Me Myself, Mom & Tom, Life and Death

I have to live with myself and so

I want to be fit for myself to know.

I want to be able as days go by,

always to look myself straight in the eye;

I don't want to stand with the setting sun

and hate myself for the things I have done.

I don't want to keep on a closet shelf

a lot of secrets about myself

and fool myself as I come and go

into thinking no one else will ever know

the kind of person I really am,

I don't want to dress up myself in shame.

I want to go out with my head erect

I want to deserve all men's respect;

but here in the struggle for fame and wealth

I want to be able to like myself.

I don't want to look at myself and know that

I am bluster and bluff and empty show.

I never can hide myself from me;

I see what others may never see;

I know what others may never know,

I never can fool myself and so,

whatever happens I want to be

self respecting and conscience free.

A poem my mom made me memorize as a youth by Edgar A. Guest

I miss you mom.  Yesterday Richie and I were talking about you - about all your counsel, about how parents do know more than their kids but that kids won't, & never will admit that and learn without experience.  Sometimes secrets do come off the shelf and out of the closet, we can only hope before we meet our maker that amends have been made - as our parents have taught.  We don't always have to be the center of all the action and Drama around us that we shan't care about the mote in someone else's eye, but instead only be concerned about our own eye and be self respecting and conscience free.  
 thank you Mom for teaching me that.

I'm remembering today the days and the night we waiting beside my brother Tom for him to die.  It's such and empty hopeless feeling.  The visual of it never ever leaves your brains' storage base.  The race to drive to him from Washington to Arizona.  Austin, Mom and me ...and Tom, praying out in the little patio garden for him to not have to suffer, feeding him, reading to him, teaching him the Plan of Happiness on deaths door, the room we stayed in, the book we read together as he lay there waiting knowing the end was near, the looks between Mother and Son.  The look he gave me when I said you'll be ok - go find Big Sis.  And the moment he was gone.  The look of a shattered conscience.   He had gone to that hospital with the intent of being "fixed" of living and "fixing" things when he came out, I hope he has the chance on the other side.  It came over me like a tidal wave that feeling of whatever happens I want to be self respecting and conscience free.