I don't have an actual date for the Therapy Funeral. It was symbolic and I didn't have THAT faith in the ritual. It was just a straw I grasped in an especially desperate moment in the journey. But I am quite sure it happened during the gypsy wander I gave myself in the Summer of 1977 on the drive between my first attempt at college on my way to the second. It in one of the marvelous nature preserves in the land between the rivers in Southern Illinois. No shortage of nature preserves in that neighborhood, thanks to the National Park System.

My memory of the pro parade in the stream of my 43 years of therapy is still alphabet soup. The names, ranks and serial numbers still flow like letter noodles through the broth whenever I try to remember them. I have decided to let that part go for now. I think better with my senses, any way. Increasingly, I believe I can gain more information from a twitch of my natural senses than from all the words it takes to describe that twitch.

The professional who guided me through the Therapy Funeral had her office in the very building where I was taking my "Computer Science" classes. For sure the degree plan was not called, "Computer Science" in 1976 when I carried my hot, little GI bill to the registrar offices after my Army Discharge. That particular degree plan was still forming in. Mainstream knowledge of computers was still being gleaned from Science Fiction sources. Folks who knew me were careful about mentioning those particular Sci-Fi stories around me. The facts were a bit esoteric for their analog conditioning. The mega-nerds who were forming it were still kludging together the formal degree plan from what classes were available. The kludging had been hot topic in the CINCUSAEUR com center where I worked the first world's first "DIN" (Digitally Integrated Network.)

The letters of the sessions remain garbled, but the images are clarifying. The earnest young woman was not much older than my own 22 years. Her body language spoke of Upper Middle Class conditioning. Rich enough to have resources, but still attached to roots deeper than a bank statement. Her office was not much more than space carved out of a storage room in the basement of the academic edifice. When I first knocked on her door, I was in danger of abandoning my classes before they were finished. The clan yaddahs were bigger than any of my homework assignments. The family support was fully counter productive. They really, really believe their own family stories about how college life is just one big string of TV parties. If you can afford college tuition, you can afford to pay my rent. Yaddah to the blah and blah to the yaddah. Quit bogarting that libation you have in your hand. One for all and all for one.

When I first stumbled into her office, the first goal was, "Not Worse." I was falling into the family habits at a frightening speed. Arresting the descent far enough that I could stay focused on my Fortran class that afternoon was the extent of our first session. Our sessions continued for the rest of my time at that campus. I paused to say good-bye to her before I put my battered Buick Skylark on a Westbound highway and put the pedal to the medal. The national speed limit was 55 in 1977. I suspect my brother would have seen jail time during that drive. An underweight, okay to look at 22 year old woman with professional experience giving blow jobs? You do the math. . . I am busy spitting the remembered residues out of my mouth. Got soap? Industrial strength preferred. . .

The Therapy Funeral sessions with this sincere young woman were an extreme take on the detachment theories. Burying real-time relationships was nowhere in the dialogue. The door was still open to future developments. Just needed collegiate strength boundaries. The Toxic People Landfill had yet to be conceptualized. Shoot. . . The need for real-time hazardous material disposal was barely hitting the newspaper headlines. Randy Newman's "Cuyahoga River" song was still not fit for the Top Ten Music Charts. The goal of the sessions was strictly personal. I had a dream of earning a college degree. It was quite evident my birth family was not going to be able to help fulfill that dream on any level. I would have to accomplish the goal as an orphan. I made and burned little effigies during the symbolic funeral. The cremation pyre was built from scraps picked up off of the construction site of my "Computer Science" dream.

I have no doubt that the flashback series surrounding the MIL/DIL blowout is playing mightily into the Yaddahs to the Blahs of this year's anniversary tribute, but. . . Feels real time. Cumulative confusions from the here and now. I believe I am simply processing currently available data.

Thanks again for the Ramble space. Am I safe calling it, "Allot to Sort?"