Memorial Day ... Remembering What it's Really About ...

While branded a holiday about barbeques and drinking many people forget what Memorial Day is really about ...

When I was seventeen my father and I took a trip to Washington DC  ... the first horrific thing that I saw there was the Holocaust Museum ... I don't think that what Hitler did registered with me until I walked through that museum and watched the bulldozing of bodies ... saw the personal stories ... that experience is something that will resonate with me forever ...

Later that same day we visited the Vietnam Memorial Wall ... where my dad broke down and cried when he found the names of friends from high school ... and I think it wasn't until

Scared ...

This is something I don't talk about a lot ... and it's probably something I should be talking about ... I don't feel comfortable with the subject because, quite frankly, it scares the living shit out of me ... so I don't talk about it with my closest friends ... or my family ... but for some reason ... today ... I'm going to share it with the people that read this blog ... the bulk of which are strangers ...

I think I don't talk about it because I don't think people realize how much it really scares me ... how much I avoid it ... and then I finally do say something ... and nobody responds ... leading to me posting about how it actually hurt my feelings to have no responses on Facebook about it ...

So here it goes ... my kidney is slowly failing ... I say kidney because they already took

Rest in Peace MCA ...

The death of Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys (aka MCA) hit me harder than any celebrity deaths have in a very long time ...

I think there are several reasons for this ... age being a major part of it ... he was forty-seven ... he was still old enough that technically he could have almost been my father ... but his picture hung on my wall as a teenage girl ... along with the other Beastie Boys ... I thought they were all cute ... all within reach ... another part of it is that he died from cancer ... from something that made him just as human as the rest of us ... and something that he didn't bring on himself ... he didn't die from a drug overdose, like so many young celebrities do ... he was also a very good person ... philanthropy was a huge part of his life for the last two decades ... he started foundations and contributed to others ...

I think my own sense of mortality kicked in ... my own sense of the people around me being vulnerable ... the phrase "the good die young" went through my mind when I first heard ... what I do know is based on several of my friends' responses through social networks that I am not alone in feeling this way ... I am not alone in being deeply affected by the loss of such an amazing artist, philanthropist and person ...

He will be missed ... and many in my generation grew a little bit from the news of the last two days ...

The Moment of Clarity ...

I received a gift about six months ago ... a gift that nobody plans on giving ... a gift that nobody plans on receiving ... but one that forever changes you ...

I received the gift of peace with death ...

A spiritual concreteness flushed through me in a way that nothing ever had before ... at this point in my life I am more spiritual than religious, however I stand by the religion I have been part of all my life, because I believe in their philosophies on people ... on issues ... on everything non-biblical ... and then as much faith as I can put in the bible I believe in their philosophies on it too ... I believe in walking by faith not by sight ... but at the same time there are holes in the bible that I can't wrap my mind around ... but that being said ... I spiritually grew that night in a way that I probably never would have without it ...

It was a fateful evening ... my previous employer had taken me off the schedule ... I had unplanned time off ... then my dad called ... then my cousin called ... both of them with