What?

A 32.9% drop in the annual GDP was announced yesterday, the greatest drop in history by a staggering amount.  Yeah, I'm tired of winning.

The faux president yesterday tweeted that he thought the November election should be postponed.  Is this what you voted for in 2016?

Over 153,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 in five months in America (over 1400 on Wednesday) because of the criminally negligent response by our president to the arrival of the coronavirus on our shores months after it was unearthed in China.  That's the greatest number of deaths in the world by far, making America great, uh huh.

Herman Cain, a 74 year old businessman who in 2012 was for awhile the leading Republican candidate in the GOP's presidential primary that year as the self-declared ABC candidate (American Black Conservative) attended President Trump's "relaunch" of his 2020 reelection campaign late last month in an indoor arena in Tulsa, packed in with other attendees, none of them wearing masks or socially distancing, has died of the coronavirus.  It was criminally negligent to hold such a rally at such a time.

Inject disinfectant?

What?  Is the president of the US, on a nationally televised public broadcast, actually suggesting that shining a powerful light inside the body or that disinfectant placed inside the body will cure the patient of the novel coronavirus?  This is crazy stuff.

World headlines trumpet banners of "dangerous," "bizarre," "insane" and "horror" in reference to this manchild's bloviating for two hours of dangerous claptrap and medical nonsense.  Who voted for this giant three-year old toddler who somehow got ahold of the car keys and is behind the wheel with the engine running and everyone in the family strapped into their seatbelts looking on in horror.

Maybe we could pour a little spic and span in a glass, top it off with water to the fill line and--down the hatch-- or shine a heat lamp into, what, your rectum?  Your open mouth?

Yeah, that'll keep covid-19 at bay.  "Thank you, Mr. President [Dear Leader]."

50,000 deaths and counting now in about forty days to the virus, and 20% unemployment in the same time frame due to the virus.  No national strategy on ramping up reliable testing or mapping out a game plan for when the virus comes back strong in a second wave.  Even when a sane person takes the White House in January, it'll take a year or more to immediately mobilize national resources under a coherent hand to ramp up a rational response to this deadly peril.

To say goodbye

This past weekend I attended a service at the beautiful Trinity Episcopal Church in Ambler, PA, to say goodbye to a cousin of mine.  Andrea was an inspiration to everyone who met her, a selfless social worker who worked tirelessly on behalf of others, loved by her family of course but also beloved in her community and at her church.

The large sanctuary filled up with her friends and relatives mourning her passage, but sure she was in a peaceful place befitting her life's work.  Her son read a poem evocative of her life:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die. 

Mary Elizabeth Frye

She was laid to rest in a quiet corner of the churchyard.  She will be greatly missed by all.

Running into an old friend

I spent a little time in York, PA on the day after the Fourth of July, sightseeing.  York once was the capital of the United States; it is where the Articles of Incorporation were ratified.

Gettysburg is thirty miles to the west, and after the terrific, terrible battle there in 1863, 14,000 wounded Union soldiers were transported to York for their convalescence at a site now set aside as Penn Park.  The Soldiers and Sailors Monument commemorates this ground.

Further to the north is the Prospect Hill Cemetery where there is a ring of honor atop the hill, guarded by a Union sentinel, enclosing the heroes who died of their wounds suffered at the most famous battle in American history.  On this hill, along the main street which runs the entire length of this town, there is an honor station commemorating the several sons of York who have been lost in this century's wars, and here I came across an old friend of mine, Adam Dickmyer, a York native, with whom I used to run in the District occasionally.

Adam was lost to us in Afghanistan eight years ago, but he is honored still in his hometown.  He was an NCO in the honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and he resides there still, for eternity.

"Now He Belongs to the Ages"

Abraham Lincoln died on this date in 1865 at the Petersen House in DC, after having been shot the night before across the street at Ford's Theatre.  He was attended at death by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who said famously as the greatest US president in history passed from this world, perhaps one of the ten or twenty greatest persons in world history, "Now he belongs to the ages."

Broncos

A friend of mine who is into hockey brought me back a momento when she visited Lake Placid, a Miracle On Ice mini-hockey stick, because I had told her about the US Olympic hockey team winning the gold medal there in 1980, a team made up of rank amateurs who improbably beat the powerful professional national Soviet hockey team in the semifinals, an event which occurred before she was born.  It's the only hockey stick I own.

We are all Humboldt Broncos this week.  I placed it on my porch.

March for Our Lives

And the children shall lead.  Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and so many other gruesomely evocative names.  A legacy of shame for America.

It was a mentally ill person, a neighbor said disapprovingly to me on the sidewalk out front as he saw me head for the March for Our Lives in the District this morning, not the gun that killed those 17 people on Valentine's Day, and besides it wasn't an assault rifle.  I say BS, it was an AR-15, the civilian version of the Army's best and most lethal personal killing machine, with large capacity magazines and high velocity bullets, all legally obtained by an 18 year-old boy, that caused those 15 defenseless children gathered together by us adults in one known place at a predictable time to die, plus 2 heroic care taking adults who died fighting to defend them, in a mere 6 minutes and a few seconds.  That's the weapon of choice that enabled an addled teenager to go on a killing spree in a killing ground.

If he had entered that school with a knife, or even a pistol with a 7-shot capacity for an automatic or 6-shots for a revolver, or even a pump shotgun with a regular capacity internal magazine chamber, then maybe 17 people wouldn't have died in those 6 minutes.  Maybe the crazed misfit wouldn't have even been able to command the field or fire for those 6 minutes, which would have further reduced the carnage.  But we have failed our children in our love for guns that outshines our love for our children, or is it a lust for guns in a way that's clearly improper for us to lust after children.

Today the children marched by the hundreds of thousands in DC, LA, NYC, St. Paul and elsewhere around the country and the world, demanding change now.  Earlier this week, two more school children were killed and a third wounded in a school shooting in Maryland, not too far from where a million people marched today trying to effect a long overdue change.  No more dead, too many shot down already, with no end in sight to the mass killings of children and others, necessitating a real, dramatic change to be enacted now.

2017 in Review, 2 of 3

I had filed my Complaint alleging age discrimination in my 2014-2015 Evaluation, and a Hostile Work Environment subsequently that caused me to retire involuntarily in May of 2016 during the investigative phase of my original formal complaint, with the Regional Office of the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") in December of last year.  When May rolled around and I had not received a single confirmation from that office, no docket number issued by the Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") there or even acknowledgement of receipt, I contacted the General Counsel's office ("GC") at my former agency, my adversary, to inform them that I would be contacting the EEOC office to inquire about the filing in order to make sure I wasn't sleeping on my rights and thus be dis-enfranchised by inactivity, and that call got the settlement discussions rolling for the first time.  That led to lengthy negotiations about settlement that resulted in a Stipulated Settlement Agreement ("Settlement") later in the summer, more than two years after the original incident that triggered the Complaint.  The Settlemet was the most significant event of the year for  me, because it totally validated my Complaint, brought meaningful relief and was an open document, not sealed by the improper and oft-used device of a Non-Disclosure Agreement ("NDA"), in effect silencing the successful complainant and imposing a shroud of secrecy upon the matter.   My Settlement can and does serve as a warning to other violators of the law and a potential blueprint for individuals struggling by themselves against the formidable array of lawyers in their agency's GC office and the oppressive process of the bucking the system and waiting out the interminable passage of crushing time while seeking to prosecute their valid complaints about discrimination.  I did find the time during the month to donate double red blood cells, my 117th lifetime donation. (Notice that this Order of Dismissal of the Complaint I mailed in on December 27, 2016, is dated September 20, 2017.  This was the first and only court-issued document that I received in the case, the first indication I ever received from the ALJ office that it had even received the Complaint.  Also notice that the Agency number assigned is 2016-2, indicating that only two cases were filed with the EEOC office during the entire previous year, attesting to the obvious reluctance of many persons to keep pursuing the long, drawn out system  of protesting agency discrimination in the workplace.)

In June, as settlement negotiations dragged on (it's a long, slow, strategic dance that I'm not unfamiliar with), I went to Nationals Stadium two days in a row, once to see the Nationals, those proverbial losers, play the Braves and the next day for an inspirational intramural baseball game where the Congressional Democrats played the Congressional Republicans shortly after a crazy man shot some Republican congressmen and staff members at their practice field.  We were all at the stadium to cheer on and be inspired by the small Capitol Police contingent that immediately engaged the assailant at the practice field and prevailed although massively outgunned.  The injured Capitol Policeman David Bailey, though on crutches, threw out the first pitch in honor of his force and his wounded partner.  That pretty much summed up the month.  (A true hero.)

Settlement discussions during July got into the same arena for both adversaries, pointing towards a distant yet foreseeable successful outcome, if both parties remained reasonable.  The opposing counsel I was dealing with at the GC's office was always courteous, professional and truthful, not character traits that are present in all lawyers.  I watched the July 4th celebration from my back stoop.  I visited a sick neighbor twice who had been clapped into the hospital for tests, and I was soon to discover just how fragile life can be.  (Happy Fourth!)

Early in August the phone by my bed rang at 6 a.m., never a good sign.  My neighbor and friend, a man younger than me, had died suddenly overnight in the hospital.  A few days later, for the first time that I remember, I attended a Catholic memorial service in his honor, and it was beautiful service with beautiful, tear-inducing singing.  I noticed that I was instructed by the presiding priest, along with all other Protestants and, I guess, fallen Catholics, not to participate in taking communion.  The faux total eclipse of the sun came and went without my noticing it despite my constant attention to homebuilt eclipse viewer in my driveway (I didn't have a government jet at my disposal to fly to Fort Knox accompanied by a trophy wife bedecked in designer clothes she had to tweet to us "adorable people" about to view the bonafide total eclipse).  On August 26th, exactly two years after my faux evaluation at work that started my ageism complaint, I mailed back to my former agency the final draft of the Settlement, signed by me, for their signature.  I hoped they wouldn't notice or object to the lack of an NDA, which the three drafts of the document had always lacked and had never been the subject of discussion.  Its lack in the document was very important to me, for the reasons stated above.  Almost two weeks went by without me hearing back from my former agency whether or not they, in fact, would execute it.  It was an anxious time for me, because the Settlement I had signed contained everything I could realistically hope for and aligned very well with my principles as a man.  (Farewell, my friend.)

Goodbyes

I lost some people who were close to me this year, and I regret their passing, as I regret the passing of  all people I know who passed.  Pictured below on the left is Dave, who was one of the two mentors of mine in my legal career.

Dana was a close colleague and a friend, whom I hadn't seen in years because she moved on to a different agency, but I saw her on her last night in hospice.  Her passage was shocking as she was only in her fifties if that.  The other mentor in my legal career, Steve, and I attended a memorial gathering for our friend and then extended the celebration of her life afterwards by discussing our fond memories of the cases that the three of us did.

A friend and neighbor, Steve, passed suddenly and at his memorial service I discovered just how deep was the reservoir of good will that all of his quiet, good works had created.  His wife found a beautiful place to lay him to rest in a cemetery atop a hill nearby.

Other people I knew and respected died too, like Peter, a runner who maddeningly almost always beat me and was also the editor of the Kipling Tax Review, and I fervently hope my 3 children are alive and well and believe they are, but I mourn deeply the possible passing of our democracy with the inauguration this year of our unqualified and unstable demagogic president, voted in by a distinct minority of the misguided or misanthropic voters last year.  He is pictured below in the opening days of his presidency blowing a kiss to then-FBI Director James Comey; shortly thereafter he fired him because the director wouldn't vow personal fealty to him and the putative king dismissed him in a possible criminal act.

   

Make War No More

I went for a walk through the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden on the Mall recently, reflecting on the increasingly bombastic war of words between our president and the dear leader of North Korea, two fat little men with delusions of grandeur and total lack of consciences.  I labeled this artwork Attempt at Decapitation.

Could words alone lead to devastating consequences?  This piece I named War with North Korea.

It happens in schoolyards, and these cunning megalomaniacs demonstrate the guile and silly word escalations of schoolchildren.  I called this statue The Battle.

The faux deity who has killed his half brother with a chemical agent and executed his uncle by shooting him with an antiaircraft gun, and the lazy grifter who has assaulted women, lambasted gold star families, disparaged war heroes, praised neo-Nazis, assailed the free press and displayed shocking ignorance and startling narcissism are two scorpions in a bottle with everyone in the world watching anxiously.  Meet The Victor.

Goodbye Dave

I was going to write a post today on the greatest football game ever, played yesterday in Super Bowl 51, but today I received a voice mail from a friend at my former workplace saying merely, "Peter, please return my call."  You always hasten to return those calls.

I thereby learned that one of my two foremost mentors as a lawyer, Dave Fix, who taught me how to be a forward looking, far-projecting strategic thinker in cases, died yesterday.  I called my other foremost mentor, Steve, who taught me litigation and how to drive a case to a successful conclusion, a contemporary colleague of this lion, to let him know the tragic news about Dave, and we set about to find out as much information as possible.

I am beside myself.  God bless you, Dave.

I have a lot of memories of Dave, which I won't share with you because they are special to me.  This Harvard and Stanford grad, instrumental in implementing successful federal court actions filed by my former agency in support of consumers struggling under the burdens imposed by unprincipled fraudsters, be they small nefarious boiler room operators or giant avaricious corporations, was a hero of mine, and I am so sad.  (Dave is on the left and Steve is on he right in this photo taken in 2011.)

To say goodbye.

I went to church last month to pray for an acquaintance I had the good fortune to meet more than once, the sister-in-law of a childhood best friend who took care of him for months while he recovered from a terrible accident, who was an inspiring person but was terribly ill.  She died peacefully with loved ones around while I was driving to church so I know she was with the Lord even as I prayed for her.

Another loss I encountered last year was a man I chatted up while I was out on a run in early September on Railroad Avenue in my hometown, an African American who had lived there always, in the bad times when there was segregation in the state I live in, and the good times when he could have sold his formerly depressed property for a lot because now it was fronting the W&OD Trail whereas formerly it was merely by the railroad tracks.  He was an interesting fellow, full of anecdotes about the olden times, whom I intended to chat up again on future encounters, and I was shocked to learn from another occupant of that block last month that he passed away in the fall.

We lost notable celebrities last year as well, from the sweet sounding Leon Russell to the caustic tongued Antonin Scalia.  David Bowie who sang sadly about the slow death of Major Tom, spinning out of control in his runaway spaceship whose last transmission was to tell his wife that he loved her.

George Michael who sang Father Figure, a song I'll always remember and that I loved because it came out around the time of the birth of my middle son and I always associate it with him.  Tell my son that I loved him.

Another Tragic Shooting

A lone gunman opened fire on white policemen in Dallas to express his odious racial hatred.  The Dallas police chief, when this highly trained and motivated killer refused to surrender and was in a superior position to keep killing people, made the good decision to send a robot in after the mad dog.  

Let me go on record to say that taking out the assassin in Dallas with a robot bomb was an astonishingly good command decision to end the standoff with a militarily trained sniper who shot over a dozen citizens (including executing 5 police officers) so he couldn't shoot or execute more citizens. Two hours of negotiations proved to be fruitless. 

Akin to a military situation, the commander, in order to suppress casualties, took the strongpoint out with artillery rather than expose those advancing upon the it to harm due to their inadequate protection and cover.  And I don't think the robot pinned the assassin to the ground then shot him. 

Rather the robot went into the killer's liar and blew itself up, which killed the barricaded cowardly murderer. Yay. 

(From a former police officer.)

For today I'm gay

49 tragic deaths in a gay nightclub in Orlando Sunday.  A mentally unstable, wife-abusing US citizen who was on the FBI's radar screen was able to easily buy an assault rifle and put it to horrific use.  Only in America.

He was a homegrown terrorist who was either a homophobe or perhaps a self-loathing denier.  This situation has nothing to do with religion.

I donated double red cells on Friday, and I like to think that if my donation wasn't put to good use in my area, then perhaps it was sent to Orlando for use after that mass carnage.  I am O+ so my blood is useful for almost everyone (except for the rarer O- people).

For today, I am gay in solidarity with my slain and wounded brethren and sisters.

Dead right or dead wrong

You're acutely aware of the rules of the road when you're running, because it's a safety issue.  You have to know what an approaching car is likely to do, and you have to make eye contact with the driver before you exert your right of way as a pedestrian when, say, you're on the sidewalk crossing a driveway with a car coming out.

Today I was running up a sidewalk to a controlled intersection just as the light turned green for me to cross.  However, a steady stream of cars were coming up to the red light (for them) and making a right-hand turn at speed without stopping first (the rule for right-turn-on-red) and physically cutting off my absolute right-of-way to cross the street on my green light.  They were coming around the corner so fast and steadily that I couldn't make eye contact with any driver.

Was I invisible?  I didn't notice particularly that the cars had their lights on during the day because many cars have their lights on all the time now and it was grey and looked like inclement weather was imminent.

I tried to impose myself into the crosswalk and start across the street but those turning cars weren't stopping or slowing no matter how poised I was to take that final step off the curb into the street.  If I stepped into the crosswalk, it was clear that the next car was likely to hit me.  As I stood on the curb, unable got enforce my right of way, I threw my hands up in frustration and muttered something profane.  (I was on a run!  I had the right of way!)

The driver in the lead car which was stopped in the left through lane at the red light rolled down his passenger window and yelled something at me that I didn't hear clearly because of all the traffic noise created by the cars cutting right around me as I stood poised on the curb.  My first impression was that he had yelled, "You're really obsessive!"  In trying to cross the street on green, had I stumbled upon an entire band of runner-haters?

The situation wasn't making sense.  I could not cross the street due to the steady interference of turning cars blocking my path and now this man was yelling at me.  Then as my brain tried to process the situation I belatedly recognized what he had yelled at me, "Funeral procession!"

The steady stream of turning cars exhausted itself, without a single one slowing down a bit despite my proximity to nearly being in their way, and the man who had shouted at me turned his car down the street I had run up from his far lane and started chasing the procession of cars.

I crossed the street on the waning green light and continued my run, now off to a bad start.  I was annoyed with myself for not immediately recognizing what was happening.  If I had, I would have respectfully waited for the procession to pass before trying to cross the street.  There's a funeral home mid-block on the busy street I was trying to cross on the green light, and a cemetery down a mile on the street I was running alongside of.

Experience had just taught me one more thing about running on the roads, to keep in mind that a peculiar traffic anomaly might be something as unpredictable as a funeral procession.  If I had tried to force my right of way, not recognizing what I was dealing with, I would have been dead right, but also dead wrong.

It was the best of times...

I re-read A Tale of Two Cities which I read at age 12 for school.  I remembered the famous beginning ("It was the best of times... .") and the iconic close ("far better rest that I go to... .") but not much in between. 

I see now that it is a novel about expiation of past sins through terror which is in itself a horror.  During the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, each day scores of people were condemned to die within 24 hours under the Guillotine (the National Barber) for various impure thoughts or actions towards the Republic by jackal courts thronged by vengeful baying people who retired therefrom to the "sharp female, newly born" to watch that day's grim tally tied to the instrument and perish one by one.  The crowds would count out loud each head as it was lopped off. 

How far to take the cleansing? asked Ernest Defarge, a revolutionary leader, of his vengeful, implacable wife.  "To extermination." 

When will there be a finish to it? he inquired of her.  "Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!" was the soulless answer.

Written in the 19th century about occurrences in the 18th century, such sentiments presaged even worse events in the 20th century.  As the dreary tumbrils trundled through the crowded streets towards the guillotine each afternoon, each dolorous cart bearing its piteous load of bound, condemned prisoners, the occupants looked out with their faces reflecting various expressions, resignation, defiance, dignity, desperation, but not one looked out beseeching mercy, because there was no pity to be had in the massed crowd.

Ode To a Young Man Gone

My sister called me today.  The one who hasn't called in a decade except the time she called last month to tell me that her stepson had died.

That was crushing, as I was waiting on the phone for the opening formalities of that call to pass so she could inform me of the purpose of her call--that her husband had died in a car crash or some such tragedy.  But no, it was the death of a child!

The boy was 21 when he died, his death a final release from the domestic wars our society puts children through when a divorcing adult--in my opinion in this case his biological mother--enlists his or her children in their narcisstic need to bloodlet against the other parent.  Sharon and Meg, and your enabling intimate friends, in my opinion you too should rest uneasy.

My sister and her husband are scattering the young man's ashes tomorrow at sunset atop Sun Mountain in Santa Fe.  I had my best run forever just after sunset one winter day in 2007 running around the base of that mountain with the young man's father in the snow and dark, wearing lanterns on our foreheads for illumination as evergreen tree branches whipped our faces as we ran past them. 

I asked my sister today to tell her husband that that was my best running memory ever.  I could barely speak because I wanted to cry.

My sister was nice enough to say that the card I sent to her and her husband expressing my sorrow and quoting Dylan Thomas' And Death Shall Have No Dominion meant a lot to them, and that they would read the poem when they committed Matthew's ashes to the mountain.  I said I would be there in spirit.

I told my sister that I loved her.  She didn't say anything to this.

Go be with God, young man.  I remember you well from the last time I saw you, when you were nine, a vivacious, bright, alert boy, and I will pray for you in church on the day after.

Half full?

I was running four and a half miles on the Mall at noontime last week with R and she was keeping me honest with 9:30 miles, the fastest I've run this year, when we ran by J, a friend and husband of a workmate.  It was great to see him out there jogging because last year he was in a serious car crash that put him in the ICU for a week and necesitated an operation and he's been involved in PT ever since, slowly regaining his health.

Then upon my return to the office I received an email from E, a friend and workmate who donated a kidney to his sister last month.  The operation went well, he reported, and his sister was better and he himself was up and about, taking long walks as he recovered.

Not so encouragingly, I took a call from a workmate who was going through a divorce after twenty years of marriage and guess what, his wife at mediation the day before had spent all day demanding sole legal custody and that he be restricted to seeing their two children, with whom he is heavily involved daily, to every other Saturday and Sunday and two hours on a weeknight once every two weeks.  Tens of thousands of dollars are draining from their small estate as he combats the outrageous default position in our domestic law system of Mother Knows Best. 

That morning I'd attended a funeral service for a workmate in her fifties who'd died unexpectedly during surgery the week before for her recently discoverd cancer.  Life is certainly a series of steps forward, and backwards.

Kodokushi

The phone rang insistently at 10:30 pm, not a good time to be receiving ordinary calls.  It was a friend, who had just learned from an acquaintance that she'd lost her close friend from another life and another job decades earlier. 

Her pain was palpable.  He had died alone in his apartment, keeled over at his computer, and no one knew how long he'd been there like that because he lived alone.

Once upon a time when life was full of fresh promises this person had taken my friend all the way up the California coast on his Harley, and to Italy also. To me, that's a beautiful series of memories.

She hadn't spoken to him in many, many years.  My friend was appalled he'd died like that, alone and undiscovered for days. 

We all die alone, just like we all come into the world alone, although our mother is with us within moments of our delivery, and perhaps that gratifies us.  Perhaps the thought that Jesus will be with us moments after we die gratifies us of the Christian faith.

I live alone, with my nearest family hundreds of miles away, and I expect it'd be days before anyone noticed I was gone if I died in my house.  But then, I would be dead and it wouldn't matter.

After my life-altering divorce that took all of my savings and consumed much of the last decade, I no longer think that men and women are compatible after the child bearing and rearing years have passed.  That life-wrecking process also cost me my three children to estrangement in our Mother-knows-best legal culture, and how could I get close to another person after that painful ordeal?

In Japan they have a phrase to describe a lonely death, kodokushi, which basically connotates to a bothersome stain upon a carpet which might necessitate its replacement.  But perhaps some long-lost lover somewhere might grieve for that departed person, too.

I'll See You There

The call came in on my land line last night, too late for solicitor calls, so I answered it.  It was my sister, who hasn't called me in years.  I waited for the bad news I knew was coming.

Her stepson died the previous night at age 21.  I knew he had been used as a lifelong pawn by his biological mother against the father, my sister's husband, in the interminable warfare certain parents wage in their endless quest to get back at spouses who have "failed" them.  Now the boy is free and those left behind are utterly devastated.

I know whereof I speak.  My three children, now adults, haven't spoken to me in years because of their mother's use of them "up to their armpits" in our divorce proceeding.  I hope they are all alright, but I have no idea whether they are even alive.

My ex-wife surely believes in her never ending rage that I will go to hell.  If so, I will see every single mother or father or "professional" who has ever involved a minor child in a mindless pursuit to utterly destroy the other parent.  Meanwhile, rest in peace, sweet troubled young man whose childhood was stolen away.