Fading Flames

Mama, Aunt Phillis, Alice (my mother), and Daddy.
Mama and Daddy were my aunt and mother's parents.

I keep coming back to these old photos and studying them careful. This was taken the year I was born and what you see in this photo is what I always saw. Oh, there were terrible times and things I'd like to forget. Like everyone else, they did stupid things. They cried and got angry and depressed but if there are any good memories of my life, this photo reflects them. They always seemed to be laughing.

This image also reflects any gatherings of my family. We usually end up laughing at something and often it involves a story from the lives of one of these people or something one of us has done. We are a family of natural humorist. We are funny without trying to be funny. And we laugh most at ourselves.

This morning it occurred to me that this photo also depicts the three women who most profoundly affected my life and directed its  course. These women determined my outlook, my character and my goals. They made me most of who I am today, good and bad. I can't imagine what my life would have become without them. They gave me the strength to survive trials and turmoil and grief and continue laughing, even through tears. They gave me a desire to become more. I love them, each in a slightly different way but far more than any of them could guess.

Mama would say, "My Cindy can do anything." My aunt always says, "You are so smart." My mother always said, "I'm proud of you." I had no idea who they were talking about. I wanted to be like all of them to one degree or another. I wanted to love the way Mama loved. I wanted to be the kind of Godly women Mama and my aunt were. I wanted to be as beautiful as my mother, to have that presence that made heads turn when you enter a room. She drew people like moths to a flame. I always thought if I could have inherited the best qualities of these three women I could shake the world. I do not think I've ever approached that goal.

I can't say my mother and I were close. Her parents raised me but I still loved her, with bitterness and then, with resignation. I loved her humor, her laughter, and her singing. She had a beautiful voice and I loved riding in the car with her and listening to her and Mama sing gospel songs. They'd let us kids sing with them but those two voices were about as close to a heavenly choir that I've ever gotten. I loved her ability to go out job hunting at 8 and come back with a job at 10.

Put her in a crowded room with boring people and where she was standing would be a party. When she was a waitress her customers were the happiest in the room. It was not unusual for her to carry home $200 in tips for an evening's work and that was in the 70's. People just flocked to her and she reveled in that. When I was a little girl and she came home from time to time, I loved the moments when I was the focus of that dazzling smile and I felt the warmth of that flame. I was special for a little while and when she left, I always missed her.

Thursday I will see her one last time. The flame of my mother's life is extinguished. She's left me again.

The End of 2012

This is my last post of an old and miserable year. There are no words that I can write that even begin to express how glad I am to see it end. It could not even end on a happy note. Thursday I will bury another part of my life.

I will hope for a bright and happy New Year for you all.

Deadly December

My mother died today. I wish I had something to say that was meaningful and profound. I don't. I hate December. Her parents raised me and I called her mother Mama. Mama had a stroke on December 24, 1973 and died January 2, 1974. Daddy, my mother's dad, died December 10, 1990. His sister died in December. My husband, Jerry, died January 29, 2009, ten days after our anniversary. Is it any wonder that I await the Big Three holidays with absolute dread? I'd love to find something joyful in the season but it is pretty much horrible.

I am actually not feeling much of anything but a kind of depression. I recognize this for what it is and I know I'll have to be careful for a while. I will be leaving on Wednesday to go home for the funeral. They're trying to do it on Thursday but lets face it, New Years Day is not the best time to arrange a funeral.

I'm ready to adjust my calendar to eliminate December. Maybe January, too.

Let's Ban Everything!

I do not know why it is so difficult for legislators, politicians or whatever, to see that banning something never works. A negative action never creates a positive outcome.

Banning alcohol did not stop people from obtaining it and it created a whole new segment of society: organized crime on a grand scale. Interestingly, the World Health Organization reports here, Alcohol, that "The harmful use of alcohol results in 2.5 million deaths each year." The drug that was once banned and is now sold legally across the nation kills more people than guns!

Drugs are a perfect example of a "no solution problem". You can ban them but banning drug use has not stopped usage and created a second segment of society: drug cartels. Those who want them, buy them illegally and use them. There is no way to register street drugs. There is no way to identify where they came from if people won't talk. There is no way to control usage because usage is in the control of the user. Drugs are rampant in this country. According to this LA Times post 37,792 died in 2010 from illegal drug use and that was only a first estimate. The number was expected to rise.

However, according to Datablog in 2011, there was  "12,664 murders in the US. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms." So... should we consider much more than firearms? I mean, knives, hammers, crowbars, automobiles, drugs, oh... and axes, of course. (See Responsible Parties).

According, to the Datablog  report gun violence is trending down! And for those who want all the stats on illegal drug use here is a report that probably cost millions to prepare from dozen of agencies. National Drug Control Strategy This is a comprehensive report prepared for the President for 2012.

Banning anything as a means of control is notoriously ineffective. In the case of guns, this is ludicrous  We have the technology in place to exert control over who owns a gun. Every gun sold can be tracked to the person bought it. Licensing can be monitored with a national database if they want to do so. Criminal records should already be in a national database where they can be cross referenced with gun purchases. More than one criminal has bought a gun through regular channels. Of course, then you have to start documenting those with violent tendencies and mental disorders. This should keep most law enforcement agencies pretty busy just keeping track of the legal guns. Of course, it still won't prevent the illegal ones from finding their way into the hands of the violent criminal or insane.

So, lets ban all drugs, every conceivable weapon, vehicles that travel over the national speed limit, and all alcohol. That will definitely insure that law abiding citizens won't be able to hurt anyone. As for the criminal element... they'll do exactly what they're doing now - purchasing illegal weapons and guns and drinking and driving.

Responsible Parties

I read this article after my friend +Chris D posted it on her Facebook page: Anger as French psychiatrist is found guilty after patient hacks man to death

This post is just my thoughts on this timely subject. The article relates that a psychiatrist got a one year suspended sentence for failing to recognize her patient could be dangerous. He escaped his therapy session in hospital and while free, he murdered his grandmother's boyfriend with an ax. Not they have prosecuted the doctor for failing to recognize the danger. I'm not sure she didn't recognize the danger but she is responsible for what happened?  I'm not convinced of that.

One of two things will happen once you start prosecuting people for "not recognizing the danger" a mentally disturbed person presents to others. First, a lot of people, mostly harmless people, will be brought before a panel of mental health professionals who will be terrified to get it wrong. That alone is scary.

Second, the truly dangerous won't be able to find medical help anywhere and their families will be held accountable and fined because doctors will be too afraid they will be sent to jail for a misdiagnosis or for not recognizing a danger. Mental health care is already in a sad state.

A third scenario could come about if wisdom prevails... apparently several other doctors actually recognized that the situation was so serious with this patient they "suggested" she give the patient to someone else. She refused. Note, doesn't it sound as if a "team" was involved in his treatment and that his behavior had escalated? Why wouldn't a team force this doctor to remand her patient to a more secure institution under someone else's care? When other doctors were aware that the situation was dangerous or the patient was not being helped why are they not also questioned or even charged? He was known to be dangerous by everyone!

For days I've read articles suggesting that Adam Lanza's mother did nothing to protect society. Immediately people began to lay blame on the mother. Why didn't she ask for help? Why didn't she do something? Why did she have guns? It must be her fault he killed all those people, right? A recent article suggested she had begun to take steps to have him committed and this may have been what sent him over the edge. But how do we know she hadn't tried to handle things in some way?

I can't begin to know what this woman was living with for years but based on what is now known, she's handled it alone for a long time, growing more and more frightened of what was happening to her child. The most recent months must have been a boiling cauldron of fear in her home. If reports are true, she had begun steps to have him committed. She had reached her limit. How sad it came too late and her head was blown off before she could get the help she needed.

As a parent, I don't think any of us want to believe we have insane children. But this isn't the first time children have harmed parents. It is the first time they managed to harm the parent and nearly two dozen others. She should have asked for help? Really? From whom? Does the public really know how difficult getting help for this sort of thing is? Obviously, not.

A few decades ago some political know-nothings dumped mental patients on the streets to fend for themselves. Funding, you know, and there was adequate help out there without having to institutionalize folks who could dress themselves and wipe their own bottom. Never mind that most of the time many of these institutionalized patients didn't know their own names or what planet they were on. They became the homeless, rooting around in garbage cans and sleeping where they could find a warm cardboard box.And the processes of getting help for new cases... unbelievably difficult.  The process of getting someone committed is nearly impossible. For good reasons and bad ones.

The Adam Lanza's of the world are capable of coherent, even highly intelligent activity. The majority of people who knew him appear to have never seen a violent action or more than a passing weirdness. Are they to blame for this tragedy because they failed to recognize that he was a danger? No. Is anyone capable of identifying psychopaths? No. And we don't really know what Adam Lanza was suffering from, at this point. There is no diagnosis.

I suspect there are many more of these children out there. There are many more of these mothers and fathers out there. What do you really think is going to happen when they try to get help?

The doctor in France made the wrong decision probably in the belief that she could help. She's responsible for not recognizing her limitations.

Adam Lanza's mother is probably guilty of being a mother who loved her son and simply could not believe he'd ever hurt anyone...until it was too late. Had Adam not killed his own mother, would we crucify her for his actions? I believe we would.

Blaming others is a coping mechanism for people who don't know what else to do. I do not think other people are responsible for an insane person's actions. I do think we should take steps to protect ourselves and others but I know that generally, it is a waste of time. Ask anyone who has been harassed by a disturbed person living next door how difficult it is to get help to stop it. Adam Lanza is a murderer. His mother is one of his victims and I suspect she was a victim for a long time before he killed her.

The problem here is not guns. The problem here is we can't know who will go on a rampage and murder our children. Instead of spending millions enforcing a ban on owning guns,why can't we spend millions finding way to prevent another massacre at the hands of people like Lanza? He isn't the first to do this. Find ways to actually help families of the mentally ill rather than closing doors in their faces, tying them up with years of red tape, and making them out to be the monsters.

Evil will always find a way. Please note that the mental patient in France used an axe to murder his victim. Evil will use any means necessary to kill, steal, and destroy society. Our job is to find ways to combat evil.