The Hard Part II

Whether to grieve the end of life or celebrate the end of suffering?

As of the last court hearing in July, the family court was giving serious consideration to terminating parental rights of my son and his wife. Their efforts to run their marriage by contemporary romance standards were resulting in destructive parenting. One does not often see happy children in the parade of self-absorbed beauties in the chick flick section of your local video store. Neither my son, nor his wife would have been allowed an audition for the casting call. Physical beauties and social sophisticates they wasn't. As with most of the nuts on their family tree, they were neither beautiful nor well-coiffed. Both suffered grievous mental illness. My son's mental illness was being called, "Paranoid Schizophrenia." His wife never opened to me far enough for me to know her plight, but morbid obesity is clearly on the list. That morbid obesity was an important element in the 2014 series of PTSD episodes which ushered in the sense that my son had married my mother. My mother always was a woman ahead of her time. She was morbidly obese long before it morphed into a cultural norm. With 11 children, her chubby knees ignored a great many rounds of hysterically crying children while she evered her what's on her way back to her eternally closed door.

The both loved their children as much as they loved each other. The discussion of terminating parental rights was devastating to them both. Despite my failure to approve of their parenting tactics, their wasnae ever a doubt in my mind that those children were dearly loved by both of them. I never doubted my mama sincerely loved me, either. Daddy, too, despite all his father fucking. Love isnae enough, despite what the Romance Novelists claim in their bachelor isolation.

Still I wonder if the accident was vehicular suicide. These two were romantic enough for a suicide pact. My efforts to *Not Go There* are failing miserably. The image of 4 hands on that steering wheel as the car turned into the path of the cattle truck behind them keeps coming back, no matter how hard I push it away.

I am far from confident about sending Big Bro back to school today. The school is quite harsh in its anti-bullying policies and Big Bro was issued two citations last week. Can we let his parents settle in their graves before we start issuing first grade criminal edicts? Who is bullyig whom here?

Ouch. . . I fear we are a ways out from achieving "Not Worse."