Living with the dead

Today is an empty day for me. Mentally, and emotionally I feel barren. I am into my fifth week of school and I still haven't had a surge of energy to send me sailing for a while. This semester is dull and lifeless for me.

Fall is ironically my favorite and worse season. I love the temperatures, the change of color, the smell (of course). However, along with all of that, I have to face the death anniversaries of my loved ones. The biggest and toughest is that of my mother, which is Oct. 11. This year marks the 17th year. Seventeen years. How is that possible? Another 7 years and my mother will have been dead half my life. And I am only 41, 48 then.

As September closes, and October opens I start to feel the approach of the 11th. It comes on me subtly at times. Some years, like this one, it seems to be approaching me like a roaring lion. I miss my mom. It's a shame that I missed her when she was living too.

I never really knew her, she was always outside of my grasp. We lived together, seperately. It's the way it was, a house full of people, yet none of us were ever in tune with any of the others. I was too young and ignorant of life and its ways, to have done much to change it, but I still participated in it. Therefore, I feel an indebtedness to my other family members. Even so, I still am void of feelings that should have come more natural it seems. Our brokenness is still displayed.

My grandmother is another loved one whose death anniversary occurs in the Fall. Her's is November 1st, it falls on my brother Ron's birthday. She died two years after my mom. She was the last of my grandparents.Well, according to my knowledge. My father ran off when I was a baby. Perhaps, there are still biological members living. I never knew them, and they probably didn't know me, since, their son was married to another woman at the time he and my mother were together. Yeah, I am an illegitimate child, but, who isn't these days?

I had always carried a feeling of being orphaned, so when I found out about my real father, it wasn't too shocking. Actually, it was merely a confirmation.

This life has never really offered me a home, I am thankful to God for taking me in under his armpit. With the hope he has given me, I look forward to rest when I get to heaven.

If I didn't have the assurance of peace beyond this world, I think I would have a hard time getting up in the mornings, harder than I have it on some mornings already.

Jesus, the name above all names, and my "blessed assurance" leads me and comforts me. He is my rock and my refuge.