Surgery went well, thank you.

I was stunned by being friended then unfriended by my youngest son's wife on the day before my stomach surgery.  I was not looking forward to this invasive procedure of double abdominal incisions on August 12th, after waiting for six months to have it scheduled, so being friended by Danny's wife on August 11th and unfriended within the hour was, actually, an unwelcome distraction.

But PAS is a sinister reality in western society, destroying normal parental relations based upon the insidious knowledge possessed by all lawyers that the law is merely "the minimum of morality."  That would describe you, Sharon, mother of my children, you represent the lowest common denominator that the law struggles to encompass.

But almost three weeks later after surgery I am fine.  I ran 12 miles this week and I weigh the same as I did on the day of surgery.

I don't thank my offspring for checking on my condition, because they didn't, special children (now men) that they are.  Still, as always when I'm in town, on the next holiday, Labor Day, next Monday, I'll be having lunch as usual during the noon hour at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover; maybe I'll see you then, JJD&L, eh?

I'm guessing not.  But rest assured that I'm fine after a painful recovery period, really I am, as are most or all Lambertons still alive, unfortunately you don't know a thing about those who departed in the last decade, including loving persons who held you as infants, because although I tried to inform you of these mournful passages, you three don't give a damn about such ordinary people.

What I think

I felt that something wasn't right last week when I received a sudden and unexpected friend request on Facebook from a girl named Laura J. Lamberton, who I think is the wife of my estranged youngest son, Danny.  It had been nine years of radio silence for me from 27 year-old Danny, whom I last heard from when he was 18 when he wrote me a breezy missive asking me to provide full funding for four years of college tuition and fees, which I did.

Indeed, I didn't even know until a neighbor mentioned it to me this summer that Danny got married last year.  Welcome to the family, Laura, and congratulations on your wedding.

I consulted with a few friends and relatives about the friend request from Laura and they all said I should accept right away, that perhaps this was the first step in Danny reaching out to me.  I accepted, which I was inclined to do anyway because I have always been available for my children at any time (tragically I'm estranged from all three of them), and then I was unfriended by Laura within the hour, thus giving me only a momentary and diffused glimpse into Danny's world and then shutting me out again.

I wasn't surprised by this abrupt, frivolous action or made despondent by this tantalizing, almost taunting act of reaching out for a second and then slamming the door shut again with nary a word of explanation.  It's characteristic of what my children became when they were grossly manipulated as vulnerable children by grotesque adults during the divorce who were relentlessly pursuing their own hateful and spiteful agendas by using my children against me, in my opinion.

The many layers of motives

My healing from surgery is coming along nicely, tomorrow I'll come up on the one week mark since the procedure and I have been entertaining thoughts of running a couple of miles, slowly.  I'll wait a few days yet, as the doctor's orders were No Running for 2-6 weeks.

The day before surgery, Laura, the wife of my youngest child Danny, sent me a friend request on Facebook which I accepted, and then she unfriended me within the hour.  I have been totally estranged from all three of my children for a decade or longer, basically ever since the divorce, because they are all victims of the form of child abuse known as PAS (parental alienation syndrome), perpetrated upon them when they were vulnerable children by their mother and her gang of "professionals."

I didn't even know that Danny got married in the spring of 2015 until this summer when I learned about it from a neighbor who is a good friend of their mother.  (She was in on the visitation scam during the divorce of inviting my children to sleep over at her house practically every weekend when I was supposed to have them, so as soon as I showed up my children would express their preference to be at her house with their friends rather than coming with me.  That is how you work PAS with children and foil court-ordered visitation.)  I didn't even know Laura, having never met her nor heard about her before.

In the few moments when I perused Laura's FB site, after I accepted her friend request and before I went out for my daily run during which time I was unfriended, I could see that she and Danny had moved from downstate Virginia to Arlington, in my immediate vicinity, last summer and they were moving to Chicago that very weekend or perhaps they had already moved out of Arlington the weekend before.  What I suspect is that this was my son's way, acting through his wife, of trying to be as hurtful as possible to me by using this method to inform me, on the day before my surgery, that unbeknownst to me he had been living in close proximity to me for over a year without me ever knowing it, and now he had moved far away without ever contacting me.

People Are Strange

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
the Doors.

I had stomach surgery last week, which anyone who reads my Facebook posts would know.  I am at home now healing nicely, thank you, expecting a complete recovery, but this gets bound up with the strangeness of my "contact" with the wife of my youngest son, Danny, who has been completely estranged from me (and all Lambertons) for a decade.

The happy couple got married a year ago, as I recently found out from a neighbor.  This information at least told me that my youngest child is alive and ostensibly doing well, information his mother stonily refused to provide to me in response to my direct questions to her on the subject when I happened to encounter her on a public street a year and a half ago (she lives two miles from me).

Last Thursday I accepted a bolt-from-the-blue friend request on Facebook from Laura J. Lamberton, the wife of Danny, and I added a personal greeting to my acceptance of her request, "Welcome to the family, Laura. Congratulations on your wedding."  I have never met the woman and know nothing about her beyond what I gleaned from perusing her FB site for a few minutes after I accepted her request.

Then I went out for a run in the midday August heat to sort out a mass of conflicting things such as my fears about the double hernia repair surgery I was undergoing the next morning, the fact that I was receiving solid information about my youngest child after so many years of darkness, and what it all meant.  By the time I returned, nine miles later and seven pounds lighter, I had been unfriended by Laura and shut out from any information about Danny again.

Was she just purposefully messing with my head on the day before I went in for surgery?  Streets are uneven when you're down.

And the point was, what, Laura?

You might know that I haven't heard from any child of mine in over seven years. This is due to the divorce, a bitter western divorce (google parental alienation syndrome, or PAS).

I recently found out from a neighbor and former friend of mine that my youngest son got married last year to "Laura."  In the past few years I have largely gotten over my natural desire of wanting to be involved with my three offspring, to whom I have always made myself accessible, but who have completely ignored all Lambertons for over a decade (these three boys, now men, didn't grow up with any Lamberton traits, they are all Rogers through and through).

Their mother and her coterie of "professionals," assassins of the childhoods of my children (you know who you are), overbore my children's wills as minors and turned the adolescents against me and all Lambertons.  It will all get sorted out eventually, I guess at Saint Peter's gate, but meanwhile research into the victims of the form of child abuse known as PAS shows that these children grow up lacking any strong emotional ties as adults and they are very insecure and prone to divorce themselves.

Last week I heard from Laura, Dan's wife, at least for an hour, when she sent me a friend request on Facebook out of the clear blue.  When I accepted it, she unfriended me within the hour.

Thanks, Chris, for forcing my early retirement. Enjoy being corporate counsel after failing in government work (in my opinion).

Today I would have celebrated my 26th anniversary with the government, after spending nine years in police work and four years in restaurant work.  I was looking forward to working for a few more years yet for my agency because I was good at what I did and I freely and unselfishly imparted my expertise and wisdom to amenable younger lawyers, many of whom were eager to learn, grateful and are now lifelong friends.

But that's not suitable for the current breed of cut-throat managers.  They advance upon your work, demand that you do more with less because it reflects well upon them and their advancement, and they actively work to drive sexagenarians out of the work force (improperly if not illegally) because the older workers don't worship these less experienced managers and can see through their shenanigans and thus make them extremely uncomfortable.

Things changed three or four years ago when the current set of managers in my former shop became a closed system of friends and cronies who looked out only for themselves, could do no wrong, and started going after older workers by giving them sub-standard reviews, usually based upon writing discrepancies from their own perfect writing (you don't write exactly like I would and you're not in my circle of worshippers therefore you're downgraded on this extremely subjective application of a supposedly objective category).  A brand new manager named Chris, who did one case all his career there, became management's hatchet man, in my opinion, and he drove a fellow sexagenarian out of the division with bullying management, manifested in an outrageous, bogus out-of-proper-channels written review and perpetrating a stalking incident in retaliation when she fought back.

Then he set his sights on me as the next sexagenarian to go, by establishing an outrageous set of ridiculous pre textual deadlines of unimportant matters when real work was being done and needed to be done, as I informed him, and now we're both suddenly gone.  I left by premature retirement to escape an untenable hostile work environment based upon age discrimination by the agency, leaving behind a retaliation claim to go with my then-current formal ageism discrimination complaint, based upon Chris's bullying, ham handed and incompetent management style culminating in a list of pre textual demands upon me.  He himself left suddenly and unexpectedly two weeks later, obviously, in my opinion, having been told to look elsewhere as his rise through the ranks of management was stymied because his actions were drawing too much heat upon the current closed circle of managers.