Posted by Kenn (205.188.199.24) on May 09, 2000 at 19:24:41:
In Reply to: My mom and all her pain! posted by Deveny on May 09, 2000 at 08:14:27:
This is such an excellent piece of work that no comment of mine can do it justice.
It's something that should be shared all over the Web, especially with Mother's Day arriving.
I would give all of my remaining time on this Earth to have a daughter like you...and a mother like yours (although mine comes close).
I like the way Riccardo put it, You have a mother that is "out of standard". And obviously, so are you.
I might just admit something here...if you promise not to tell anyone; I've been "around" a bit, shall we say? I've seen and done enough to terrify at least a few of the most hardened of men (maybe even a few women :) There is nothing to brag about here and I would never even mention it except that it seems called for just now. It's just the unfortunate truth:
In younger years I have been what we might term a real Ass, a dangerous man. People used to be afraid of me because of way I used the power I had. There was little in the realm of human activities that I did not see or experience, and I knew terrible things that few people get to know about this world and what goes on in and around it. I had powerful friends with lots of arcane knowledge -- and I still do. And for years, the pain I suffered only made me more scary, even to myself.
But, everything is different for me now. Somehow along the path I began questioning my life's goals and the work I did. I think I have always had a basic gentleness and goodness in me, but it took some very hard lessons for me to allow it to emerge and replace the rotten bastard I was becoming.
As I think I told your mother some months back, I'll be, um, 58? this coming Monday. We mellow with age, they say. My life has been one of a million regrets, to be sure. But it turns out to have really been about the search for truth and meaning in life. It has been, as I now know, one long vision quest.
I'm telling you all of this because this story you wrote is very nearly the kind of thing which brought me out of that 'bad' life and into one of which I can be proud, if that is the word. The ability to understand the life and suffering of another is to me paramount to an understanding of self. It's the other way around for most, maybe, but that's how it got to me.
And, I'm also telling you this because while this hardened, irreverent old fart read your story -- he cried.
Don't ever do that again!
:)
If you don't mind, I want to print your story and share it with my family and friends?
Thank you!