I’ve always heard that you don’t gamble more than you can afford to lose. This is why, on those rare occasions I find myself in a casino, I usually take my little $20 in with me, play until it’s gone then pack it in. I’ve paid $20 to the casino for letting me hang around, slurp up watered down drinks, and watch the pretty lights. I’m okay with that. I don’t feel guilty about opening up my hand and letting that money go.

To me, a gift is similar in that it is something that I am willing to open up my hand and let go. Once I give it, it belongs to the other person and I have no say in how, when, or even if they use it.

I saw a video yesterday that reminded me of an exchange I had with my son in Philadelphia when he was about seven or eight. But, before I tell you about that, I have to tell you about our trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., about six months before the Philadelphia incident.

My mother was an avid student of World War II. She could tell you more about the Reich principals than she could tell you about her own neighbors. So, when we lived in Latrobe, PA, and Mother came up for a visit one summer, we drove over to D.C., for some sight-seeing that included the Holocaust Museum. Now, my young son was just as thrilled with that choice of venue as you might imagine. He asked why we had to go to that place. I responded, “Because all God’s children are precious until they decide not to be (pretty sure Ted Bundy doesn’t quality) and this is what happens when one group decides that they are more precious than another group. It’s really important that we remember this.”

You never know what children really hear and remember; but, he was okay to go through the rest of the museum on the promise that we would hit up the Lincoln Memorial (his favorite) afterwards.

Fast forward a few months to a visit to Philadelphia when my cousin was in town.

We were doing regular tourist things downtown, which included a visit to Reading Station and the market there at the terminal. We left there to walk to Chinatown because I was jonsing for some pork buns and on a mission to find some. We had left the station and walked a couple of blocks when I felt this tug on my coat. This is the exchange that followed to the best of my memory:

• Curious Son: Mama, why didn’t you give that man any money?
• Hungry Mother: What man?
• Observant Son: That man sitting by the station door. He said he was hungry and asked you for money.
• Clueless Mother: I didn’t see him. But I wouldn’t have given him any anyway.
• Absorbent Son: Why not?
• About-to-be-shamed Mother: Because he just would have spent it on drugs or alcohol anyway. (Which, I must admit, sounded lame even to me and even as it was coming out of my mouth.)
• Beloved Son: Well, you could have bought him a sandwich. Aren’t all God’s children precious?

Don’t you just hate it when your kids throw your own words back at you? They expect us to do something silly like live up to what we say, right? Dammit.

So, from thenceforth, we gave the homeless a gift of either cash or food that we were okay with opening our hands and letting go of. There are scammers, I know; so, the gift had to be something we were willing to let go of. To this day, I buy a Contributor from any homeless person I see selling one. I don’t read them all, but I buy them. And I am thrilled to say that at an adult, my beloved son still practices what he preaches working in food pantries and helping with other charities.

Kids. I knew I was supposed to help him become a good human. I had no idea he’d do the same for me.

On Sunday, I planned to go to nearby Monteagle, TN, to check out an arts and crafts fair. I woke that morning, got busy with other things and decided not to go. After all, what was the point? My budget doesn’t have shopping money in it right now; so, why make the 60-some mile drive over there? I decided just to stay home and read the Elvis Cole mysteries I’d checked out of the library on Saturday.

As the morning wore on, I kept thinking about the festival and how I’d looked forward to going. I finally kicked myself in the rear and got moving. There was no point in my going, but I went anyway.

The festival was a bust. It was very small and featured a lot of handmade soaps, wind chimes that were more like scrapbooks, and jewelry…lots of jewelry.  Even the homemade peach ice cream (my favorite) wasn’t all that great. I was disappointed; so, I left and went to a flea market down the road. Another bust. Rats. My trip seemed more pointless than ever. I was disgruntled and ready to go home.

Instead, I went to Sewanee and I discovered the point – joy.

Sewanee, TN, is home of Sewanee, The University of the South. I drove around and fell completely in love. As you may or may not know, I enjoy taking photographs – mostly architectural or close nature photos.  I love the detail of stone or woodwork, the play of light on bark and leaves, and the contrast of shadows anywhere the light plays. Sewanee is a delight. The stone buildings and careful landscaping will provide me with plenty to shoot and enjoy on another trip to the town. A trip I am already planning.

My heart and spirit were both much lighter on the drive home. It made me think of my flower bed in New Orleans.

I had this flower bed in front of the duplex where I lived there. My aunts Judy and Barbara had started it for me when I first moved to the city. I took it over, though, and it became my own. It had sort of a cottage garden feel – balanced, but hardly symmetrical. Full of zinnias, summer snapdragons, dahlias, petunias, sweet William and more, it was like a riot of wild flowers that all happened to be blooming at the same place at the same time. I weeded and watered it every morning and every afternoon. I fussed over it, met my neighbors over it, and took great joy in putting the little plants into the soil to watch them flourish.

Then Katrina came and there was nothing left of my beautiful flowers. I haven’t seriously tried to garden since. After all, what’s the point? I put all that work and effort into my little garden and, in an instant, it was all gone. Why go to all the trouble?

Because it was beautiful and I derived joy from it.

That was the point and that was enough.

People say the stupidest things at funerals and since I’m a people, I’m including myself in that list. At Leah’s funeral, I said to one of her sons, “It’s really good to see you.”

What?!

I opened my mouth, asked my brain operator to give me a funeral appropriate phrase; but, my message got rerouted to the “Things you say at a pool party” library. After I heard what I said, I was as bewildered as her son was. Having buried my own mother, I can say that I remember little of what was said to me that day; so, it’s possible that he either won’t remember it or didn’t hear me at all. On the other hand, I do remember many of the ridiculous things people said; so, he may have heard and shifted me into that category. At any rate, my gaff got me thinking about grief and what we say to the grieving.

I am a white woman of Scottish and Danish ancestry and always have been; so, northern European culture is really the only one I know very well. Based on that, I don’t think that the culture does a very good job of grieving. It’s the whole British “keep a stiff upper lip” thing. As soon as someone dies, we start vomiting platitudes like the emotional sheep we’ve been conditioned to be, telling the grieving things meant to comfort them and to get them over their grief quickly.

• She’s in a better place.
• He’s not hurting anymore.
• At least you had time to get used to the idea. (When the deceased has been ill for a long time.)
• She wouldn’t have wanted to live like that.
• He died doing what he loved.
• etc., etc., etc.

You know what? That’s craaaa-aaaa-p!

All of those plaaa-aaaa-aaa-titudes may be true (except the getting used to the idea thing), but when I’m in the moment of grieving, I. don’t. care. The fact is: I’m not grieving for them. I’m grieving for myself. I’m grieving that I won’t see that person I love again. I’m grieving that I can’t call them on the phone, go out to lunch, send a birthday card, get a text or just spend time with them. Sometimes it’s about hurting for the pain others I love are experiencing; but, most often, it’s about me, not them.

And I say that’s okay.

I think we should allow ourselves to feel that selfish grief for a time. If I am to heal and reconcile myself to this new reality, I must feel that grief. I have to feel that disbelief, that anger, and that sadness in order to be healthy myself. There is a certain order and defined steps to how humans grieve. My aunt Judy has a master’s degree in thanatology and can say it much better than I can; however, at the core of what she would (and does) say, is that we have to follow that grief order to avoid complications for ourselves. Our minds need to go through the steps.

I believe that we would all deal with death a great deal better if we took cues from some other cultures and wailed, keened and yelled out our grief at funerals. Instead, we hold it in. Historically, we’ve even hired mourners to grieve for us! That’s like hiring someone to heal my broken leg. They can sit around on the couch all day for weeks with their healthy leg in a cast; but, it’s my leg that’s broken and must be set, immobilized and allowed time to knit. It’s my leg and my heart that have to heal. And I’m going to take the time to let them do just that.

Also, I’ve had a talk with my internal operator about routing my requests to the right department. And to Mitch, what I meant to say was: Your mother was a fine woman and I am so sorry for your loss.

“You didn’t tell me!”

I was awakened at 6AM one March morning in 1994 with my friend Larry screaming this through the phone at me. “You didn’t tell me that Joey was killed last night.”

I hadn’t known.

After ending the call with Larry, I phoned my father and told him what had happened. “What are you going to do?” he asked. I replied that I planned to go to work and would make further plans as I had more information.

My father knew better.

The drive from his house to mine usually took a little more than an hour. 45 minutes after we hung up, he was at my house with breakfast. By then, the reality had hit me. I was sitting in a corner screaming the only word left in my vocabulary, “Nonononononononononono!”

My father stayed with me in the days and weeks that followed. In spite of the several very difficult events I’d gone through that year, burying my friend was (and remains) the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. We love our family partly because, well, we have to. But, we love our friends because we choose to. Losing them is losing the family we’ve made for ourselves. It rips us in several directions. But Daddy stayed with me. He held me like his baby I once was as I wept so many times. I felt his own tears hitting my hair at the graveside service. He gave me counsel when, after picking up the phone to call Joey yet again, I dropped both it and myself to the floor, wailing, “How long will I keep doing this?” My father said, “My father was my best friend and sometimes, even now, more than 20 years later, I think that if I could just talk to Daddy, everything would be alright.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I didn’t feel any better; but, he told me the truth. I still think of things I’d love to tell Joey.

Parents love their children differently than children love their parents. I’ve heard that all my life and know its truth in my own affections for my son and for my father. Tomorrow, my sister and I go with our daddy as he buries the woman he loves and with whom he had planned to spend the rest of his life. As mothers, I know that we would do anything to spare our own children this kind of anguish. As children, I know that both of us would far rather experience this torment for ourselves than to watch that dear man as he is shattered by this grief.

When it comes to those you love, it is agonizing to stand helplessly by, watching their suffering. It is decidedly easier to feel your own pain.

So. My boyfriend dumped me.

At least I think he did. He just stopped talking to me. He might have dropped dead in mid-conversation; so, a lack of communication would be understandable and God rest him. Or he might have just decided to ignore me which is just rude and God can do something else with him. We weren’t even fighting, although I was being a little snitty about something I believe he did wrong. He never addressed anything; so, I don’t know if he actually did it or if it was all an honest misunderstanding. It might have been. Apparently, our relationship wasn’t worth the potential confrontation to him. On the other hand, it’s not like I went to his house and forced him to talk to me; so, I guess it wasn’t worth it to me, either.

This summary dismissal made me think about interpersonal dealings in general. And hockey – it made me think about hockey, too. I believe that most of us detest confrontation and that we go to great lengths to avoid it – hockey players being a notable exception.

How many times a day do we come across people we just want to snatch bald-headed? Someone takes that plum parking spot we were stalking, or the last rangoon on the buffet, or they post a series spoiler on Facebook without so much as a warning! Of course, we can’t ram them with our cars, pop their hands, or smack them through the internet (although a “thanks a lot” button on Facebook might be a good idea). We fume while we circle the lot again. We smile and say, “No, really, that soggy-assed spring roll will do just as well.” We skip the episode because watching it is just pointless now. We don’t confront. We absorb the disappointment and even anger, then we go home and yell at the people we love who had nothing to do with it.

Not so for the men on the ice.

A player checks a little high, hits a little dirty or gets in the goalie’s face? He’s gonna smell some gloves. An Enforcer is going to come along, drop his gloves and invite the offending player to dance – that or he’s going to ram the guy into the boards to get his attention. And I’ll be on my feet in the stands or in my living room, screaming like a savage, letting my Viking genes take over. (My father observed that I become positively bloodthirsty watching a hockey game. Since he’s the source of the Viking genes, I blame him, although the trait seems to have skipped a generation there.) Hockey fights provide a vicarious release for me that organized fighting does not – I’m not a boxing or UFC fan at all. The spontaneous nature of the fight on the ice is what makes it attractive. In my mind, I’m the one laying into that idiot who cut me off in traffic.

Obviously, I don’t advocate violence in the streets or at The Golden Wok, and I certainly don’t advocate it when some man or woman ends a relationship rudely. While we weren’t in love, we had fun. I’ll miss our visits and adventures. Still, the frustration over his silence is there and, at the next game I attend, the player on the receiving end of the pummeling will likely have a specific face, indeed.