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#16
11-24-2020, 01:14 PM
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#17
11-24-2020, 01:27 PM
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Did I really forget to mention that I'm extremely thankful to be retired??? QUESTION: What am I going to do tomorrow? ANSWER: Any darn thing I want....
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Emerald X20 Emerald X20-12 Fender Robert Cray Stratocaster Martin D18 Ambertone Martin 000-15sm
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#19
11-24-2020, 04:05 PM
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I'm most grateful that despite it occurring in the middle of the pandemic, our daughter gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Not our first grandchild (third) but the first girl. Little Miss Harlow Madison Davis is already the apple of her Pampy's eye. After that grateful to still be employed (we both work in critical fields) and our family is all employed and healthy. One daughter did pick up the 'rona recently but thankfully had a mild case. Last, very grateful to all the AGF friends that joined me on the AGF Open Mic group and perform regularly. We've become a small band of like-minded friends who get to enjoy each others company and performances every other week!
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Call me Scott Cole Clark Angel 2 Thin Line | Emerald X7 Custom Woody | IRIS DF in sinker mahogany Methos1979: (Almost) Every guitar-related review I've written on AGF! Scott & Donna Music
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#20
11-24-2020, 04:50 PM
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What keeps my hopes up is a loving wife and daughter. That and the knowledge that I have endured several extremely difficult periods in my lifetime, and this current “situation” is just one more that I will overcome.
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It won’t always be like this.
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#21
11-25-2020, 06:56 AM
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I'm thankful that I'm retiring next August. I was fortunate enough to work for an agency that has a pension, I can pay off my house and hopefully, escape from the hysteria. At least I won't have to be out in the world every day. Just gotta make nine more months.
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Frances 
Last edited by TomB'sox; 11-29-2020 at 12:24 PM. Reason: politics
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#22
11-25-2020, 07:58 AM
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We've been healthy and mostly sane.
 I've worked the entire duration of the situation. Plus I picked up a part time job teaching at the local community college. Paid off our farm/homestead. Mostly thankful for my ever-loving wife.
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#23
11-25-2020, 08:40 AM
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I'm thankful and grateful for a lot, but nothing is in the same league as how thankful I am for my wonderful family. This was brought home all the more forcefully by a very recent loss that was/is devastating as well as not totally unexpected. I have an amazing wife that after 35 years is more than ever the love of my life and my best friend. I count my blessings every morning when I wake up with her. And together we have two wonderful daughters who have turned into kind and delightful and competent and successful young women, both in their early 30's now. One of them is due to give birth to our first grandchild in less than two months.
We also raised a nephew, the child of my wife's brother and a woman he never had much of a relationship with, both of them have had massive problems through their lives, neither has ever amounted to anything, including being decent people. They're both just kind of wastes. And my nephew never got any sort of love or adequate attention as a baby and developed an attachment disorder that I guess comes from never bonding with a parent, which is devastating for an infant. He spent every summer with us from about the time he was three years old. And then he lived with us full time for a couple of years around kindergarten and first grade. He was a beautiful little kid, I think he was put on earth to be the perfect little kid. As long as he could play with no real responsibilities, he was as full of unencumbered joy as any kid I've ever been around. But he could never handle even the slightest bit of responsibility. I mean NOTHING. He couldn't handle school, he never did household chores, didn't respond to discipline or encouragement. He was just broken from an early age. But my daughters grew up with him as a little brother and he was part of our family. After a couple years, he stopped living with us full time and went to live with my wife's folks, who lived in the same town with his parents, so at least he got to see them more often - being away from them was really hard on him when he was with us. He didn't do any better in that environment, but he had a larger support system there. He still came to us for summers, and was generally a delight during the summer when not much was asked of him. But when he was in middle school, my father in law died and my mother in law couldn't handle him alone, so he came back to us for the next few years. During the school year, he was worse than ever, just non-stop trouble. My wife is an educator who's dealt with special needs kids most of her career - if anyone was equipped to help this kid, it was her. But despite all of our best efforts, and a herculean effort by various teachers and counselors at school, he just kept doing worse and worse. He was seeing a psychologist in those years and when I went in to talk to him after Adam's appointment one day, I expressed my concern about how Adam was ever going to handle the adult world. And he said very bluntly, 'you can't worry about that - he is very unlikely to be able to handle it at all. You just have to look at what you're doing as giving him some good years right now, while he's with you. It's the best life he'll ever know, and it's all you can do'. Knocked me back, but he was right. We eventually had to send Adam back to his home town after he started getting violent and threatening my wife and the one daughter who was still at home. It was a wrenching decision, but we clearly weren't doing him any good and he had started doing some real harm to us. He lived back and forth between his mother and father, neither one of them really giving him a home - mostly just a place to crash. He was clearly mentally ill by that time, and was more and more delusional. My wife and I lamented that he was unlikely to live to see 25 the way his life was going. But nobody could seem to help him, despite many efforts to. In his early 20's he rode his bike out to Colorado and started living on the street in Ft. Collins. I don't think he was homeless the whole time, but he was a lot and recently has been for a few years. His happiest times were honestly when he was in jail. He got arrested and jailed a couple of times and when he was in jail, he had a pace to sleep, three meals, and not a lot was asked of him. Frankly, hard as it is to say, it was the best environment for him. We would hear from him every now and then, as would his grandmother. He'd often ask for money and sometimes we or she would send him some, just to get him through a few more days. My older daughter, who's a doctor and was probably the closest person to him, talked to him and tried to help him get some mental health care, but he was uncooperative. He talked to his father regularly, but there couldn't be a more dysfunctional father / son relationship. Last week he either picked a fight with or ripped off the wrong person. The police found him stabbed to death the next morning. It took a couple days to ID him and reach his father (fingerprints - he'd been in enough trouble with the law that they had his prints on file). It was one of those events that's totally shocking, but barely surprising. And it's soul crushing at the same time. Everyone tried to help him, nobody could. I'm having trouble pulling up the memories of the bad times with him, which eventually dominated - all I can remember was this magically sweet, fun, little kid. Of picking him up in a swimming pool when he was so smooth and slippery I could barely hang on to him. Of having to go up and get him out of trees he'd climbed too high in and couldn't figure out how to get down. He was a wonderful little guy, but he never had a chance at growing up. It seems obvious now, but we fought so hard to try to get him in a better place. And, as his psychologist said, when we had him, it was the best his life ever got and we have to be glad we were able to give him that. Even if we couldn't fix him or prepare him for a future he never could handle. So I'm incredibly thankful for my family, but also ripped apart about this missing member of it, who will never torment or delight us again. He's just gone. I can't say it's quite like losing my own kid - i'd be catatonic and hysterical and totally unable to function if that ever happened. I'm not there, but I'm just so sad. As is my wife, who put more effort and love into that little guy than anybody. That, and just being the two of us for Thanksgiving, makes this a real bittersweet holiday. But we have a grandchild coming soon and life will go on, and be unbearably sweet most of the time, and we'll cope with the loss of Adam, which was long feared and finally did come to pass. He turned 30 in June. Sorry to burden you all with this - I guess I needed to write it down somewhere. -Ray
__________________
"It's just honest human stuff that hadn't been near a dang metronome in its life" - Benmont Tench Last edited by raysachs; 11-25-2020 at 09:37 AM.
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#24
11-25-2020, 09:05 AM
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Ray: Thanks for sharing a very heart-wrenching story. It does really give us a lot to be thankful for on several different levels. The psychologist's words would have been stark, but I really believe that those are the words that you and your family should hang your thoughts on. I've read that many of the souls who are/were damaged in the way that Adam was had a very early period of attachment that was skipped over. Well intended attempts to later make up for it tended to be futile. You and your family provided the best stable years of Adam's life, and that's all you could have done....
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Emerald X20 Emerald X20-12 Fender Robert Cray Stratocaster Martin D18 Ambertone Martin 000-15sm Last edited by RP; 11-25-2020 at 09:59 AM.
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#25
11-25-2020, 09:43 AM
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I've been lucky in life and I am thankful that I have not been affected much by covid and find myself in a place where I'm prepared and able to help my kids out of it comes to that. No worries for us. That is really something to be thankful for considering how many people are not so much so.
__________________
Please don't take me too seriously, I don't. Taylor GS Mini Mahogany. Guild D-20 Gretsch Streamliner Morgan Monroe MNB-1w https://www.minnesotabluegrass.org/
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#26
11-25-2020, 09:46 AM
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-Ray
__________________
"It's just honest human stuff that hadn't been near a dang metronome in its life" - Benmont Tench
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#27
11-25-2020, 12:32 PM
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Hi Scott!
Congratulations on your new grandson! Holy Cow! That is so special! Good for you and your family! For me, I am grateful for my family: for my wife in particular, but also for our children and grandchildren who have all made an effort to reach out and stay in touch in spite of all the isolation that 2020 has brought about. If I didn't have my wife, I'd be sitting here day after day by myself. I am comfortable being alone for long periods of time, but that kind of aloneness would be a little too much! I'm grateful we are both still reasonably healthy and can enjoy each other's company. - Glenn
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My You Tube Channel
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#28
11-25-2020, 12:41 PM
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I am so sorry for what you have gone through and for what you and your family have lost. I hope it helps a little that those of us on the outside of this situation can see that you and your wife did the best that you could. Sometimes that's all that people can do. The big events in life are always beyond our control. I'm hoping that you and your wife will heal soon from this difficult pain and grief. - Glenn
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My You Tube Channel
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#29
11-25-2020, 01:02 PM
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Grateful for my wife and although had issues with health we tend to work through it. She's tough! Well she had to put up with me so.......lol
__________________
Alvarez AP-70 Squire Contemporary Jaguar Kustom Amp (acoustic) Gamma G-25 Amp (electric)
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#30
11-25-2020, 01:07 PM
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Hey Ray,
That was a gut-wrenching story but... I, for one, am glad you told it both for yourself and for those of us who read it. We have had a couple of family members whose lives were not unlike your nephew Adam, in many, many ways. One ended in a tragic death similar his and the other is still being played out and in some respect is even worse because children are involved. The difference with our situation is that we were not as closely and less directly involved in those lives as you. Still, we were/are affected. In this season of giving thanks, it is good that you have remembered the joy that Adam’s existence brought you as well as the pain. To be thankful for what you have experienced, both the good and the bad, shows more than balance, it shows a recognition of a higher sensitivity to purpose. I think we can draw a lot from our relationships with people and life in general that helps us to recognize a “higher purpose” if we are open to it and not given in to loss, pain or confusion. Your timing is perfect in this season of giving thanks.
__________________
Nothing bothers me unless I let it. Martin D18 Gibson J45 Gibson J15 Fender Copperburst Telecaster Squier CV 50 Stratocaster Squier CV 50 Telecaster Last edited by rokdog49; 11-25-2020 at 01:13 PM.
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