Pondering My Parental's Petulance

So I talked to my dad yesterday evening. He's not doing as well I expected. He keeps showing up at the emergency room with various ails and I know that this is his way of asking for someone on his medical staff to do something.

His heart rate is very low and they've suggested a pacemaker. Thing is, he's on so much stuff chemically that they probably can't do anything at this moment if they wanted to. He's pushing for the pacemaker as well because he knows (and feels) that the drugs are dragging him down, making him lethargic. Pops is an active guy. Hell, he's only 61. He also mentioned a few things that have the holistic healer in me angry as hell because he's still repping cheeseburgers as a way of life.

So we're knee deep in conversation and I'm quizzing him on his green leaf and water intake to which he answers 'Well I need to lose some of this weight and do like you said and get on my greens because I'm having a hard time moving around, you know?' Yeah, I know. The motivation to get off of dairy and red meat is there, and it looks good in theory, but let me at least finish this cheeseburger my wife made me and we'll discuss further after dinner. Honey, pass the milk.

I love my Pops, but...

Every time I think about or talk to both sets of my parents, I keep seeing the Tony Todd Coroner character from the Final Destination  series:

Dammit! He's talking to me and I know he's right too.


So what about this whole 'calling' thing I mentioned the other day?

Well, I feel that I need to use myself as the example in gaining success and in getting healthy enough to want to sit down with folk face to face and possibly influence them with my story. Nothing more or less than that, no dogma involved, no hard pitch sales job on either a product or a service. I just want to show people that one can heal from various ills whether they be physical, mental or spiritual, and where there is no real formula developed that's what I want to show... That there is no formula!

Now I am back in student mode with an accredited healing institute paring what I've already learned and experienced academically and living  thirteen years with diabetes/chronic kidney disease with what I'm learning now about holistic healing and its applied practices, and currently I can't tell you nothing but... I'm experiencing better results clinically by letting go of tradition that I ever have with the various teams of doctors and clinicians I've assembled over the years. And it goes beyond prescription medicine and a pill bottle discipline.

I just feel that if as long as I use myself as the example that my family and friends will probably take a bit of what I'm doing and will follow suit. I have a long way to go before I complete the educational and practical part of becoming a Holistic Health Practitioner, but just the practice on myself is enough to possibly motivate my parentals to want to emulate what I do and want to live.

Talking to my Pops the other night brought me down a bit. I was watching a webcast of Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue rip a venue I frequent a lot in NOLA called Tipitina's to shreds in anticipation of the new album he just dropped yesterday.

click the link, go get that

I could hear the defeat in his voice.

There was a sense of give in my mother's voice when I spoke to her last week as well. I think that they feel as if they aren't working or taking care of kids or grand kids that they have no worth and there is nothing further to do. like they have served their primary function and purpose.



In America we are culturally conditioned to believe that all things white are superior and all things black are inferior. And the manifestation of that cultural conditioning is that African Americans are undervalued, underestimated, and marginalized


My parents and their spouses have lived their lives in service to their children, their extended families and the community in service via employment, and have lived their lives thinking that there was nothing more to life other than being these things to these people. And even though my father has 26 plus years on the job and my mother has over 20 on hers, they feel as if there is no reward or additional meanings for life beyond their kids getting grown and moving out of the house and them reaching the age of retirement.

And because they are so bound to tradition, religion and the forced adaptation and integration to society at society's level and not their own...

There is no motivation to move off of fast food, traditional soul food dishes that rob them of their vitality and to keep the tune in the pocket when it comes to travel, exercise and meaningful purpose in being an elder in society. I want to help them unlearn this bad practice and let them know that there is so much more to life and living in America for them than to just just give up, wilt away and die.

It seems that society hasn't much need for African American elders. Hell, the Tea Party debates the other proved that certain folk would just let a 30 year old working man with no insurance just die if he didn't have coverage.

I may be too late. For them.

But I'll die trying. For them.

For you, dear reader... I'll continue to try to live the example and show you as well.
Now my shit ain't perfect. I will fall and fall off the wagon. I will get angry and probably head out for a three piece dark with mild sauce and fries on the side until I realize halfway to the Popeye's that it makes my legs go numb and tingle and that my lower back and kidneys will ache for damn near twelve hours and I'll be blind for four. As a matter of fact, my shit smells remarkably like...


Shit.

But I am willing to live and show you my shit. Not literally. I'm talking about my actions (and inaction for that matter). Thank God there is no such thing as smellivision.