Dear Stimpy,
My Daugter ran into your Grandson and apparently they talked about you. I have no doubt they grouced only negitive about you, taking what Teenage comfort they could from sharing their varoius complaints about you. Remembering and exchanging that which makes you look like a boob.
Some of it I believe, like taking away Joshs hard earned lawn money.Knowing how you were about money, That I can believe. But a compulsive gambler? I don’t think so.
But the far funniest is that you are now a drinker.Now, I don’t mean the social drinker you were lo those years ago. I mean a drinker like your Brother Al. I can believe equaly that you could be neither.(Family history you know) When Jamie passed this piece of info I couldn’t help but laugh. I couldn’t help but picture you behaving like Al or even worse, Goat. Scary that the picture wasn’t out of the realm of posibility.
I laughed confident that you’d have not turned out that way had you not run off with the type of woman who’d let you degenerate so. (And no matter how you feel, any woman who’d swipe another womans Hub. IS that type of woman) The longer I laughed the more I thought. Then I got real.
I got gratitude. In the fact that IF you were destined to go so far down the hill you topped some half dozen years ago that I wasn’t there to watch someone I love do so. I got gratitude that I wasn’t there to get drug down with you. I thank my god that my Jamie wasn’t pulled into that pit.
About 4 years ago I had a terrible nightmare, and after jotting down the images was inspired to write what follows. I think in some way it was me dealing with my pain but, more importantly my memories. Now that I’ve heard a bit of gossip, the circle continues. In sharing the vision in my nighmare, so it goes unbroken.
So Stimpy,take what joy you can from your life, and I will endeavour to do likewise. Be happy. Have grace.
>>> Barbara Ann<<<
Page 2
He stood before me, starkly different from the man I had knew and loved so many years ago.
Instead of the full but well trimed salt and pepper beard, the hair hung on his jowls in thin patches. The skin hiding from the light, flaking as would the skin of a leaper. Once I scratched that face when it would itch.I imagined it drove him nuts, but I wouldn’t touch it now, for love nor money.
The beautiful but thinning raven hair kept meticulously trimmed was now allowed to grow long. It hung past his shoulder blades. But it wasn’t the lovely colour of grey it had started as. Instead it was a stringy unhealthy yellow. I’d seen that condition before on the beard of an imfirm man unable to care for himself. It spoke of neglect.
My Edward was not a tall man, but still he stood straight in pride. His shoulders straight,his head held up in confidence. Now he seemed to lose a foot in height, and easily seemed a head shorter than me. I’m not sure if one could say he stood now. He seemed more to lean, parking his weight on an unseen helper, one shoulder hunched, his knees bent.
His chest and arms, always healthy from his hard work were now thinned. The arms resembling a pre adolesent boy. His chest flat and the skin hung losely, an articulate testament to the degeneration of his once manly frame.
Around his eyes, the skin was pulled tightly, a stark contrast to the skin on his jowls. There were few wrinkles in the skin, which one would normaly please, looked unnatural as the rest of him. the tight skin gave him the look of a naked skull and the popping eyes held a frightened look.
I’m sure now, the man I knew had been thorugh his own version of a private hell, and this old broken man the sole survivor.
A part of me wants to believe that had our happiness continued he’d have been spared the trial which turned him into the shell before me.But, I know that to be the pride of a scorned woman.
A part of me wants to beleieve that what hell there was, was the direct result of putting myself and my daughter thorough our own private hells. But, I know that to be the pain of an exWife. A part of me wants to believe that if that emaciated old man crossed my path I would take him in my arms and love him back to health. But, that is no longer my responsibility. A part of me wants to pray for him. To beg our Lord to never allow him to become what I saw. To request he never go through the hell that turned him into the living skeleton I invisioned. And I do.