Journal

 I wrote letters to my daughter throughout her life away from me. It is only now that a relationship is being forged but she's 13 now and all those years of birthdays, christmas, thanksgiving, school plays, trips to see snow for the first time will never happen for the two of us together. mind you, I was blessed to have family take her from me. She never saw me at my worst: homeless, addicted, anorexic, chronically ill in and out of hospitals. Oh, I've written her reams of poems and letters and one day she will open my closet door  to find hundreds of love letters written just for the love of her. I am including the first one I wrote when she was gone from me. I knew not what else to do. My mama arms were empty. so, for those of you perhaps on the fence with your drinking please--after reading this--ask yourself is this worth it? 

my darling baby girl,
i love, i love you, i love you. you are the best that can come from me.you are the best seller i never wrote.the truce i could never make. you inspire, you coerce, you create all that is holy for me,that is good in God's universe. child of my heart, we are a communion of sorts, mother and daughter, in us i imagine redemption, an inherit good and if i could i would bless you with enough stars to buy you the world. but mother's can't give the world (nor fathers, nor even husbands, lovers, or children)-the world sometimes just happens to us, or if we begin with more wisdom than your mama had, we might help ourselves to the world.i feel the wisdom in you and i offer a prayer for its
continued growth.

on this, the day i say goodbye to you, i wish more than i've ever wished for anything that you be gifted with good health, great joy, extravegant love. i would tear down a star and put it in a box- if i could. i would seal up love in a long thin bottle so you could sip it whenever it was needed- if i could. for you. my sweetheart girl.

i love you maia nicolette. you are closest to my heart, closer than any other human being. you are my extention. you are my prayer. you are my belief in God. for better or for worse, you inherit me.

mama

Roger drank to clear his thinking

Nowadays the heroes go out seaching

For any answers two bucks will buy.

Soon the bubbles in his glass were the only

pieces of charm he wore proudly.

His face seems frightened in the afternoon 

Just today he was complaining about vigilantes

and swindlers

Who come knocking at his door.

They will steal a ridiculous shiny duct free film canister

that confines his arms and legs

From the bedroom where his women use

to walk and talk to him.

Who pushed him from his own two feet?

                         (his father?)

                         (his mother?)

                         (his friends?)

                         (his woman?)

WHat can I say about this incipiant loneliness?

His mother using him to be a life she owns

His father, making small poems

that melt in the air.

He sits on a mortgaged chair by a window'

dreaming dreams

of a separate sail that will give birth to life

                           to start the song

                           to end the scream

They say t0 begin again is no more

agony than opening your hand.

I say we lived as carefully as our

complicated lives would allow.

We are stranded, you and i, in a wasteland

of anesthesia

Drinking memories, entertaining ghosts

Longing for arms no longer warm

And we hope no one forgets how we tried

to love-

And how so many of us died their on our knees.            d.h. 2005

 God's will never takes me where his grace will not sustain me. ---RuthHumlecker

I never wanted to write this. I didn't think I could. Yes, I'd had losses before: my dad, my brother, my best friend, my other best friend, and my girlfriend. Wish these were but a few but the list goes on and on and on. For example, I knew three people: Miles Sims, Patti Morris, and Joanne Sims. Joanne was Miles's mom and she loved him through his many debacles. After all, she'd known some herself. I went to Mass with her a few times and we prayed that finally Miles would make his way out of the darkness. It never happened.

He met Patti in 2006 and I suffered for her because she had no one. Parents both dead from alcoholism and a sister long estranged though that sister tried. She really. Patti was my roommates girlfriend for awhile. I don't wish to cast aspersions on this fragile girl but she did her pills and she drank when she could.  She never worked though I don't know why.  Maybe just too beaten down by life and couldn't conceive of being hireable. Just my guess from one who loved her and tried HARD to see she got somewhere. I pulled strings and got into as domestic violence shelter where she could have free school, housing, a car, a mentor to aid her in the future. Damn that girl! She always did have her own mind.....

She left after I spoke for Alumni night and went back to Miles. They lived in an apaprtment his mom owned which they promptly burned down. Call it freebasing or-to be charitable-a candle left unattended. Anyway, the apartment burned and off Patti and Milers went to a motel. You know the ones. About a week later I got a phone call that Miles was dead. His body was found decomposing in Sims Bayou. Miles Sims in Sims Bayou.

Joane died shortly after that. Some people thought it was a drug deal gone bad that Patti had something to do with it. She was persona non grata after that. In the dope world I don't make a habit of judgements. It's an evil piece of work but the Lord forgives and I try to.

Patti--my God I loved that forlorn orphan. She had a habit of sleeping on whosever sofas she could. Homeless, helpless, addicted.  I haven't thought of her for awhile but I am sobbing now. She deserved better. She was the biological daughter of two American Indians who both died of disease of alcoholism. Her adopted father was an abuser and she had her tubes tied at 24 out of fear of being like her dad. She had no real friends. I think she never thought she deserved one. I tried, though, until she disappeared.

I heard she met a predator of sorts. He goes to aa to meet vulnerable women that he keeps drunk or high or desperate to do his bidding. I call him a pimp. I had the pleasure of seeing him after Patti's service so that I could allow him to hear nothing like the bullshit he was used to. Some people find him "charming." I find him a bastard and a killer of women.

Patti died of D.T.'s in the hospital. Her paramour dropped her off and never told the nurses what she'd been drinking. She died because her heart could not support her body anymore. Patti could have been saved. She wasn't. She is buried in a paupers grave..... Patti, this is for you and though you might not have believed I loved you......i surely did. And if no one else remembers I will tell Patti stories as long as I have breath. You deserved so much better. I wish you got it.

p.s. In the world of addiction please, I beg you, please be your brother and sisters keepers.