Unfinished Business

It seems like April 11th will be the follow up meeting to our suicide Town-Hall Meeting. The location is yet to be confirmed. I watched Clara Huges "Big Ride" television show yesterday with wide eyes. She is such an inspiration, riding her bike in rain, snow and sleet across our great nation, to cultivate a spirit of conversation around, mental illness. On Canada Day, she arrived in Ottawa, and humbly thanked everyone for their support. She even rode her bicycle on a sled in the Northwest Territories.  Just the sheer knowledge that you do not have to be alone to tackle this monster is a comforting knowledge, if only people had the courage to reach out. The stigma of mental health has to be eliminated, and one should be able to openly address our depression, bipolar, anxiety or whatever else ails us. Clara's hope is to instigate, and propagate conversation, and give hope to people with mental health  concerns,  We know 1 in 5 people are at some point affected by it in their life time, and the leading cause, the number one cause of death among young people is suicide. This is unfinished business in our books, and the more we talk about it, the stigma will dissipate.

Today I await the visit, of one of Deborah's friends. I hope she can stay and have dinner with us. Yesterday, Sarah and I went to the graveside, and changed Deborah's flowers. Fresh graves marked the area where she is buried.  It must have been a child as the reefs just overtook the grave.

Visits to doctors have become a routine, as one of my girls got a bad cold and a fever from helping build the shed in the back yard. I have had to go back on my cholesterol pills, and now I'm waiting for an ultrasound and a dermatologists appointment.A small cyst like thing on my eyelid, may be of bad intentions. I would have totally ignored it, had a friend not recently had one removed, and her doctor feels it may be cancerous. We must take small strides ahead. Often it seems like no forward motion has taken place, only stagnation. My husband is moving back to our bedroom, as he returned his sleep apnea machine. We are waiting for the construction of a cheap scratch post for Moonshine, as she is ripping apart all my upholstery.

I'm cooking. Goulash one day, and stuffed peppers the next. My mother is writing to us again, after a long absence from our lives. It is nice to hear from her, and it pleases me that all her faculties are there. I'm preparing to teach English as a second language tomorrow. Most of my students are from China, and I made a point of explaining to them, that when a person has one child, they will end up being the caregiver for 8 people, not including themselves or their children. Ultimately, they will have to make decisions, and gave care to their elderly grandparents (both sides of the family-4),( the aging parents-4 members) as well as themselves and the children they have. Even in Hungary where I am from, there is no population growth, and the families mostly consist of one child. This brings about a very heavy emotional toll on the surviving child.
Live is very difficult, and that is why many children do not launch before age 30. The American dream is out the window. It is no longer the motto, if you work hard you will achieve this or that. If you work hard, the tax man takes away what you earned, and you will not get a pay increase for the next 30 years, while everything increases in price around you. The money the corporations make, they will not re invest in the companies they own, but pocket the residual profit.

I just asked a repair man from a very familiar store in Canada, if I should get more insurance on another appliance I have. He said, that the company will likely close in a year or two, so there is no point in doing so. All this because of poor management on the top. People are unable to take pride in the jobs they do, because they know the owners are not in their best interest. So.... truly, we must look up and await the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. May we be ready..