{"id":274,"date":"2010-12-31T08:02:29","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T15:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=274"},"modified":"2010-12-31T08:02:29","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T15:02:29","slug":"friday-poetry-narrow-trail-plus-2010-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=274","title":{"rendered":"Friday Poetry — Narrow Trail — Plus 2010 Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Narrow Trail<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes we walk a narrow path
\nOn a razor-thin line
\nOur bloody feet ask for mercy
\nAnd there’s no sunshine<\/p>\n

Then we find branches
\nSo many roads to choose
\nWhich one offers hope?
\nHow will we pay its dues?<\/p>\n

Another year is gone then
\nAnd still I tread this path
\nMy soul feels so dirty
\nBut I cannot take a bath<\/p>\n

Nothing will cleanse me
\nMy innocence fled long ago
\nI cling to shreds of hope
\nIn the few bright strands I know<\/p>\n

Farewell to times now past
\nI greet a future I have not met
\nIn the present I feel lost
\nBut it’s my only safe bet<\/p>\n

I look to you and I hope
\nYou walk beside me on this trail
\nWith love my pain is less
\nAnd I know I will not fail<\/p>\n

****<\/p>\n

Happy New Year’s Eve!\u00a0 I hope my last weird lyrical bit of verse was enjoyable.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, this past year was crap.\u00a0 I honestly don’t like looking back, but sometimes the best way to put things behind us is to give them a final parting thought.\u00a0 So here it is, 2010 in review:<\/p>\n

January started off positive.\u00a0 Daniel had had a moment of insanity in December, but seemed to be recovering from it and getting a better perspective on reality.\u00a0 My bosses assured us that the contract Microsoft had with our employer (Hewlett-Packard) to provide their helpdesk support would continue.\u00a0 We were certain to get the renewal we were looking for.\u00a0 HP had had the contract for eight years now and always done well with it.\u00a0 But Microsoft decided they could not afford us anymore, and before January was out we learned the corporate contract would not<\/em> be renewed.\u00a0 We were told we had until the end of July–my birthday, by the way–to find a new job.\u00a0 That gave us six comfortable months.<\/p>\n

February…well, there’s only one thing which happened in February of any consequence.\u00a0 On Friday, February 26, I got a call at work from Sam.\u00a0 She told me to get home quickly, that my heart was about to break.\u00a0 She would not give me details.\u00a0 My emotions assumed the worst, my head told me I was panicking needlessly.\u00a0 Danny was probably hurt, I told myself, maybe seriously, but nothing more.\u00a0 I got home and learned he was dead.\u00a0 I remember Sam’s pained expression as she stood in the doorway of our house.\u00a0 I asked if he was alive and she said “No” and I kind of collapsed.\u00a0 I contacted Shoes at work and she came over and I barely needed to tell her anything.\u00a0 She collapsed, too, upon receipt of the news.\u00a0 She read it in my face, although she confirmed it by asking audibly.<\/p>\n

I contacted my side of the family.\u00a0 I told Dad, and I could hear his heart break over the phone line.\u00a0 We had trouble getting in touch with Mom, but I finally succeeded, and again I heard a heart break while my own was already doing the same.\u00a0 Things kind of blurred over the next couple of days.\u00a0 I remember announcing Dan’s suicide in church on Sunday and then leaving the Great Hall quickly to keep my emotions in check.\u00a0 After service, I had a moment I’ll not likely forget.\u00a0 One of my church friends, Coleman, came straight to me.\u00a0 Her daughter committed suicide a few years ago.\u00a0 We put our arms around each other and cried for a minute.\u00a0 It’s a pain that can’t be described to anyone who has not felt it, but it is a pain which can be shared by those who have.<\/p>\n

Then I was on a plane and I was in Virginia.\u00a0 I cried at the funeral home without reason.\u00a0 Then I saw the casket my ex-wife picked out and I cried some more because it was beautiful and terrible at the same time.\u00a0 I picked out the urn which sits beside me now.\u00a0 My minister back home put me in touch with a Richmond UU minister who put me together with another Richmond UU minister who could do Danny’s service.\u00a0 Everybody agreed on the UU thing because it’s such a non-denominational faith.\u00a0 We could not have had better; the woman spoke as if she knew Danny.<\/p>\n

I remember the last time I looked on my son’s face.\u00a0 I remember the last time I saw his coffin as the JROTC color guard escorted it out of the room.\u00a0 Everything in between was a blur.\u00a0 There was crying, but there was a bit of joy to be found.\u00a0 I spent an afternoon with my surviving son, Spaceman.\u00a0 I established a line of communication with him with our cell phones.\u00a0 I had just gotten my phone late in January in anticipation of needing it to help me find a job.\u00a0 Now it was a link I very much needed, one I feel Spaceman needed as well.<\/p>\n

By this point it was March.\u00a0 A week after I returned home, my co-workers and I were told Microsoft had executed an option to end the contract even earlier.\u00a0 Our jobs would be over on April 30 instead of July 30.\u00a0 Panic mode set in, but I kept as calm as I could about it and set about trying to find a job while mourning Danny’s loss.<\/p>\n

April came and went, and I was jobless.\u00a0 One of my co-workers found a job at my current place of employment, and in May I was there as well.\u00a0 A couple of other HP co-workers would follow me.\u00a0 I found other former HP employees I knew already working for my new employer, although in other parts of the company.<\/p>\n

During my brief job hunt, I got into an accident on my scooter.\u00a0 I was unhurt but the scooter was totaled.\u00a0 This doesn’t take much; scooters are low-value things so it doesn’t take much for repair costs to exceed their worth.\u00a0 I was sad at having lost it.\u00a0 After having had it for about two and a half years, I was a bit attached to it.\u00a0 The insurance company of the fellow who hit me paid for its replacement, but I had to shell out a few hundred dollars of my own.\u00a0 Given that I was jobless at the time, this was not a happy thing to have to do.\u00a0 Fortunately, the day after the accident I had an interview with my new employer and was offered my current job.<\/p>\n

Summer was a bit of a blur.\u00a0 Sam had a birthday in June, and mine was at the end of July.\u00a0 Spaceman’s birthday was mid-July, and for the first time in some years I could not be with him for it.\u00a0 In August, Shoes moved to Phoenix.\u00a0 This was a good move for her but a lousy one for me.<\/p>\n

In September my divorce reached its final steps and in October it was finalized.\u00a0 Shoes birthday was in October and she turned twenty-two.\u00a0 I consider this a significant event; it’s the first birthday in her full legal adulthood.\u00a0 Twenty-one is when that adulthood “happens,” but twenty-two is the end of the first full year of such legal nonsense.\u00a0 No more big birthdays for many, many years to come.<\/p>\n

Anyway, November came and brought new tragedy.\u00a0 Shadow, my cat of fourteen years, died.\u00a0 I went to bed three days before Thanksgiving knowing she was having problems.\u00a0 We had an appointment with the vet scheduled for Wednesday, but when Sam woke up on Tuesday an hour or two after I did, she told me Shadow wasn’t moving.\u00a0 I checked and found she still breathed, and was aware of her surroundings, but she could not move.\u00a0 Her body was limp, other than an occasional twitch of her tail.\u00a0 We took her to the vet and put her to sleep within two hours of discovering her condition.\u00a0 She had slept next to my head for the last time.\u00a0 Her urn, which looks like a resting black cat, sits next to Danny’s.<\/p>\n

Thanksgiving was okay, other than the fact I was in mourning again.\u00a0 I had had an unpleasant day earlier in the month when what would have been Danny’s twenty-first birthday came and went.\u00a0 Sam fixed a lunch which was barely edible.\u00a0 I am not insulting her cooking; she is normally a wonderful cook.\u00a0 She was the first to say the bird was badly prepared, but we ate what we could.<\/p>\n

I resolved around that time to end 2010 early, at least from an emotional standpoint.\u00a0 I would start having a new year, a good year, in December.\u00a0 Bright spot number one came on the last day of November when, with the help of another church friend, Kivuli came into my life.\u00a0 The same friend had taken Sam and I to the vet a week earlier with Shadow for her euthanizing; now he took us to the Humane Society for the other, more joyous end of life.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks later, more joy as Sylvie came into our life.\u00a0 This time, Sam went to church with me, helped me fold the Order of Service for the day, and then she went to the Humane Society and managed to get a free adoption.\u00a0 (The first ten on Sunday are always free, which is not as easy a feat as one might imagine.)\u00a0 Just before Christmas, I learned I would be going permanent with my new employer.\u00a0 No more contracting agency.\u00a0 This meant a cut in pay but significant benefits, so it is a good thing and will happen in January.\u00a0 I followed the steps my boss gave me and just need to wait for the official transaction to occur.<\/p>\n

In summary, 2010 has been the worst year of my life, hands down.\u00a0 It ended on a positive note and I have high hopes for 2011.\u00a0 I have several projects on the horizon which I hope to pull forward in January and make great progress on in the coming year.\u00a0 More on that tomorrow.\u00a0 See you then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Narrow Trail Sometimes we walk a narrow path On a razor-thin line Our bloody feet ask for mercy And there’s no sunshine Then we find branches So many roads to choose Which one offers hope? How will we pay its dues? Another year is gone then And still I tread this path My soul feels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}