8.16.01

Hey, all. Sorry I didn’t update last night, but, well, I was really damn tired. I went to bed at 6:30 and slept through till 1:30 and then off and on until 7:30 this morning. Just one of those things, ya know?

The next time you’re in St. Louis, you have to go to The Landing and hit The Big Bang. For those of you cool enough to read my adventure to the Landing a few entries ago, you might recall I stopped there and had a good time. Well, I went back with two friends of mine last weekend and had the most fun I’ve had in a long damn time there. It’s a sing-along piano bar and we hung out there for five hours! Sang along to so many songs I can barely remember all of them. The one that really stuck out, though, was Enter Sandman. Yes, that Enter Sandman. Yes, they played it on the pianos. Coolest place ever. However, I have this bad feeling that the next time I go it will essentially be the same show we saw last time. Might be one of those places that’s cool as hell, but you only go to every once in a while so it doesn’t get old. We’ll see. Either way, the first time was incredible.

I’m thinking about another outing this Saturday. I really want to hit that Miles Davis exhibition that I’ve mentioned and wouldn’t mind seeing the rest of the art museum. Might find myself down at The Landing again. We’ll see. Don’t worry all you MTV Generation X’ers with no attention span, I won’t put up my commentary like I did last time. I heard enough about how it was too long. Geez…

So what’s on my mind this week? Family. A friend of mine has left this morning for Seattle to see his Aunt who he, nor any other member of his family have spoken to for something like fifteen years. A squabble in 1985 over socks getting dirty has caused such a riff in this family that it has taken the Aunt being diagnosed with cancer to get them back together. She has only a few more months to live and they’re finally patching things up. Thank God.

When my Mom died back in 1996, her two sisters, my aunts, were great about keeping in touch with us. Then, when my Dad started dating, things fell apart; they couldn’t understand why Dad was dating and saw it as an insult to my Mom. Admittedly, I felt the same way at first. It took me a long time to finally warm up to the idea, until literally, one day I was riding the stationary bike at the gym, reading Dante’s Inferno, and suddenly it hit me that it was ok. I wasn’t even thinking about the situation, I was reading about one of the levels of hell at the time, and suddenly out of nowhere I said to myself, “It’s ok that Dad’s dating.” It was, in the words of Shakespeare, “Pretty fucked up.” (Not William Shakespeare, Gary Shakespeare, the janitor here at work. Sorry for the confusion.)

However, my aunts never had this epiphany, and believe it or not but I can understand this. One lives over by Iowa, the other in California – it’s not like they really had the opportunity to get to know this new woman like those of us who lived so close did. They have also never really been given the opportunity to finish mourning. Being so close to my home and seeing the changes it has gone through over the last five years has made this process easier for me. Every time I come home, something’s different, there’s a little less of Mom there, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s people getting on with their lives – not forgetting, but getting on. It’s not that we don’t think of Mom, I do every day in some way, but we don’t sit in a dark corner crying all hours either. I think it just goes to show that it’s much easier to deal with the pain of loss when you’re thrown in and have no other choice but to deal with it, instead of being miles away from it’s source. I know that seems backwards, you would think that being away from it all would help you forget, but remember the old saying “distance makes the heart grow fonder.”

Either way, my Mom’s death and Dad’s dating, have created quite a lack of contact with these aunts. I hear from one about once or twice a year and the other, well, I haven’t heard from her since about 1997, maybe 1998. Now, I have to admit that I haven’t exactly been good about keeping in touch with them either. Hell, I bet I haven’t spoken to my grandma on that side of the family for a year now. It’s not that I’m angry with them, it’s just, this is how things have worked out. It seems that none of us are really all that concerned. I guess without my Mom there as a common bond, we just lose touch with each other. It’s sad, but again, that’s just how things have worked out.

However, I’d like to try to change that. This whole episode with my friend and his aunt has really gotten me thinking about my situation with my aunts. It’s silly that I haven’t heard from them or spoken to them in so long. You only live once and life’s too short for this shit, ya know?

So, I’m going to try contacting them again, to see what happens. The one aunt I hear from every once in a while will be fine. It’s the aunt in California that’s going to be interesting. I’m trying to decide if I should take the safe route and email her or if I should just say the hell with it and call her out of the blue. Frankly, I’m leaning to the latter, simply because the last time I tried to talk to her was an email and I never heard back from her. I need to call my grandma, too. Been too long. I’m not looking to get weekly updates from them, but it would be nice to be able to send an email every once in a while just to know what’s going on with them. I mean, I have two cousins in Cali that I have no idea what’s been going on with them for four years now. That’s just wrong.

Isn’t it strange how we humans have to be so damned right about everything? My friend hasn’t seen his aunt in fifteen years because there was a fight over someone’s socks getting dirty. I haven’t spoken to my aunt in three or four years because she couldn’t understand why my Dad was dating – hell, I didn’t even get involved in that one and I’m being punished for it. Personally, I could care less about being right. I’d rather be happy. So, I’m thinking I’ll make this last attempt and if she doesn’t respond, well, it’s not my problem.

Someone out there you should make amends with? What’s it going to hurt if you do? Your pride? Fuck your pride. There’s nothing wrong with saying “I’m sorry” as long as the other person is an adult about it and realizes they were wrong too. Again, all I can say is, “Life’s too short”, so do something about it. You’ll be glad you did.

Space Monkey