Threesomes, Spooning, and Cake: A dying Man's Regrets (of sorts)

I started this blog with the intention of posting every week. I have to admit though life has been hectic. I haven’t been able to stop and appreciate it, or get inspired by it long enough to have the words to communicate my experiences in a blog post. I don’t mean to say there haven’t been real genuine treasurable moments, because there have been many. But they’re fleeting. They pass, and we move on.  It has been many moons since I’ve been inspired to write like I am now. I woke up this morning and I just had to get this on paper. More than I had to feed the kids, or feed myself, or start the dishwasher. I had to get this on paper because it’s beautiful, and raw, and real, and terribly stoic.

I’m not sure where to even begin, so I’ll start by saying there’s all this business on whether or not one is a “crier.” People say things like, “I cried, and I am not a crier.” This statement is meant to give the receiver the impression that the moment was so intense that it made someone cry who ordinarily wouldn’t.  Or they’ll say something such as, “For the first time in a long time my first response was not to cry.” I don’t know what this one means exactly, but I’m pretty sure I’ve said it myself, and meant it.

Nowadays I don’t know whether or not I’m a “crier,” but I do cry. Sometimes when I cry it freaks people out. They’ve said things to me such as, “It’s so weird to see you cry.” Or, “I don’t know what to do when you cry because it’s so uncommon.” My son asked me why I don’t cry when people die. The response is complicated, and could easily take up an entire post on its own, but in short I go numb. But that’s not entirely true either. Sometimes I just see the beauty in the beast of death.

So in a way these people are right, I don’t cry a lot. It makes me feel like a pussy. I used to though. Oh god, I used to cry over everything. Then one day I just stopped. Instead of crying today I take a deep breath and say something like, “well this shit sucks,” and then just handle business.

I don’t think I did it on my own though, and by that I mean I don’t think I made the decision to just stop being a crier. I’ll get to more on how that happened later.

Anyway, I woke up thinking about crying today because well, I woke up crying, which is rare. And that doesn’t make me tough or strong, or anything like that. I think it’s safe to say I’m part of the majority of people who do not wake up crying.

But here’s the thing.

I’ve been communicating with this man, and odds are, he is dying. Maybe sooner, maybe later, but he’s ill, and unless he gets a miracle he will die of this disease. This man is special to me. He came into my life by way of the “trickledown effect,” and he helped set me free.

You see, he gave all this spiritual wisdom to this gal and she passed it on to me. It was just in the nick of time too. I was a real Debbie Downer. I cried all the time, stared at the wall, and contemplated suicide. It was a really tricky situation too, because I thought I was a part of a spiritual community that was supposed to be saving my life. Despite doing everything they did, and everything they told me to do, I still went home and cried and stared at my wall, and thought about who would care for my babies if I killed myself. I wondered how I could make it look like an accident. I’d go home from those spiritual meetings wondering why it wasn’t working for me and why I hated it so much. But I kept pretending things were okay, hoping that if I could just fake it long enough, I’d surely make it. I smiled when I didn’t want to. I talked to people I didn’t like. I acted better than I felt, and I got further and further from who I really was at my core. This in turn, made me more and more miserable with each passing day. The rules of this community, which were laid out for me to live and abide by, made me feel like a wild caged lion. I was angry and wanted to bite someone’s head off. I felt so trapped because I thought if I wanted to live I’d have to keep doing this, and that thought made me want to vomit. Now- I’ve always been a little bit of a hellion, a little rebellious, way too curious, and quite frankly pretty stubborn. The conformed life was not one for me, but damn I tried like hell.

Then something really cool happened though. I started talking to this gal (the one that was bestowed with all this, what I call wisdom) and she was like, “Well maybe you don’t have to do any of that stuff. You should read the material again and decide for yourself…”

So I did. I started to see that I could live my life based on spiritual principals, rather than rules, and I started applying them. To make a long story short, I was set free, and I started to feel happy. I started to build real solid connections with people that mattered to me. I started being a part of the community I lived in. I started really participating (by choice) in this adulthood thing- and liking it. This was the result of one man taking the time to talk to a woman about spiritual principals and how to apply them to one’s own life. She then talked to me about those same things. I’ve yet to be restored to my old life (thank god), but I have been able to create a pretty cool new one with the help of that woman, God, and the experience that was passed down from this man. Finding God can be a complex thing in itself. Different people have different ways of going about it- and it just so happened their way worked for me.

So, fast-forward some. Him and I were communicating last night, and I told him I want to write his story down. The whole thing, not the one that everyone else gets but I want to write down all the nitty gritty shit in between. He doesn’t think he’s book-worthy, and maybe he’s not. Not by the standards of the #1 Best Seller community anyway. But, I feel like I need to do it. Maybe for me, and maybe for everyone else who may not have had the luxury of meeting this man in all his authenticity, sincerity, humor and dignity.

I asked him if he considered himself a Christian, and he told me he does, but that he ain’t a very good one (I disagree). Christians amaze me. In the face of a painful, brutal, unfair death they await salvation from Jesus. That to me is beautiful.

Life is fragile. My communication with him makes that abundantly clear. There is no rhyme or reason as to who goes and who stays. This is glaring as well. And as many times as I’ve found beauty in death, I feel like there is more beauty in this man’s breath. There is something great about this man. The way he always treated me like an equal, the way he’s reminded me before that he’s safe. He’s never treated me like he knew more or better than me. He’s unpretentious, and oblivious to his gift, and he allows others the freedom to live their lives without interrupting the process. He’s filled with the type of experience that not only inspires, but can actually save lives when shared. He does this often. He is in essence, an open book.

So, as we continue to talk about his health and how things will play out, he says to me, “Steph… I don’t have many if any regrets. I’m not sorry for anything I’ve done, but there are some things that I wish I had done that I didn’t do. Not many, but there are a few… and I had the chance to do them and passed them up. Nothing monumental. Silly stuff really. I wish I had kept playing in bands, and had a threesome, and had one really fast car. I wish I would have spooned with more girls too, and ate more cake.”

I tell him matter of fact that threesomes are overrated and I’m going to make it a point to eat more cake in his honor.

Afterwards I went to the bathroom and balled like a baby for a man that I’ve only been in the company of maybe 5 whole times, but who helped save the wretched little mess that I was. A man that lived a really simple life and at the end of his 55 years only wishes he ate more cake.

 So at the end of the day maybe I cry for good reason. Maybe my tears have a mind of their own, and shed as they see fit. I guess I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that if I’m lucky he’ll keep sharing his stories with me, and I’ll know a little bit more about the man who helped save my life and has been rooting for me ever since.