Life is too doggone short, you know?This week, two of my friends have lost parents to complications from cancer. This evening, I attended the memorial service of one. I hadn't known my friend's dad very well at all, but listening to the people who spoke about his life, I was so sorry that I hadn't known him better. As a matter of fact, the longer I sat there, the more sorry I became that there are a lot of people I don't know as well as I should, and I was saddened by how unfamiliar everything was to me. Yeah, I was in a familiar church. Sure, I knew a lot of faces. Yes, I count some of those people as friends. But do I really know them? Do they really know me?
I remember when my uncle Paul died of a brain tumor about 12 years ago. I slinked into the funeral parlor sheepishly, not really wanting to make conversation with anyone. Though I spent a lot of time as a child at my aunt and uncle's house, I never felt like part of that family. I never felt like they knew me or loved me. For some reason, I always got the distinct feeling that I was the troublemaker, the black sheep. Even now, when my dad talks to his sister, I know that the bulk of their conversation is centered around me, my mistakes, my bad choices, my failures. So I didn't feel welcomed in that family, and I didn't feel welcomed at that funeral.
But when people began to talk about my uncle and the choices he made as a man with a brain tumor, the faith choices, I began to see him in a different light, and I wondered why I hadn't spent more time getting to know him. The people who shared what they knew about my uncle were strangers to me, and the man they talked about was just as much of a stranger. I hadn't known him as a man of faith. I had known him as a tough, strong, condescending kind of man. I remembered him as the big, scary person who would make fun of me--not tease me, mind you, but make fun of me--for having knots in my hair or stains on my pants or dumb-looking dolls. I always felt small and insignificant and stupid around him. Who was this great man all of these people were talking about at this funeral? Why hadn't I met *that* man? Why hadn't *he* been my uncle? What had I done wrong to lose out on *that* relationship?
I'm not saying it was all his fault, either. I don't have such a great track record with carrying on deep, meaningful relationships. I think my expectations of myself are too high. If I can't be a perfect friend, a best friend, then there's no point in trying to be a friend at all, you know?
And I'm pretty hard on friends, too, to be fair. Not as hard as I am on myself, but pretty darn hard. I expect a lot of a friendship, though I may not say that aloud. So if you're not going to be a true blue friend, don't even make the effort. Harsh, huh? I guess the older I get, the more of a misanthrope I become.
Because I've put myself out there quite a few times, taken the risk, exposed my soft (and it really is soft) underbelly. And I've been hurt so many times because of that vulnerability, torn apart by people who claim to know me but have never really taken the time to do anything other than judge me and look for my faults and then tell me, in no uncertain terms, how badly I've screwed up, that it gets harder and harder to put my real feelings out here on this blog for fear of being misunderstood, misjudged, and truly attacked.
Yet here I am again. And why? Because one person told me tonight that they miss my blog entries. That they enjoy my writing.
My son told me recently that it's been proven that it takes seven positive things to cancel out one negative thing. In other words, if one person in my life tells me that I'm a screw-up, that I've failed, that I really let them down, it takes seven people saying great things about me to neutralize that negative thing. I think that's a bit conservative, actually. I'd venture to say that it takes ten positives. Maybe even twenty. And I'm not sure that those harsh, hateful words ever disappear. I think they just sit there, haunting every word I type, sometimes just lying about benignly, but only until someone even hints at one of my weaknesses, and then all of those negative things come back to the surface, sniffing for wounds and ripping open a major artery like the 1916 shark attacks along the Jersey Shore.
So maybe you were number seven, Brenda. Or maybe your sincerity was enough to be numbers five, six and seven altogether.
Or maybe it was you, Mel, when you asked me if I feel that blogging is a valid way of recording family history (and for those of you who are wondering, my answer was yes), listened to my less-than-expert ramblings with patience, and made me realize that, if I believe that these writings are valid, accurate records of a life, I should probably keep at it, even in the face of the nasty trolls, both real and imagined, who try to convince me of my worthlessness. Because, as I've said before, this blog is not for them. It's for me. It's for my family. It's for Kim and Paul and Catherine and Nicholas. It's for Brenda and Mel. It's for Jill and MamaGeph and Michael and Kris. It's for Tammy and Hope and Kathie and Gina. It's for Donna and Diane and True and Lil Sis, Raymond and I.M and Patrick and Dean, Peaceful Lady and Marie and MamaNutt and Linda and Gail and Analisa and TulipGirl. It's for you who come here to cry with me, and laugh with me and empathize and nod and cheer, to comment or not to comment, but to read. To think. To be changed. To muddle through with me.
And it's for God. It's what I promised him when I handed over this mess of a life, this brief, fleeting moment, this comic tragedy. It's his to do with what he wants, to use how he sees fit.
I thank God for Benny, even though I only knew him for a fraction of a second. His life and death gave opportunity for all of us with our own fleeting moments to gather in one room for long enough to get yet another glimpse into each other's lives.
Can we get together more often? And not just at weddings and funerals over coffee and lemon bars? Can we enmesh ourselves in each other's lives, cook with each other, sing with each other, worship together, watch movies together, get angry together, and still accept each other with the same unconditional love with which Christ accepts us?
I want to get to know you deeply, truly, so that we don't sit at each other's funerals and say, "Gosh. I wish I would have known her."
