The Cheese Stands Alone

I recently enrolled in an online writing class. The class assignments include a requirement to submit two personal essays during the eight weeks of the course. The instructor and other students critique the pieces the participant submits. The student can elect to either submit two separate essays or to revise the first submission based on the class feedback and submit the “new and improved” version for the second opportunity.

For my first submission, I used an essay based on the blog piece I posted here- Sand, Sea, and Sadness ( Sand, Sea, And Sadness – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement )– about my trip to the beach the day after my brother died. There was a lot of feedback from the instructor and the students, which I took under advisement and considered in submitting my second piece- the revision of my first essay. I honestly do not know which version I like better. They are quite different, although they relate to the same event and same family dynamics. It was an interesting exercise.

One piece of feedback that kind of threw me was that the class believed my ending was “too pat” and “too neat and tidy.” The general feeling of the critique-ers was that I suggested that simply remembering the good episode with my brother at day camp allowed me to come to terms with grief and resolve my feelings. If I suggested that, my bad. Of course, one memory and one trip to the beach did not punch my grief ticket. My point in the ending of the blog post was simply that the trip to the beach and the memory allowed me to start the grieving process more elegantly and effectively. I expect that I will be grieving and remembering and processing emotions around my brother’s death for the rest of my life. This is one reason that I have continued to share blog posts about my trip and the misadventures I experienced. The grief process is very much still in my mind and in my heart. Even the blog posts that have a comic framework are a way of working through my feelings about my brother and his death. Maybe I am just not ready yet to relate anything even a little bit profound about this experience. I have not found the profundity of losing my brother in a way I can articulate yet.

However, there is a serious issue related to my brother’s death that I want to share in this blog piece. I am now the last of my birth family standing on this side of the Great Divide. My father died in 1996. My mother died five years ago this past September 2. My brother died on July 28, 2022. My brother’s death was not just about losing my brother. My brother’s death caused a tearing away of the last tangible thread I had to my family of origin, my childhood, the hopes I had for my life that never materialized, my youth. Don’t get me wrong. I have a great life and I am incredibly grateful for everything I have. It is just that my life today is not anything like what I pictured when my world was my parents and my brother and me living on the corner of Cerritos and Perdito in Anaheim, CA. Also, as an adult, I see that the world I knew then was not even the world I thought it was at the time… and now, never can be.

While I was in California, I took a sentimental journey. I drove past the house where I grew up. I drove past the church we attended. I drove past my old elementary, junior high, and high schools. I cruised down the streets where the neighborhood children played late into the evening on extended summer days. I stayed in Hemet, where my brother lived. My mother and father, and later just my mother, lived in Hemet for many years, as well. Everything in Hemet and in Anaheim looked so foreign and far away from any relevance to me. Bars and fences on all the schools. A new addition on the house. The church building looked small and lonely. The storefronts did not look the same as I remembered in either Anaheim or Hemet. Even the mobile home park where my mother lived before she moved to Florida was completely different- new owners, new name, and a new sign. I almost missed it completely as I tooled down the main highway.

Finding yourself the only one left is disorienting. I looked online for some context for what I was feeling and found that my perspective is common, though not discussed very frequently. Society, in general, tends to concentrate more on the grief of widows, widowers, parents, and children. There is an unspoken idea that, somehow, the grief of a sibling is not “that bad.” I do not know about that. I am sure it is more about the emotional relationship than the biological relationship. Besides, as someone once told me, “Comparing is despairing.” Nobody needs to win the misery lottery to suffer with grief. The grief of a sibling is as legitimate as any other. It can be quite complex, as well, because sibling relationships are often fraught with difficult emotions. Spouses choose each other. Parents choose to have children. Children may not choose their parents, but, at the very least, children understand that their parents are necessary to their lives. Friends choose each other. Sibling relationships are the only ones where the parties have absolutely no choice in the creation of the relationship.

When the difficulty of losing a sibling combines with the isolation and disorientation of finding yourself as the cheese standing alone in the world, it can be even more difficult. I found myself struggling with that realization the whole time I was in California. I did a lot of sobbing when I was alone, mourning for everything I saw that was not what I remembered it being. There is a lot I could say about what exactly I was mourning. There is a lot I could say about the regret and guilt. There is a lot I could say about disillusionment. There is a lot I could say about when and how I learned to live as myself instead of simply as the oldest child in the Goodness family. And, certainly, how scared I am that maybe I never did learn that. I am just not sure how to talk about any of that yet. As the people in my writing class pointed out, grief does not resolve so neatly.

This trip was about saying good-bye. Yes, it was about saying good-bye to my brother. But it was also about saying good-bye to the me I used to be, the me I thought I was, and the me I dreamt I would someday be. The good news is that saying good-bye to those “mes” may open the door for greater acceptance and appreciation for who I actually am.

In losing someone close to you, have you ever realized you were losing more than just that person? What was that experience like for you? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a fresh start today!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

Write On!

This week, I started taking an online writing course. Some of you may be saying, “well, it’s about time!” I’m excited about this opportunity, but I am also nervous. I took a few creative writing courses in high school and college, but I don’t think I ever put my heart and soul into them. I think my fear of rejection and being criticized got in the way of me benefiting from the courses in the past. I protected myself. I wrote what I thought others would like. I did not share the work that I truly carved from my soul. I treated the classes as an obstacle course where I had to avoid booby traps instead of a fancy store from which I could buy as many treasures as I was willing to carry. This time, I vow to make a concerted effort to be courageous. I vow to be thirsty for what the class can teach me. I vow to see feedback as a gift, not a punishment.

As one of the first assignments for the class, the instructor asked us to write about why we write. I don’t think I ever considered that before. I always just did. They say that “writers write.” It does not matter if you are making a living at being a writer or if you are even publishing your work. The crucial factor when proclaiming yourself a writer is that you do the work and produce evidence that you have done so.

When I thought about the instructor’s question, though, I realized there was a more definitive reason that I write. There was a more tangible, focused explanation for why I began this worldview as perceived through my own written word.

Writing was always a wonderful experience for me, even as a child. I loved the order and patience the writing process imposed on my thoughts and feelings. I was a “smart kid” in school, but I also had no confidence or faith in my own perspective. I had a tough time telling people what I thought and felt. I was always afraid that someone else would interrupt to dispute my communication and I would not be able to defend my perspective. Perhaps even more scary, I would not get the chance to say everything I wanted to say. When I communicated what I wanted to convey in writing, I could carefully craft and lovingly curate my perspective. I could also galvanize my message in fact, tone, and intensity. There is little that is more satisfying to anyone than finding her voice- even when that “voice” makes no sound other than fingers pecking at a keyboard.

The idea of being a writer always lurked in the wild part of my mind, but I never seriously considered that I might be able to make a living by writing. I was able to feed my writing habit on the job by drafting correspondence, writing employee evaluations, and composing other technical documents. However, that tiny wild hair dream of being a real writer never came to fruition. It stayed confined in the wild pasture side of my mind. It was a free-range dream, but there were still some fences at the boundaries of my brain. Life and making a living got in the way and I never released the dream until I retired from my “real job.”

Retirement is the perfect time for my own little “encore” performance- to do the things I always wanted to do in my life but never had time to do. I wanted to “retire to” something much more than I wanted to “retire from” something. It turns out that the heart of my “to something” has been writing. I began by starting this blog almost seven years ago. I had no idea that I would continue for so long. I’ve published two books and have a third one coming out in a few months. I thought that, once I published the first book, I would bask in the languid afterglow of completing my writing bucket list. I did, but only very briefly. It turns out that it isn’t so easy to turn off the writing machine in my head once I’ve turned it on.

So, I continue. I may not produce a new post every single week, but I do pretty well with creating new content. The blog has birthed the books. I’ve also tried my hand at a novel (and found said hand to be sadly lacking) and I have just finished the first draft of a novella- my first work of fiction to get beyond the most embryonic stage. It is fun exploring. It is fun finding new ways to use that keyboard voice I embraced over 50 years ago. I am not sure why I am gorging myself at this literary smorgasbord or where this experimenting will take me, but, for now… I am content to just write on!

What are you doing in retirement as your “encore?” Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Use your voice today!

Terri/Dorry 😊

What To Do; What To Say

Believe it or not, we are approaching the fifth birthday of www.terrilabonte.com.  I have published over 250 posts.  At an average of about 1000 words per post, that means I have written approximately 250,000 words over the past five years.  There have been over 1200 non-spam comments.  Who would have thunk it? 

It is hard to say how many people read my blog.  Analytics show about 350,000 hits per year.  This sounds impressive, but I know there is a lot of junk in there. There are so many spam comments that I just delete without y’all ever seeing them.  This tells me that a lot of those hits are from search engine optimization companies that pay poor people in foreign countries pennies to “hit” websites.  The idea is to create clickbait for their clients.

When I first started my blog, I said, no matter what the readership, I would continue posting until I ran out of things to say.  Every now and again throughout the past five years, I would hit a place where I wondered if I had arrived at the “ran out of things to say” point.  Then, something would happen in my life or in the state of the world that would make me think a new thought and I’d write another blog post.  Now, as five years is drawing to a close, I wonder if now might be a good time to call it quits. 

Typically, I have about 5-10 blog posts written and waiting to be posted.  Now, I am down to just a couple.  Is that a sign that the new ideas are drying up? Am I becoming boring or redundant?  Also, it is a bit of pressure to come up with a new post every week.  I started a new book a couple of months ago (by the way… remember you can get a paperback or Kindle copy of my book Random (A)Musings on Amazon) but have kind of stalled because the blog has taken precedence.  It also costs money to pay for the blog hosting for another year.  And, is anybody reading?  I know I said that I’d keep writing if I had something to say, regardless of readership.  If I were a really noble, well-adjusted person, I would not care about readership numbers.  I must confess that I do care a little bit, though. 

As part of my COVID reconsideration of my life (see  The Year That God Hit Pause – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement for more information on that), I am taking a good hard look at the blog.  Is it something I want to continue doing? 

On the one hand, the downsides I have just noted are real. They may be sufficient reason to shut the blog down before it is time to pay the annual renewal fee. On the other hand, I really do enjoy the blog.  The fee is less than $10 per month… less than most people pay for just about any form of entertainment.  If I was better adjusted, the readership numbers should not be a factor in my satisfaction level.  I could eliminate any undue pressure to come up with new blog posts if I just released myself from my self-imposed requirement to publish every week.  I know that people might stop reading if there is not continuous new content, but I truly do not think I am rocking anybody’s world anyway.  Maybe I should get outside my head and pay the renewal… then, just do whatever comes naturally.

Part of me wonders if the blog is really what I am supposed to be doing in life.  I truly believe that God has a plan for each our lives (Jeremiah 29:11).  I think it is important to stay awake to the signs and opportunities He puts in our path so that we will see the plan He has for us when it appears.  I believe that, if we follow the path He has for us and use the opportunities He gives us, then He will bless our efforts.  He will multiply whatever little we are able to do on our own so that the results will be far beyond anything we can ever imagine.

I have always maintained that His plan for me was not to do anything extraordinary, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love.  I believed that God would bless these little, love-soaked ordinary things and they would have a positive impact beyond my small circle.  St. Therese of Lisieux lived simply as a nun in a cloistered convent for her entire adult life and spent her days doing small, generous things for others.  Today, her writings are known the world over and they inspire people to walk towards God.  Unfortunately, I do not think my ordinary acts, despite the extraordinary love of God that I try to harness within them, are having much impact beyond the people who love me anyway. 

Maybe I believe I am only supposed to be doing the ordinary deeds I find in my way because it is the most comfortable way for me to be a Christian.  Maybe God believes I am supposed to aim a little higher in finding the plan He has for me.  So, is there more I should be doing?  Does God have a bigger plan for me, even at this late stage in the game? And does www.terrilabonte.com have a place in that plan?  Or do I just need to get over myself?  I am no St. Therese of Lisieux.

What do you think?  Should I keep blogging?  Is there anybody out there reading?  How would you feel if I only ended up posting new content on a more irregular schedule?  Would you keep reading?  What do think about finding purpose in life?  How do you know if you are following the path you were meant to follow?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement.com. 

Have a metaphysical day!

Terri/Dorry 😊