Monthly Archives: March 2009

Suicide

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Suicide. This treacherous word burns into the marrow of your soul, leaves those behind with wrenched hearts, eyes flooded with tears, or dead as stones. Questions drift through the air, if there is air. Questions unanswered. Unanswerable. Never asked. Never answered. The knee-buckling burden of not knowing. Never knowing.

You are, if someone you know has committed suicide, in a kind of hell.

I know this hell. A beautiful young man I called my brother, one year my junior, put a rifle to the side of his head and fired. He was 23. The end. The birth-father I never met because he put on a tuxedo, slipped a flower into his lapel, put a handgun to his head, and fired. He was 68. The end. My mother who raised me, raised me I tell you, gathered pictures of her family all around her before she loaded her body with pills and alcohol. She was 68. The end.

I remember carrying her stained with blood from hemorrhaging mattress outside. I remember packing up her home, as if we were taking apart and packing away her life. I remember sitting on the floor of the empty room where she died writing, writing writing, writing in my journal, desperately hoping I would wake up and find the horror was all but a nightmare.

I ask you in gentle tones carried on the wings of angels to consider something for a moment. Try it on, if you will. Because if it lifts you, sends some warmth into the chill of loss and heartbreak, you deserve it. There is a cliché that says, Living well is the best revenge. Now breathe and think for a moment. Living well is the best revenge. In the case of suicide the revenge is not against the person who committed suicide, it is against the act of suicide.



There is something else I can tell you too. When someone you know commits suicide, it is not your fault. I know these words may sit like pebbles in sand right now, hard to see, believe, hard to breathe in, but they are true. I will not lie to you. It is not your fault. Laying blame against yourself or any living person is understandable because you, we, are trying to make rational sense where the norm of rational sense does not apply. Have the feelings you have, but don’t let them define you. The person who committed suicide is responsible for the suicide. This truth does not make them bad or evil. It very likely means they were in so much pain they were tragically only able to identify suicide as a way out of the pain.

Hold them close to your hearts. They are not gone from there. Even death has its impotence. But as close as you hold them, hold yourself and each other even closer. You are the living, and you deserve each others loving embrace right now. You do. I promise.

Remember the basics. Remember to eat, bathe, brush your teeth, wash your hair, – breathe. You are alive, and that is a beautiful thing. I promise.

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Here Comes Soil Boy

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So I’ve decided to plant a vegetable garden, my very first. A serious vegetable garden. I’m thinking something like 600 square feet, which is, when it comes to size, plenty serious to me.

There is a wealth in poverty. A fixed income keeps you, if breath deep and relax, focused on some basics. And basics can be wonderful. Cost saving measures can be creative, and, in the case of this garden I am planning, freeing. I have done some reading about gardening. The importance of spacing the seeds correctly, the correct depth to plant the seeds, the benefits of compost, a process that suddenly gives your garbage welcome meaning.

I am raring to go. I have staked out an area in the back, I know to plant the taller items on the north side of the garden so they don’t block the sun for the other plants. I know in my heart I will develop a bond with the plants and I already know that when the season ends and they return to the soil there will be tears for me because I will be losing friends. But we all return to the soil in one way or another, so how bad could it be?

I have some seeds already: tomatoes, onions, squash, corn, sunflowers, peppers and beans. I’m even looking into canning food. All these things cost saving measures and the newness of this experience almost makes me clap my hands with childlike glee. There may be moments when I do exactly that.

So, today I go to my local gardening center. I love it there. It is run by a family and they are all attentive, kind, very knowledgeable, patient and, as I found out today, non-judgmental.

I get two seed flats that handle 50 seeds each, a few packets of seeds, and a gardening pamphlet. The young fellow who has been helping me begins to ring up my items. He says, “You’ve got soil for the flats?”

“Soil?”

“Could be helpful.”

The two us are pretty much rolling in laughter. I say, “Betcha next time you see me roll up you’re gonna say, “Here comes Soil Boy”.”

It was a wonderful moment. Now, if I can make the garden half as wonderful as that moment, there will be some mighty fine veggies in the Kahrmann house this year.
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I Knew

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While it can be all of unsettling and scary, change can induce growth, open doors, shed light on the possibilities in life that heretofore have been hidden in darkness. And so it is that I am deeply contemplating change.



There is no doubt that March 28 has me thinking hard and feeling deep. I will enter the minute my father never reached in life at 1:44 in the afternoon, and from then on, my life will be for the two of us in a way like never before. My father was born on February 20 and died at age 55 on August 16. I was born October 2. I am 55. If you count out the same number of days from October 2, you arrive at March 28. My father died at 1:43 in the afternoon.



I remember. I was 15. Around 1:30 that afternoon a couple of friends of mine who knew my father was not expected to live through the day came with me on a walk from my house into the Village of Nyack. My father was in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. We had received a call that morning saying he would not live through the day. My mother had chosen to stay home and not go see him, explaining to us that he was unconscious, in an iron-lung, and wouldn’t know she was there in the first place. Then and now her choice to not be at his side, let him die alone, staggers me.



We were 10 minutes or so into our walk when all the air went out of me and I doubled over. I knew. Out loud I said, “He just died.” My friends said, Naw, common, Pete, he’s okay. He’s gonna be okay. Their words were a lifeline. I grabbed on.



We bought soda and candy and walked back to my house. I went into the kitchen. My mother was standing at the counter with her back to me. She was cutting up vegetables. She turned to face me. Her face was almost stern. She said, “Peter, it happened.” My father was dead. I walked over and hugged her. I went into the living room where my friends were waiting. “He died,” I said. We left the house. My mother was still in the kitchen cutting vegetables.



As March 28 draws closer, I am contemplating change. I may resign from one position, focus on another, write more than ever, and create my own bucket list. There are some people and circumstances I will shed from my life.



There are some things that will not change, now or ever. I will, now and always, write and read. I will, now and always, fight for the persecuted. I will, now and always, cherish my relationship with nature. I will love those close to me with all my heart. And always, always, I will go through my life with my father at my side, now, on March 28, and beyond.



Yes, it is true, change can be unsettling and scary. It can be freeing too. And of the many things I know about my father, I know he wanted me to be free – to be me.

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The Dream Worth Living

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Carl Sandburg called it “The best book ever written about how to write” and I agree. The book, entitled “If You Want to Write” with the subtitle of “A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit” is written by Brenda Ueland. It was first published in 1938.

Ms. Ueland’s beautifully written work, when all is said and done, is about the inherent right and, if I may be so bold, responsibility we each have to give ourselves permission to be who we are, and discover that the joy of life comes from the very experience of being you and not from material wealth, or the sincere and insincere accolades of others.

The reward is the experience of life itself. The kind of car you drive is, in my opinion anyway, not life. But what you see around you or the music you are listening to or the conversation you are having with a loved one while you drive, these are the rewards of life.

When I talk with Michael, without question, my closest friend, so much so I experience him as my brother, the joy is in the content of our conversations, not the kind of phone we may be on. Nearly always before we hang up we say love you to each other. What a shame it would be if either of us gave a rat’s ass about the kind of phone we are on – we’d miss the experience of the conversation.

I would recommend Ms. Ueland’s book to anyone who wants to be reminded that being who you are in life is the dream worth living – and it is. I promise.
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Thi

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Her name is Thi, pronounced tee. She is Vietnamese and Buddhist and her name means poem. It is a name that fits her well. Thi was the first person to teach me something about Buddhism, how Buddha believed that much of human suffering was and is rooted in our relationship with things. Things we have come to believe we should have, lamenting those things we don’t have, clinging to the things we do have, as if, and I imagine this was Buddha’s point, our very identities and worth were based on the presence or absence of these things in our lives. a

Thi was and is a truly beautiful and extraordinary person with remarkable depth of spirit and thought. Like anyone you genuinely like in life, when you are with them, talking with them, the joy of the moment is because of the person you are sharing time with, not because of what they are wearing or how much their watch or clothing cost. Right there is a reminder that real happiness in life doesn’t have a damned thing to do with things. For the life of me I can’t remember being in a conversation with someone and thinking, I’m having a wonderful time because, thank God, they’re wearing a Rolex and not a Timex!

Many who read this were, like me, raised in a culture that socializes (brainwashes) us into believing the acquisition of things is, whether we recognize this pattern or not, the driving force of our lives. And when I say things, I’m not just talking about material things like cars, fancy technology and such. I’m also talking about things like job titles, positions in society, of monetary wealth, of fame, of having the prettiest or handsomest mate and so forth. The word having being the dangerous word there, you don’t have anyone. No one is or ought to be a possession.

Life is a great teacher. I think the best teacher of all. There are times the lessons are not particularly pleasant, but they can become so if you have grown comfortable in your own skin and know that no challenge in life takes you away from you. If you stay in the warm light of that awareness, you are better able to digest the lesson, even if it doesn’t always taste good – at least not at first. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out happiness is not found in things, in our possession of things. Sometimes life offers us the chance to learn this, or, better put, discover this.

A case in point. I have recently gone back on disability and, save for a speaking engagement or two coming up, things are walnut tight on the economic front, and so I am streamlining things on the economic front. I was using a smart phone with all the bells and whistles. Realizing I could cut the cost of the phone in half by going back to a regular ol’ cell phone, I proceeded to do exactly that. And oh my, the upset I felt at having to put away the smart phone. You’d have thought I was having a limb removed, for Godsakes.

And then I thought of Thi, and Buddhism, and I realized I was in one of those moments that Buddha warned us about. Suddenly an experience that was giving me pain shifted and began giving me joy. The kind of exhilarating joy that one feels when they discover something wonderful in life.

Something for you to think about. I live in rural area. There are hills and streams and lakes and fields and farms all around me. There are birds and deer and rabbits and there is a big sky here. I don’t know where you live but the point I am about to make here still applies. How often have you been going to an appointment, the store, to see a friend, and on your way there you are so fixed on where you are going and what it is you want that you never notice the world you are traveling through?

It’s not all about things. Don’t miss your life. Stay open to it. Love it. Breathe it in. It is yours, and it’s wonder doesn’t have a damned thing to do with things.

When I am watching the beauty of a sunset, or watching birds on the feeder, a huge smile on my face at their antics, the last thing I am thinking about is what I am wearing or what I own or don’t own, I am too busy living. And isn’t that what it’s all about in the first place, living?
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