Q & A

The Curious as a Cat question I connect with this week is “When were you most moved by a ceremony?” So, without further ado ...

A few months ago, as I've alluded to in a previous post, my paternal grandmother passed away. She'd lived a good portion of her adult life in a town of about 4000 people, and the vast majority of them knew her by name. She had raised three boys in the town and her husband ran the local grocery store. After he died, she was the secretary at the Lutheran church for twenty some odd years, and even after she retired from that post, she was very much involved with the church. Needless to say, she'd touched many lives, and when we had the memorial service, several of the locals got up to tell stories about her. It was so amazing to be able to share in these anecdotes that other people had. I was never as proud to be a part of that family as I was then.

A few of the boys that grew up with my dad and his brothers shared their stories about how they'd been practically raised by her and several of the other moms in the neighborhood. While they were sharing their stories, I was remembering my own. From the time I could ride a bike, I was going to grandma's house on my own. My mom and dad would be fighting, and I'd go to her house to get away. She was an extra parent to me for most of my childhood. So, her death and the various ceremonies surrounding it were the most moving to me.

Since we made the decision to remove her from the ventilator, and we knew it wouldn't be long before she was gone, we called her pastor. Pastor Ginny came down to the hospital, and we were all permitted to be in the room in ICU as she was performing the Lutheran version of the last rites. Because Pastor Ginny knew Grandma (they'd worked together and become friends over the years) she read some of Grandma's favourite passages from the Bible, and then she sang her favourite hymns. We were all standing around her bed as Pastor prayed. All of us, including Pastor, with tears streaming down our faces.

My grandmother was an amazing woman. I'm glad I got to know her as well as I did.

A question on My Turn/Your Turn a couple of weeks ago that I've decided to briefly answer is “Are there times when you feel 'alone in the universe?'”

I feel alone in the universe the vast majority of the time. Being a full time student and working full time as well, I don't have much time for the social activities that my peers seem to be involved in. Not that I'd really want to be involved anyway. Really, I'm around people constantly because of my obligations. When I'm not obligated to be somewhere (class or work) I'd much rather just be relaxing at home. So, as a result, my only real friends are people I've never met, living hundreds or thousands of miles away. As far as family goes, I've been physically distanced from my parents for several years and emotionally distanced for much longer than that. Most kids go through a phase in their teen years when they distance themselves from their parents. I tried to do that but at the same time wound up taking over their roles as parents. Long story short, it's still affecting my relationships with them now and probably always will. So, I feel alone in the universe most of the time, like I'm on the outside looking in.

"What was the most difficult choice you were ever forced to make?" was a question I saw yesterday on Curious as a Cat. It really resonated with me because I've had to make several choices in my life which have been difficult. There are two that I'd say tie for the most difficult though. One was a choice about which parent to live with and the other a choice that needed to be made by the entire family. They were equally hard because of the emotions that were connected to both choices, and the guilt that I feel now for making them.

As a Junior in high school, my parents decided after 17 years of an unhappy marriage to go ahead and call it quits. However, my mom was already in another relationship, and preparing to move 1200 miles away, taking my much younger brother with her. I was torn between staying in school with my local support system and uprooting to be with my brother. You would think that I was more concerned with which parent to be with, but truth be told I was very angry with my mom at the time. She had been living in her own little world because she was unhappy with her situation, and I'd been picking up the slack around the house. In the end, I decided to stay where I had friends, and continue living with my dad. The whole process though was hard on me. I had to weigh out all the options and decide what was best for me. Now, I feel guilty that I stayed where I was, like I was being selfish. I know it was the best choice, but there is still that guilt.

A few months ago, my dad's mom had a sudden internal bleed in her belly. She was taken from one hospital to another because her local hospital wasn't equipped to deal with her internal bleeding. She decided to go ahead and have surgery to see if they could repair the damage. In pre-op she coded and they had to resuscitate her. That should have been an indicator for us of the likely outcome. She survived the surgery, and the docs took about two liters of blood out of her belly. About a week later, with her on a ventilator the entire time, there had been virtually no improvement, and she'd developed vent-induced pneumonia on top of everything else. I spoke to the doctors and nurses and determined that long-term she wasn't likely to recover enough to have any real quality of life. We gathered the family together, and made the decision to take her off of the ventilator. I know it was what she wanted, my dad actually asked her when she was alert enough to respond, but I still feel an incredible amount of guilt because of the "what ifs."

A friend and I were talking earlier today and he said, "You're smart!" At the time we were discussing regex and its usefulness for opering on a large IRC network, but his exclamation got me thinking. What is it that makes someone smart? It seems like “smart” is one of those subjective terms like "love," for instance. In this case, the definition would be “intelligent,” but I think there is more to intelligence than just knowing about a specific subject or two or even ten!

All of us view intelligence differently. We all value different aspects of intelligence. For me, intelligence is more than just being well-read or an ability to learn, there are a couple of other aspects to it as well. I have come across plenty of people that seem to have a decent brain, but lack something as simple as common sense. If I am going to consider a person as being smart, they have to have both. While the ability to learn and common sense are a good basis for intelligence, they lack one of the most fundamental aspects that I place in high esteem.

Several years ago, I took a class in relationship psychology. In that class, we discussed something that is known as emotional intelligence. Essentially what emotional intelligence is is the ability to regulate your emotions coupled with the ability to be sympathetic/empathetic towards others. I realised then that that aspect of intelligence was the part that mattered the most to me in looking for marriage material. Perhaps that's why I've yet to get married. I still haven't found someone (locally, that is) that has all of those things that make up my subjective definition of intelligence.

I'm sure there is far more to it than that even. What do you think intelligence is? Remember, like love it is something that we're all going to think of and define differently. So, take a stab at it.

So, welcome to my life. As the title states, it's a bit crazy. However, this blog won't necessarily be about my life, or my jam-packed schedule. I want this to be about various questions I have, things that are on my mind, things that are on the minds of my readers. I know I'm not the only one to ponder the things that make the world go round, what makes a friend or a co-worker tick, what people do when they're not "in the open." These are just a few of the thousands of questions that run across my mind on a daily basis. This blog will eventually be my answers to these things. Even now, at the outset of this crazy set of ideas you'll be following (hopefully), I can guarantee that I won't always use facts to back up my statements, nor will my research into the things I write be all that thorough. These are my thoughts and ideas. When it suits you, you're free to agree to disagree with me. You don't necessarily have to verbally bash me if you think I'm wrong.

I also want to use this for various creative writing adventures. I have a ton of story lines in my head, and I want a place to perhaps put a few of them out there (the ones I don't intend on publishing one day, of course).