. She kept trying to rebuild, and kept getting knocked back. After a miscarriage, she endured a three year stretch that saw a business bankruptcy, personal bankruptcy, and divorce because her husband was unfaithful and a drug abuser. Then she learned that her husband hadn’t been paying taxes to the IRS for over three years. The squirrel had been a symbol of change. Now the squirrel was dead.

Debby cried when she told the story. Emi and I cried when we heard it.

Come forward to last week. Mom had passed away. Home to make her funeral arrangements, Debby, Emi, and I were remembering our lives with Mom. Debby recalled how her parents had taken her children in, so I mentioned the squirrel tale, because it was part of that same era.

Debby looked blank. “Nope. Wasn’t me.”

Emi said, “I don’t remember ever hearing that before in my life.”

Their response stunned me. I guess the memory was just mine.

It really makes me wonder.

 

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Karma’s Ripples

He knew exactly what’d taken place.

The firefight wound down. Adrenalin still scorched his nerves, numbed his muscles, and drove instincts and senses. The others were in front of him. “Rat-a-tat-tat,” he said, shooting into his comrades’ backs. Laughter poured out of him as they jerked. “Rat-a-tat-tat.”

That was it. They were dead. He was alive. He’d enjoyed it, to be truthful. Killing felt good. Killing was the best way to set yourself free. He put his rifle in another dead man’s hand. “Bang, bang,” he said to the dead man, what’s his name? Why’d the dead have names? They’d never use them.

One sat up to his left. He didn’t see. Later, he knew, because he was the one, the one who’d killed, the one who was the killer, and the one who came back to kill the killer. Karma’s ripples were bigger than he’d known or suspected.

Sitting up, a temporary life in a dead man, he watched himself laugh as he remembered laughing, and then pointed the assault rifle at himself and emptied the magazine into himself, regretfully smiling as he jerked, gushed blood, and finally sank to the floor. Even so injured, he managed to turn his head and look at him. His lips moved, but he didn’t speak. He remembered, though, that he’d been about to say, “You,” because he knew, he knew.

It was really a mercy. With that done, he left the dead man and the site, returning to the bardo from whence he’d come. At last, he felt peace. At last, all the voices in his head fell quiet. At last, all the dead left him alone.

At last, karma’s ripples died.

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The Difference

He used to tell himself, “I’m feeling lucky today.”

It happened a few times a year. Feeling lucky, he’d rush out and buy lottery tickets.

Nothing was ever won. He began re-thinking his process. He wasn’t buying tickets because he felt lucky, but because he was feeling unlucky, and was hoping he could change his day, his status, his life. Once he understood that difference, well…it made a huge difference in how he lived.

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