Love Bungle’s Department of Impending Gratitude, And Experimental Liposuction

 

March 22, 2020

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     The responsibility for composing a dedication has fallen to our department, and frankly the assignment has been giving us fits. It’s not that we’re having trouble mustering a sense of gratitude - quite the opposite - we are brimming with thankfulness. No, it’s more an issue of how best to express those feelings, as a matter of order and emphasis.

     Take the Declaration of Independence - does anyone remember the 23rd person to sign it? Nobody who hands someone a document, looking for a signature, asks for their Abraham Clark - it’s always their John Hancock. The obvious take away is that “first” and “largest” matter, at least when it comes to proclamations, declarations, and dedications. Within the bounds of that truth lies the poser that’s been tormenting us - how do we begin?

     Certainly, a case could be made for starting with a shout out to John and Linda, our Father and Stepmother - ample precedent exists for choosing to put family members at the top of the list. But the thing is, while they may well be family, and they each have had a hand in saving our life, Karen, Tom, Heidi, Kate, Tina, Suzy, Christine, Jason, Kim, Jerry, Mary Anne, Tom, Patti, Bob, Melanie, Carol, Barbara, and Cindy, we also consider family, and each of them has also saved our life.

     It goes without saying, anyone who saves our life we consider to be family and a strong candidate for being placed first. But someone doesn’t have to save our life to be seen as kin. Michael, Chris, Vicki, Bob, Diane, Karla, Kelly, Anne, Liza, Terry, Betty, Raymond, Peggy, Jennifer, Tricia, have also become our intentional family – dear friends who we see as our tribe, our “people.” Each and every one of them certainly deserves to have their name writ large at the top this dedication.

     This is the problem – despite our best efforts, something of an unintended hierarchy is beginning to form - we can only type one name at a time, and therefore some names are going to appear before others, implying a descending order of importance we are loath to acknowledge. Suffice it to say, to our minds, every person mentioned above deserves to have their name blazoned across the top of the page as the most-worthy of our gratitude.

     But then there’s the matter of Barbara and Cindy, a partner and biological sister, who have passed on, but whose love and understanding changed and then saved our life.  They were both intentional family and intimate long-term friends. Which is a whole other category – long-term friends. Tom, Patti, Jason, Kim, Jerry, Mary Anne, Michael, Diane, Anne, Tom, Karen, Lyra, Mira, Vickie, Barbara, Chris, Kim, John, Linda all are deserving of special recognition for standing by us through the years.

     Of course the same could be said to be true when it comes to fishing partners.  Given how important being outdoors, within nature, on and in water has been to us, the fact we have been blessed to find people with whom to share our fascination and wonder makes it almost a given that we should place Mike's, Jeff's, and Mianda's names at the top of this page.

     Which highlights another problem – should we go on and on, shifting the names among and across more and more narrowly defined categories of relationships? Until what? Until everyone’s name has appeared at least a dozen times, across several score of bracketed groupings? Is the winner of the dedication award to be the person or persons who appear most frequently along a broadly imagined continuum of relationship possibilities?

      And then there are the temporal considerations. It’s natural, we think, to look backward in time, and survey where we’ve been and who was accompanying us through the years. But the present is just as important, if not more important than the past. We have been finding friendships with some truly extraordinary people these past few years - with people we have come to cherish, and who we look forward to getting to know better. Each holds a special place in our hearts for the kindnesses they’ve extended, and the moments we’ve shared. Anne-Marie, Erik, Mianda, Dave, Brandon, Adam, Yard, Kelsey, Anna, Gina, Jeff, Donna, Gloria, Rye, Pablo, Renee, Loren, Emily, Emily, Emily, Cody, Tim, Rye, Paul, Carol, Jill, Christina, Ben, Elise, Marie, Teresa, Kris, Jana, Matt, Penelope, Princess, Loubot,Amalia, Liza, Nate, Carole, Hillary, Paula, Sarah, Dean, Cheryl, Crystal, Dave, Usnea, Ben, Michelle, Elizabeth, Margarita, Ben, Chris, Brian, Mike, Brenda, Joe, Kristy, Kenny, Alex, Andrew, Cheryl, Ben, Josh, Chris, Katt, Meryl, Lily, and when it comes right down to it, a goodly portion of the population of the town here. To place any of them first, if we were to create a hierarchy of some sort, would rightly honor them, but slight everyone else mentioned above; how could we do that? They each are deserving of the honor, for reasons that will no doubt become clear, but so is everyone else.

     And of course, there's Aubrie.  She did all of the heavy lifting when came to designing and helping me to create this website.  Her patience and caring alone, as she sought to teach me, answer my questions, and get this site up and running are deserving of not only the dedication but also sainthood.  Justice and right-headedness would seem to dictate that this dedication be hers and hers alone.

     But then what about those people who we loved, but with whom we've had a falling out?  Many of them have saved our lives, but then misunderstandings and an inability or unwillingness to find a way through to the next phase of our friendship caused us to drift apart.  To mention their names would be unfair and inappropriate, but we do feel an immense gratitude for the parts they've played in helping us to become the person we are today.  We don't know how we would dedicate this website to them without using their names, but even though they're deserving, the dilemma is moot, for all the reasons stated above. 

     So, we’re tempted to just go and dedicate this website to Frog. No one’s feelings would be hurt, we could satisfactorily rationalize the abdication of our responsibility, and an acceptable dedication would result. But we feel this would be taking the easy way out; and also, Ms. Lilly would be coming down on us hard. Not that Frog isn’t deserving; and it’s not that having Frog’s name appear at the top of the page wouldn’t be met with understanding and agreement by everyone in our life; it’s more that it doesn’t solve the problem – if Frog’s name appears first, whose name appears second?

     One other consideration, we might mention. While we’ve been befriended by some of the most kind and generous people we’ve met over the years, we’ve also known people who have challenged us in ways that were destructive and mean-spirited – some of these people were evil in the truest sense of the word. They, by their intention, and we, by our ignorance, need, and co-dependency or actual dependency, created deep pain and lasting scars in us. Our relationships with these people were pathological, but they also served as the crucibles within which our capabilities and dreams were tested. Who we’ve become – who we are in the present – is due as much to their self-serving, parasitic, unkind, conflict-oriented outlooks, as to the love, understanding, support, and encouragement shown us by others.

     We sometimes wonder what our life might have been like if we'd experienced it in a state of protected bliss, in which our greatest concerns centered around a toaster that has a finicky darkness setting, not being able to find the perfect pink pen with which to R.S.V.P. a wedding invitation, and the discomfort of enduring two hours of labor while birthing our third child. But such was not the case.  We are who we are because of both the adversities and the kindnesses.

     Having been touched by grace and beauty, as well having been dragged to the dark side and then slammed against its cold, hard deck with such jarring force that our universe threatened to shatter with the impact, we’ve struggled to bring a depth and breadth to our worldview, scrabbling with conviction and humility to own our empathy and love. That is to say, yes, we are and always have been a Pollyanna, but we’ve earned our Pollyannaish outlook; our sense of justice and kindness are not merely fashion accessories to be trotted out during luncheons and pool parties. We mean it when we say, anyone, and everyone, who has ever felt a sense of loss, confusion, vulnerability, outrage, or despair, and who has suffered prejudice, bias, oppression, and the demeaning label of “other,” are our kin.

     Which is why we considered dedicating this “Fillitorium” to those who have caused us pain; and why we also thought to dedicate it to everyone who has ever suffered the lash of exclusion and the brutality of injustice. But we feel the one choice would elevate the wicked, giving them additional “air time,” when they have had more than they ever deserved; and the other choice would highlight the victimization of good hearted people, who are so much more than merely the sum of their scars.

     Which leaves us wondering if we should simply take a cue from Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” exo-trilogy, and dedicate this website to “Life, The Universe, and Everything.” It would certainly address our concerns about creating offence, just in case we have left out the name of some deserving person or persons. But once again, this seems like it’s cheating in some way – for one thing it doesn’t really resolve the conundrum that prompted this long-winded exercise in avoidance.

     The sad thing is, what with the deadline for submitting a dedication upon us, we have little recourse but to make our choice and let things unfold as they may – courage and inspiration are called for here, and we refuse to be found wanting. So, with that, we would like to dedicate this site to………oh, that’s our phone ringing…we should probably answer that…do you mind if we put you on hold…just click the arrow button below……