Mother's Day orphans: When your mom's no longer here

Mother's Day is not my favorite holiday. Father's Day isn't, either. I remember being young and asking, "Why don't they have a Kids Day?"

"Because every day is 'Kids Day,'" I was told.

Yes, kids sometimes have it easy. I know I did. I have no complaints about how I was raised, and I couldn't be more grateful to my mom and dad for their patience, generosity and the hard work they did to raise a sometimes difficult boy. Especially when that boy was enduring the crucible that was (and, from what I hear, still is) middle school. It's not hyperbole to wonder whether I would have survived those years without Mom and Dad.

Which brings me to why, at least in part, Mother's Day and Father's Day aren't my favorite times of year - now, far more than when I was a kid.

First, I'll invite you to look at where the apostrophe is in those names. It's before the "s," which makes it singular, and that's how I always took it. Mother's Day was a day for me to appreciate my mother, and for you to appreciate yours. Here's the rub: I haven't had a mother for 22  years now (and, as of last August, I don't have a father anymore, either).

It's fine to say that all mothers deserve to be appreciated, and I couldn't agree more. They should be appreciated every day of every year they're on this planet.

My mom isn't on this planet anymore. Yes, I still appreciate her. But no, I can't give her a schmaltzy Hallmark greeting card to tell her oh-so-imperfectly how much - and at the moment, I wouldn't want to. I'd just want to give her a hug (even though she was chronically off-balance from the polio that left her half paralyzed as a child), and tell her I loved her so she could hear me.

Please don't tell me she can hear me from heaven or "the other side of the veil," because even believing that wouldn't make it the same. It doesn't for me, and I doubt it does for anyone else, either.

It will never be the same again.

It's not just the winter holidays

I've heard people talk about having a blue Christmas, sometimes invoking the all-too-clinical-sounding term "seasonal affective disorder." They don't enjoy the winter holidays because they bring back memories of times spent with loved ones who are no longer there. Mother's Day does the same thing to me, and if anything, it's worse, because there was only one of her, and this day is supposed to be about that one person.

For years, I've tried to shrug it off and not get too wrapped up in sorrow over it, because my mom's death remains the single most traumatic event of my life. When my father passed away last year, he'd been unconscious in a hospital bed for 10 days, and as hard as it when he died, I'd had time to prepare myself.

When my mother died, it was sudden. I was working one evening when I got a call in the back paste-up shop at the newspaper where I was working (back when they still had such things). I heard my dad sobbing on the other end. He never cried. But when he told me Mom had gone to lie down for a nap and hadn't woken up again, it just didn't compute with me. She had been ill, but not that ill. I hadn't seen her since Christmas, which had been more than two weeks earlier, and now, I never would again.

So, Mother's Day isn't a cause for celebration to me. As much as I appreciate everything mothers all over the world go through for their kids, none of them is my mom. I know the same thing will happen at Father's Day this year, and it will might even hit me harder because this will be my first year without Dad, and the day often fell right on his birthday.

None of this is to say you need to tiptoe around me Sunday. I won't take offense at others who, unlike me, have a Mom who's still here to celebrate. Just excuse me if I feel a little left out. I might not even show it on the outside, but it's there, and I wanted you to know because I doubt I'm the only person who has this kind of reaction. And as important as it is to celebrate your mom (please do!), it's important that you know there are other feelings associated with days like these. 

I still miss my mom. Even if there were 365 days to honor mothers, she'd still be the only one I'll ever have.

Bullying for a cause: You don't get to make me feel sad

The savage and heinous assaults on innocent civilians in Paris that took place on Nov. 13 have unleashed a predictable torrent of self-righteous indignation on social media. 

• "Facebook's providing this really cool French flag overlay. Why aren't you using it on your profile picture? Are you heartless?"

• "Do you really think using changing your profile is going to accomplish anything? You're just trying to make yourself feel better. Quit being so shallow."

• And my favorite: "What about all the people who died in those terrorist attacks in Kenya and Beirut? Why didn't you change your profile picture then, you xenophobic so-and-so?"

Ah, social media. The place where good intentions somehow become bad vibes as users rush to judgment like jackals on a feeding frenzy, laughing in ridicule at people they call their "friends" as they feed on the corpse of human tragedy. If that sounds harsh, it's intentional. Because this is what people look like when they go around demanding that their friends be sad.

My response to all this: Who are you to tell me why to feel sad? Come to think of it, why do you want me to feel sad in the first place?

It seems to me the height of arrogance for one person to tell another, "If you feel sad about this, you must feel sad about this other thing, too. And not just sad, but equally sad. Heck, more sad, because it's more important to me."

Compassion should know no boundaries. It shouldn't be dependent on where we live in the world, what color our skin is or whether we worship (or decline to worship) this or that deity. But demeaning someone for showing compassion in one case and failing - according to your definition - to show it in another won't resolve anything. What it will do is make compassionate people angry at and wary of one another. Instead of railing against each other, shouldn't we be focusing on the problems that are making people sad in the first place?

News flash: Most people don't enjoy being sad. Or outraged. Most people want exactly the opposite. They want happiness, support and respect. Heaping tragedy upon tragedy and demanding that people be sad or outraged about each new one in turn won't heal us from those that have already occurred or prevent others from happening down the road. It's going to do the opposite. It's going to make people numb and indifferent.

I'm sorry, but you don't get to make me feel sad, no matter how worthy your cause or how justified you may feel in your judgments. And if you think calling me racist or xenophobic or ignorant or insensitive is going to help your cause, go right ahead, because, you see, I know it won't. All it will do is encourage me to tune you out. That's what people do when people start calling them names.

People don't like being attacked - even in the name of what someone else considers "a good cause." Those of us who have been bullied know from experience that our tormentors often hide behind "good causes" to justified their actions. When someone tries to "convince" us by using force, guilt or manipulation, we stop listening to the message and pay attention to the method. People who use such tactics often do so because they're trying to hide some deficiency in their argument. Most of us won't even analyze their motivations to that extent. We see what we perceive as a threat, and our fight-or-flight response kicks in.

Sometimes, the squeaky wheel doesn't get the grease. Sometimes it gets ignored and just falls off. And sometimes it gets replaced altogether.

It's inhuman cruelty we're trying to stop here, not compassion. If someone shows compassion, and you say, "Yes, but," I can't see how that helps the situation. Awareness doesn't come through judgmental declarations (which, incidentally, the purveyors of fear and cruelty are very good at making themselves), it comes by spreading compassion. And compassion never spreads through demands and accusations. It spreads through encouragement and empathy.

So please, if someone's sad about something, don't jump down that person's throat and say, "Yes, but what about (fill in the blank) ... ?" Meet compassion with compassion. That's the way it grows.

It must be OK to be who we really are

Violence against transgender individuals must stop now. Do you have any idea what it's like to be told you must be one way even though you know you are another? Of course you do. Society tells each of us every day that we must be this or that, even though we know we are something else entirely. 

We are told we "must" be "housewives" or "breadwinners" or "good Christians" or "patriots," whatever those things mean. (Like so many other sweeping generalizations, their meanings are open to an endless number of interpretations). Yet we are unique individuals, not cookie-cutter caricatures, and dignity demands that we be acknowledged for who we are, whether that involves gender identity, as it does for some of my friends, or artistic identity, as it does for some others.

I often hear people say, "Put yourself in another person's shoes." But we're already there. We wear those shoes today, at this very moment. Perhaps our lives aren't being threatened because of it. But we're there nonetheless: just a heartbeat away from disapproval or marginalization by those who may decide, at the drop of a hat, we don't fit their status quo. Our lives and livelihoods might not be threatened now, but there but for the grace of God - or the luck of the draw - go we.

Who among us can say that no one ever demanded that we be something or someone we're not - that we MUST "get with the program" or be alienated and demeaned? If we're honest, none of us can say that. That's why I stand with LGBT individuals, and that's why I will continue to stand with them. They pose no threat to me. The true threats are spoken by those who say, "You're not allowed to be 'that way.' That “you must conform to our preconceived notions.”

How many times have I been told this? Too often. Yet not as often as many others.

It's easy to make fun of people who aren't like us. It seems to make us feel superior. But that feeling is a mirage bought at great cost: the cost of our own honesty, self-respect and, worse still, at the cost of innocent lives not fully lived. Should we not invest instead in something real: the right of self-expression and the freedom to be who we truly are? That's not too much to ask. Indeed, it's the most fundamental thing most of us ever ask for. And we, each and every one of us, deserve nothing less.

How a Notebook Changed My Perspective on Bullying

A couple of years back, I wrote a book titled Undefeated to illustrate a simple principle: that the abuse of power is wrong. Period. No one person or group has a monopoly on cruelty, and those who dole out abuse in one culture or time period might wind up on the receiving end of abuse under different circumstances.

I learned that lesson early.

When I was a child, I was bullied. They say middle school (aka junior high) is hell, and I can attest to that. But, to be candid, there was a time when I was a bit of a bully myself. In sixth grade, some "friends" and I started giving another friend a "hard time" by knocking his notebook out of his hands when he was walking down the corridor to his next class. It was all in fun, supposedly. That's what I told myself to justify it. In reality, it was vicious and cruel.

Then, one day, everything turned on its head, and for some reason I became the target. Suddenly, it wasn't so much fun anymore.

Initially, I took it as a challenge. I'd outsmart them. I asked my parents to take me to the store and buy a "bully-proof" notebook. I thought I'd found one: one with a zipper to keep everything safely inside so that, the next time they knocked it out of my hands, none of my homework would come spilling out onto the pavement.

Except it did. Because the first time they knocked that slick new forest-green, zippered notebook out of my hands, they picked it up off the concrete, unzipped it and proceeded to shake out the contents until they were strewn all across the canopied corridor of A.E. Wright Middle School. Game, set and match. I was beaten. And to this day I remember how I felt when it happened: utterly defeated.

It wasn't because of anything I'd done (unless you believe in karma). The reason they knocked that notebook out of my hands wasn't because of who I was or what I'd done; it was because of who they were - and who I'd been when I did the same thing to the other kid in the first place. Mean. Selfish. Brazen. Willing to rationalize doing something hurtful by saying we were "giving someone a hard time"  or that it was all just "good, clean fun." It may have been fun for the notebook-knockers, but it wasn't fun for the person on the receiving end. It wasn't clean, and it certainly wasn't good for anyone.

There wasn't anything special about me or the other kid who wound up on the receiving end of these "pranks." We weren't minorities in any sense of the word; we weren't bad kids or layabouts or troublemakers. We were just there. A couple of years later, after I'd put on a bit of weight, some of the bullies took to calling me the "great white whale." It seems I had committed an unpardonable sin by being out of shape and pale as a scoop of vanilla ice cream (my Danish ancestry) in sunny, surf-obsessed Southern California. But that was just an excuse. If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else.

Because it wasn't about me. It was about them.

"It" is never about the victims. It's never about their sexuality, their gender, their race, their religion, their ethnic background or any of that. The bullies would like everyone to believe that it is, because they're under the warped impression that it will justify their abusive behavior. If something is wrong were their targets, it would mean something must be right with them. And this argument, if we accept it, blinds us from realizing that the wrong lies wholly with the perpetrators. 

There's nothing wrong with being gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, cisgender, lesbian, asexual, Asian, Native American, white, Pacific Islander, Aboriginal Australian, black, Indian, Ainu, Inuit, Latino, Norse, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, an atheist, a polytheist, a woman, a man, a child, a senior citizen, a monotheist, a pantheist, a deist, an agnostic, a Gnostic, a poet, a scientist, an artisan, a cultivator, a merchant, a musician, an author, an engineer, a mathematician, a philosopher, a historian, a teacher, a chef, a healer, an advocate, a tailor ...

There is something terribly wrong with treating anybody as inferior because they belong to any of these groups, any one of which might be on giving or receiving end of abuse. Christians have been persecuted, and they've also been persecutors. So have atheists (remember the Soviet Union?). Name any ethnic group, and chances are they've been on each end of the stick at one time or another during their history. Power can be abused by anyone for any "reason," and the so-called "reasons" are never rational. 

The abuser-victim dynamic can flip in very short order, just as it did with me in middle school, as it did with the Christian church in the fourth century, or as it did with the Soviet Union in the early part of this one. Race, ethnicity, gender, etc. are never more than excuses for abusers to inflict their cruelty - and they're always bad excuses, at that. Regardless of the differences that we use as a foundation to build up barriers, one person's life is intrinsically no more and no less important than anyone else's. Human dignity recognizes none of these barriers and demands to be recognized despite all of them. Anything less is unacceptable.