Dear Mom
Dear Mom,
You are not here to receive this letter. Some days that makes me very angry. Other days very sad. Still two years after you left this life I fight a struggle with emotions, healing, and understanding. I have had the great fortune to have excellent friends help me at every stage of this process.
Your last wishes to me were that we hold no memorial for your passing. You wished to fade away from memory. We soundly ignored that. You are worth being remembered by each of us who are left behind. At that memorial I read an abbreviated version of this observation about life from Bill Hicks:
The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly colored, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while.
Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don’t worry; don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we…kill those people.
"Shut him up! I’ve got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real."
It’s just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok… But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride. And we can change it any time we want.
It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money.
Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love.
The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off.
The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.
Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.
That passage means as much to me today as it did two years ago. Life is a ride, and we can change the ride for the better.
We had our won roller coaster of ups and downs as a family. Few times were easy. It was real, it was fun, and sometimes not real fun. And I am thankful for every moment of it we had.
Thank you for everything you gave me, I love you, I miss you.
