My Thanksgiving List 2013

My Thanksgiving List

I am thankful that I am alive.  Honestly, in 2013, at times, that has been enough.  Truthfully, 2013 has certainly provided me the opportunity to feel nearly every emotion possible in the human spectrum.

In no particular order, I thought it important to state what, or more importantly, whom I am thankful.  Yet, with the danger of making any list, forgetfulness and absentmindedness are factors, feel free to suggest additions to my list of individuals, events, or things for which I am thankful.  Not everyone will be listed, due to constraints of time, memory, perception, and length.

The condensed version:  Mom, Marc & Cindy, Extended relatives, Celia & Barb with extended friends.  Other Friends - close & dear, and friends not so close and dear.  The support from GSDBA and Waddell & Reed, The Cannon Family, Sean and Dom, and Carleton's Aunt Jackie.  Mostly, the experience of Carleton.  Lastly, a new resolved feeling of relevance.  (disclosure:  the list is not necessarily in value order or is to imply exclusion or inclusion of value should your name be listed or not listed.  It is a condensed listing only).

This listing is a more expansive expression with further exploration of what determined the inclusion on the list:

I cherish my mother, Beth.  Her combination of values, perspectives, and wisdom I constantly seek.   Her purpose and motivations endears her to many.  While others call her Beth or Aunt Beth, I am so very thankful I am one of a precious few who get to call her Mom.  She taught me inclusion, unrelenting love, forgiveness, and grace.  I am sure, at times, she would prefer I cherished these values more limitedly than I have. 

Yet, even this year, she moved me by demonstrating why I call her Mom.  I regularly called to vent, to share updates or relay more bad news.  Yet, she bore it with me.  Perhaps because I am her son.  Perhaps because she knew there were few I would burden.  She moved outside of her Mom-ness to reach me, reason with me, support me, and, yes, even console me.  Sometimes, she simply listened as I sobbed.  She is able to be with me at moments when I cannot be with others.  This year, I realized that it is she who taught me how to create a refuge for others.  Her refuge is always open to me, it seems.

I also cherish her pies, Christmas cookies, knitting, my Christmas stocking, and general ability to tolerate me talking.

I am thankful for my siblings, Marc and Cindy (and the partners they have).  While they are far away, they have worried and raised concerns.  They do not often have to say anything at all.  They just are.  It is something quirky about our family.  We just “are”. 

I am so fortunate to be acquainted with so many people.  The diversity and combination of experience, skill, perception, capacity, and ability of each is a source of fascination that constantly pulls me into the realm of awe.

 

This year is no exception.  I am truly thankful for my friends.  My thankfulness includes those who are near and dear along with those who have simply felt we were acquaintances.  When someone goes through a terrible loss, no one know what comment or show of concern tips the balance toward renewal.  Some friends were called to come to my rescue this year in caring for Carleton.  Some friends extended invitations to visit their homes as places of refuge or rejuvenation. 

Celia came at the request of Carleton simply to be with me and confirm my deepest fears.  Few would have dared to make me face it.  Loyalty has a cost.  Loyalty does not hide the truth.  Deep friendship bears the cost of reality, love, and pain.  Intense toughness know its own.

I am thankful for my friends who have helped me through 2013.  Those of you who came to my home or had me at yours.  Friends made sure I was alive days after Carleton died.  Some texted me each day.  Others e-mailed.  Others simply lived with me vicariously through Facebook and my blog.  Each interaction this year was important to me.  From my La Grande friends who reached out in concern to those in Portland and beyond, thank you.  Your cards, notes, e-mails, retorts, taunts, and encouragement did help maintain my sanity.  One high point was the nearly 200 happy birthday wishes for me.

To Sue and Mary Jo, Jen, Celia & Barb, Kevin, Mary & Patricia, Ellen, Tory, Matt & Daniel, Rene, Andy, and Kevin, Karen, Jeanne, Marci, the GSDBA Board, James Haug, Mike Cavallo and many who just asked how I was doing.  Wow, you watched as the train wreck started and did not abandon until the emergency subsided.  You did not ask and simply made my decisions for me.  Or had lunch with me.  Truly friends.

I am thankful for the support the last year from Waddell& Reed people who helped me stay on track with clients, compliance, and the ever changing and expected responsibilities in my career.  The patience and support from this “other family” I have enjoyed for over 20 years simply, and deeply, moved me.  Their acceptance, and my clients’ patience and support of my commitment to Carleton made the struggle of 2013 much easier.

I am thankful for Jackie, Carleton’s Aunt, for her quiet entrances and departures.  When emotions are raw, gentleness is a valuable commodity.  Dominique, Carleton’s other aunt, became a new friend and help to understanding family dynamics.

I am thankful that I was allowed to be a part, for a time, of the Cannon Clan.  Carleton often called it a circus without a tent.  I will leave it to your imagination.  I continue to be thankful that the family did not make a difficult time more difficult.  I cannot imagine losing a brother and twin or a son.   I know Carleton worried about this above all.

Carleton

What I am most thankful for?  My time with Carleton.

I am thankful that I met Carleton Cannon and spent three tumultuous years of his life with him.  He was not perfect and neither am I.  Our relationship was not lengthy but it was intensely lived.  If I had never met him, I would be quite different today, certainly.  Yet, I am so very glad I did.  Though the cost has been great emotionally and in other ways.

Carleton demanded that I love him.  He required and yearned for my focus.  He did not share easily and I was accustomed to providing my time and attention unguarded. 

I have been raised not to demand of others but simply to ask.  While some have an expectation of others, I have lived my life in hope, not demand.  Carleton’s deteriorating health required more of me than hope.  His reality required more than I was able to give.  I experienced moments of his grief, despair, fear, anger, along with his denial, acceptance, ultimately his entire range of intense, unfiltered and very raw emotional expressions.  I have never been an extension of someone else.  Yet, in some way, our connection allowed him the ability to assure most, if not all, of his hopes.  I became an extension of him.

Through the last year of his life, I worried he was not considering his end.  I worried he might not prepare to meet his God.  At times, our conversations led down this road, yet we all have areas of secrets and hurts that we do not share with anyone, easily.  Ultimately, communication between Mom & Carleton created his pathway of acceptance for his future, should he no longer be able to fight.  Ultimately, finding peace is what everyone is most thankful to find.

In return for my all, my giving, attentiveness, and living with Carleton, he gave me the one thing that I have longed to have.  Secretly, and not so secretly over my chosen career, the volunteering I do, the people I have helped, the causes I support, the friends that I select, all have been based on a deep seated need to feel relevant.  Some might call it their legacy. 

Relevance to the world, to others, to people I know is a deep value of mine.  My secret horror was that at the end of my days I would look back and feel that my life did not matter, that what I did made no difference.

Carleton, with his life at an end, in quiet moments before his end, resolved that horror.  At the end of his days, he relied on me to make decisions no one should have to make.  He acknowledged and accepted my choices without comment.  He knew I would bear the choices.  He submitted or surrendered in the process.  Carleton, in his actions, acknowledged my relevance.

Truly, 2013 will continue to be a terribly significant year.  I am thankful it is near an end.  I look forward to new beginnings.  But, I am thankful for those who participated in my life this year.  And, that I had relevance to one.

The Most Precious Holiday in My Calendar - Thanksgiving

I appreciate a grocery store being opened in the morning for those of us who forgot an essential ingredient.  I have stopped by a restaurant chain with employees who volunteered for the shifts.  Not to mention that to get to grandmothers house, which is over the river and through the woods, you certainly need to make sure a gas station is available for refueling.  No, I will not be shopping on Thanksgiving beyond the bare essentials.

Thanksgiving is a most sacred day.  Consumerism is ignored though it may scratch at the edges.  This Thursday each year is the one day when all Americans cherish each other.  It is people over profits.  I consider it the one day of the year when everyone has an opportunity to feel a sense of warmth toward those who they call family, even if it is not with someone blood related.

Thanksgiving is certainly an event of magnificent proportions.  There are the many pounds of turkey, gallons of gravy, bowls of stuffing, and the many styles of vegetables concoctions.  Secretly each person may judge another’s green bean casseroles or cranberry sauces, but each is special in its own way.  It is a day where each person hopes to belong and where others purpose to be inclusive.  It is one day where the term family is stretched, like so many waist lines, to the limits, undaunted by blood, marriage, or any form of discriminatory exclusion.  It is one day where few are turned away and hopefully no one is forgotten.

Truly resourceful Thanksgiving revelers take advantage of the abundance of terminology on the fourth Thursday of the November.  They appreciate that “family” is inclusively expanded.  True revelers also passionately rejoice at the Thanksgiving expansion of the dinner and dessert options.  The truly creative multiply the families they must visit. 

I cherish Thanksgiving.  It is the day when all are invited to belong.  Each person is able to reflect on what they have or have experienced and spend time reflecting on what and who they have.  It also is the beginning of a season when many reflect on events, experiences, friends, and loves who are no more.  Yet, most, if not all, would not change those cherished experiences, no matter the feelings of loss.

Thanksgiving is not simply a day, but perhaps a weekend of events where extended family reconnects, revisit old stories, review achievements, reflect on old passions, and recommits to forgotten secrets.  If consumerism is at all discussed, let it be well after dinner.  Use it as a game.  Consider bringing the newspaper with all its ads to a cleared off table.  Let each person peruse and develop their own strategy for accumulating gifts.  Yet, leave the execution of the plan for another day.  Stay together and laugh on Thanksgiving.  

In my family, Thanksgiving has become the most important holiday where we obey the rules of peace and truce.  Thanksgiving is about joy and plenty, not politics or position.  It is an exhausting yet exhilarating day.  Each participant functions in a form of service to all.  Each is challenged to serve in ways they may not normally function. 

In years past, we did not have these rules.  Yet, we developed them to assure that all were welcomed.  No matter the interpersonal issues, Thanksgiving has always drawn me to my family.  And, while the pies Mom makes were certainly incentive on their own, it was the belonging that demanded answering.  And, as we expanded our invitations to others, our family Thanksgiving flourished, too.

In many homes, there will be conflict.  In many homes, someone’s feelings will be hurt.  Family is not perfect.  Thanksgiving is so immense in its concept that the holiday experience manages to address these experiences, too.  For it is having those painful moments that allows us to be thankful for where we live now, who we love, and why we make those types of choices.  Thanksgiving provides opportunities to create new families or add additional families to visit throughout the day.

In past years, when my personal interaction with my dad was not spectacular, I developed a three hour rule.  Much like Gilligan’s Island’s three hour tour, I started with family optimism.  Yet, if storms developed into tsunamis of destruction, after three hours, a graceful exit could be made to seek families of creation or invitation.  While I would mourn the loss of pie creations by mom, the change in weather at another home did not bring the same focused attention.

No Thanksgiving is without its challenge or reward.  And Thanksgiving is certainly the one day when all relationships are cherished no matter how poorly another communicates its value.

Thanksgiving is perhaps the last stronghold of community and the last holy day of connection.  It encourages me to belong, to love, to connect, to pursue moments of reflection, to laugh, to be in the presence of others who love.  It is a powerful time to spend time appreciating what is, rather than what will be or what was. 
 
No matter your circumstance, no matter how you feel, I hope if you have no plans tomorrow, you will call and join with others.  For Thanksgiving is not powerful when you are alone.  It is when we join together and give thanks that its power is demonstrated.  Make this Thanksgiving a wonderful time of belonging.   Each Thanksgiving is so powerful, you can make a tradition after only one! 

An Apology Is Necessary

Recently, the LGBT Weekly has published two articles related to my leadership and changes that were necessary at the GSDBA.  Though I attempted ad nauseum to correct a myriad of suppositions, errors, inaccuracies, lies, character assassinations, and violations of confidentiality, the reporter was intent on creating divisiveness.

I will not address this poorly written or "investigated" article to correct its myriad of inaccuracies.  The entire GSDBA Board, as always, will choose how to do so, with consideration for membership, staff, and stakeholders, as we always do, together.

Yet, there is one thing that must be said, by me, toward someone, from a public forum.  When reporters make insinuations about staff of non-profits without merit, simply suggesting, creating innuendo, or creating the illusion they are providing information, I find these reporters to be of the scum sucking variety and should be banned from any LGBT resource or information source in journalism.

Take your pot shots at decision makers.  Attempt to question or ridicule volunteer leaders for their decisions.  Create doubt where you feel you must for your own selfish need to get published.  But, when you attack staff, their loyalty, their purpose, their contribution, or their integrity, you simply have gone too far.  Staff who have done nothing but what has been asked of them from executive directors, CEOs, and Board Members should be off limits as targets for reporters and their mud slinging.

Today, as Chair of GSDBA, I felt it necessary to personally apologize for LGBT Weekly and their totally inappropriate articles related to GSDBA when the reporter included a character assassination of one of our employees, Sue Sneeringer.  Her decision to resign was a personal one based on  her values.  When she was sought after by me, and the GSDBA Board, to be rehired, to help our organization in a truly necessary role, she accepted after careful consideration.

Sue Sneeringer is a true asset of GSDBA, a gem of organization and clarity, and a soft, caring voice for our LGBT Chamber that encourages members, is respected in our community, and is devoted to our mission of Equality for All.  Her integrity should not be questioned by a reporter who does not have access to information, is only intent on seeing division where there is none, and in questioning Sue's character, indicts his very own integrity in the process.