Tag Archives: Facebook

Long Memories Aren’t Just an Elephant Thing

Posted on by Ann
Making an SVG to replace - Image:Certain Eleph...

Image via Wikipedia

Found a great quote on Twitter today:

“…people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou

It doesn’t get more true than that.

Specifics fade or morph. They take on lives of their own. But in the end, what drives the things you say or do into another person’s soul like nails into the proverbial coffin are the feelings that resulted.

Good, bad and freak show ugly, what matters at the end of the day is how people feel.

Last evening a friend of Will’s mother contacted me on Facebook.  I haven’t heard from her in five years.  In fact, the last conversation we had concerned her calling on MIL’s behalf to inquire about Will’s burial.

Which I had not invited anyone to attend given the fact that his mother and friends hijacked his visitation and made it all about them and their loss.  Dee and I weren’t even afterthoughts.

At the time, this woman had been acting as a go-between for about six months.  MIL moved shortly before Will went into hospice and refused to allow anyone to tell me her new address or phone number.

And no, there wasn’t any trauma-rama incident that led up to my being persona non-grata.  She just hated me and preferred to let others talk to me and relay information to her.

In our last conversation, I told MIL’s friend that in the future MIL was to contact me herself if she needed information.  I wasn’t catering to her Queen of England fetish anymore.

Okay, I didn’t make the “Queen” comment but I was clear enough.

I didn’t hear from MIL for 8 months and last evening was the first I’d heard from her friend.

“I was searching for friends and thought I would try to find you. I am curious to see pictures of Will’s daughter to see how she is growing up.”

And yes, she referred to Dee as “Will’s daughter”.  I don’t imagine any of his friends remember that Dee is a separate entity with a name of her own.  She’s simply a legacy.

Some Facebook buddies responded to my slightly ranty status update bemoaning having been tracked down. They’d been there and advised using the various privacy tools to limit access to my personal page while still relaying information to interested parties about Dee.

But my sister, DNOS, was more to the point in her reply,

I wouldn’t Annie, you owe them nothing!!!! or completely block em!! It is time to end it!!! All they will do is bring you and everyone else misery!! I know that is mean but I had watch them and that is all I can say!!!!!Well I could say more but can not here.

DNOS is still a bit indignant on my behalf and she is a fierce mama tiger. It was all I could do to keep her from ripping his family and friends to shreds during the funeral.  She did lay waste to one of Will’s pool league buddies who wandered outside for a smoke and ran into her.  He, according to her account, “blubbered like a baby and boo-hoo’d about how he should have been there for Will. And I just gave him a look of disgust and told him he should have before I walked away.”*

My sister is a strong person.  She has no use for the weak, indecisive or those who look back on their poor behavior expecting sympathy. “Fuck ‘em” is her motto. You have ample opportunity in life to stand up and be worthy in her opinion.  Regrets are for the useless.

MIL asked me once to forgive her for the slights, dishonesty, malicious attempts to undermine me with the staff at the nursing home and again at hospice.

But I can’t forget what the Social Worker at hospice told me after one such attack,

“She hates you. Be careful.”

I am not at all sure what prompted the friend’s request for photos. I messaged back that she should inquire with MIL for photo access as I have sent her pictures recently.  She replied with a “thank you” and not much more.  I suspect that MIL sent her looking for me on FB with the intent of gaining access to real-time information via my page.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the hunt has even led them to this blog or the others for which I have written.

I have enjoyed five years of pretty much total anonymity from Will’s family and friends on the Internet.  Longer than I should have expected but given their mercurial temperaments and historic lack of interest in how Dee or I was faring, perhaps it’s more of a surprise to be found at all.

I haven’t forgotten the feelings associated with dealing with a single one of them. I was the Cinderella of care-taking and then of widowhood, and I broke all manner of polite society (which is funnier if you know the people I am taking about) rules by moving on and eventually remarrying.

Gut instinct says this is first contact.

*On a side note, DNOS informed friend and MIL’s sister that no way in hell would they ever see Dee again after the funeral. I knew nothing about this exchange at the time. In fact, DNOS was under orders from me not to start anything with the in-laws, whom she held in great contempt for their failure to be much help. She especially disliked MIL for her antics while Will was in hospice and when we arrived at the funeral home to find that MIL and friends had set up camp and taken over, it was all I could do to hold DNOS back. I wasn’t in the mood for a Finnegan sort of wake.

2010 Top Ten Posts

Posted on by Ann
Australia Day Fireworks

Image by Sam Ilić via Flickr

Top tenning is THE new year eve’s week thing to do in the blogosphere.  Mostly because bloggers need vacation time too.

Thanks to the wonderful tech team at WordPress’s need to constantly justify their paychecks, I have a plethora of data aggregating goodies to help keep track of posts by popularity.

So here are the top ten posts by page views at anniegirl1138 for the year we are about to bid adieu:

10) Brad Pitt shaved the scraggly thing off months ago, but it lives on in my post about goatees and dead husbands.

9) Though I’ve successfully steered my daughter away from the cash-grabbing universe of “dance” studios, my contempt remains. Remember the Single Ladies? 9 year olds hoochie dancing for the dirty old men who troll the Internet?

8) Although I wrote this ages ago and it’s true intent has been repeatedly misunderstood, Angelina’s non-weight problems continues to be a big draw.

7) Another oldie but goldie, Lisa Parker still pulls readers and comments.

6) It’s hardly the only Facebook Meme worthy of scorn (I ignored the equally awful Movember Movement), but breast cancer awareness meme’s, and pink ‘s co-option by Susan Komen for that matter, sparked a rant that people read.

5) Jennifer Petkov was another post that missed its mark but certainly got read.

4) I’d originally planned to write this for Care2, or maybe I did and it got rejected, regardless, young and dumb in America was a huge hit.

3) Jillian Michaels is a poor role model and apparently I am not the only one who thinks so.

2) Musing on my life of plenty.

1) And the biggest post of the year? Women with no basic understanding of dressing for body type.

“You know,” my husband observed as he glanced through this list, “not one of these posts is about your family … or me.”

“Can you believe that? ” I said, “No one wants to read about you guys.”

“I am dismayed, disappointed and disgusted, ” he replied, ” but not surprised.”

Nor am I.  My best stuff is usually not the most popular, but that is the bane of all bloggers.

I hope you enjoyed the year’s effort and will continue to read in the new year.

Related Articles

A Session with The Reiki Master

Posted on by Ann
reiki cat

Leslie, my old college chum, sent me a message via Facebook not long ago asking if I would be interested in helping her out. She’s studying Healing Touch and needed to practice her distance healing.

Iowa to Alberta is a purty fer distance so it qualifies.

I’ve mentioned Les before. She has always been the most interesting and open to all things of my friends. Her training includes Reiki and she is at master level, but she is exploring Healing Touch too. Similar and yet not, it involves tapping the cosmic energy or the universe or God – whatever resonates most for you in order to wrap your understanding about what amounts to super-sensitive/charged beings manipulating life force to promote well-being, health and healing if necessary.

Do I believe in this?

Totally.  I can see the air after all. Multi-colored specs ripple all around me. I was probably five or six when I realized that not everyone could see them, and as it is hard to explain exactly what I see without alarming people, I learned to keep it to myself. It’s a bit like my useless talent for knowing when/if people will have children or not, or my daughter’s ability to dream snippets of her life in advance.

She took my “history” and asked about problem areas in much the same way a massage or physical therapist would and we set up a time.

This morning I experienced “healing touch” and I must say it is in no way magicky or new age. It was very much like massage in that it can be felt in an immediate and tangible way.

I’d explained to Les that my forearms were sore from yoga. The muscles are tight and they are one of the last remaining holdouts in my quest to liberate myself physically as the low back and hamstrings have long since surrendered to the void and my shoulder unknotted ages ago.

Quickly into the session, they warmed and began to feel as though wrapped in soft warm flannel or cotton casts.

Since my allergies are acting up, I asked her to focus on the sinuses too and throughout the session they drained. The fullness and pressure vanished and an intense flushing occurred.

When we talked later, she told me that she’d also done a lymphatic flush and mind clearing. The latter was truly interesting because close to the end of the session I was suddenly aware of a thin red line swirling around my head at eye level. It reminded me of the scanners at store check-outs, but instead of being a steady line, it gave the impression that it was shooting around my head.

Right now I am feeling a little wrung out. The lymph flush no doubt. Therapeutic massage has the same effect though it tends to lag about 24 hrs whereas this hit within hours. Not likely something that would happen if I were not battling allergies and had a good night’s sleep under my belt. Last night was fitful because I am not tolerating the sawdust. My eyes swelled and itch intolerably. Gogi berry caps are good but not decisive in quelling the histamine reaction entirely.

The past couple of days has given me a chance to gab girl-style in a way I haven’t been able to for quite a while. I am reminded again of my isolation living here without family and old friends. Though it is a ways off still, the planned trip to Iowa is welcome. I plan to take advantage of proximity and indulge in old ties.

Reiki and Healing Touch are not so far removed from my yoga training as they might sound. It’s all energy based. We are essentially bits of charged matter that decided for reasons unknown to take solid shape. My yoga teachers and my massage therapist talk about transference of energy in physical adjustments, and I was a public school teacher long enough to know that there is more than a bit of energy corralling and exchange going on in the pupil-teacher relationship.

That the distance healing could work was something I did not question though the intensity was a surprise. I didn’t expect it to be as immediate and intense. Of course, why wouldn’t it be? Energy is not confined in its pure form by time and space  (pardon my ignorance of physics here because I know there are rules).

I will try this again. I don’t want to abuse or presume on our friendship though. Like yoga, healing sessions should be remunerated as we value what we must pay for in some way more than what is just given to us even when it comes from a generous intention.

Related Articles