We arrive here like a soldier who is wounded on the battlefield and wakes up weeks later in the hospital. He never really meets the people who saved him. He only knows that without their help he would have died.
How true Jeff....so true. And it was your comment Jeff, that, upon reading, I decided to do one more thread. I would never be able to list all the people here who have helped me without going over almost 2 years of posts. Some of you been with me from the very start...those I can list of the top of my head...Jeff223, DonH, ISLH, nicola, ford, WCW
Long termers include 25 years MLC..4kids..FaithfulH...among many
Some people who haven't been back for awhile...BBA, eg
Others have disappeared....S_O_T_S, tyler
If I didn't list you, it's just that there are so many.
I guess it is not much longer before I go with the wind myself. I, like others, don't think I have the emotional energy to take on any newcomers. Although I am entering a difficult phase of my life...I feel more or less like I am approaching the end of one phase...my marriage. I don't know if I will think differently later, but...time will tell. This post is simply, well, a catch up, since many here have followed me for so long, I feel they deserve to know what happened. Hence..a....? last thread?.
A True Story
Many years ago while I was in college, I was doing a procedure while in my research portion of my last year of college for my thesis. I was a biochemistry major and to graduate with honors, I had to do a year of research and write a thesis. I had spent weeks breaking down and preparing a small protein taken from the outer cell wall of a bacterium. The small amount of blue-colored material had to be 'pipetted' into a small container holding a thin gel (electrophoresis), where, a current would be applied over a day or so....driving the components along the gel at different speeds and leaving a pattern that is like a fingerprint. It's like making a fingerprint...similar to DNA analysis.
On the day that I was starting to pipette the material in (which took days to prepare), my professor walked over to me to watch over my shoulder. He was Japanese and a full professor at the University. I once was invited to his home for dinner, truly a cultural experience. He was grey-haired with a grey mustache and reminded me of either a kamikaze pilot or a samurai. The workers bowed to him and he mostly spoke in Japanese while in the lab.
As he stared over his glasses, I became quite nervous. Afterall, he was a full professor and I would have to defend my thesis in front him when it was time for graduation. With my hands shaking, the little blue protein sample began to miss the wells, and, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, my hard work slowly started to float away and disappear as it diffused through the water. Gone.
I turned around, expecting to see my professor prepared to castigate me for my poor technique. Instead, he stared at me, smiled and looked over his eyeglasses. AFter a minute of looking at me, he uttered something I will never forget:
Quote:
"Saru mo ki kara ochiru"
. He walked away. One of the other doctoral fellows, visiting from Japan, a guy named Kenzo, was standing nearby and chuckling. I walked over and asked him to translate.
He smiled...looked at me and said, "Even the monkey falls from the tree."
We should all stop blaming ourselves......release the guilt and resentment....and go forward with life.
I am in the storm now. Update to follow. FIB
Me 55; XW 47; 2 kids (S13, D11) Bomb 05/19/06 Original thread http://tinyurl.com/yg2ou2t Last anniversary 04/25/10, Divorced 5/12/10 Status: Loving father of 2 beautiful children;
