Legacy

We all reach a point in our young lives when we are able to process and comprehend what death truly is.  For most of us, at that moment, or sometime after, it dawns on us that one day; we will have to deal with the death of our parents.   Before it happens, it is a very difficult and surreal thing to have to swallow.    We don’t focus on it.  We push it to the back of our minds and try to believe that we have all the time in the world.   This month, I finally had to make that long trip back home to Missouri, to deal with the death of one of my parents.   My father was 71.  He had been pretty sick for the last 3 years from illnesses brought on from over 50 years of tobacco use.  He succumbed to it on July 11, 2014.

I was en route to dads when I got the news that he had passed in the middle of the night before I could get there.  It is worth noting, that nothing remained unsaid between my father and myself.  I knew in my head that I had already told him everything I had wanted too.  Because of this, I was not saddened by the lack of ability to say goodbye, but by the fact that I was not able to be there to hold his hand as he passed.   However, it was the emotions and thoughts that would happen over the next seven days that would surprise me.

The first emotion that washed over me like a blanket, almost at once, was relief.  I was so glad that my father was no longer suffering.  Then immediately, I was stricken with a sense of liberation.  I have spent so much emotional energy over the last few years worrying about Joe, that I had not realized how heavy it was weighing on my soul.  I no longer had to worry about when or where, because I had the answer now.   In just such emotional times, Dad was always my go-to guy for advice.  My instinct at that point was to immediately think to call him for advice.  I reached for my phone before I was hit with it.  Then the emptiness came when I realized I would never again have his shoulder to lean on.

Over the next several days, I did a lot of driving through Missouri and Iowa, mostly running errands for the estate, but sometimes for soul searching.  One such trip was to the Grace family gravesite in Kahoka Missouri where my grandparents lay, so that I could scout a location for Dad.  I had not visited with my Grandparents in over 20 years.  I spent an hour there, talking, crying and listening.  When I left Kahoka, I was flooded with a new sense of emptiness: spiritual.  My family is a God fearing one.  My whole life I had heard about the need for spiritual fulfillment and I never understood it, until now.  I had spent my life working to achieve fulfillment on a physical, emotional and financial level.  But now, talking to God seemed to fill a void for me that I never noticed before.

After the service, we had a little wake in the basement of the Church.  It was at this point where I got to hold my Grandson Eryx for the first time.  It was at the very moment where it was really sinking in that I was a grandfather that my daughter Nicole pointed out to me that I was now “Grandpa Grace”.  That notion hit me like a ton of bricks.  As the oldest son, of the oldest son, of the oldest son, the mantle was now mine to carry.  It had never dawned on me that one day it would be mine to guard.  I was suddenly stricken with an urgent sense of responsibility to my kin.  A lot of people ask me why I live in Florida, so far away from my family.  The answer was always simple: because I ran out of ground.  When I hit the water I had to stop running or buy a boat.   Now I suddenly feel like I should be making more effort to be attending family reunions and being more connected with the Grace clan.  I have a sneaking suspicion that in doing so, the spiritual void I am feeling may start to fill.

Grandpa Grace with Eryx.

I owe a great deal of thanks at this point to a lot of people.  First and foremost to my sister Annette and her husband Allen who repeatedly helped me financially when I lacked the means myself.  To my brother Robert who saw it in his heart to forgive me and let us bury a 20 year old hatchet.  To all of my friends who sent me messages of support.  And to the entire Grace family who showed in a Podunk town in the middle of Missouri to say help us say goodbye to one of the most influential men in all of our lives.  I write all of this with another emotion: A renewed sense of self, of who I want to be and of the changes I want to make in my life to take advantage of the time I have left on this earth.  I will make no promises, but I am definitely going to make an effort.

Grandpa Grace

Who do we blame?

 In a wonderful display of authority this week, Mother Nature crippled one the biggest cities in the United States with a mere 3 inches of snow.  I could easily rattle off a dozen names in the next 30 seconds of people living north of the Mason Dixon line who are undoubtedly finding this quite laughable.  It is actually pretty impressive to think that two and a half inches of the white stuff have brought the state of Georgia to its knees.  Thousands of people were left stranded on Interstate highways.  Abandoned cars were lined up for miles and miles all around the city. Children were forced to spend the night in their Schools.  CNN is calling the scene a “zombie apocalypse”.  And right now, everyone is looking for the culpable parties.

Photo courtesy ABC news.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a pretty good comic that sums up the peoples frustrations.

 Courtesy: Atlanta Journal Constitution

The finger pointing is so rampant that I am surprised that more people are not getting frostbite on their index fingers.  The front page of CNN is demanding someone to pin the blame on.

On the Today Show, Al Roker said the traffic nightmare was caused by “Poor planning on the Governors part.”  The National Guard has been called out to deal with the mass confusion created by the “Blizzard of 14”.  Every news agency in the country is rushing to quote angry residents, looking to point fingers at someone, anyone and blame them for this awful tragedy.   As I sit and watch all of this unfold, I am sure I share the opinion of my Yankee neighbors when all I can think is:  “Dear God, what kind of nation, full of pansy-ass, nancy boys have we created?”  If our forefathers could see a metropolis the size of Atlanta, crippled by a handful of snow, they would be rolling in their graves.

   Let’s take a closer look at this shall we?  First things first.  There is an endless stream of pundits and residents all over the news who are griping about Atlanta’s lack of preparedness.  Really? Anyone who expects a city the size of Atlanta to keep millions of dollars worth of snow removal equipment on hand and well maintained is out of their mind.  According to the Southeast Regional Climate Center, over the past 70 years, Atlanta has averaged just over 2 inches of snowfall a year.  Chew that up for a moment.  We are laying out the expectation that Atlanta should have snow plows and salt trucks ready to go.  In a city that sees less snowfall a year than any city in Michigan sees in an hour.  That’s absurd.  If officials had proposed spending that kind of money 6 months ago on that equipment, the media would have lambasted them for wasting taxpayer dollars, and rightfully so. 

   I live quite a ways south of Atlanta.  I enjoy the luxury of year round sunshine and warmer weather.  If for some crazy reason, I looked out the window and saw snow falling and gathering on the ground here, I can tell you what I would do:  I would turn on the heater, put on a sweater, start some cocoa, load the shotgun and lock the door.  I would then sit down and watch a movie.  Wait for it to finish snowing and then cautiously go out and check on the animals and the farm.  If I absolutely needed to go out, I would measure the road conditions against the vehicles I have.  My truck certainly does not have snow tires on it here.    

But who do we blame?  Oh, I’m getting to that.  The mass of problems created in Atlanta lie squarely with one group of people; its citizens.  If you look out and see snow on the ground, and you know that you live in an area ill equipped to handle accumulated snowfall and you then go out and get in your car, guess what? You are the one to blame.  Each and every individual who got behind the wheel of their car in Atlanta is the problem.  Even if you are a transplanted Yankee who knows how to drive around in 16 inches of accumulated snow, if you get out and drive, congratulations, you just won the Darwin award.  You are surrounded by half a million people who don’t have a clue how to drive in inclement weather.  You are still not going to get very far, and you just became part of the problem.  And let's face it.  If your kid has to spend the night at the gym in his School, isn't that an awesome excuse to have a date night with the wife?

“But Howie, the elected officials should have seen this coming.  They did not cancel School and send out warnings.”  I really hate to dignify this with the obvious response, but I am going to.  For all your technology and research, the one variable that you will never control is the one everyone seems to be leaving out.  You cannot control or predict Mother Nature, pure and simple.  And what can you really do once Nature takes over?  Call someone with salt trucks, call the National Guard and drink that cocoa.  Everyone knows I am a huge fan of dragging politicians out into the light.  I love me some tar and feather action.  However, this is not the time for that.  People just need to accept that sometimes things happen that are beyond our control.  Give it a few hours and the snow will melt.  In the meantime, stop griping and let everyone get back to preparing for the real zombie apocalypse. 

Florida: You are not part of the solution.

   Regardless of the fact that I do not presently have a job, and I am not drawing an income, according to the state of Florida, I am not unemployed.  Make no mistake; I am very actively looking for work.  In the past I was considered unemployed by the state because I had drawn on unemployment benefits.  I no longer draw on those benefits. Since the state of Florida measures the “unemployed” by those who are receiving benefits, I am officially not unemployed, despite the fact that I do not have a job. Confused?  Just wait it gets so much better.

As part of the process to file for unemployment benefits in the state of Florida, you are required to go to a website called Employ Florida and sign up for job searches.  For all intents and purposes, the site requires you to enter all of your work history, your personal information, date of birth, social security number and I am pretty sure they asked my favorite ice cream flavor.  This whole process can be a pretty grueling one that takes over four hours to completely finish.  I was happy to do it at the time because I believed that by entering all of my information accurately, and carefully crafting my profile, it would make it easier to facilitate my job searches in the future. 

I spent last weekend in a flurry of resume tweaking, sending, writing, foot kissing, begging and generally using every tool at my disposal to try to find a job.  Employ Florida was one of the sites that I had combed through to find job listings that might fit within my skill set.  Then, there it was.  A great looking local job, seeking someone with knowledge of AP writing style and media contacts.  It was generally laid out as a position with my name on it. (For the sake of argument, we will say the position was with the Acme company.)  Down at the bottom of the page was the button that said: “Apply now”.   I clicked the button believing that I would be, well, applying for a job.

NO SIR!  You most assuredly can not apply for that job without logging in first.  Okay, I had to retrieve my login and password from my email archive because the state would not let me pick my own.  Instead opting to assign me some weird jumble of characters I can never remember.  All logged in, I once again had to search for the job at Acme and click the apply button.  As soon as I clicked the button, I was redirected to Careerbuilder.  For those who do not know, Careerbuilder is a third party, for profit job search website.  At this point, I was a bit flummoxed.  I had spent hours creating and tweaking my profile on the state owned website, to be redirected to another search engine.   It made me a bit angry to realize that tax dollars were being spent on a site that simply redirects patrons to other employment sites that are going to require an entirely separate login and account.

    Now, I would not be a serious job seeker if I did not already have an account on Careerbuilder.  And wouldn’t you know it? I was required to log in to Careerbuilder before I was allowed to click on the “Apply Now” button at the bottom of the page.  Keep in mind, that I had also spent several hours setting up a profile on Careerbuilder in order to facilitate the job application process.  After logging in to the new site, I again clicked the apply now button.  This time it opened another webpage.  Now I was staring at the Acme website with the job profile listed.  “Finally”! I thought “Some progress”. 

I noticed the new “Apply Now” button at the bottom of the page.  I clicked this time with some well earned trepidation.  No, no, no.  You can not apply without first creating an account on the Acme website.  All right then, let’s create that account.  Name, address, phone number, desired username, password, re-enter password and ENTER!  “Aw, tough luck, your password did not have an “@” symbol in it so you will have to pick a new one.  Just for laughs, we also erased all the personal info you typed in, so if you could go ahead and retype everything you just entered all over again, that would be awesome."

At this point, if you are keeping track, between three websites, I have a total of about six hours of my time invested to apply for a job opening.  By now, it has already become clear that none of that time was spent fruitfully, but I think I see a light at the end of the tunnel.  With my Acme account created, the website asks me if I would like to connect my new account to my Linkedin profile.  DEAR GOD YES, PLEASE!  For those who do not know, Linkedin has quickly grown to become the best place to keep an online job search profile.   I, like many others have spent many hours building and tweaking my Linkedin profile in an attempt to make myself more appealing to prospective employers.  If Acme is going to access my Linkedin account, then they will have access to all of my work history, my references, my skill set and any other information they wish to know at a click. 

You would think that at this point, the application process would be nearly finished.  You would be wrong.  I found myself staring at a 6 tab webpage.  The website was asking me to manually enter my entire work history, references, contact information(again), criminal history, blood type, and favorite ice cream flavor.  All of this information, by the way, was readily available on the linkedin account that I had just given them access to.  By my math, at this point, I have well over 10 hours of labor involved in filling out personal information, and refilling out the same information.  All so that I can get to a website, where I can go fill out the same information again, in the grand expectations that I will never hear another word from the Acme Corporation again.  Except when they sell my information to a third party, who will use it to send me spam emails, offering to sell me drugs that will enhance my sex life.

 If you work for any company that is involved with this process in any way, you are most certainly not part of the solution,  you are a part of the problem. Congratulations on finding a way to use time saving technology to waste more of my time.  Resolving to remain “not unemployed” for another day, I slammed down the cover to my laptop, and went to fetch some of my preferred flavor of ice cream.  I would tell you what flavor, but by now, the whole world must already know, chocolate is my favorite.