Saturday, January 26, 2008

WTF?

Alright, so I got home yesterday and was expected back into work this coming Monday. Well I got a call late afternoon and was asked to call work when I got in. I have no idea who told my boss that I was coming back on Friday, but when I say I am going to be available for Monday, that doesn't mean you can call my house and EXPECT a call back right away. Well unbeknownst to myself, I was placed on MOD rotation at work for Saturday/Sunday. Now for all those that dont know what a MOD is, well its a Manager On Duty. Which means I am at the mercy of a phone and common sense. Well in most cases where I work at, the Phone is my friend.. Common Sense, not so much. So here is what happened...

Saturday 6am:
Boss calls: Can you come into work a little early?
Me: How early is early?
Boss: Well can you come in at 9pm?
Me: My son is being picked up by his Dad at 10, so no.
Boss: Is there any way that I can have you come into work, and bring your son till your ex can come get him?
Me: No. I will be there at 9. I am DOING you a favor by even coming in at all this weekened.. I am not even supposed to be back till Monday.
Boss: I know and I am sorry that we had to do this.
Me: You are? What would have happened had I said "no" to you about tonight?
Boss: Then we would seriously think about your future with our company.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ALL ABOUT? My mother just died. I am still, by company policy, on LEAVE!!!! But out of the goodness of my heart, I came in. I needed the break. My son needed to be with me, and, I needed to be with him, but I also have bills to pay. And my Ex, who is a kick ass father and friend ( when he wants to be ), was cool with keeping our son for one more night.

So I get to work, and Common Sense my friend, and all hell breaks loose. More on that tomorrow. I have to get some paperwork done and tomorrow is a new day.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The Funeral of Debra Atia Lynn

Born: January 3rd at 202am in Sheffeild, England 1951.
Died: January 18th at 323am in Hayward, California 2008 of breast cancer.

My mother had her mass yesterday at 1130am ( monday) at St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco.. Her mass was very beautiful and I had to haggle with the church to have certain music played.

As people were walking into the Church, you could hear Odette playing, softly, in the background. And after the mass was done, you heard The Boy Comes Home, played louder. Its was my mothers wish. Her mass was not filled with pomp and circumstance, just a few people spoke and recited their favorite passages from the Bible. I took a note from her and read it out loud. Here is that note:

Sarhari(my nicname),Michael and Albert,

A lot has happened in the last few months that your not going to understand. One of them being that I have decided to not seek treatment for this. The cancer came back and is riddled throughout my body and Dr. Safi doesnt think that there is anything that can be done other then live, be comfortable and prepare myself for death. In the time that you will find out, it will be too late and that was my wish. I know how hard headed you are and that you will worry yourself sick with this. Dont do that to yourself, your heart needs the break from the worring.

Please understand that I am not giving up, but have decided to pass away with the one thing that I can control with my health, and thats the choice to pass on my own terms, in my home with the ones I love ,with me. There is grace and winning in that. Please try to see it that way. I dont know what else to say about all of this, but that its my choice.

I want you to know how proud I am of you and your brother. You both have been wonderful children and have done right in your lives. There have been times that I wanted to strangle the both of you, but i'm glad that I didn't. ( at this I laughed cause she could have )

Please live your lives to the fullest knowing that you were loved beyond measure. I have not always done the things that you would understand, but as parents you both will see that I did what I had to do with what I had. Life has not been easy for any of our family, but we pulled through, cause we loved one another immensly. Please always remember that.

So in ending, and this no ending but a new begining, remember that I love you and that I am watching you. So dont be stupid or once the day comes we meet again, I will smack you silly. ( I laughed at this )

Please look after Albert, he will need you now, like you needed him when you two were growing up. Honor him as you have and remember he is your family, always.

Albert: Thank you for everything that you have given to my family. Your a blessing to us all and I thankful for every moment that we shared. Know that I love you and will always look over you.

I love you with all of my soul~ Mommy ( Atia ).

And I added to her vocally: Momma, I promise to always carry myself in your absence as I did in your presence and IF I am bad, turn the light on for me.

*****

That dear reader was my mother in a nutshell. Beautiful, funnier then hell, fiestier then a pit bull and had a heart of gold that was limitless. The women who took in a "homeless man" the woman who had a wild heart and a wild love affair with my Daddy, one withstood the test of her limited time, with grace, truth and a beautiful heart.

My Mother is my Hero..

Tu bisard doste dardi, Mother-jaan, tu bisard.

Sibel Edmonds: A real patriot.

Today on Matthew Good's blog, link on the right, he posted a blog about Sibel Edmonds. She is a whistle blower, blowing one of the biggest whistles in the history of the United States as far as I am concerned. In his blog he provided a link to a documentary, Kill the Messenger: Sibel Edmonds, this can be found on google videos. Now I don't go to google normally cause they do human date mining.. but for this particular item I did, Matt rarely would send something our unless it was very news worthy, in fact Matt didn't really say much on the blog, but his lack of words were volumes of tomes to me. He is often one of many words, full of wisdom, and in this situation to see that he let the documentary speak for itself, well.. That's a lot.

So I advise checking it out..

here is it as read from Matthewgood.org


Matthew Good / January 22nd, 2008
Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger
Click here to watch the documentary “Kill The Messenger” about the Sibel Edmonds affair. I highly recommend that you find some time today, or over the next few days, to watch this crucial film. The information provided in it is extremely important, so if you have a blog, or an email list that you use to send group emails to friends, please help spread the link.
More on the documentary here.

( thanks Kristy for the idea to just copy and paste.. so much easier then hyperlinking it )

Its worth the 52 mins of your life.. She is a true patriot.

~Sarhar

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Albert, my *Uncle*, my guardian angel.

Albert was a man who fell on hard times when he came home from Vietnam. His wife had left him for another man, the child that he thought was his wasn't. His country hated him, called him a baby killer..it was tough. So like any other person who is depressed, he turned to drugs and drink. Drank himself right into jail and thats where we come in. As part of his probation, he had to go get methadone treatment for his drug habit and attend AA. Well on a friday afternoon in Novemeber of '83 I was walking from a friends house, I was dropping of her school work-she had been sick, I was pulled into a alley way next a half a block from a methadone clinic and was violently raped and stabbed. I was left for dead and would have died if it had not been for Albert. He heard me crying at the opening of this alleyway , saw that I was bleeding and hurt... I dont remember much after he asked me my name, but I do know he left me for a few minutes went back to the clinic and had them call a ambulance. I do remember the visit with the police that followed. In San Francisco when you recieve methadone treatments you have to register with the clinic and have proper ID, that way you dont go to another clinic and get more methadone, it prevents OD's or the ability to take it and sell it on the street. Well Albert stayed with me till the ambulance came and the police showed.. they actually took him in for questioning and tried to get him to confess to my rape and stabbing. Now, as this was going on, I was in ICU and healing from the surgery that took my left ovary out,my rapist stabbed me so deeply that he actually pierced it. He sodomized me so brutally that I had seven stitches in my rectum and orally sodomized me so brutally that I had not been able to really speak, I could write but not speak. He punched me in the face which left the left orbital bone fracutred, which was causing me severe pain in the forehead ( and from time to time, still does) and I recieved a concussion as well from him slamming my head into the dumpster a few times. I dont remember all of that.. I hardly remember much from that day, if it was by devine grace alone, I have no idea, but I dont remember much.



A month after I was let go from the hospital I was asked to go into the station to give my report to the police, which I did. They gave me a few pictures to look through and Alberts was one of them. I remember clearly looking at the Detective and telling him that this was the man THAT saved me, not raped me. He tried his damnedest to get me to say that Albert was the one who did this, easier to blame a homeless man with a addiction then the man who did it, right? Not with me it wasn't. My Momma raised me better then that. Well finally they understood that I wasn't caving on this and decided to look for the man that Albert described as being in the neighborhood that day.. the man was a average look guy, he wore a sweat suit and drove a normal car.. I believe the car was a Dodge Dart..normal. Well they finally after a month or so arrested this man that had been caught masturbating outside this daycare school yard and he fit the description that Albert gave, they called me in again, and I identified the man. He went to trial and was let acquitted for my rape and attempted murder, but was convicted on the lew conduct charges for the daycare. This is something I should be happy about, but as you can guess I wasn't. During this time, it was when my mother and dad were finally able to met with Albert and asked him to move in with them. He became a family memeber and my Gaurdian angel. When I attempted suicide at 14 it was Albert who saved my life again, he had called a ambulance and told them what I did. The rape had left me scarred in ways that to this day, I dont fully understand. But thats another story, my mental demons that is.



So during all this time, he has lived with my Momma and brother, and was by my side when my Mother passed away. He is going to move where ever my brother goes and is a good man. My son's Godfather, my Uncle, my bestfriend and my life saver..



I love you, Albert... your an angel.

Sorting through the memories..

I woke up this morning around 6am east coast time, that's where I live and have been trying to keep my internal clock normal, since I don't adjust to time changes well. I decided to start going through some of my mothers stuff. This was hard to do but I really needed to get this done, so I got some coffee and sat in the middle of her room and looked at all this stuff...my mother was a avid collector of masks.. She had a whole wall that was devoted to the ones from all of the world. My Grandfather was in the Army and traveled a lot during his time, well he used to bring one back to her from every country that he went to. So by the age of 57, you can understand that she had a rather large collection. And then there are her books.. She was a fan of romance novels.. I don't understand how she could spend and entire day in bed, crying and reading said love stories.. I find them to be very unrealistic, but I am the forever optimist ( well not always ). Anyways, she also read a lot of books on Quantum Physics.. she was a biochemical researcher for her career and enjoyed it immensely. She suffered from acute asthma. After 10 or so years my mother had to stop working in the lab for health reasons ( she had ovarian cancer ) and moved to the actual supervision of the department that oversaw the package of anti venins and other vials that were to be shipped to hospitals and labs throughout the states and abroad. She loved this job immensely as well,.it gave her a different avenue to per sue when her body seemed to be revolting against her.

From the time she was a small child she was sickly. She was born premature and nearly died then. But thanks to the love and knowledge of my grandmother, who was a nurse, she lived! But you the reader can garner that, cause I was born. When my Grandfathers time to retire in the Army came, he moved my Mother, 2 Aunts and Uncle from Sheffield England to Wichita Kansas. Later they moved all over Kansas, but they spent a long time here. This is where she was exposed to a bacteria that would infiltrate her lungs and would cause most of her health problems. Aspergalosis. Its a bacteria that is caused by pesticides that are sprayed onto crops.. my Grandfather was a farmer after his retirement and grew all sorts of veggies and fruits on their farm.

(Well I have no idea where I was going with all of that, but just to I guess talk about her? I have a tendency to go off on a tangent when I am not being careful with my thoughts, I do apologize to you reader.)

So as I was going through her things I started with pictures.. I put all the ones that I knew were originals in a box to take to a lab to have them duplicated for my brother. Those were some of the nicest pics of my mother and I have that I have seen.. Pics of me when she came to visit in Tehran, pics of my mom and dad together.. her pregnant with me and with my brother. I have to wait to get home to scan them.. but she was a radiant pregnant woman, despite the morning sickness I caused her. This of course made me cry.. but good tears.

Then it was onto her jewelry, which I am going to take to a appraiser ( as was her request ) she wanted me to divide it between my brother and I, her wedding ring/engagement ring to my brothers father is going to be his, as was the rings my father gave her during their time together, go to me etc.. I honestly don't want anything but the ring that I gave her for her 50th birthday. It was a ring I had made of her, mine and my brothers birthstone. She loved this ring and wore it everyday till she started to lose all this weight. Then she wore it around her neck on a chain. I wanted to size it down for her, but she wouldn't let me.. Said that she would be able to wear it again. She also wanted to make sure that after the wake was over, that her head be shaved and the hair donated to Locks of Love.. she didn't even bother going with treatment this time, so she had all of her beautiful hair..long blondish and curly.. her hair had been straight all of her life till she had treatment for breast cancer the first time. Then it grew back more wild then before and she loved it. So off it will go to the Locks of Love..

I decided to take a break from all of the sorting and try to eat something. There is a enormous amount of food downstairs and I have to do something with that as well. I could take it to the local shelter.. or the fire department down the street.. or just freeze it for Michael. He wont want to eat I am sure, so I am going to ask him.. but for now I need to try to eat, I am all about losing a few pounds here and there, but not like this..

So I in ending..
I am doing okay today. I am trying to get my head together and I still have to wait for the medical supply company to come get the bed and machinery. I put a screen over the entry way to the den area, its hard to look at the empty bed..I miss her a lot. And I am sure I am going to cry more throughout the day, but it helps to know that she is somewhere where there is no pain..and that she is looking down and smiling. I think Mike is going to sell the house and move out here to live near me.. My mother did leave me 50% of the house, but I am going to give it to Mike, he lived there with her long after I left.. so its his. All I want are pictures.