A friend emailed me today and said, “I usually keep in touch by reading your blog but as I’m sure you know you haven’t been blogging much of late.” She also told me that while her second child is not quite one year old, she’s expecting her third, to which I gave my standard blessing, Better You Than Me, Sister.
It’s true, I haven’t been blogging. I can’t come up with anything comprehensive, and I’ve been busy, so I just let it go for a bit. Today, however, I have a mild cold and little ambition, so I’ll just give you a catch-all of what’s been up in my corner.
Most of my web search hits continue to be those seeking information about John, Luray and Ruby Kuca. A few have come through “Luray Hodder Kuca murdered”, a few just looking up Ruby–which seems terribly sad. I realized today that close relatives of John’s have likely been here as well, which I expected (although I don’t think it’s fair to characterize what’s been said here as cruel. It’s the truth). I don’t blame anyone in John’s family for the decisions he made. I know that had he called his brothers or his mother and told them what he planned, they would have moved heaven and earth to stop it from happening and to help him. We all regret that he didn’t ask for help. We all, regardless of whose family or friend we were, would have done everything possible to help.
I’ve witnessed such unfortunate behavior and hurtfulness over belongings that I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to have some sort of Viking-style funeral that includes piling every single thing I ever owned on the burning boat with me*. Seriously. It seems that everyone suspects everyone else of being utterly nefarious, when in reality I think we are all just in terrible pain, and wanting to cling to those scraps of our beloved friends that are left. There is so much anger that it threatens to block out grieving entirely, which is exactly the state of being that kept John from being able to deal with what was happening to his wife and their child. Anger is dangerous stuff when used to avoid pain.
Were I to sit down and list every problem in life, macro and micro, I would be able to trace it back to the battle for control. We all want to have control of the world, that’s why John did what he did, that’s why those folks gather and chat casually about other people’s tragedies, that’s why marriages struggle and teenaged children rebel. It’s why we have religion, laws and superstition. It’s all a desperate attempt to deny reality, which is that there isn’t anything that we really have control over. Ultimately, John lost control at the point at which he believed he was taking it.
The sadness, pain and bitterness that he left is just part of an endless loop of the tragedy of life the we’re all caught up in. I don’t know how any of us will go one without our loved ones, or why we or they have to suffer. I don’t know why life goes on and we find ourselves laughing or celebrating or experiencing joy in the wake of loss, but it does. My father has been dead for nearly eight years, and occasionally I feel guilty for all the joy that has occurred in his absence. But I didn’t design the system. In the same way, I already feel guilty when I tell someone something I would have previously emailed to Ray, or when I smile or laugh or forget for a moment that she is gone. It’s just the way of things, and I have to try to accept that I can’t control it and take it as it comes, good moments and bad.
As we go along in life, we collect things–loves, losses, moments of triumph and defeat. I carry my losses, as we all do, as I go through life. So, even as I grieve Ray and Ruby and John, I am not static.
I continue as the Tattooed Gypsy Sewing Teacher, and continue to love it. I’ve been offered an avenue by which I might become certified to teach in my artistic field, which might give me my own classroom space and a place in the regular curriculum instead of the after school program, which would possibly allow me to give up that cartload of eight sewing machines that I haul across hell and back. It’s a whole lot of maybe, but several of my students were beside themselves at the prospect, which certainly left my ego smiling. My class just finished their first sewing project, Pants Class, and if you know anything about teenagers you know how difficult it is to get them to break loose of their “cool.” I had three kids so thrilled with their flannel jammie pants that they wore them home from class. We had catwalking and hooting and hollering, and one dad was so thrilled for his son he kissed and hugged him right there in class.
Pants. Your ticket to joy.
My sister and I and Ernesto Frijoles took our twenty feet of folk art and handbags to our first big(ger) event, and while I now have the aforementioned cold and a sunburn, I am also $1200 richer, which feels pretty damned good. Now we double up and get ready for a much bigger show (and half as much booth space) in a month. Soon all you’ll hear at my house is the endless loop of my iPod Nano (who thought 1 GB wasn’t enough?) and the sewing machine humming along. I’ll try to take pictures of my production this time, too.
Oh, and we have a mouse problem, no cats and lazy ass dogs that show more interest in the peanut butter on the traps than the mouse shit under the stove.
Such is life as it goes on.
*Confidential note to K and MS–I’m not talking about you, or me. I think we have pure motives and have behaved well and morally, with legal rights to do so. The other flim-flam is just smoke and mirrors.
