My Dear Cousin - Ego Solus

12th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

I can tell you a funny thing about my old man passing, (Pony Girl) said his remains where to go to his ex-wife. I learned this when I wanted to visit the grave and mourn alone. (Pickle) would later tell me that his ashes where at (Pony Girl)’s house.

You may ask why I did not attend the funeral, and that would be a good question. Truth be told, I felt the family had long since been poisoned against me and that there was no making amends. There was no coming to them because they had already made my life so hard that I couldn’t deal with them and grief.

If there are people in your life you want to reconnect with you need to do it now. You need to take the time to see their side of things and be willing to make things right. With that family of mine they had made it clear that I would accept what I was given and pay what they asked me for it. What they wanted in return was always more than the value of what they gave.

A narcissist will often plant and idea in a person’s head and we humans aren’t all that bright enough to let that idea be put down by reason. The idea needs to be knocked out of our heads and that takes some damage. When I needed them the most those people turned their backs on me, and I think we have past the point where there is anything they can do to make it up to me.

In my art work I often write the words in Latin ‘Ego Solus’ under the symbol of the man alone. Ego Solus means I alone as I am alone. I stand alone in a world that stands against me and I will never give up.

Best,


Richard Leland Neal

The Bad Things

 

Last Day of Leland

27^th July 2012

Dear Cassi,

It comes to me that I have not told you of the last note in Grandpa Leland’s life that was played so many years ago. Leland was a man who had little love for doctors and even less for medication. He would crush pills and mix them with honey to get them down, because he had trouble swallowing them. Still he lived to be seventy five from what I understand. In his last years he had a sixty inch waste and did little moving.

       

I’m told once one of my aunts came over to help him with his laundry and found in his sheets blood. Not spots of red, mind, but deep puddles that had stained the bed itself.  The family insisted he go to see a doctor and only after some pushing Leland agreed. They found that he had colon cancer, but he lived for many years after that discovery. 

       

When Leland finally passed he did so in his sleep. He was found the next morning with the number of his undertaker on his bed stand. The old man knew he wasn’t long for this world, but he had that number because this undertaker was a friend. It would appear as if this man in question had retired from the business of the dead some years before but not saw those he had fondness for to the other side. Thus, grandpa went to the darkness gently touched by old hands that cared for him.

       

Family came out of the woodwork to go to the funeral but Alan refused to let them see his father’s body. “You pay your respect when a man is alive” he would say. Alan thought most of those folks just wanted to have a run at his father’s things. People can get greedy when folks die and will go about taking what they are not welcome to have.  The funeral was a small affair from what I gather but I have no recollection of this event.

       

There is much to be learned from this, Cassi, both from the passing of Leland and the actions of Alan. Firstly, it is good to have your affairs well in order when you pass. Sounds morbid I guess, but in this world a person has to look after things as best they can.

Secondly, to this we learn that the time is now to see things dealt with in our lives and loved ones. In the time of our lives we should see disputes settle if we want them to be so and never let the little things turn bad. That is a lesson everyone in my genetic similarity should learn as we have never been folks to get on. In the fragile nature of our lives we should never live for someday. Living for someday only means that we had laid today aside.

When I look over my life I see so much preparation for the future but so little joy and light. I have wallowed in darkness for so many years that I forgot the sight of the sun. For so much of my life I have been nothing but a walking ghost because I never learned from Grandpa Leland.

Live at least a little every day, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal