Another Day to Celebrate Memories of Life and Living, and of Death too! Dedicated to my Friend and Mentor, Anita, Wherever You Are Now By: George D. Patnoe., Jr! August 10th, 2018

Another Day to Celebrate Memories of Life and Living, and of Death too!

Dedicated to my Friend and Mentor, Anita, Wherever You Are Now.

By: George D. Patnoe., Jr!

August 10th, 2018


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5LIDNbFadU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9aCAneCSPg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jorJh8DTMVM

I am writing this piece today because when I woke up I turned on the radio to hear an oldies song, “I Just Want to Celebrate Another Day of Living.” by Rare Earth in 1974.

But maybe a better song for this piece would be, “WIND BENEATH MY WINGS - BETTE MIDLER?” By: Bette Midler. (Youtube videos located at the bottom).

The unexpected emotions of joy within me rose up from the core of my being because I am still alive to celebrate another day of living, living for another day on planet earth. The joy of life within me caused me to start dancing on my feet, but then I looked at my 30-year-old Cockatoo parrot and I walked up to him and said out loud, “You know I love you. Right?” You see, I know that he could die any day because he can not live forever. Although he might live another 30 years and the joke would be on me. The point here was my death tears are ready for the death of my 30-year-old buddy, because he could die of old age any night, and I would not be there to say goodbye to him. So I have to let him know that I love him now, not later, when it would be too late for words.

I had done that only once before to a human being, a very long time ago. I was sitting on my chair in a New York University apartment in New York, reading books, some for university courses and some for fun, like how the how the redshift works in the cosmic universe when I should have been reading books on international economics and finance. I was sitting there with my feet on the very old desk that had been with me since high school. My mother had bought a whole bunch of very old desks for twenty US bucks from the school district I think. She got all of her kids to sand those desks down to wood and then we used the paint brushes to coat them in a very nice dark brown varnish. I still own it.

Anyway, I had an immediate urge to get up and make a long distance phone call to a person who had always been there for me whenever I needed a person to talk to by way of a phone. She was like the grandmother I never had to speak to on my level of intelligence. My real grandmothers lived so far away that I rarely ever saw them anyway. So I grabbed a roll of quarters and I walked to a phone across the street to use a pay phone. Just in case there are youngsters reading this piece, payphones were located on almost street corner in America, and you had to put quarters in the payphone slot to make a phone call. I assume that you know what the coin quarter is!

Yes, I did have a phone in my room. But this was going to be a special phone although I did not know it at that time. You must understand my dear readers that the urge was so powerful and overwhelming that I had no other choice but to act on my seemingly irrational behavior, to myself that is, to me within in my own mind. I had no real reason to talk to her either. That was the strange part of it all. I had nothing to say to my phone friend, but I knew that I had to get to that phone like she was in trouble or something and she needed my help or advice or words of comfort. I did not know!

You see my dear readers, this grandmother lady had helped me through some life and death situations that I am not going to explain here because it would take to long for me when I am writing a short writing piece. She was always there when I needed or wanted someone to talk to about nothing or something very important, like the mysteries of the God and evil, especially evil. So she was also a teacher to me, maybe even more than a phone friend. Yes, I had met her in person and I had talked to many times in person, but back then, I was the traveling man, or maybe even a wandering man, looking for my own life away from my parents and that old life of childhood.

It was night time, and very cool with a bit of rain too. I was surrounded by darkness and I had the eyes in the back of my head looking out in case someone was going to try something strange, like attack me or try to rob me. Which by the way would have been a really stupid thing to try to do to me at any age of my life. Anyway, the ground was wet and I was wondering what in the heck am I doing at this pay phone when I could have called her in a nice warm apartment with my phone?

She answered the phone and she was surprised that it was me because it had been a long time since I had called her or even chatted with her for any reason. I guess I did not really need her like I did when I was younger because I had grown up and I had become more of a man than a, well, young man who enjoyed talking to this grandmother figure. Heck, maybe she was even waiting for my phone call because I had not called in such a long time, compared to when I was younger.

Anita answered the phone with “What a pleasant surprise!” After she heard me say, “Hi, it is me.”

She asked me, “So what is up?”

The words just flow out of my mouth. Unprepared, not thought up before that moment.

“I just called to say I love you.”

She responded with a, “What?”

“I said, I just called to say that I love you. Thanks for all of those conversations over the telephone over all those years. And thanks for your help over the years too.”

She was silent. I had caught her and myself by surprise.

So I hung up the phone and I walked back to my apartment, still looking behind my back for trouble. To be honest with my readers and to myself, I felt really, really weird after I did that. And I did not know how I was going to explain myself to her the next time I called her on the phone, whenever that would be. I told myself that I would call her next week to clear the air. But next week would be too late.

I was so happy that I said those words and I was already planning on calling her back in a week to talk to her normally. And so I did call her one week later. Instead of Anita answering the phone, it was her daughter Christine. Christine said to me, “You do not know?”

I said, “Know what?”

“Anita died last week, soon after a phone call. She walked down the stairs and she said, “I am ready now.”

Now it was I that was speechless. Unprepared for those words, “She died last week.”

My friend was now gone from earth and I would never again call her on the telephone to talk to her. It was over! Done! Finished!  Or maybe not!

She had been on kidney dialysis machines for years, staying alive by those kidney dialysis machines, maybe just to talk to me. (How big is my ego?) “Kidney Dialysis is a treatment that does some of the things done by healthy kidneys. It is needed when your own kidneys can no longer take care of your body's needs. You need dialysis when you develop end stage kidney fausually by the time you lose about 85 to 90 percent of your kidney function and have a GER. of <15 .="" aken="" nbsp="" off="" p="" the="" web.="">

But she knew the day would arrive when she would give up her ghost to go leave earth and go on into her afterlife. You must understand or know something about Anita, my dear readers. She had spent her whole life dealing with metaphysical or spiritual matters in one way or another that she already knew she had an afterlife. She had learned long ago before she gave up her earthly ghost that life was eternal. In other words, she knew that her true selfhood was a deathless idea within the realm of Spirit instead of a human biological body with a kidney.

Anita knew stuff, my friends. She knew something about Divine Metaphysics and other stuff too. And she had lived it too!

But long ago before I had made my phone call to Anita, she had helped me in a very big way, possibly saving my life by knowing spiritual and metaphysical truths when I was laying in a hospital bed, going back and forth from life and death, consciousness, but more like coma consciousness, but not quite a coma yet. Another long story for later.

I woke up in a hospital’s Intensive Care Unit laying on my death bed, from what everyone expected was going to happen to me after a very bad accident. In essence, I was a dead human being still breathing the earth’s air, but I was probably going to die, humanly. Of course, I too had been spending my whole life dealing with metaphysical and spiritual matters too, in one way or another. And I also knew something about real angels and the afterlife, God and evil too. But the biggest truth I knew before my accident happened, well in between the moment or start of the accident and moment when certain parts of my face's bones were crushed and broken beyond belief, I yelled out the words, “God is All.” That is where I went mentally before I knew I knew I was in very big trouble and I knew that I could possibly die.

But still, when Anita unexpectedly called me in my hospital room, she said to me, “Hi there George. It is your friend Anita. I am working for you, you know how. Everything is going to be ok. I am working really hard for you. Ok?”

I said something like, “OK.”

And she hung the phone up on me.

And so my dear readers, when everyone expected me to die during and after that accident, Anita expected me to live. She was the only person in the world that expected me to live, in order to celebrate another day of living. In that simple regard, she was truly my hero. And I thank her from the bottom of my heart more than words could ever express.

Next week, I am going to meet my sister’s 15-year-old son for the first time. Is that going to be great, for both of us?

So I just want to celebrate another day of living! I hope you celebrate another day of living too!

Thanks, Anita, wherever you are now. (Probably watching over me and still praying for me.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9aCAneCSPg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5LIDNbFadU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jorJh8DTMVM