this most likely will trigger-talking about death,so caution!

I don’t really know my exact age in this photograph-I imagine around age 12!  Looking at my brothers rank as a seaman apprentice-he has just come home from boot camp.

I did not really know my brother-so I don’t know how old he is either-so I am figuring a six-year difference!

He gave me the sailors cap-this to go along with our  fathers Navy patches made my sailor’s uniform complete.

 The era was different. There was some kind of pride about growing up to be a man-and serve our country.

I am stuck somewhere. I told somebody this,a psychologist,who listened as I told about everything I do seems unfinished. It seems a part of me is stuck back then. The psychologist said I was still trying to live through a boy’s mind where everything seemed safer to me.

 Could be…I mean-it is strange to me how as with a VCR/DVD my mind can reel back to a certain instance (yet can’t recall my neighbors name at times) with absolute recall. I still see my baby brother as his shoes were blown off at the impact of the Chrysler that ran over him. Every time I drive and pass a random shoe on the road I remember that day. The pictures are so vivid!

I remember that as this boy in the photograph I was already collecting any picture I could of houses-floor plans were even higher on my list. Something the kids I played with then had no idea of my secret-I wanted to be an architect. My eyes were always attracted to the structures of that period.

 There were incidents of nature that took place when I was a boy. My sister died (age 11) when I was about 6-I remember even now the stool the funeral home attendant put in front of her casket so I could see. Death was an obvious matter-it seemed important then for undertakers to show the gathered crowd the remains of the deceased before they are properly attended to. As a kid I can almost run out of fingers counting the’ back yard viewings’,seeing dead folk in assorted profiles. On my kid brothers birthday my mother had sent me with a chunk of birthday cake for our neighbor Bennie. Bennie was an old drunk that sat in his Buick all day-smoking and drinking and watching traffic go by. We kids loved old Bennie. Arriving at his car that day it was empty. A funeral car was there-parked right behind the Buick. I walked up to Bennies porch-I had never been that far before. His sister opened the door-I had never seen her before. The undertakers rolled out the stretcher-and made sure I got my last look at Bennie. He was blue-his eyes were open,he had no teeth.

Mr.Hoke-more of an example of them all…he blows his brains out unknowing before a couple of kids- one of them me. I was not even as old as I am in this photo. Later in the day when his wife found him and the undertakers came and the neighborhood gathered the undertakers gave us a back yard viewing. A few days later my parents take me to the funeral home-and there is Mr.Hoke in exactly the same room my sister was. His casket was in the same spot. A ‘bingo’ goes off in my mind,things connect. And Mr.Hoke is ‘fixed’! After all…we all saw the damage.

I saw more death by the time I was 18 that it drew my curiosity (especially about Mr.Hoke and how they fixed all that up) when I was a young 21 years old. I began training as a mortician. Oddly enough! (although I learned what I wanted and quit)

I dealt with death in all manner of ways-and understood the truth of how it does not respect any one at any age or…if anything death was what always drew my heart towards knowing God. It is obvious,this part of life is so unfair of all who is touched by death.  It became more easier to understand when I took a position in a funeral home in Washington DC. Sometimes we had up to 5 funerals a day-sometimes all 20 of the repose rooms were filled with families-all bereaved,and always we heard various messages of a God and of a heaven,although different versions,always the promise of a new life.

For some reason-I had to have this experience! It is something we will all have an experience with one way or the other!

I am certain it is about my having to deal with my sister’s death,although I was just a little boy,I still knew somebody was missing!

No one sat me down and counseled me then,nor was any form of touch attempted when Carl was run over by the car.

I had to find out how they fixed Mr.Hokes head so he looked the same as usual…so working in a mortuary was a place to learn and to heal.

Crazy,aye? And not everybody gets to have that portion of a lesson. We all are different vessels-we all have some experience another might not have and that I cannot explain. I learned to understand death in the mortuary and through seeing it from a boy up…a man I once knew had a daughter that was viciously murdered-he sank into a wheel chair and died from grief. I have no explanations. My next door neighbor had a teenage son disappear. She never hunted for him but some hunters found him dead. He had been dead for months. She never ever seemed to grieve. I have no answer. Like I said,crazy.

So why is it one form of tragic events can be nothing-and another can blow your life apart? Why is it ?

I still connect with my funeral past. I briefly operated a tombstone business. There are still stones here. I collect funeral home items. I have a small collection of various items like toy cars (hearses) and advertisement materials like thermometers. I have a coffin in my living room,I am ready to rock on! I always say…”we should put the ‘fun’ back in funeral” !

So,why is it these things seem less unfortunate to me? Why is it I have the natural feelings of loss when someone I love dies! I cried when an old curmudgeon of a friend died so I know I am normal about grief.

I don’t get it.

I was asked the other day why I can’t get past barracks D? I was told that it seemed to my questioning friend why I bring everything around and blame it on barracks D.

I can’t explain why it is that I drive by a shoe on the road and say in my head “boom”…and in a short while I will enter my bathroom and nearly freak out about how many memories come to me from being raped in a toilet. It is those memories that haunt me. The very sound of a rest room,the smell of the cleaning fluids all trigger me. I am going to forever fear being in a restroom. Not death,but the countless times a day the toilet is necessary. I don’t get it. Everything! It seems everything I look at and wake up to-connects me with that past. I can’t quit dreaming about it and I never wake up with out remembering it. I am unable to get away from it.

PTSD? What a creative monster it is!