Pico de Orizaba

Pico de Orizaba
Taken from Huatusco, Veracruz, the closest town to Margarita's family's ranch.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

I'm not dead...yet... Never died. A foolish childhood fantasy...

I wanted to be superman but I'm not.  I thought I was a dead man walking but I wasn't.  I've always been very alive, yet vulnerable, as are all non-comic humans... 

Dead man walking was a childhood fantasy of a boy running away from an extremely difficult situation, beyond his control.  Very little difference between leaving and dying...  The difference is that death in this human dimension is permanent.  When you leave, when you run away, you can always run back.  Aside from all the many different forms of suicide that exist (smoking and driving recklessly and injesting things you know can harm you are forms of suicide; one can call them slow suicide) there is nothing we can do that guarrantees we won't return one day.  How we experience life or how we experience ourselves changes over time.  Maybe we realize we're no longer that child in that situation we must escape.  The language changes with the perspective, with the experience.  

I'm not a dead man walking.  I wished I were dead.  And I was afraid of what seemed like the perpetual imminence of death.  I've always been very alive, very vital; a very feeling human being.  Maybe I dreamed of not feeling.  However, in as much as I may have dreamed of numbing myself, of not feeling or reacting, I still felt.  I never learned to control the situation or make the horrible situation into an acceptable situation.  I couldn't prevent the death of my father or the home-life situation from becoming what it became.  I was only 4.5-years-old when he died.  I was 12-years-old when I learned that I inhereted his disease and that I must have my colon removed.  Had it been within my power of deciding, I would have told the specialists and my mother that I wouldn't have the surgery the following year...  Maybe I would have opted for dying one day.  

I'm not dead.  I never died.  I couldn't take my life, even if I wanted to.  

But my life is taking me.  It was always taking me...

When I leaned over that abyss into the unknown of the new world, my new life called Mexico, I thought I had symbolically killed myself.  Yes, I had finally succeeded in running away.  And, maybe I killed my physical past and my historical past entered into a gradual fading away.  But, I continued on the same constant plain...  I'm the same person, yet evolving, aumenting experience and skills.  But, I'm still that same living person.  That same living-dying person.

You aren't dead until you're dead.  But maybe you are dying.  Maybe there are irreversables in this lifetime, such as the illness I inhereted from my father.  I've been fighting it for the past few years.  Maybe I thought there were miracles we could create with intelligent/conscious diets through researching.  And, maybe I encounted some of those miracles.  However, I do believe that we all have a clock ticking.  One day we will awaken to the alarm and find that this dream is over.  

Lately I've been telling myself not to go back in the past.  However, the problem I've encountered is that some aspects of the past are inextricably attached to our present and our future, such as what we injested as children and the long-term repercussions for our health, especially if we have blah blah blah on our chromosome 5 that de-activates tumor self-destruct button...  Did you know that gene experts can read your the placement of the genome on your chromosome 5 and tell you how, when and where you will become ill?  My genome was placed differently than that of my sister and my two cousins because my polyps didn't disappear, I developed osteomas and fibrosis and didn't develop thyroid cancer or desmoid tumors...  Did you know that FAP/Gardners Syndrome also places us at risk of brain tumors (like the one that killed my cousin Stacy), pancreatic, small bowel, stomach and bladder cancer?  As I said in 1996, "they know so little about FAP/Gardners Syndrome.  But what I'm realizing is that they know that there is much more to come..."  Yesterday I read in the Stanford Medical Cancer Institute webside that what I suspected in 1996 and what the American Medical Association negated, is verified today...  

31 years after my baptism by fire initiation into the true FAP experience we still find ourselves without being able to alter genes to save our children from "unnecessary" surgeries and "unnecessary" suffering.  Yes, we can read the genes to rescue our children from suffering the experience of enemas and sigmoidescopes.  However, who is born FAP is born FAP with all the wonderful life experience.

I'm sorry if it seems this has gone sour.  It's not true.  I'm typing while lying in bed.  There are things I must do. But I don't have the energy to do them.

Fortunately, I'm not the FAP person suffering his 17th or 33rd surgery.  I've recently met them on various Facebook groups...  I've learned a lot and hopefully have shared some interesting information with them...  One man was first diagnosed with FAP at the age of 50.  I didn't know they lived undiagnosed that long!  But it turns out that there is a group of FAP genetics that shows late in life.  I also learned that 30% are "new" cases; meaning that they didn't have a family history.  But, now they will create a new FAP family history with their offspring.  Today, checking a young adult for polyps in their colon does not guarrantee that they are free of the gene, since they may not show until middle age... So, that doesn't protect their children who will not be tested. 

No, this is not about FAP or Gardner's Syndrome.  It is about the difference of being alive and being dead.  The question is about quality of life.  It's about what is within your control and what is beyond your control.  When you are dead... well, there is nothing you can do, is there?  But when you are alive?

It depends upon the stage of your life, your family's economic situation, the socio-political situation of the community, region or country within which you live.  When you are a child...

I stored all of my original dead man walking writings because they were very personal...  No.  Yes.  But, that wasn't the whole issue.  It was because I had planned differently for the blog than how it turned out.  I thought I was a better writer than I realized I truly was.  I thought there was something inspirational to share with others.  But, the truth is that the story became more a diatribe... an "apology" not as in saying "I'm sorry" but as is meant philosophically, literally or politically.  An explanation of "why"?  As if I was still seeking understanding from someone.  How can I inspire someone from whom I'm seeking understanding?

And why seek someone's understanding? Why explain? And why apologize?

Going back in the past does not change anything.  It may help you forgive by understanding :-)  It may help you accept.  But it doesn't change the course of your life between the events and the day you decide to return.

The relationships we developed or we destroyed or that never existed remain the same regardless of going back in the past.  Most people can't understand or don't wish to understand or don't have the time or energy for understanding.  And maybe they aren't truly that valuable in our lives for making such an effort and for possibly wasting so much time.  

The relationships developed as they developed, be it part of our destiny or be it part of the nature of the events/circumstances/family structures or the nature of those relationships and their needs.  

I imagine the best relationships developed without reason just as did the worst ones. 

For instance; why did my Uncle Stan physically abuse me when his only brother (my father) was dying in Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City?

I don't know.  And I never would have had the guts to ask him had he lived long enough for me to have asked him that today...  And he may not have been able to been honest enough or strong enough to be sincere and answer that question.  I was always afraid of him.  

He's dead.  There is nothing anyone can do.  The event was and helped shape me.  What can you do?  But the relationship was born and maintained as it was maintained.  I was just a kid; 4.5 years old and growing.  What could I do?  

I didn't choose the style of relationship.  I didn't choose my father's illness and sudden death and all those repercussions.  I didn't choose my mother's giving my uncle $40,000 of the death insurance money that would help pay for season Giants and Knicks tickets and, private schools and giant bar and bat mitzvahs and trips to Italy for my cousins while we received their hand-me-downs and I was called "Poor Boy" in 7th and 8th grade... 

And how would things been had it been Stanley who died first and not my father?  Imagine that Momma's and Grandmama's boy Seth, Mr. Superior.  Had the cards been turned... But, I'm sure my father wouldn't have done to you what your father did to us... 

And I wonder what price my Uncle paid for his way of relating to his deceased brother's family and why he related to us that way.

A friend of mine says, "Forgive your Uncle so that he can finally rest."  And I wonder, "why should I do him that favor?"  

Hell is the life we create for ourselves... 

or maybe not.  

I didn't kill my father and I wasn't my uncle's size for inviting him into a power struggle with me.  Did he hate his younger brother so much, even after death that he would do what he did to us?  

I wonder what Stacey knew... I even wonder what Elise knew.  Maybe Stacy will share with me one day.  I think Elise suffered much. It is very clear in how she lived.  I wouldn't ask her, since I'm sure she lives better in denile without having to go back into that hell...  And if my uncle is suffering.  Let him suffer.  

I believe in a strange way, that we can change our courses in death as in life... We can continue making decisions or better decisions for that matter.  We can still share with the living and help them continue evolving or producing, even if that means we can help them die...  

If you were reading this blog 2 years ago, you would have seen the photo I took of my grandfather in my mother-in-law's kitchen although my grandfather died between my first two surgeries February and March of 1983.  Harry was born on the same birthdate as my mother-in-law Paz, January 24th...  One day I was at my in-law's ranch in Veracruz taking photographs when something told me to return to the kitchen and take photographs there.  Now what could be different this minute from the last.  And when I turned to the kitchen, it was just beautiful and I took photos.  But, I didn't see my grandfather in the photos until I returned home to Xalapa that evening.  I turned to Margarita and said, "do you see this?"  She went to our bedroom and returned with my childhood photo album and showed me a photo of my grandfather...  He was so clear in the smoke over the bracero in the kitchen that, Margarita, who hadn't known him in life recognized the similarity to the photograph...  It was a long story.  But it is already written.  This time around I've decided to write this differently... if I actually continue.

My Uncle Stan...  a horrible man... for me... possibly for himself.  If he didn't do something unforgiveable, why would he be dependent upon me for his being able to rest?

I couldn't go back there even if I tried.  Not even with psychologists could I touch those formative experiences with my father's illness and death and what happened with my Uncle and in my childhood home before the age of 10...  

If it were true that Stan is hovering around there somewhere hoping for my forgiveness, then maybe can help me understand.  There was the possibility that Stacy was there too...  I'm sure she knew much more than Seth explained to me that Passover night...  I believe that's why she was so attentive towards me...  But then she died.  

And then we die.  And I don't know what truly changes.  

The years speed by.  Relationships fade. Some were better than others.  Some still are and how wonderful.  Some relationships you a trained to believe should be the most enduring yet were still-born, such as the relationship with my mother and with my sisters.  Actually, the relationship with my mother is borderline personality :-)  She never truly knew if she wanted to love me or hurt me.

She's incredibly sarcastic and has this thing for kicking you in the balls...  and then she tells you she loves you and then she does it again.  There's a point when one must say enough iis enough, even if it is to your very own mother.

Just as she could say, "I never promised you a rose garden", I can say, "no one can guarrantee the success of a relationship between a parent and a child or between other blood relatives.  Relationships aren't genetic. They are psychological, socio-political and spiritual.  

You don't agree with me?

Then why do parents neglect their children?

Why do parents physically and/or emotionally abuse their children?

Why would a father sexually abuse his son or his daughter?

You don't believe that's possible?

There are many men and women in prison for being discovered...  And, maybe they weren't put in prison, but they were divorced and lost their children.  My friend Michelle's brother committed suicide after his father was put in prison for raping him repeatedly and with a young man he brought in from the street.  For years I was seeing a deformed woman come to Margarita's parents' house with her mother for grinding corn in the mornings.  I always wondered about her lack of formation into a normal adult body.  And then Margarita and her brothers explained that she is her grandfather's daughter, if you know what I mean.  The story is much more horrible regarding this man and I wonder why they didn't lynch him, although they claim he killed his other daughter's lover out of jealousy...  
And, why didn't their mother protect them from their father?  

So, tell me about parental unconditional love...

No this is not about resentment and anger or going back in the past for shovelling it in your face...  

It's about living until you die and how you live...  

I am not a dead man walking...  I haven't died.  I've lived a ton.  I would like to live more and better.  I wish there wasn't a past under question, nor a past for retrieving.  I wish I didn't have a parent or siblings for remembering, nor the need for somehow coming to terms with what we call family, and what that TRULY means.

If I die tomorrow.  I die.  And that's that.  I don't believe there is anything left untied on my part.  There is no one of who I wish forgiveness.   Oh, yes, my cat Alex. No. I don't wish for his foregiveness, but for my own, since I did to hime what my mother did to me, ignored his needs.  I emotionally neglected him due to my selfishness...  He was a very special and beautiful cat.  But he was very needy for my attention.  I'm sure that's what my mother would say after my father's death and my uncle's beatings and anti-Semitism and ostracism by my childhood peers... spitting and taunting and "POOR BOY"... 

But that doesn't mean that I don't wish things could have been different.  But they couldn't have been.  Maybe we could have behaved different.  But we didn't.  I teased Satch, I wet the bed... If that was the true cause of my uncle's violence towards me...  the only son of his only brother dying at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  But, maybe if I hadn't lit the basement on fire the day before my father was taken from our house to the hospital for good.  I was 4-years-old.  Why did I light the basement on fire?  I remember that day.  Vividly.  I don't remember being more than curious.  But, maybe had I decided against wetting Seth's bed.  But it wasn't a decision.  I was asleep...  Teasing Satch until he bit me...  I was still only 4-years-old.  Not all household dogs bite.  Many don't bite small children.  But was that reason to beat the shit out of me?

And you may ask, "But Ross, why are you going back there?"  And I wonder... how toddler minds are formed under such circumstances...  And we return to the apology...  But, why would a grown man choose a small child as a target? especially under those circumstances?  And, truthfully, what would be the repercussions over a lifetime adding all of the rest of the uncontrollable circumstances and the un-natural stress placed upon a child?  And what if the other adults knew what my Uncle Stan was doing to me those weekends...  Maybe they would have treated him and me differently.  Maybe they course would have been different.  But it seemed that everyone failed and the course was as it was; a great part of my destiny.  And throw in FAP/Gardners on top of an original PTSD situation...

But we live.  And we survive.  And we develop much self-respect for having overcome much and have learned and have grown so much through the experience...  

And maybe we aren't superman.  But nor are we a dead man walking...

In Mexico.  Yes.  Not on your street.  Nor in your family reunion.  Because I was never truly an acceptable part of your family nor were you truly an acceptable part of mine.  And you should ask yourself why...  

But you can live with your denile and your illusions.  They don't protect you from suffering, although they may mitigate it a bit.  But, in the end you know what you did or what you didn't do and what was true success and what wasn't true.  I can't live with your denile, nor within your illusions.  

But I am not dead.  Never was. 

The clock continues ticking...

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