No, use this Bible.

I was driving back home after being away for the weekend and I wound up listening to a radio show on Public Radio International called Smiley & West hosted by Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornell West. They were talking about a lot of things, but the most interesting thing to me was an interview with an author who wrote a book about the Great Migration. (The Great Migration being the moves of millions of Black people in the 1900s from the south to the north.) The radio show really caught my attention when I heard that when testifying in courtrooms in the Jim Crow south, there were different Bibles used for Black people than for white people. Are you kidding me? White people really think of everything.
On the radio show, the hosts Smiley and West, and the guest, author Isabel Wilkerson, talked about whether Wilkerson thought it a fair analysis to describe the discrimination and prejudice Black people experienced as terrorism. That really made my ears perk up, because I'd never heard the term terrorism used that way, but I have to agree that that's a good way to describe it. There was also a lot of talk about the caste system where Black people were relied upon for cheap labor but were discriminated against every time they turned around. (It's a whole 'nother ball of wax to talk about cheap labor and who's relied upon to provide it nowadays, so we can save that topic.) Wilkerson also mentioned that it wasn't okay for a Black motorist to pass a white motorist regardless of how slow the white motorist was going. Ick.
The book is called The Warmth of Other Suns and Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize for writing it. She conducted 1,200 interviews as a part of her research, and she mentioned the positive impact moving had on all of the descendants of Black people who migrated north and the impact those people have had on American culture. (Toni Morrison being one.) Go Isabel Wilkerson. I can't wait to read the book.

Milestones, I guess.

Two friends and I were on a walk the other day and my friend decided walking backwards up a very steep hill instead of walking forwards would make him feel less winded. He runs marathons, so I'm not sure how this could have made him winded, but he said he also liked being able to see how far we had come. And, being that I like to notice that I've passed a milestone, take a look at how far I've come, and feel encouraged by that progress enough that I can keep putting one foot in front of the other through the shitstorms that life brings, I'll focus on that right now.
Today, I talked with a guy at work about our coworker and his good friend, M. Before I learned that M's mom has terminal cancer, I remember seeing her at work crying. She wasn't making any attempt to wipe away the tears, she was just sitting in this corner cube, tucked back between nondescript grey cube walls having a cry. Back at that point, my dad was alive and didn't have cancer and I felt this omigoshthat'ssad feeling about M's situation, but didn't think about it a ton like I would now. Now, I feel like we have a connection in that I can relate to what she and her family might be going through. And, I just kind of get it. I found out last week that her mom's health is declining really rapidly and she's away from the office spending time with her and helping take care of her. I found out today that hospice thinks her mom has about a week or two to live. And, I found out that her dad had a cataract surgery today. As if your spouse dying of cancer wasn't enough, why don't you have a cataract surgery? I feel really bad for their family. I also noticed that while I can't say I'm jumping for joy each day because I get to be at whatever phase of grieving I am in as a grieving daughter in month two following a parent's death, I am convinced that my day-to-day this week is a lot easier than it was in mid-February when I packed up a week's worth of clothes and went home to spend time with my dad before he died. Things aren't particularly easy now - some days (many days?) they're pretty damn excruciating, but still it is an improvement from where I was. And, that means that my world is less challening than M's, which means that with time things might actually sort of get easier or go back to something normal. And hopefully that happens for M., too.
Knowing that someone is going to die, seeing them in a lot of pain, and having to adapt to the changes they're experiencing really sucks. Dying from cancer is, from what I've seen, painful and gruesome. Things get boiled down to the thoughts I would have or hear family saying like It's good that this person gets to die at home surrounded by loved ones and Isn't it nice that it's sunny outside for them in these last few days and When people have heart attacks and die suddenly they don't get to say their goodbyes so maybe this is better than that in some ways? And, well, this person who is dying is out of their mind on pain killers but at least they're not in pain? Or not as bad of pain as they would be otherwise? And that is better than this same type illness killing someone, say, before we invented Methadone? And when you add up all of those ways of looking at things, it still doesn't add up to a whole lot. I came this close to taking a bottle of my dad's Lorazapam and heading for the hills but I restrained myself. And, had my friend mail me my own little stash of Lorazapam. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
I was also talking with another friend today, another M, about when her dad died three years ago. Her dog died the month prior, then her dad died, then she had to write her dissertation for college and sell his house that was 3,000 miles away in the months just after all that. She wrote the dissertation, knocked 20 or so things off her to do list each day, and sold the house (but without making a penny). Raise your hand if you want to have power of attorney over your dad's estate in your very early twenties because your older brother probably isn't responsible enough to take care of that type of business - that on top of trying to graduate from college and process your emotions about your dad being gone. Oh, and six months later she shattered her heel in about a bazillion different places while cliff jumping. I suppose the plus side is that the cliff jumping was in Italy which makes her look like adventurous (for cliff jumping) and cultured (for doing her second study abroad in Italy), at least. (She's had three surgeries to fix her heel and it's been a big hassle. Don't cliff jump.) She said it took a long time before she could talk about her dad dying without dissolving into tears, and said after maybe six months she felt a bit more normal. That means I'm four months away from normal but I have to break my heel into a bazillion pieces. Some days that feels like a fair trade. She called it The Year from Hell and she saved her planner because every day was so jam packed full of stuff, busyness, life.
Our family friend A, my sister, and I were talking about me being overdue for a blog entry. I said I didn't have anything funny to write about, and A suggested we dress up our family cat and have a cat fashion show. I said that reminded me of when Hugh Hefner's girlfriends on the show Girls Next Door would throw birthday parties for their dogs because otherwise the show wouldn't have much narrative arc. But I plan to keep writing about the kind of stuff that hurts to read. Like the time when I got a new cell phone, had the people at Sprint transfer all my numbers over from the old phone to the new one, and then called what I thought was my Mom's home phone number. But it wasn't. It was my dad's work cell phone number. And there was no outgoing message on the voicemail. And I just wanted to fall between the cracks in the sidewalk. Or, as my lovely and amazing sister described the feeling to me today: cry, then go punch people in the face.