Myth Me Musings (22): Meet The Jespersens

I.

Thursday night I spent a couple hours at Zoe’s house, chatting and trying to put my brain in some semblance of order when my mom called to tell me that the viewing was not at the “normal funeral home, it’s at the other one.” And the word “normal” in that instance made complete sense to me.

II.

Friday at the viewing, we sat in an empty pew a few rows behind the rest of the family.  I watched as my uncle’s family (he was my cousin through my mom’s sister) all sat there, bawling their heads off.  And I looked at my family, none of us shedding a tear.  Our family was the one who spent the most time with him–the majority of holidays, etc.  Was they’re crying obligatory tears, because they felt that’s what they were supposed to do?  Or was it that we’ve lost so much in a few short years that our wells have pretty much run dry?

III.

The pastor at the viewing decided to take the opportunity to remind us that tragic accidents are a not-so-subtle hint from God that the next day is never guaranteed, and we should use this as a sign to examine our own relationship with the one true Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amy and I decided to turn the weekend into a drinking game.  Any instance of prostelyzation (can’t spell that word.  Can hardly pronounce it) would equal a shot.  Good thing we didn’t actually do it, otherwise we would have never been able to drive home.

After the jump, continue reading Myth Me Musings (22): Meet the Jespersens

Snippets of backstage conversation

After the show tonight, I was talking to one of the other people in the show, who asked me “how long ago did your cousin die?” I said, “Wednesday, the funeral was yesterday.”

She said, “oh my god, just like you said.”

I don’t know why it is so hard for people sometimes to take what I say onstage as truth.  It always is.  Sure, I may shape it for a dramatic arc, but if I said “I just got back last night from my cousin’s funeral in Sioux Falls, South Dakota”, it means I got back last night from my cousin’s funeral in South Dakota.

That is all.

Deeper thoughts coming tomorrow.

Radio All-Stars: Tonight!

I realized that I hadn’t put out a blurb that I’m performing at Radio All-Stars tonight.

8pm, Bryant Lake Bowl

So, if you read this, be there.

If you can’t, after the jump the piece I’m doing tonight.

There’s a lot of things to be written about this weekend, but not right now.  Soon.

Crying in Unexpected Places

I went to the gas station to get smokes, and asked if they had any specials on Camels.  They didn’t, but I spied a two-for-one package of another brand in the back.  I said, “Give me the two-for-one Parliaments”, and started crying.

Parliament is my cousin’s last name.

It’s a cruel, cruel world sometimes.

Thank you again, readers.

For the second month in a row, this blog has had over 1,000 hits. 

Thank you.

Da Monkey

Myth Musings (21): A death in the family

Some more information has come out on the accident that my cousin was killed in this morning, hitting the evening news and creating a subsequent comment thread.  Apparently, there are a lot of people praying for us right now.  I’ve never been one to tell people I know that I’m praying for them, let alone strangers.  Do these posters really sit down for their evening prayers (and, really, does anyone do that any more, or do we just leave it up to the prayer circles at churches to do for us?) and say “And oh yeah, I pray for the family of Lane Parson, no wait, that wasn’t his name, Lance? really, people other than soap opera characters name their child Lance?  You know, Father, the guy that caused that big bus accident this morning?  Yeah.  I pray for that family.  I wish I could remember the name, though.”  And what do these people have to gain by annonymously posting on a news site that they’re going to pray?  That’s one question in my mind tonight.

The other one is this, posed by my sister on the phone about an hours ago: our cousin Lauren, Lance’s younger sister, is one of the most religious people–the religious, maybe, in the way she professes her faith through her church actions and subsequent political and social views–that we know.  She not only lost her brother today, but just five years ago (or is it six now?  God, I can’t believe it’s been that long) lost her mother to breast cancer.  Two years ago, we lost our Grandfather who lived around the corner from that family, and I think growing up she spent more time with my grandparents than with her own parents.  So my sister posed the question: why does so much really bad stuff happen to someone with so much faith? 

Oh Boogie, if I knew the answer to that question, I would fulfill my big sister role and tell you.  Because that kid’s had a lot of course correction in her 21 years. 

I was sitting at band practice tonight and the second Alto turned to me and asked how my day was going.  I was obviously out of it, and said, “well, not great.  My cousin was killed in a car accident today.”  She answered, “oh no, is everything all right?” and the snarkiness “well, yeah, except for the him being dead part” escaped my mouth before I realized that the trombone had been warming up behind us and she’d missed the key verb in that sentence. 

I have a small family.  My mom had two sisters.  They each had two kids.  I’m the oldest of the six (now five) of us, my sister is the youngest.  We range in age from 21 – 28, spanning that first real adult decade that any human experiences.  I’m, well, the gay creative one, never content to doing anything less than chase my dreams.  Jordan, six months younger, got married to an awesome guy she met in college, they bought a house in somewhat rural Pennsylvania, and works as a counselor to troubled youth.  Her brother Taylor is a store executive at an IKEA in Arizona.  My sister and Lauren are still in school.  I am not all that close to them, I admit–but since the family is so small, we spent nearly every holiday together growing up, gathering in South Dakota at the grandparents’ house; Lance and Lauren walking around the block, my sister and I from Minneapolis, Jordan and Taylor from Salt Lake City.  With a family that small, your cousins become siblings of some kind. 

I won’t pretend that Lance wasn’t the black sheep.  Maybe that’s heartless to say the day he died, but it’s true.  I will show respect and not go into his black sheepedness here.  But this is going to be a hard weekend.  Not just because it’s always sad when a young person, or a family member, dies, especially in a tragic accident (actually, this is the first accident we’ve had), but because I’m going to have a hard time sitting in those pews and swallowing the hypocrasy when they talk about how good a man he was. 

And then I’m going to feel horrible, as horrible as I do right now typing that previous sentence, about the evil in me for even thinking those thoughts.

It’s time to go back to the First Baptist Church in Sioux Falls.  I wish it had been more than a year and a half.

Limit? has been reached.

What? no post for three days?  Why yes.  I was writing on Monday night when my laptop decided to crap out.  Completely dead.  They were able to recover the data, and I’m currently writing from my brand new laptop.  That was an expense I hadn’t counted on, which pretty much put me over the edge.

And while I was at Best Buy waiting for my new laptop this afternoon, my mom called to tell me that my cousin made the front page of the paper.

Well, actually, she told me that he had died in a car wreck.  That made the front page of the paper. 

This is too much.

From the bottom of the barrel…

Greatness can emerge.

This article brought great comfort this morning.  I’m at a point right now where I can’t remember a time when I’ve been much lower.  I just feel…stuck.  A rat in a maze trying to get to the cheese at the end but faces a dead end each way I turn.  I keep telling myself it’s gotta go up from here.  But I’m not sure I’ve found the ladder yet.

But we cannot fully experience, we cannot fully live, until we have examined our lives to the fullest extent.  And pain is part of that.

I don’t set out to write the next Harry Potter.  Even though I look like him.

I just want to make one person’s day a little bit better.

And I have to believe that I’ll find that first rung soon.

Funny of the day

From a 1995 article: the Internet will never catch on.

Full text after the jump, in case the link ever goes away.

Hitting hard, unexpectedly

I was reading through stories on the Strib site yeterday, and came across this one, about the little girl who was disembowled in the pool last summer, and died a couple days ago.  I think I actually shed a tear.  I’m not sure this story got to me so much.  First sad, which quickly turned to anger.  The kid didn’t die from the accident at the pool–she died from complications from her subsequent transplant surgeries to try to give her working organs again.

I’m not a Christian Scientist or anything, or one of the denominations that believes that prayer and God are the only true instruments of healing.   Modern medicine work.  Well, most of the time.

No, the part that gets me is that the kid would have lived after the accident.  It wouldn’t be a normal life, by any means, but she could have lived.  But in an effort to make their child “normal”, the parents and doctors decided to put a six year old through a three-organ transplant procedure, which the medical community admits is a rare thing.

So why did they do the surgery?  Did the parents really feel that their child’s life was worth living only if she had her intestines?  Could they not accept their daughter the way she was after her injuries?

I understand why the parents are suing the pool manufacturer and the country club for the initial accident.  Yes, they are liable for that.  But if I hear one thing about the pool or the club causing their child’s death, I’m going to be very, very angry.  Blame where blame is due, people.