Lieutenant-Commander Brunner, RCN: Media Personality

Today at 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on nationwide TV on Canada AM, lieutenant commander Robert Brunner, RCN, was interviewed about the progress and activities of the Canadian Disaster Assistance Response Team in the Philippines in response to Hurricane Haiyan. Audio only for the interview,  link here.

The interview covered the activities of the team in the last week and the arrival of the new helicopters and the coming online off water purification facilities.

Robert explained that the teams have been getting out into the rural areas and the coastal areas where the devastation was the worst and also attending disaster shelters to attempt medical assistance.

Robert explained the activities of the engineers and other technical folk in route clearance to free up roads from storm damage and downed power lines.

Robert further explained that the local governor had a good disaster response plan and this explains why they were not as many casualties in penne as there were in other locations but that the devastation was equal otherwise.

The interviewer asked why the Canadians were in the Roxas and on Panay Island. Robert explained that this was the place the Philippine government asked us to be and that we were as necessary in this location because of the devastation as we would have been in any of the other hard hit areas that were under the primary storm track.

The interview was well executed and Robert deserves recognition for doing a competent and professional job and for giving Canadians a good idea what our Canadian Forces are doing.

I think Alex and Jack, my two Godsons - Rob's little guys - can be proud of their dad.

Life Is Never Boring

This last week has been a mix of good and bad for me, just like the rest of the world, although for more personal reasons. The academic things I've struggled through to complete (two exams) have ended well (92% and 100%). On the other hand, the medical file has taken a turn for the more painful. On the third hand, I've arranged two sets of docs to be looking at my health. On the fourth hand, things are going well with my sweet heart. It really is a mixed bag.

Last Wednesday night, I started to get sore in the kidneys. I've had this on and off the last year, short bouts that were usually addressed with drinking a bunch of water and sometimes with a tylenol 1. The feeling is generally more like an ache than a stabbing pain and usually isn't severe enough to do more than make you uncomfortable.

What came Wednesday was more pronounced although still not stabbing. It was not amenable to tylenol 1s or enough water (1.5 - 2 liters a day exclusive of other fluids) as it kept up. It disrupted my sleeping patterns pretty badly. By Friday, it wasn't relenting, so I went to see the walk-in doctor and she said I should talk to my urologist again to see if I was within the 1 year follow-up period to avoid a new referral. That's about all they can do since walk-in clinics here don't prescribe anything strong enough to dent a real attack.

Wednesday through Sunday were times I was supposed to be writing 4 exams in my Java Enterprise Developer course. I tried studying, but I couldn't sit in one position for long and any posture other than prone was not very good. I was reading lines in the text 3 to 5 times trying to make much sense of them and retention and recall were significantly sub par. I didn't get to do much useful studying until  Saturday night and I should have been completed 3 of the 4 exams by then.

Sunday, I did study for an successfully execute two of the tests. The water loading helped a bit... I was sore but managed a 23 hour day of work. I did part of a third test, but the combination of fatigue, long-form answers, the kidney twinging, and my recently-sliced up and not yet fully healed finger meant I wasn't completing the test in the time allocated. My typing accuracy was poor with the finger and my speed is way down and the long form answers requiring very precise syntax were just not being completed in any sort of timely fashion.

I never did get to that 4th exam at all.

Provisions are being made to let me have some more time on the 3rd and to take the 4th. The college has a mostly-sane policy of requiring a doctor's note, but that meant another office visit and the walk-in doctor can't say too much other than 'patient was unwell this date to that date'.

I have an appointment to see the urologist again on the 26th of November which is great (assuming I don't get a full-fledged stone attack before then). I have an appointment with a new G.P. on the 2nd of December when he becomes my G.P. Hopefully one of these two steps will result in my getting sufficient painkillers to weather any attacks at home (has to be something like morphine as weaker stuff just can't control the pain of a full fledged attack and apparently the pain actually impedes the passing of the stone).

If anything happens between now and then, it'll be off to emergency. Today, the kidney has been (at least in the morning) more sharply painful and I've got some radiated discomfort. That's the kind of sensations I had when I did have a stone doing its thing in my kidney last year which is part of what has me a bit worried about another full-fledged attack.

I've put myself on an alpha blocker (leftover from last year) called Teva-Terasozin to help dilate the kidney passages. Hopefully that'll help.

Catherine is kind of scared by this whole thing and I get that. It's unpleasant. But people live with this stuff (stay home, medicate when there is an attack) for decades. It's no fun, but it is a well-understood thing. I wouldn't even worry about going to the hospital if I had sufficient pain meds at home, but the concerns about people abusing narcotics (possibly valid) have made prescriptions hard to come by and thus the walk-in clinics can't help.

The school and I will come to an accommodation. My kidney and I will survive this. I'm still lucky to have Catherine, overall health, and good friends and family and to be studying interesting stuff at school. I'm not letting this dampen my sense of life being a good thing.

Canadians headed to the Phillipines

DART deploys to the Philippines  

 As part of Canada's response to Hurricane Haiyan, Canada is dispatching the Disaster Assistance and Recovery Team (DART) to the Philippines. This dispatch accompanies the tasking of two C-17 Globemaster cargo planes that will be providing logistical support and transporting humanitarian supplies and personel. There is an effort to fast-track travel and immigration from Filipinos from the affected regions as well.

More personally, Lt. (N) Brunner, the father of my Godson's Jack and Alex, is deploying to Roxas on the island of Panay to the UN operations center to engage in joint planning work with representatives of other nations and various NGOs to assist the Filipino people in this terrible situation.

[UPDATE: Lt. Brunner e-mailed me from Hawaii 15 NOV 2013 1330 EST to inform me his plane was refueling before taking off again enroute to the Philippines. I hope the second leg of his journey was low fuss. On the ground, I expect a brutal work schedule and a lot of psychologically tough work.]

The Canadian Area of Responsibility (AOR) will include Iloilo City, South of Roxas on the same island.

The urban areas are better off than the rural areas apparently and the rural areas are a real mess.

A number of uninformed and ignorant people have speculated on media sites that our response is slow or half-hearted. This reflects their ignorance of the nature and scope of such mobilizations. Let me take a moment to describe some of the scope of the task and then take another moment to describe the activities that must happen in a situation like this.

Hurricane Haiyan has caused thousands, possibly tens of thousands of deaths, and last I had read, had displaced nearly 600,000 people. As a comparison, the US city of New Orleans and its surrounds were hit by hurricane Katrina and it impacted and displaced 400,000 people, so Haiyan is at least 50% larger in impact, not counting another follow on Hurricane which may hit the Philippines over the next days and its impact.

The US was criticized (similarly ignorantly) for its response to Katrina by people who don't understand the scope and the resources or the challenges. I'm not defending all of the response actions in the wake of Katrina, but I happen to know CDR Makowsky, USCG (ret.) who was the officer in charge of airborne operations into New Orleans after the CG was given the responsibility to coordinate the multi-agency response. Aboard the USS Iwo Jima, he and his team coordinated over 200 aid flights or evac flights per day utilizing more than 30 helicopters and they were supported by two US Aircraft Carriers, the HSV Swift (then LCDR Pournelle, USN, XO of the Swift, a friend of mine), and many resources from civilian, law enforcement, EMS, fire, and the military of other sorts in support of the relief effort. This relief effort was executed within a country with a high level of groundside infrastructure, technology, and occurred on the same landmass as many centers which could assist and with an affluent population, many of whom had means of their own to help themselves.

In the Philippines, the geography is a number of separate islands. There are intra-island roads, but inter-island movement of goods and personnel is all by air or sea. The Philippines is a successful nation, but is not as affluent or able to muster a response as the USA and a greater % of the overall nation has been affected (Katrina: 400,000 out of 300,000,000 or about 1 in 750 people, just over 0.1% vs. Haiyan: 600,000 out of 96,000,000 or about 1 in 160 people, 0.625% or 6 times greater proportionately).

Where the US was able to muster 30+ rotary winged craft capable of operating in less than perfect weather and coordinating this response using military and civilian air traffic control and supported by an aircraft carrier then another, the Philippine military does not have those resources.

This disaster is more remote due to island topography, larger in gross numbers and relative to the ability of the government involved to respond, and more severe in terms of death toll and damage than the US Katrina situation.

You can't just throw some supplies in a bag and parachute in. That will end up with your assistance team needing assistance. To work, they need safety and security, they need communications, a way to request, get, store and distribute supplies, fuel/food/water for the disaster assistance teams, dry safe places to do medical work from assessment and triage to surgery, transit arteries to support evacuation in the air and on the ground, as well as enough pre-arrival reconnaissance to tell you where you need to go, who needs the help most and what sort of help they need. You also have to protect your people from attacks (the Philippine Army has already had firefights to protect supply convoys from attack).

You also need to work with the county's government who has to assign an area of responsibility after they come to terms with things which takes them some time. They have to be okay with allowing armed troops from a host of other nations into their country and they have to know what those nations are doing moment to moment which is a huge liaison task. Beyond that, they probably have to provide translators and guides to assist foreign military and NGOs operating in their country.

There is an order these things must be done in. It might seem slow to the outsider, but it is deliberate-fast. It's as fast as it can be to get the job done without endangering the rescuers or the rescue efforts.

The front end of this operation is permissions - diplomacy, liaison, and getting assigned an area by the host government.

Following that, there is the dispatch of survey/advance teams who scope out the security situation, the physical environment, and try to start figuring out where they can setup their headquarters to manage the response and to give them safe, dry places to begin sending out teams to do the relief work and to handle an expected inflow of injured and dead and a throughput on a large scale of humanitarian supplies. These teams need to survey roads, find dry, safe ground, figure out where the populations they need to reach are (they may have moved in response to the disaster), and to begin engineering assessments to tell the engineers where they have to go to work to open roads, address downed and dangerous power infrastructure, to tell the communications people where they need to set up communications hubs (which they need to do in cooperation with national governments and foreign nations), to tell air force personnel where they can setup forward air controllers to help control the airspace and their assistance flights, to figure out where they can establish living quarters for their assistance teams, to figure out where they can establish refueling points and resupply points for the rotary winged aircraft coming in and out, to figure out which airports can be reopened soonest to fly in supplies and more first responders, and the list of tasks goes on from there.

Once the advance team has a rough idea of where work needs to be done first to establish the aid response to allow it to be effective, then follow on teams of engineers, communications, planning, and security folk must get to those locations and start work. The larger relief effort cannot progress until minimum security is established (not much point in having your supplies hijacked or your people becoming victims too) nor until engineering can provide a minimum of light, power, heat, and dry enough accommodation to work. Communications has to be up and running with various partners and the national government. Translators must be available, at least in limited numbers.

Once the relief effort has some basic facilities, then relief teams can start arriving and beginning immediate aid with assessment, survey, triage, and urgent care. This requires transport, often by air, which means local air traffic control must be in place (usually by the military). It also requires refueling, mechanics, etc. be available to keep the birds in the air. It also requires security for the teams going out into the disaster area. It also requires at least a trickle of relief supplies be able to reach the operating area.

Over the days and weeks, facilities continue to expand, transit routes become unblocked, power starts to get restored, people get food, water and medical care, and larger volumes of supplies start being able to be deployed effectively. This can take weeks and weeks, unfortunately, but that's the fastest this can be done. Meanwhile, people are dying, disease is starting, and all sorts of other miseries are afflicting the survivors. First responders will also be starting to burn out from the 20 hour days they will be running and the emotional toll of dealing with this sort of large scale disaster.

This doesn't even begin to touch long term efforts at reconstruction and rebuilding. That's a whole other world. Just to mount a widespread first-response to immediate physical needs on the scale required by the Filipinos will take weeks even with all of the people working full time as hard as they can and a whole pile of nations throwing money, people, and expertise at the problem.

I am proud of our DART team and the other people involved in this response including the RCAF. I know they won't get to everyone fast enough - it isn't possible given the size and scope of the disaster. But I know they will be doing everything they can do, which is all anyone can expect.

Java Enterprise Architect at Algonquin - First Exams

 

Four tests, each allegedly worth 17% of their respective courses, were written by me a week and a half ago, with another set of four (worth another 16% per course) to be written this week.

So far, my results are

• Advanced Java: 100% (17 out of 17 of 100% final course aggregate)
• Web Services with Java and XML: 100% (17 out of 17 of 100% final course aggregate)
• Web Services using Enterprise Java Beans and Java Beans: 100% (17 out of 17 of 100% final course aggregate)
• Web Services using Servlets and Java Server Pages: 80% (13.6 out of 17 of 100% final course aggregate) - missed one answer because I misread an article that I thought suggested an exception where none existed, missed another and not sure what the right answer was.

Pretty happy with those results. Lots to do this week and new exams to be written Fri/Sat/Sun. Busy short week!

 
 

Getting An Education

 

Java Enterprise Developer

That's what they call my new certificate program. Takes 6 courses. I'm taking 4 at once and challenging the other two. Plan to finish the whole thing up by end of December. Registering two days after registration closed was just the start of the fun...

I looked around for textbooks based on last years course information. I made several command decisions to purchase newer iterations of the recommended texts. As it turns out, the courses are using the newer texts, but the bookstore isn't stocking some of them (apparently they don't think one of the courses has a text....). I also got 4 texts in eBook form. Unfortunately, two of them I can't get onto my Android Phone & Tablet because they are in a Secure PDF format. I could get the Secure ePubs, but not these others and I've so far had 3 unsatisfying interactions with Kobo tech support to try to find a solution.

Then there is the matter of getting computers set up. My newest one is out on loan and has been for a time. It should come back next week. I'm using a little Linux box (Atom, 4 Gb RAM, 60 Gb solid state drive, 1 working USB port) as my computer. My main desktop is down with some sort of hardware issue, but whether the crashes are memory, motherboard/cpu, gpu, or hard disk is hard to know. Could even be the power supply. My netbook died last fall and was not repairable. My older laptop lost its network port last fall. My spare (older) development box is now old enough that loading modern web pages causes it to hang up. Somewhere, I need a couple of computers with appropriate software setups.

Being online courses, there is a whole new package of fancy eLearning stufff to absorb. They use a large enterprise web app called blackboard and this integrates forum, real-time chat, email, statis web presentation of lab/course materials, contact info, calendars, homework submission, etc. And then there's all the course material and textbooks for 4 courses.

By sometime next week, hopefully most of the environment needed to get on with things will be present.

I am really looking forward to these courses.

 
 

 

Dean Brody Concert

Catherine and I attended the Dean Brody Concert on 3 OCT 2013 at the Algonquin College Commons Theatre. The tickets were reasonable for a major star and I understand the place was sold out. I was taking Catherine out as a belated present for her Birthday (which happened a week or two before we moved to face-to-face dates, and thus I wasn't able to celebrate with her).

The concert opened with a warm-up act I didn't know, but did enjoy. That singer and his band weren't as good as Dean and his guys, but they have some talent.

Dean and his guys (the 'Brodeo' apparently) put on a good show. The guitarist is very talented and I thought the drummer was good too. Dean sings well and made a point to be interactive with the crowd. He also drew on his knowledge of the college life (noting most of the audience was College students, I think that was a good call) and related stories about his own time in College and his own experience coming from a small town.

Dean and the band did a variety of enjoyable tunes whose names I don't know yet. During his set, he did Footloose and I was instantly singing along and feeling a Kevin Bacon moment. He also sang a song mentioning Bob Marley and then broke into an actual Bob Marley song (which he rendered very well, I thought).

I was most impressed by the song "Brothers", a tribute to soldiers. He took the time to talk about his respect for members of the military who protected our country and had to be separated from their families for 6, 12, 18 months or more or who never came back. He handled this with class. He finished the regular set with "Canadian Girls" which, along with being a rocking sort of tune, pays respects to our female military members. I think Dean is a class act for doing this.

Catherine and I had a great time. There was probably some cuddling, nuzzling and kissing, but I won't tell. It was a good experience and I'd go to watch Dean again.

I have pictures and videos to post sometime soon when I have a chance. Will post on this blog some links.

 
 

Sapphire Anniversary

August 31st, 2013 saw the milestone of 45 years of marriage for Mr. Robert Andrew Barclay and Mrs. Mary Douglas Barclay.

I salute both of these survivors for their courage, tenacity, and love for one another. Neither alone could have managed the trials of recent years.

I hope one day to look back on a relationship of decades myself.

Friendship

 

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
Ray Bradbury

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.
William Hazlitt

I think in friendship, you want to be there for your friend, and sometimes you just don't know what to do or the relationship you have with them is not clear enough for you to know what to do.
Marion Cotillard

When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.
Hilaire Belloc

Came but for friendship, and took away love.
Thomas Moore

 
 

Memorial Post

 
I had a story a wrote several years ago as a memorial for a loyal friend. I wasn't able to post it until now. I rediscovered it and realized I should give it to the world in his memory. I miss him.  
 

The Void Within: The Faces of Emptiness

 

Emptiness. The emptiness of the void between worlds. The emptiness of a darkness after a great light has been extinguished. The emptiness of a heart after its true soul-kin has been lost to it and part of it has been lost therewith.

This is what some emptiness feels like; Such emptiness is cold, dark, hurtful, lonely, solitary, and depressing. This is the emptiness of always wanting to look beside you for a friend who is no longer there. This is the emptiness of knowing that the dreams you once entertained have been consumed by some Fell Beast of the Abyss, devoid of mercy, reason or compassion.

But there is another kind of emptiness. The emptiness that is left once a great fire burns out. The emptiness that brings with it the greatest stillness, without fear, expectation, intrusive thought, tension, or pain. The emptiness that is the result of the Refiner's Fire, forging you anew, burning away the unessential, the no longer possible, and the desperation that lived in chasing a phantasm of faint hope with every fiber of being. This is the emptiness that is left when the wound is cauterized, where the truth settles in - not to acceptance for some things may never reach such a state, but instead to a weighty co-existence.

Our military has a saying one man, one kit. This refers to the need for each of us to carry his own gear, all he needs, and to learn to make do with what he carries. This also refers to the fact that each man's burden is his own. His path is his own as is the load that he must carry.

My heart drives me to do things in line with its sense of values. My brain begs me to check with it first to ensure it concurs - sometimes my heart allows for this nicety, other times it will brook no dissent. But in all cases, no matter how hard the road or how tough the truth, I have known that the truth is the only thing that can liberate us and that the hard road is often the right road if one wishes to live ones values.

In this instance, I must yield the greatest wishes of the heart: to reach out, to salvage some good from the ashes of all that was and could have been, to reconnect and rebuild a trust, to have truths about my experience, my actions and my thoughts be understood, to heal the most horrible of hurts and to reach a person with whom I had a truly special, singular and transformative relationship. I must yield these because, as weak as I feel and as shaky as I am, I can do this.

The sort of friend we all should have has been blunt, caring, and has spoken with the voice of personal experience. He has explained to me the power and the scope of a traumatic past and the evoked trauma. He has explained to me that, at certain phases along the path of healing and with enough other painful matters of great necessity in play, it was more important for the afflicted soul to have their experience validated and acknowledged rather than gently nudged towards greater accordance with the full list of pertinent facts. It is necessary because of the awfulness of the evoked trauma and because acknowledging that the truth may be more than what the evoked trauma could perceive would have much in common with a further injury, which the brain, in its not so bright but powerful way, would prevent. This prevention would come at the cost of good memories repressed or, worse yet and horrifying to boot, prior good memories may actually be re-contextualized to take on a very different and dark cast, so that the brain can protect the wounded soul from further difficult experiences. And of course, any of this activity would itself come with great emotional upset and pain.

With no odds of success in my fondest wish, in the most important endeavour in my entire life, I am left with only the great likelihood of causing further harm and injury. That is not acceptable to my values nor to the great care I bear for a wounded friend, now lost to me for now and perhaps forever. It is not acceptable to the memory of what we had, which I must preserve if she cannot recall things in all of their splendour and wonder. I can do this, because to not do this - hardest of things - would be to willingly cause her hurt for a negligible chance of success.

I have never wanted to hurt her. I have hated, with the entirety of my rarely-seen incandescent, implacable anger, those who had hurt her previously. I had wept openly in impotent rage and deep empathy for her hurt. I could not knowingly hurt her, now, then or ever. For, whatever my flaws, a lack of willingness to take the harder road and face the harder truths has never been my failing.

I have my pack. I am loading the largest rocks I have ever known into it. Soon, I will be donning it and moving on. To where? I know not, I am empty. With what goal or purpose? I am unsure, except that I know I must strive to record and remember all of the good memories on the off chance that she will one day be healed enough to be reminded of them. I am also sure that I must honour her wish to have her story told, but it will be told in a format that will protect her privacy, yet still satisfy her desire to have her tale educate others about the experiences she has lived.

I am empty. But in that emptiness, there is a peace. The knots have eased a bit, the heart no longer feels so tight in the chest, the stomach no longer quivers with nausea so much, and the sense of desperate purpose is gone. Possibility opens before me. I am not yet ready to seize it with great panache, but I am ready to acknowledge that moving on is the last, best thing I can do for her; To give her her peace, her chance to heal, and hope that one day she will wish to talk and rekindle some connection. I will not pin a hope on it, for that would be putting myself on tenter's hooks. But if it ever were to transpire, I would hear her, whatever she wished to say and however hard that was to hear, with deep care, esteem and respect. I bear no anger for my fate; It was always the risk of the path we trod and it was not the action of the person I cared deeply about. My anger shall always be reserved for those who wounded her before she could defend herself. For her, I have only care, empathy, and esteem.

One last worthy note: She is the best mother I have ever met, working harder for and with her kids than any other mother I have seen and loving them more than life. She has the most positive attitude towards life, caring, compassionate, open to nuance and grey areas, and open-minded and questioning, seeking to know herself and the world with an honest heart. A soul of exceptional wonder and a singular beauty that starts at that soul and radiates. I mean this when I say she is the best human being I have ever known. When I spent time with her, I was a far better version of myself.

She is not replaceable. My great care and belief in her will never erode. I choose to hope that time will find a way to heal the wounds she has. I believe in her and know her to be worthy. I will miss her in my life like I would miss oxygen.

But I will do what is kindest, best, and least likely to cause further hurt to her. I will do this because, even if I am not strong, my care for her is that strong and will keep me on my feet and on the path despite the rocks in my pack. I will live my values, cry as I will, hurt as I must, but there will be no surrender. I will never surrender my hope for her. I will take that, as I will take our memories, with me throughout my life.

She helped me out of my darkest place while she was amidst her own. She changed my whole way of speaking to myself, of looking at the world and of believing in myself. No thanks will ever be sufficient.

Fare thee well, Arwen Evenstar. I will miss you. And I will pray, each night, for your safety, peace, and healing.

I am empty, but I am whole. I will honour your gifts. I will walk towards the Light.

 
 

The Path To Whole-Heartedness: Not For The Faint Of Heart

 

Life seems to deal us varied hands at any given time. Or at least it does so to me.

I never seem to get a tremendously easy time but there often seems to be some wonderful things buried in the difficulties if one has the right mental perspective. I think the times I get way, way down at least in part are symptomatic of having lost the ability to dig for the good parts to be thankful for.

I'm down to 208.2 pounds, 50+ pounds lighter than my peak weight. I've donned a size L T-shirt I never thought I'd wear again and it fits reasonably. I suppose my next goal of 200 pounds may take some time to reach, but I seem to be going in the right direction.

I've got some friends going through tough times. One is recovering from a nasty bout of chemotherapy necessitated by Leukemia and followed up by some nasty bugs while his immune system was flatlined. Another is sad because an important thing didn't work out the way he'd wished, no fault of his own. A third is struggling with the aftermath of a relationship gone awry and finally being able to explore and discover her own true nature with all the challenges that go with that. Another is struggling with the fallout of a failed relationship and a crisis of self-worth in a far away land.

I find that I'm not very good at just empathizing with friends and maintaining emotional detachment. When a good friend is depressed, hurting, or very sad, I find myself feeling very sad for them. I always want to be able to help heal the wound or prevent any further injury, although I know that people must face their own challenges to be independent and healthy. Still, my natural inclination is to want to minimize harm and to care about the hurting.

Through the last year or so of surprisingly broad ranges of challenges, I have learned a lot about myself. Amidst that were quite a few things I never thought I would have a chance to experience and learn about. A lot of it has been hard emotional territory.

Learning about yourself is the only way to figure out who you really are, what you really want, and how you need to heal to be whole-hearted and have the last half of your life be as healthy and satisfying as possible. It's an expensive, hard, effort-laden and time-consuming bit of work. Sometimes it feels overwhelming, sad, desperate or even hopeless.

If you can turn your mind to look for the gratitude, to look for the things you've learned and achieved (one is often surprised by how much one has done if one looks back with a clear eye), and if you keep a strong focus on maintaining hope and pursuing the path, however windy, towards a hopeful, happy, optimistic future, that helps get you out of the darkness.

There are bad, bad days. At the same time, there have been great and singular gifts. There is a truth and a peace that comes from being able to see what you want and to reach for that.

I've got a lot of road still to walk. There are some awful parts ahead. I'll honestly admit some of the things that need to be undertaken or braved in order to pursue the hope for the future I want are quite terrifying. I have no idea yet how I'll get through some of them or how many failed attempts will precede any success. The fears and the doubts don't all conveniently pack up and depart even when you do become resolved to pursuing hope through tumultuous times.

The choice is straightforward: Give up and accept that you cannot be well, happy and whole-hearted. Or choose to walk the scary, dark, hard road that will move you slowly and haltingly towards that better place. That's one hell of a Hobson's choice, but one path leads nowhere and the other maybe, possibly, at some point, leads to the whole-hearted and whole life that is so worth pursuing.

My troubled friends and I are all walking this path, each with our own hurdles and each with differing strengths. We all have bad days. Sometimes it seems like the path is just too much and we'll never manage it. That's where it is nice to have a friend to remind you of how far you have traveled, all that you have achieved, and to remind you that tomorrow is a new day.

I'm very lucky to have a supportive family and so many good friends. They help keep me going in the tough times. Love is such a very important piece of my life and a whole-hearted life is a goal worth all the risks.

 
 

Unforseen Wonders

These last months have been a cyclone of activities, crises, emotions, discoveries, fears, and joys. If you had asked me 7 months ago, I could not have imagined the future of that moment unfolding as it has. If I could have, I have no idea how I would have taken it in or even fathomed it. I certainly would not have had any idea what path to take forward.

I can only thank God that I could not see 90% of the iceberg as I may, as the man I was then, have been fearful. I would like to think I would have still had the courage to go forward, but I cannot know.

If I had not had the courage, I would have missed out on much that has been physically and emotionally challenging ( although that word hardly does any justice to the experience). I would have missed out on some hurts and fears, as well as a lot of ambiguity and confusion.

If I had not had the courage, I would have missed so many parts of the experience which were and continue to be profound, healing, perspective expanding, joyous, educational, and inspiring. I would have never discovered so many new and amazing aspects of my heart, brain, and soul. I would have not discovered life without judging, with self-esteem, with a belief in life worth truly living. I would never have discovered that a person undergoing trauma could find it in themselves to truly see another and to help them heal and see themselves anew in a healthy way.

I have been in an increasingly dark place over the last fifteen years. But a light shone through the darkness and showed me a path out, a path to the light. It is not an easy path, far from it. But I tread that tough path willingly and with a sense of peace when I can hold my Demons at bay. It is a path to an uncertain future, but I feel like I am on the path I have chosen freely yet also on the path Destiny has always intended for me.

Along the way, I have met two wonderful kids, learned so much I never had a chance to before, and have found out life is really worth the effort and that I am a lot better and more capable in so many ways than I ever believed before. Hopefully, I have helped two friends and two great kids along the way.  Every bit of these months, hard or easy, has been an irreplaceable and priceless gift.

I have a profound gratitude and sense of wonder. Whatever the future holds, I want to walk the path that Destiny and choice dictate. It'll be a great trip. Nothing could be more wonderful.

Thanks.

Remain Calm and Carry On

 

On January 9th, 2013, Mary Douglas Barclay turned 78 years of age. Age and infirmity may be her lot (and a bitterly painful lot at that), but she continues to try to maintain a positive demeanor and to give the world back at least as good as she gets.

I have to especially note that I am happy to have her with Dad and I (we've been very fortunate to all make it so long together having such a small family). Whenever I need an inspiration and an example of courage, endurance, and basic decency, I need look no further than my Mother.

In these later days of my life, my family has been incredibly supportive during my troubled times and for that I am and will remain eternally grateful. To them, no blame or fault attaches for the troubles I face now - they did their best with what they knew at the time and whatever became of me was the sum of my particular genetics, my particular experience, and a lifetime of things of which their contribution was an important but hardly the only component. Their support has been unstinting and generally compassionate if somewhat perplexed at times. When the chips have been really down, their support has never wavered. That is beyond price to me.

I wish I could ease some of Mother's suffering and pain, but the best I can do is distract her occasionally. I'd love to allay her worries about me; I am still slogging through deep, challenging places, but I just feel like things are going to end well.

Thanks, Mom. Thanks for all you've done, for all you've given me, for the traits you transmitted to me of compassion, of strength of character, of intelligence, of decency and integrity, and of the courage to have my own opinions and mind and to speak it, even when it disagreed with our own most dearly held opinions. These are gifts that have helped make me who I am and for which no repayment would be adequate. But you have my everlasting gratitude in any event....

 
 

Farewell, Old Friend

 

On December 31st, our family had to euthanize our cat Wally. It was a hard decision for my parents to make and Wally's absence leaves a huge hole in all of our lives and hearts. For a stray cat, he was a kind-spirited creature with a great sensitivity for when someone was having a bad day or was in low spirits.

I know he was well cared for and we did the best thing by him at each step along his journey with us, but I must say he left a mark on me that no cat since the original stray, old Puss. Wally was social and affectionate from the very first, as was old Puss, and both were gentle spirits.

I've broken down a couple of times and I know both my mother and father have as well. I suppose in my case, things could be impacted by my current emotional vulnerability, but he was a good companion and I hope, if there is a Heaven, that I will see him there one day.

I'm not strongly religious, but I said a prayer to ask a merciful God to see to it that Wally was kept warm, well-fed, and cared-for and that he got to know sunny days and play without the cares and infirmities of age again. I figure it can't hurt to wish for the best for my companion, even if that's all it ends up being.

If there is any lesson here, it is love those dear to you every day because you never know when their span will be over (or your own will).