Cafe Leone

My good blog buddy and friend, Terri at http://territerri.wordpress.com/ has done something that I wonder if I could do. Due to a serious condition, Terri’s father needed a new kidney in order to remain healthy. After numerous and grueling medical exams, it was determined that she was a good match to donate her kidney.

Yesterday, she underwent her surgery and though we still don’t know the status of her and her dad’s condition, she did leave us a post for today.

Please stop by http://territerri.wordpress.com/ and wish her well. She totally can use the addition of the two extra hits from my site.

Terri is one of the sweetest souls on the internet tubes. We are so lucky to read her words. She shares her spiritual struggles as well as the day to day challenges of being a working mom and wife. Every word of hers bleeds sincerity, sweetness (I bet she doesn’t like that fact) and depth. I have stalked followed her for a couple of years and feel intimately vested in her journey.

When many of us would not even have shown up on game day, Terri has stepped up to the plate, and leaned in, and hit one out of the ball park.

I love you Terri and wish you and your family the best of health.

blogging, blogs way better than mine | 3 Comments »

A skill I have mastered over a few years of erratic blogging is to write about not writing. Whenever, I feel like I should be writing my “book” or feel guilty that I am abandoning BoMR (Both of My Readers), I simply start a post about not writing. Then go into painful details about how am really good at thinking about writing, preparing to write, buy really cool writing-related toys, sitting down and not writing.

This post is no different. It is a post about not writing.

I have put down my book recently (did you notice “T”, that I didn’t put quotes around that word this time?). I feel justified in doing so. With all the various stresses in my life and the fact that my dad is a very sick man, I felt that I could not commit myself to write a novel about a man who loses his father. It was simply too painful for me to deal with.

The book hits too close to home.

Over the last few months, I have been doing a lot of procrastinating, more like avoiding my blog and my book. I have poked around and wasted a ton of time on Plurk (that won’t stop!) and found the act of writing greater than 140 characters to be simply more than I can handle at this time in my life.

But, recent events, have made me revisit my book and the story I am hoping to convey. I hope to go into those reasons as soon as I can wrap my head around them.

In the meantime, just know that I will try to update more often and hopefully regain some of my readership that have since jumped ship due to utter boredom.

My words may range from the utter mundane (my kid picked his nose type stuff) to painfully maudlin to sincere expression of the anguish I have been feeling recently.

Whatever the case, look for more of me on your blogs and I hope you will find mine again.

Thank you!

blogging, writing | 13 Comments »

I’ve got no words for this picture…but HOLY CRAP!

Baby Goats | 12 Comments »

As both of you know, I am an atheist. As both of you know, my dad is dying with Lou Gehrig’s disease. As both of you know, this has become a source of unbearable stress on the entire Leone clan. We are all dealing with it as a family, but in our own way.

A conversation I got into recently (actually an amalgamation of a few conversations I have had recently) boiled down essentially to some variation of this statement: If you believe in God, and therefore heaven, then at least you can find comfort in knowing that you and your dad will be together again some day. In the meantime, you could be happy knowing that your father will be with God in heaven. Don’t you want that for him?

It is important to note that I don’t believe in god in the same way I don’t believe in Santa Claus. I may want so badly to believe that a jolly fat man will land on my roof every year and provide me with a Hot Wheel loop-the-loop track. But wanting it does not make it happen. Desire does not validate . I can drop to my knees, pray to any one of the gods, look to the heavens, speak in tongues, belt out hymns in a church, drink chicken blood and absolutely none of that will make Santa drop down my even more non-existent chimney.

What keeps me up at night; what makes me cry at the drop of a hat; what worries me; what stresses me out and what can grab hold of me and punch me in my face is not that my father is going to die. Death is a part of life. What gets me mad, is that my dad will suffer. He is suffering. His body, his spirit and his dignity are slowly slipping away from him as this fucking disease chips away at each nerve ending. He is reduced to writing his words on paper; he needs to excuse himself from the table as he has to clear the food from his cheeks with his finger; the disease makes him laugh and cry uncontrollably and often at the exact same time; his sense of balance is compromised; he cannot cough efficiently and his swallow muscles are quickly becoming paralyzed.

When he goes, I will miss him. I will weep for him. I will find constant reminders in my day to day life of him. I will celebrate his life and mourn his death. But, as when anyone dies, there is no “other side” to look forward to. My dad’s soul will not rise into the clouds or sink into the ground. When he is gone, he is gone except for his memory. I do not look forward to or think about a day when I will join him. I only look forward to the day he is free from this unbearable suffering. The day after he dies, I will leave up to nature.

My opinion until I change it. Thank you for allowing me to express it.

atheism, my father | 19 Comments »