What we have to learn when it seems there's only bad stuff ahead.

[Bill Cady]

Pickin’ out the good stuff

Bad things happen in this life. We can try to ignore it, pretend it didn’t occur, maybe, but we know we’re just fooling ourselves. Consequently, it does us no good at all. Only adds to the problem.

Some people will talk about “getting over” things, especially the loss of something valuable or, even worse, someone dear to us. Take my word for it, that ain’t gonna happen when the loss is serious. Like a loved one.

A friend of mine recently went through a time of depression, a recurrent episode after the loss of her husband a few short years ago. Regrettably, only because of the tuition I paid to learn what I used to help her, I had a very similar experience … in a way. It taught me in a very painful manner what my friend needed to hear.

In my case the lesson was the death of the most loved creature in my life, an Irish wolfhound named Movuggah. The only one who could’ve competed with the degree of love I had-still have for that boy would’ve been my Mom. Using memory only, it’s a photo finish and too close to call. He had that much love from me for two reasons. One, no one, with the possible exception of Mom, ever loved me like he did. Two, no human being I’ve ever met could approach his total honesty. Seriously, no contest.

Albeit a few people have looked at me as if I was a bit odd when I professed the depth of my love for him, along with the fact he was the reason I spent 4⅓ years living homeless, no one has ever laughed at me about it. If so, I’d've been jailed for assault. Read My Story if you want the details.

Among the “good things” I drew from that “misadventure”, being homeless all that time, is how that lifestyle teaches a man to cull the good from the bad. It’s an alternative to going insane. These horrors that visit us, the loss of someone irreplaceable in our world, teach us the only solution to what you can’t “get over”. You get past it. It’s a takeoff on the idea what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. In a way, that’s true for me with my loss. I learned there will never be a greater loss for me, so I’m already past the ugliest event in my existence. Never again will I face anything that bad or worse, so it becomes a blessing. It puts hell in my rearview mirror, sort of like the elation I knew June 22, 1990 when the freeway sign saying “You Are Entering Michigan” was in my mirror. It meant I was leaving that pit and it was wonderful.

Now I celebrate the biggest horror in my memory. It’s keyed into my computer calendar AND the calendar on my cell. Down to the minute … 1:54 p.m. I even made specific mention in a recent post about the repetition of the date of Movuggah’s death, January 17^th, 2004, with a few momentous occurrences in my life. It happened again today … January 17^th, 2012 … about two minutes ahead of a very major incident for me.

Because of the cancer, I see some specialists at UCSD Medical Center, such as Bill “The Wonder Boy Doc” Mitchell. I also have finally made a great relationship with my GP, Mike MacMurray. Because I’m still on Medi-Cal and the legislature just enacted a string of goofy changes, I was being shoved into am HMO. (Hellacious Medical Obfuscation). They had me dropping the two I have so I could go to Vista and see someone I’ve never met.

Tell it to the hand, Slick! I ain’t doin’ that crap!

After days of toying with phone morons at different Medi-Cal numbers, I called on them today face-to-face. Stood in line only about five minutes and, less than a minute before I was at the window, the alarm on my cell went off.

It was the moment of my Big Boy’s death, 1:54 p.m. Two minutes later I was in the office of a very pretty woman named Anna who was, believe it or not, interested in helping. Ten minutes afterward, I left her office with the info I needed and the name of whom to call. There are only three conditions to fulfill to meet the requirements to “disenroll” from the new HMO plan. I meet all three.

It was an event immediately preceded by the reminder of my ugliest moment in life, an event I now have tucked away in my past. Yet it came forward today to reassure me of a victory when I didn’t dare to fail.

Who says an angel incarnate must be based on someone we knew as a human being? No one does, not in my book. Movuggah was here watching out for me today, just like he did every day of his short and beautiful life. Therefore, in memory of the saddest moment of all 63 years I’ve known so far, I now look forward to blessings on that day.

There’s always something good located inside the bad things. The secret is digging deep enough to find and recognize ‘em. For that, I can only thank being homeless for teaching me how to make something good out of something so tragic and ugly.

I’m just sayin’.

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