Far Off Beats A Drum ©

The leaves danced on the trees as the north wind blew gently across the field and up through the branches.
Spring buds burst open to colourful blossoms filling the air with their sweet scent.
A small voice screamed in the night, shrieking with fear as it was pushed from the only world it knew and out to the unknown.
Dripping wet with what life was, it lay on the cusp of death listening to the slowing beat pounding through it’s body until it stopped and the only beat left to be heard, was its own.

The years passed, decades came and went with the thunder of the gods and cannon beating around him.
Blood fed the earth; she gave back life as time left its mark on the one who always felt the sound of the drum beating within.

Far up in the Balkans he heard an echo beckoning him down to cross the plains to search for what called his name.
Across mountains and rivers he went until he came to find an ocean to cross and smell the salt air as he went searching for what was his calling.

The years passed with the falling of the leaves and life came with spring blossoms adding two more beats to the symphony, he now shared with the one he loved.
The drums thundered for decades but slowly the song started to fade and remembering the tune of life became more difficult to remember, harder to play.
There were those that reminded him how the beat went but time was wearing down the music.

On one fine spring morning he lay in his bed and heard that beat he once heard 75 years earlier.
It beat in unison with his as it once did, before it faded away never to be heard again until this moment when it returned to sing that same lullaby to him and again they beat together as once before but this time their beat slowly faded together until silence fell upon what once was the thunder of life echoing through the Balkans.

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The silence filled the room as she sat in the corner listening for the smallest sound.
Life has become a void.
A void that was once full of life and love, now she sat there alone wondering what happened to her life.
Where was everyone and what will become of her now?
When she was a baby her mother used to take her everywhere and they would run and play at the park all the time.
She would put her in the swing and push her for hours and they both laughed out loud or fun into the pool together.
As she got older they used to go shopping and having fun trying out clothes, then buy outfits that matched so that they looked alike.

Today that is but a faint memory as she sits all by herself in a dark room with only her heart beat to listen to.

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It’s been a long month and I have so much to say that I have been holding in because I have been to sick to sit here and do those posts any justice.
I have been trying to catch up on all of you as well which has helped in a lot of what I am thinking about.

The two items above are but two small tit bits of what has been happening around here that I have been watching and thinking about.
Both are stories about life and how life moves for different people taking them down paths they didn’t choose but chose them.

I have heard people say that you go out and make your own roads but that isn’t true because there is no way you can predict what someone else will do and in the end your life is governed by someone else.
Everyones is.
Kings and peasants alike share this one fate and it’s all about fate.
You just got to hope it goes the way you want it to.

The first part is about my uncle who passed away this weekend from Parkinson’s.
His mother died when he was born as he lay on her.
I had known this man all my life and I could honestly say I have met few people like him.
I never saw him mad or without a smile or a kind thing to say to someone.
From the time I was a little boy I knew he was different because he didn’t speak like everyone else did at home.
You see he wasn’t Greek he was Yugoslavian.
He had met my aunt, they fell in love and got married so he didn’t speak Greek but everyone accepted him when most people shun outsiders.
Over the years they had two daughters who grew up to be fine women.
They used to spend a lot of time at my place when we were kids and got to know each other well.
My parents liked my uncle a lot and they would cook them a turkey every Christmas and send it to them because my aunt didn’t cook.
I remember my parents doing this for decades and my uncle who was an electrician would always come to help my father with any electrical work the house needed and would refuse payment.
I guess you could say family took care of family and he was family.
Both of them had great jobs and made lots of money and managed to buy three houses and build up a nice nest egg for when they retired.

I remember my uncle sneaking over from my mother’s house and knocking on my door and asking me for a smoke because he wasn’t allowed to smoke by my aunt who IS a domineering woman.
He had quit for ten years but when he was near my place he would come over and I wouldn’t tell on him.
There was a time when our parents wanted me to marry their oldest daughter but I refused for personal reasons.

As the years went by my aunt got indifferent and they stopped coming by and staying to themselves and away from family.
We would see them at church or at the Greek festival where they donated their time to the church but that was all.
They just kept to themselves.

About fifteen years ago we heard that he was sick and had Parkinson’s decease.
When we used to see him at the church we started noticing the changes but he kept on fighting and was doing well for a long time until I saw him about two years ago in the mall.
My aunt used to bring him and leave him on a bench while she ran around the different shops for hours.
He wouldn’t move just sit there staring off into his thoughts.
I was with my mother so we sat down and talked to him.
He was there and not there but we could tell he was trying hard.
We left about an hour later and never saw him again.

I was sitting at the table in my mother’s house when she told me that he had died.
I was shocked at first but I felt so sorry for him, I asked her when the funeral would be and she said there wasn’t going to be one.
My aunt decided that she wasn’t going to have a funeral because she wasn’t going to spend any more money on him for nothing and went and buried him as soon as they got the body out of the hospital.
She didn’t even tell people he had passed away and people are now learning slowly through the grapevine and many are shocked and mad at her for this.

There were a lot of people who got to know and love him that would have wanted to say goodbye and I am sure the church would have been filled to the rafters for his funeral and we have a big church.
I know it’s my aunt’s right to do what she wishes and I can respect that but if she did this because of the money then she is one hell of a fucken bitch.

I will always remember him for the kind man that he was.

The second part is an on going saga of a little girl’s life and where it is leading her.
It’s my SIL’s oldest daughter.
This is something that has been bothering me a lot recently and how I view things.
Even though I have parents that love me and worked hard to give me what I needed to have even some small luxuries they were still not there for me because they had to work hard to get what we have today so I grew up on the streets and I saw a lot of ugliness there as I have posted here in the past.
Looking back to then I could see and understand why it had to be that way.
The economy was shit and pay was pathetic sop people had to work twelve and sixteen hour days to feed their families.
Just ask any immigrant and they would tell you what they had to do to eat and keep a roof overhead.
But today it shouldn’t happen but it does to often for different reasons.
Some parents drink their money away or do drugs and the kids are nothing more than the extra cash to buy the next fix or drink leaving their kids on the street to fend for them selves, if they want to eat.

I have seen kids abused by a mother's new boy friend and not give a shit because the guy was buying the next fix or bottle.
The kid’s watch as a parade of men walk through their life, abusing their mothers and them.
What are they to think?

Today I watched a girl who turned sixteen on Saturday loose more and more of herself because she is alone.
She is a beautiful young woman as her mother is and she turns heads when she walks down the street.
But she is lost; I could see it in her eyes.
It’s something I recognize because I have seen it in the eyes of many young women her age and younger.
The teen years are the most important time in any child’s life because it sets them up at the crossroads of life where a major choice will be made that will bring then into adulthood and how they will begin to live.
She looks like she wants to be what she wants to be but can’t because she feels abandoned by those around her and she is right all those around her have abandoned her in the world and not because they want to but because they don’t even see they are doing it to her.
Her mother is off to her fathers because he is sick and wants to make sure she gets what is coming to her and that her sister and mother don’t try and cheat her out of any money.
So she has left her daughter here living alone in the apartment by herself.
Sure my brother is here with her little sister but he stays at my mothers house with Amanda because he goes to work in the morning at 6 am and he doesn’t want to wake the kid up at that time and bring her to my parents but she won’t sleep at my parents unless my brother is there.

Her father has remarried and she doesn’t get alone with her stepmother and they have two new babies now.
She doesn’t like going there to see her father anymore because she is forced to watch the kid so the adults could go out when she is there and feels that is the only reason she is wanted to go there.
She also had a fight with her father when she called him on the carpet for driving drunk and her new stepmother slapped her for talking back to her father so tension is high there and a lot of fighting has occurred in the last 5 years.
So now she lives alone in an apartment in the inner city all fucked up and naïve.
The other day my brother came home to find four kids drunk and high throwing up all over the place.
He called her father who came over and made her clean the mess then took her home with him only to have to bring her back because she got into a fight with his wife the second she walked into the door.

I sit here looking at this young woman wondering what will happen to her.
I remember what it was like on the street and she reminds me of someone I knew once in fact I wrote this post about her.
Is the SIL’s daughter going in this direction or will they all wake up and save this kid?
I guess time will tell


Have a nice day

Walker