A New Direction-Chapter 1

I need a distraction.  I need a new direction.   I notice that it has been six months since I last wrote a blog here.   So much has happened in that time.  Not the least of which is a new president, about whom I am not pleased, but about whom I read too much, see too much, listen too much.  Too much of my time and mental energy is used up in that dark world.  I want to be free of that.

I need a diversion from the world of politics.   Maybe writing would help.  I haven' t been doing much writing for quite a while.  I have given up any further writing ambitions, and also, I gave up writing my blog.

Let writing do its work and distract.

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Maybe I will start a story here.  A true story, one that happened recently.   I can remember the exact date.  It was April 8th.   It was a Saturday, and I had gone out running errands around town, not far from home.   Of course, it is actually a story that began all the way back to 1967.

When I returned home, there was my daughter Priscilla.  Gerry's arm was around her, and she was crying.  When I came into the room, she blurted,   "I just found out my father has died."

I was married to Priscilla's father from 1969 to 1979.  We had three daughters.  Then there was a divorce.  Neither I nor any of the daughters have seen or heard from him since 1979.   Suddenly learning of his death 38 years later was quite a shock.

A flurry of phone calls ensued.  They went the rounds from Priscilla to Brenda, from Michelle to me, from people in Virginia where he died, to his brother Robert, to Michelle, to me, to the rehab center in Virginia, and so forth.  There were apparently phone calls from a lawyer in there some where.

Ron was his name.  Now we know that he died in Virginia.  All of us were resigned to the fact that we would never know what happened to him.  He was not find-able---meaning everyone had "searched" the internet for years, sometimes even paying one of those People Search Places.  There was just nothing there.  Perhaps he did not live in the United States any more.  Perhaps he had died years ago.

And yet, suddenly, in his death, he re-enters our lives.