Well boys and girls I am pleased to be able to finally let all the thoughts in my brian out to the world and the infinite space that is the internet. So with out further ado...
Today I have decided to make a change in my life. This decision came about because of a couple of things that have recently happened.
1. My father pass away from a long battle with lung cancer.
2. I signed my divorce papers from a long three (yes I said 3) year battle over what seems to be nothing.
3. My job sucks and decided to make a career change.
So why start blogging??
In my 35 years of being on this earth have been through some fairly tragic events. I am not saying that they were necessarily bad just tragic. I started to think that maybe some of the things that I have been through and how those things shaped my being may help some one else who may feel like tragedy is bad.
I don't view tragic events as negative....let's say I view them as learning events. So this article I decided to discuss my father who is a comedic character (in the Shakespearan sense) in my life's play.
The earliest memory I have of my father was a towering man who was strict and fairly mean. But as my sister Rosie stated in his eulogy he "was not a scary man" to my siblings and I. However he was not some one you wanted to annoy especially after a long day of work at the hospital where he was a cook. My "pops" was strong both physically and mentally and as a child, he seemed towering. Now as I became an adult I realize that his towering was nothing more than a child's eye looking at their parent. But even up to his death I looked up to him.
My father was extremely intelligent, but he failed to graduate from high school. Don't ask me why because that is for another conversation all together. He entered the United States Marine Corp and obtained his GED (as did I, except for the GED part). He LOVED the Marines. I don't know how his life would have turned out if he had not, but I will tell you that when I went into the Marines a lot of the things my father did to disciplined us all of sudden made perfect sense. If given the opportunity my father would have been a lifer in the Marines but it was not meant to be.
So now that you have a little background I will talk about tragedy.
Needless to say my father was proud to a fault. He was angry that he could not stay in the Marines and from the time he left the marines in 1975 to 1988 he jumped from job to job, became an alcoholic (like his mother) and was truly pissed at the world. So what happened in 1988 to change all of that. He went to prison for armed robbery.
So what happened.....we were poor and instead of my father asking for help he decided to rob three gas station for a grand total of ..........$99. That's not the funny part. Before he began his crime spree the dog we had at the time had jumped and scratched my pops in the eye. So my father was known as the one eyed bandit because he went into the gas station, asked the attendant for the money as he wore an eye patch and held them up at knife point. My father the one eyed bandit!!!!!! Needless to say my father pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 3 years in prison. So for the next three years I went almost ever weekend with my mom, grandma, grandpa, and anyone else to the prison he was incarcerated at and visited with my father.
I will go into how this affected my family another time, but for now let's stick what all this meant to me.
So...visiting my pops in prison is very odd. It may sound weird but I kind of looked up to him. The way he made it sound was like the scene in Goodfellas when Ray Liotta is in prison with Pauly. My pops was Ray Liotta's character. He would tell me about him making apple jack whiskey from apples, sugar, and yeast. He would put in on top of the stoves to ferment and he would sell it to other inmates, and gave some to the guards. He told me stories of being on a road crew and taking some string and a stick and catching fish to make for the road crew. He made it sound.....romantic. I know that sounds weird, but while he was in a place that was away from the ones he loved. Punished for breaking the laws. Taken, ripped even from his wife, children, friends, and life he knew; he was enjoying it. Sounds messed up....right?
But that was my pops!!! While he never..I mean NEVER talked about the time he served in Vietnam; I imagine he enjoyed that too! Why do I say that? Because he went BACK!!! He could have gotten out. He wasn't forced to stay. He loved it. He loved the structure. He loved the camaraderie. Prison gave him the structure. Prison gave him the camaraderie. But prison changed him. Prison made him realize that he had more on the outside. When my dad came out of prison all I remember is he spent soo much time with me. We went fishing and golfing. He participated in social functions. He didn't do that before!!! I loved it, and I knew that he loved me.
Tragic....because it took tragedy to make something special. This is one example in many that I want to talk about. Want people to know about. The number one thing my father taught me (directly or indirectly) is tragedy is a special event, and how you take it is up to you.
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