Almost Labor Day

The two surgeries I had in the last month have made me more reflective.  Before I went under last month for the second eye operation in a week, I silently said an Our Father prayer as a way of asking God's plan for me to be fulfilled, although I don't remember finishing it before I went out.  This last month I have been thinking more than usual about my three sons.

Last week I went to church because I felt a heavy freight was building up.  I had already been to church a dozen times this year, the minimum attendance figure I always reach each year, but some things were on my mind so I went again before the new year would start the cycle again.  When I go, I deposit into the collection plate, along with my regular donation, a dollar coin or coins for the person or persons I am thinking about most that I wish especial ethereal help for.

The list was long since I had last been to church in the spring.  I wished to think about during holy communion my cousin who passed along this summer, and also a best friend from childhood who underwent enervating spine fusion lower back surgery last month whose situation, in addition to his unique debilitating operation, is much like mine in that he lives alone, having been divorced badly like I was, and whose one child, like my three children, blames him for the divorce and all the bitterness that came from a nuclear separation and who hasn't spoken to him in many years.  This friend actually recently received national news about his child of a very positive note, so he was proud and happy about that.

The other persons I deposited token coins in the collection basket for last week at church were the husband of another cousin who suddenly suffered emergency gall bladder removal surgery last month, and John McCain, the great American hero who passed last month, and myself for the full recovery of my eye (I don't usually, if ever, pray for myself but my eye condition bothers me greatly daily), and finally my three sons.  They are strange people for sure, to still be unjustifiably although painting my entire family, and me, with the same spurious broad black brush their overbearing narcissistic mother and her paid coterie of "professionals" presented to the three minor boys during the long, rancorous divorce almost two decades ago, and although I have forgiven them for this continuing curious cruelty, I am extremely sad to see their evident personalties of divisiveness and hatred towards other people, most especially towards kinfolk.  But tomorrow being a holiday, who knows, maybe I'll see one or more of them at noon then for lunch at the Lost Dog Pizzeria in Westover, so they can begin their own process of healing and reconciliation before it is forever too late.