Blog 3310 – 11.24.2024

Never Enough

On a fateful day, August tenth, two thousand, twenty-four years ago, my mother who would have turn sixty-nine the following November finally decided that she had had enough. I have often used the half empty, half full couple analogy to describe my mother’s outlook on life. Mama was a “somebody stole my cup” kind of gal. As king as I knew her and I was born three weeks after her nineteenth birthday, she always seemed to find the dark cloud in every silver lining.

She and my dad were married for forty-seven years when he died suddenly of a heart attack or stroke. The morning of the day he died my mom was telling me at the breakfast table that he had been down in his back in the spring and could not get out of bed. She said she just did not think she could take care of him if he had a protracted illness. Fortunately she never had to but nevertheless she blamed him for leaving her. I tried to dissuade her of that notion by saying, “Mom, dad did not choose to leave you, he died.”

My mom and dad’s marriage was more holy deadlock than holy wedlock. There is a line from one of my favorite authors, Pat Conroy, in his book The Prince of Tides where he says, “In the war between my mother and father the only prisoners that they took were their children.” That is what it was like for me and my brother.

After his death I think my mom realized that dad had always been there for her and yet that only served to worsen her depression till three years later she finally committed the irreversible act of ending her own life. She had had enough.

As a seventeen year old and two years later as a nineteen year old I attempted to take my own life fortunately both time I threw up what I had taken.and lived to tell this tale. Young suicides are so prevalent and seem so much more tragic because young people have so little life experience to decide so young that they have had enough, that things are never going to be better.

They certainly have for me. I have had a wonderful life. I am a grandpa and just as my granddaughter Emma Grace wants to experience everything, so do I. I have not had enough and do not know if I ever will. “All the shine of a thousand spotlights, all the stars we steal from the night sky will never be enough..for me.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O9TSiE35PKzupP8NjHY7QDRKHN4HWngE/view?usp=drivesdk

Never Enough