April

   I hate the month of April. On the 19th was the 30th anniversary of my dad's death and on the 29th it was the first anniversary of my husband's death. Someone said, I don't remember who,  they imagined my dad and Jack were having a beer together up in heaven. I like that image because it might be very well true.
   Paul Barry Myers, my dad, was a sociologist working for the Bureau of Land Management. One of the projects I heard of him working on was a development project that involved a land developer versus an Indian tribe. Apparently, the developers wanted to build on a piece of land the Indians considered sacred. I don't know what the outcome was.
   John 'Jack' Price Heniford, my husband, was a teacher by trade but he had his degree in Counseling. When he was looking for a position in counseling, there were none open but there was a job in teaching available so he took it.
   They were very similar in several ways. Both of them had higher education degrees, my dad a PhD and Jack a Master's. They both were teachers. My dad taught in Graduate school and Jack taught remedial students in high school. They both loved nature. Jack took lots pictures of birds, animals, flowers, whatever struck his fancy. We lived in Grand Junction the first four years of our marriage and Jack took lots of pictures of Mount Garfield, the Mesa, and the Bookcliffs. We went for drives on the Mesa several times and saw birds that he had never seen before. Being from the Carolinas, there were lots of birds that make their way here but not there and vice versa. Jack and I thought it was important to recycle as much as we could. I would think Dad would have been the same way. It kills me when mom and Gene throw away something that Jack and I would put in the recycling bin. They both had similar temperaments too. Neither shouted much or let things get under their skin. They were pretty even keeled. Neither drank much either. Dad liked a beer after work sometimes or on the weekend during a football game. Jack didn't drink at all when we went out but he liked mojitos in the summer when we had fresh mint. Of course we split a bottle of wine or Asti Spumonti on Chistmas and New Year's too. He introduced me to Reisling and Muscadine wines. Two of his favorites.

Thank you

   February 14, Valenentine's Day, would have been my 19th wedding anniversary. We got married at Bookcliff Country Club in Grand Junction, CO. We had planned to get married in May, after I graduated at what was then Mesa State College. I had an apartment and Jack was going to live with me until then. But our parents didn't like the idea of us "living in sin" for 6 months. So it was decided that instead of a May wedding, when things were green, in full bloom, and it was warm outside, we would bow to our parents' wishes and marry on Valentine's Day. After all Jack would never forget.
   For nearly 19 years Jack gave me all of his love and devotion. For that I say Thank You. I will forever not know if he knew how much that love and devotion was appreciated and reciprocated.  The last two days of his life I don't remember us even touching. How I long for his touch now that he's not here. That is one of my biggest regrets.
   In a strange way I also have to thank Jack for dying too. For nearly three years before his death I had been having a smelly discharge. It made me embarrassed to go out in public. All the doctors that I saw in Rock Hill, including the surgeon that did my colonostomy and the colonoscopy that started the whole thing, said that there was nothing they could do and I would just have to find ways to mitigate it. It wasn't until I came back to Grand Junction and was referred to Dr. Steven O'Day that I finally found hope. During my initial meeting with him not only did my medical history spew from my mouth but so did my recent loss and my frustration with the discharge which caused wounds on my backside that wouldn't heal. Both my mom and I were so relieved to be heard that by the end of that meeting we were both blubbering messes. He must've wondered what he had gotten himself in to. But he told me that there was a solution to my problems and that he was going to find it. I believed him.

   It's not a matter of if I believe in God. All I have to do is look at nature in all of it's diversity and I know there is a God. And as a Christian I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. My question is whether he/they are benevolent, kind, and loving as my fervently Catholic mom and stepdad and my other, Protestant, family members believe. Or is He a son-of-a-bitch who doesn't give a damn?
   I can't talk to them because they will argue to their dying breaths that God is benevolent and He/they are watching everything that happens to me and all of mankind.  If God is so good then why does He allow, not only my own, suffering?
    I have had hydrocephalus and spina bifida since birth. I have also had over 150 surgeries in a little over 45 years. I have also known of children who have had cancers or other diseases that require multiple rounds of chemo only to kill them, painfully, in the end. What did they do? What did I do to deserve this?  What did people in Africa  and other places around the world do to deserve years of drought, starvation and disease?
   When I was a kid I believed in a benevolent God. When I was a teenager I believed He was a son-of-a-bitch who delighted in my suffering. I would pray fervently for my I.Vs to last and not infiltrate my veins so I wouldn't be painfully stuck multiple times. They never did. I would pray fervently that I would die during surgery. I always woke up and and cursed Him. I prayed fervently for God to take Charles Manson and not a good man like my father. My father died when I was 15 and Charles Manson is still in prison. Now, as an adult I want so much to believe in a benevolent Being, but I have been through and been made aware of too much suffering.