Uncommon Questions

            We all tend to get caught up in our own uncommon lives. That’s not a judgment or a criticism; it’s just a fact. The baby’s screaming, the soup is boiling over, there are too many bills and not enough bank, etc., etc., etc. We often count ourselves lucky to lie down at night and be done with the day just so we can get back up and do it all again tomorrow. ‘S’ok. I’ve been there, too. It’s like a circus without the colors or the ringmaster or anything to make us grown up kids smile. Life can suck hard.

            But, other uncommon lives are going on all around us. Most of us will never know about their extraordinary lives—and make no mistake, gentle reader, yours is extraordinary, too. But I’m a troublemaker, not a lemming, and sometimes I see things and hear things and I find I must ask questions. Usually they are hard questions that can only be answered by the Divine. Occasionally, they are questions about the nature of our very humanity and why the hell certain people are allowed to run amok and occupy positions of authority?

            There are never any hard and fast answers; at least not yet. But two stories made Yahoo today and one of them made me so angry I almost punched out my own computer screen while the other made me want to weep.

            I have questions, Blessed Divine Creator, and I would have answers, please.

Authority Amok

            In a grainy video released on ABC World News Tonight and posted on Yahoo is the unmistakable footage of two Philadelphia police officers chasing down a man on a motorcycle, nudging his bike with their car causing him to crash and then beating the shit out of him apparently because he ran. Excessive use of force by the police isn’t a new thing these days. It’s so common it’s almost become ho-hum. But the photo of this man’s face after his little “run in” with the law is appalling! This guy shouldn’t be in jail; he should be in a hospital! But, here’s my question. Why is it that the Philadelphia Police Department was willing to back these officers right up until the point that the victim’s girlfriend went door to door asking businesses about video surveillance footage of this crime—and make no mistake this was a crime—BEFORE said video was “discovered” by the authorities? The victim’s girlfriend? Really?

            Since when did we as American citizens begin to bear the burden of finding out the truth about what happens on the streets when something like this happens? Why weren’t these two chuckle-fucks (my son coined this term; I love it because when it’s called for, it really fits) being investigated by their own? Their captains or lieutenants or other higher ups?

            Go my little witches, go to Yahoo or the ABC site and look this up. Look at this man’s face after what chucklefuck #1 and chucklefuck #2 did to him! This should not be tolerable to us as a nation. What the hell does “to protect and serve” actually mean? To protect and serve our own asses while we beat the shit out of yours? And while you’re at it, gentle reader, go to YouTube and look up the other violence perpetrated by the police like the woman who is literally thrown through the air into her cell where she does a face plant into the concrete cot on the wall. Yeah, they paid her money but the problem is that the pay-offs don’t seem to be doing a damn thing to stop the idiocy.

            So, you may say, Aunty Selene, what are we to do about this mess? Is there even an answer?

            I think so. Did you know that the average street cop does not possess a 4 year college degree? Did you know that he can today be slicing meat at Kroger and tomorrow be carrying a badge and a gun? My solution? I believe all policemen and policewomen for that matter should be required to possess a professional degree. That does not mean, my little witches, that they just graduate a 4 year institution. It also means they must sit for a test from a professional licensing board, like nurses, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals. It also means if after passing said exams they act like chucklefucks they will lose their professional license and never again work in the field.

            These people carry guns for the love of God/dess! Nurses, lawyers, engineers and other professionals do not in the course of their daily business carry said weapons nor do they have the authority to pull them whenever they damn well please! Why would we NOT as a society demand this from those who have vowed to “protect and serve” us?

            Oh don’t come at me with the whole police academy bullshit. It does not screen people who have violent tendencies well enough, it does not confer upon its graduates the responsibility to be smart enough to pass a standardized licensing test at the end of their training, and it doesn’t weed out the ones who just don’t need to be on the street.

            Lemme let you in on a fact I found out the hard way. I’ve already admitted I live rurally but I don’t live on the top of Mt. Weather or in the back of beyond, though sometimes it can feel that way. I live 20 miles from a town, less than that from a police jurisdiction. I had to call the police, actually the sheriff’s department, but that’s just splitting hairs, once upon a time on a matter of some urgency. It took them more than an hour to get here! They just mosied on in, hands on their weapons belts like the tough jocks they probably were in high school. An hour! Do you have any idea what can happen in an hour to a person? I’d been threatened with a gun, held at gunpoint for several hours along with my son, fought the man with the gun, managed to take it away from him and run to the nearest neighbor a quarter mile away where we waited an hour for the police to mosey on up!

            That my friends, is unacceptable. Just a little domestic disturbance. Really? Really?

            This silliness needs to stop. Law enforcement should be professionals and by professionals I mean they should sit a standardized board of examination administered by a regulating agency endorsed by the state and federal government. And another VERY important question, why are we not demanding this?

            Folks, violence and riots are NOT going to get done what needs doing. Only concerted, well thought out, grassroots political action is going to change this. Until then what happened in Ferguson, Missouri and in Philadelphia is going to keep right on happening.

            The guys on the camera have been, and I quote, “suspended” pending the outcome of an investigation. I urge everyone who reads this to take another look at the victim after what they did to him and ask yourself, “If these men had to keep a professional license would they have behaved as they did? If they did behave with such gross misconduct and they were professionally licensed, let me promise you they would NOT be on suspension. They would be fired and they’d never again work as police officers! And I should know because I am a professional. I am an RN. I did sit the board. I do understand “due diligence” and I know if I acted other than professional I would not be an RN today, though I am disabled and thus unable to work. I am still a professional.

            Here’s the Yahoo link for those who’d like to be outraged as well. I believe in sharin’ the love:

http://news.yahoo.com/video/alleged-police-beating-caught-tape-013739615.html

           

Bobbi Kristina Brown

            Many people in this country, including me, were so saddened to hear that the daughter of arguably one of the finest singers of our time, had suffered a serious injury in almost the exact way that her famous mother died. To add to the awful irony was that it occurred just a few days shy of the third anniversary of her mother’s death. Bobbi Kristina is just 21.

            It was widely reported that drugs were suspected as playing a role in the incident.

            I cannot imagine the anguish it must’ve cost her father. I would respect his wishes for privacy at this time. He and Bobbi Kristina’s entire family need time to process the incident, to grieve, to pray and hope and ask questions of God/dess whomever they perceive It to be.

            But today, February 7, 2015, the news is reporting that her husband has “lawyered up” and that she has “injuries that need to be explained.” WTF? That a friend came over at 9 AM, was told Bobbi K was upstairs in the bedroom but that when a service person called at 10 AM,

an hour later, the friend discovered her in the tub. Now the husband wants immunity before he’ll talk. I’m sorry to say that in my experience no one asks for immunity who is not in some way involved in what went wrong.

            But all that is beside the point.

            Included in the article is a photo of Bobbi K with Nick Gordon. It is at once beautiful and heartbreaking. She must’ve been very happy that day. I am an amateur studier of faces. Look at that smile! That’s no fake, for Hollywood smile because a real smile always, always, always includes the eyes. Bobbi K’s eyes are smiling. And look at her beautiful mouth, open, showing all her teeth; ah, this was not just a happy day for her. It was joyous, magnificent, without compare. The kind of day we have only a few times in the course of our lives but remember always.

            Here’s the link to the photo if you want to take a look: http://www.rickey.org/nick-gordon-lawyered-bobbi-kristina-foul-play-criminal-investigation-underway/276114/  I wanted to include the photo itself but this machine is acting up.

            Now my question. Where is she? Where is Bobbi K at this moment? As I understand it she has what the news is calling “minimal” brain function whatever that means and that she is being kept alive via a respirator that is doing her breathing for her. She is not conscious. So, as a nurse, it sounds to me as if she isn’t quite alive but she isn’t dead either. So where is she?

            Is she “sleeping” as we all do each night (or day, depending on when we work)? It would be a comfort for me as a parent to believe that. The oblivion of sleep isn’t such a bad place.

            Is she in some limbo place, aware but not understanding what’s happening to her? I can’t believe my loving Creator would allow such a thing!

            Is she dreaming? Of happier days, blissful moments such as she experienced in this photo, and being “engaged” by same said dreams? That would be a loving and comforting belief.

            The truth is, I don’t know where Bobbi K’s consciousness is at this moment. I only know her father and her extended family are gathered around her and they are scared, they are worried, they want more than anything else in this world for her to open her eyes and say, “Hi Daddy. I sure do love you.” I pray (yes, witches pray, we ask for Divine intervention, too) for that as well. I also pray that someone who has access to the family, someone with an open and loving heart, will take her father in his/her arms and will comfort him in this awful time, will give him strength to get through this, and will help him make any hard choices that come. In short, my friends, I am asking the Divine Creator of us all to send Bobby Brown…an angel.

            Angels, you see, come in all shapes and sizes. They may manifest as physical which is rare or as spiritual. But I want an angel for Bobby Brown! Bobby Brown needs and deserves an angel at this time. No father should have to bear such a burden devoid of Divine help.

            I ask every one of you who read this blog (both of you-lol) to also pray that God/dess, whomever you understand that to be, will mercifully send Bobby Brown an angel to comfort him and to help him through this difficult time.

            Selene, you might ask, what about the angel for Bobbi K.? I trust that the loving Creator has already sent such a one to her side the very minute she suffered whatever injury she suffered. And whether she’s asleep, in limbo, or dreaming, I believe it hovers ever near her, whispering sweet words of comfort.

            In June of 2002, my father who had suffered with Alzheimer’s for four years suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. By that time he had almost forgotten how to swallow, could not talk, nor walk, nor tend to his bodily functions. We all knew those days would come and as a family we decided NOT to try to extend his life through artificial means. He was kept comfortable, given pain meds, a plain IV, and oxygen. He, too, appeared to be sleeping. But at around 4:40 AM on June 18^th he awoke suddenly, he looked at all of us as if he recognized us which he hadn’t done in months, then he sat up and began to reach for something in the far upper corner of his hospital room. Something none of the rest of us could see. It must have heeded his call for he lay back on the bed, a little smile on his face, and he died. He was buried two days later…on my 42^nd birthday. But I know my father saw his own angel at that moment. That knowledge comforts me.

            The angel of death is NOT the spectre in the hood carrying a scythe. She must be the most beautiful of all the angels or else my daddy would never have reached for her. And if there is an angel of death, there is surely an angel who comforts. I pray that Bobby Brown receives one during this difficult vigil and I am without doubt that Bobbi K has been constantly attended by such a one during this, her most uncommon of times.