Dalai Lama Chauny

The following is result of Operation Blog Recovery (Of what I could retrieve): The following content is collected from a platform that is no longer operational. Gaps and spaces in the formatted text could be the result of broken and/or expired emoticons, links or web-hosted pictures. You can be assured that the opinions and thoughts expressed are from the original writing. Hell, I’m not even going to correct spelling or grammar. Enjoy! Or not.

Originally posted on August 16, 2008

I’m going to confess (and apologize) right off the bat, I’m not really in the mood to write today. So, this entry will probably have no entertainment value to you. However, I have so many abstract ideas and thoughts floating around my brain, I thought if I wrote a few words, maybe I could sort them out. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. My mother was rushed (from work, by ambulance) to the ER 2 days ago. One of her supervisors calls us at home to tell us that momma’s was having heart pains, and they wanted her to go to the hospital. Of course after getting that call, Sis & I beat the ambulance to the ER. In Arlington Memorial’s gigantic ER, a weird coincidence landed my mom in the exact room I was rushed to on September 17^th 2007, when I had my inexplicable Blood Blessing. 🙏🏾 Sis took every opportunity to tell the nice nurses and hospital staff of the room coincidence and the fact that I had a blood count that day that ‘wasn’t compatible with life.’ She (and I) were still a little proud that I’m the only known case of a person walking, talking and conscious (however laboring) when I only had a 3^rd of the blood I needed to live in my body at that time. After hours of numerous tests, chest x-rays and examinations, they found out that she didn’t have any serious heart or lung issues. Her blood sugar was much lower than it needed to be, so they gave her some food, prescriptions and a lecture on keeping better track of that stuff (we tell her that all the time). It started to really make me think (again) about how fragile life is and absolutely precious the time you have with the people you love is. Before losing my beloved “twin” older brother years ago, the only experience I’d had with losing anybody close, was my grandparents. First my grandfather (from leukemia), then my grandmother (from losing my grandfather but they blamed it on complications of diabetes). We spent every Summer there in Sinton, TX. I think we were the only black kids in that neighborhood. All of our Summer friends were Hispanic. My mom said that every year we’d come back home with a very pronounced Spanish accent, even though my grandfather was the only one that spoke fluent Spanish in our immediate family. I can tell you that I believe my grandparents to be the true beginning of my proud family legacy. My dad told us that their house, was the house that tramps or vagrants (as they used to call them) would come to when they were passing through town to get a hot meal and safe place to sleep. I also knew that well into their 70s/ 80s (before Granddad got sick), they had an extremely healthy sex life cause my sister and I caught them one Summer when we were scared awake by something in the middle of the night (but I think we chose to block that night out of our minds). All those great years and Summers are wonderful to think about now.  And all the quirky and unique things about me and my family, can easily be explained by my colorful family tree. Not one of us is boring…or even normal but I find great pride in that. 😁 I guess I’m rambling on because I’ve started to think about loss a lot lately. As memories of my brother flood my head, and as my September 17^th Re-birthday approaches, I lament on the importance of telling people how much you care about them. So, I called a young friend that I haven’t spoken to in quite some time, just to tell him that I hoped he was happy, healthy and eating well and I know he’ll go forth and conquer the world. Sometimes even the strongest and most capable people need to hear that. I guess I just woke up feeling that I need to let the people I care about, that someone is fondly in their corner, wishing the very best for them. Since romance seems like a forgone conclusion at this point, I need to be concentrating my energy on something just as important, even more so.