Author: TheDon McCoy

Fleeting Thought

It was a fleeting thought

An idea for a post

There was a moment of memory

A childhood recollection

Memories of my father

They could fit inside thimble

But no less important

I remember my mom’s smile. It seemed to be few and far between as a kid. I don’t thing she ever was able to fake one. Her smile was always genuine no matter who received it. Years later, when she began to understand her life and struggles, her sense of peace began to become one. We had so many conversations as I progressed in my field of psychiatry and counseling. Mom could not turn away a kid that neede d shelter, help and hope. We shared our lives with homeless kids at times. Her heart was so huge. Her love was completely unconditional.

During her last days in this world she asked me if I believed she was going to heaven. I asked her to describe heaven to me. She mentioned being with the people (and animals) she had loved, no pain, nor sadness would visit her again. She understood that I was no longer Catholic pr Christian. I told her, holding back my tears, that her heaven is where she would go to when she leaves this life. We hugged, for the very last time as we stated our love for each other.

A few days later, I awoke from a dream. I was in an old farm house. There was a staircase going to the second floor lined in warm oriental carpet. I passed the kitchen noticing the well-loved atmosphere. Warm yellow sunlight filled the room. As I walked toward the stairs, a couple ascended before me. At the top was a black man, impeccably dressed standing before a red velvet rope. As the couple stepped on the landing, the well-dressed gentleman greeted them warmly and moved the rope aside. The room beyond was filled with bright white light as they walked inside.

I stepped forward as he replaced the rope on its stanchion. “I am sorry son, it is not your time to enter. I understood immediately. I awoke to understand that my mom had achieved her happiness. Live in your truth, live with your passion, live in love.

A pair of glasses were sitting at the edge of the driveway. One lens was out, shattered in little shards. The frames bent in a grotesque twist. Just a few inches from the glasses were where the blood trail ended. The day’s cold and wind dried it to a deep burgundy, a lot of deep burgundy. Standing on the outdoor balcony, I paused, looking at the tragic scene below. I then noticed the handprint on the railing.

The event morning of the day before became clear in my head. The argument with his mom was severe. Years of arguing, years of frustration and deep depression preceded this day. I pictured him running up the stairs and climbing over the railing. He faced backward. The last decision he would ever make hung in the air as he held on with one hand, leaning back. Mom saw him run up the stairs to the third floor.

She thought it was just another argument. She didn’t run after him. A few minutes later she called up to him. A tear fell from his eye as he let go He let go of the pain. He let go of the sorrow and the hate, and the love…but ultimately, he let go of what he could have become.

I have bumped up against it time and time again.

The darkness

Whether from within or from without

I am not entirely sure.

It has been visiting me since the beginning

It feels like it is part of my being

It is part of the social consciousness

What some call the Devil

I have been visited by on a few occasions.

As long as the light is more constant

As long as I understand

As long as I love

And feel the passion of my heart

The darkness is but an occasional visitor.

I don’t want to be known as a counselor that fixes mental health problems, or one that only heals sorrows. I want my work to be more than that. I want to be known as one that fosters dreams. I want to be understood as a mentor of hearts and minds. I want people to look back at five or ten years past and say they have accomplished their dream and have moved past their sorrow and the pain with understanding to a new place of inner peace and purpose. I want to be known as a person that awakens their new self, the self that had been there all along, hidden under trauma, generational or otherwise.

I sat at a long table in a large white room. Many friends and colleagues were there at the table chatting and drinking. One woman commented to my friend Will that he was black. I leaned over and said ‘shh, he doesn’t realize that yet.’ Some immediately laughed. Others pulled their hands to their mouths in a sign of shock. Right there at that moment I felt the weight of an entire house of bricks upon me. I got up from the table and went to sit on a chair by the door. My friend Will and another friend joined me. I apologized over and over again for my error in judgement. Will looked at me with tears welling in his eyes. Another house of fell upon me as I apologized again and again. ‘these tears are not for what you said, directly.’ Will offered. He lowered his head then looked up at me again. ‘These tears are because of the gravity of what you said.’ I began to understand. ‘when did the color of a person’s skin begin to matter?’ he stated. When did we define a person’s worth by this?’ He continued. I added that when someone chose to look down at a person out of their own hatred and ignorance, that is when the color of a person’s skin mattered.

We three sitting on the folding chairs by the door wept and held hands. Generations have past since the first ignorance and hatred defined itself. Generations of division and hated all leading up to my seemingly innocent comment. The weight I immediately felt was that generational conditioning, often unseen until moments like this.

Later we were riding in a large white van, Will, another friend and myself. We were accompanied by a man in the last seat in the van with a baby in a car seat. The child was crying incessantly. The man looked at us with care and concern, ‘she cried like this nonstop.’ The baby opened her eyes just for a moment revealing piercing blue eyes. She seemed to look directly at me. As she closed them and began to cry again, I had a revelation. Looking at the other men in the van I explained that this child was going to change the world. Depending on her upbringing and her experiences from this day forward, she will either save us or destroy us. I grew silent for a while afterward. Will looked at me and then at the dark child with her piercing blue eyes. ‘Then we need to care for this child and teach her well.’ We rode in our own silence for a while before we realized that the child had stopped crying and was looking at each of us in turn.

At some point I stopped becoming who I was meant to be. The dreams continue to drive my memories to the point where it all changed, to the point I long to remember. She is in my peripheral. She dances in that gossamer white gown just out of my field of vision. But I can see her, and I can’t. The festivities had just about ended, but the party was just starting. All the young ones were winding up and their music was beginning to play. They didn’t know how much I truly understand. They don’t know I know where they all are headed. The big room was filled with dim light. Kids dancing and touching as they never had before. I remembered. I remembered the feelings and the warmth before the emptiness took over. I remember before her.

Walking through the big room the kids parted as in a script when I passed. Two sticky strips of art hung from my fingertips. One was hers but not, the other a vague poem written in Chinese. I made it to what had been my room I shared. He was there with friends not getting into the music, not dancing. He sat on the bed with a much more mature girl as I attempted to hang my vague art on the large mirror behind him. I noticed a bottle of bourbon in the closet among more gossamer clothing. Have a drink with me my friend, I motioned as I took the bottle out to show him. An older chaperone who also understood, but in a quiet way, grabbed two glasses from an old cardboard box I had been packing by belongings with. I looked at my friend who was smiling, but not with his eyes as I poured the booze. Here’s to us, what was, and what is no more.

I think people often wonder how adults can become addicts and in trouble with the law.

A story about a young girl I had done an assessment on and later met again at a homeless shelter for teens may shed some light on how these adults often did not have a good beginning.

This young girl, all of the age 12, called me on the crisis hotline. She said she was afraid she had done something bad and was afraid. I asked if she was okay. ‘I think so, right now.’ She said in a quiet voice. I asked if anyone else was home. She said that her mother had just left for work and she was alone in the house.

There was a small moment of silence where I cold hear her quietly sobbing. I asked what was troubling her so much. ‘I’m a cutter, see. And I think I went a bit too deep this time.’ I asked why she didn’t tell her mother. More silence. I asked if she was still bleeding. She said yes. I asked how her mother didn’t see her. ‘I had my covers pulled up tight when she came into my bedroom. I’m afraid there is a lot of blood now.’

I told her I was calling 911 and her mom. The ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital. Her mom decided to meet her daughter at the hospital. I arrived in time to see the girl and her mother in the room. As I approached, I saw the mother was on the phone. ‘I can’t believe this little bitch did this to me!’ She yelled into the phone. Her daughter looed at me then her mom with tears running like rivers down her cheeks.

Talking to the doctor that treated her, he told me she had over 100 superficial cuts on her body. Wherever she could reach was cut. She had cut her arm so deep she had almost reached the bone. The cut was on the top of her arm. The doctor said if she had cut on the bottom, the outcome would have been tragic.

About a year later I was called to the Emergency room to assess a young girl who had taken a bottle of pain meds. Upon entering te room I saw the same girl again. Her mother was visibly angry, yelling at her for screwing up her life and her prospects of finding a man. The doctor had given the girl a charcoal treatment. She was vomiting black as streams of charcoal exited her nose also, her dark mascara was running down her eyes.

The young girl was no longer the innocent kid I first met. Her Britney Spears poster I had seen in her room had been replaced by a Korn T-shirt and she had adopted the gothic look many kids were wearing. I tried to talk with her mother about their issues. She stated she just wanted her daughter out of the house. The girl was actually more approachable. We talked about music and what she wanted to be when she grew up. I offered my contact information, but never heard from them again. Until…

As a Crisis Clinician, I was assigned to work at the local homeless shelter program for teens in Bangor, Maine. One afternoon I was working in the shelter when the doorbell rang. Standing outside was a more grown up girl, a bit more rougher around the edges, but with the same smile I remembered from our conversation. She had been homeless for about six months, living from apartment to apartment with other kids, doing a variety of drugs and getting money wherever she could.

There is always a back-story to the person you see on the streets. Usually tragic and sad, they have much to tell, if anyone would listen.

When I leave this world, it will be with tears in my eyes.

I have witnessed such great love

Such great beauty

And such impossible compassion

Equally, I have witnessed such great hatred

Such horrible actions against the very people they should love and care for

I have chosen to witness and live the full spectrum of life

When I leave this world I will be grateful for every person I have met

Grateful for every heart I have met

For every breath I held in anticipation

For every hand I held

For every tear I wiped away

When I leave this world

May my words and love continue.

I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when I have nothing to say.

That remaining still is often the best thing to do when you are unsure of a plan of action.

I’ve learned that whatever you put into the world comes back to you threefold.

I’ve learned that doing nothing when something needs to be done makes more work in the long run, or doing too much when I need not act ruins the outcome.

A cold shower is good sometimes.

I’ve learned that there are some bad things you do that are redeemable, but hurting a child is not one of them.

I’ve learned that sometimes religion is a dangerous thing, some misrepresented, created and recreated by men to make life easier for some and painful for others.

All God ever wanted us to do was to love and honor one another, not worship with gold and treasures, grovel, or kill in the name of.

I’ve learned that.

I’ve learned that people that force religion on others are often hiding something either from others or from themselves.

Or both.

What people fear the most is change, not spiders, nor snakes.

I’ve learned that it is true that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

I’ve learned that sometimes when I face my inner demons, they actually have a face.

I’ve learned that responsibility for my actions begins with the awareness that I am wrong.

Prejudice is learned, that children are “color-blind” unless conditioned otherwise.

I’ve learned that most men need their hearts broken, ripped apart and stomped on before they truly understand what love is.

I’ve learned that I often forget to breathe.

We as a nation have forgotten how to raise our children.

I’ve learned that a child will love their parent(s) unconditionally, even after the parent abandoned and/or abused them.

I’ve learned that the green M&Ms are indeed sexy.

Simply taking a walk can clear up most problems, or at least change my frame of mind.

I’ve learned that if I stop, listen and pay attention to my surroundings, that there is a lot more going on around me that I didn’t realize before.

I’ve learned that real love is work, that being with one person for a long enough time to really know them takes patience, understanding, and the ability to look outside myself.

It is far easier to give up than do the work, but there’s no reward in that.

I’ve learned that my children learn more from my actions than what I say.

I know enough to be wise but not enough to be intelligent.

I’ve learned that common sense isn’t too common.

That none can truly feel love without accepting the loss and pain involved.

True evil is in the temptation, and that temptation can present itself as something or someone most beautiful and desirable.

That sometimes people just want someone to listen, not give advice, stated what’s wrong, or make any comments at all.

I’ve learned that the silent moments between two people tells more than words, and that the comfortable silent moments are worth a million spoken words.

there is a moment in each day that gives us the opportunity to change, ourselves, our community, or the world.

I’ve learned that.

Don McCoy 1995