"Gold Rings"



This is the mantel in our dining room that displays
over 50 Crystal Snowflakes from my collection.

Greetings One and All - I hope this post finds everyone Happy and Healthy this Holiday Season.

 

I'm sorry that I have not been available for my story writing, as some of you know I have an online store that keeps me very busy this time of year - and I love it. I have also been working on one story that has become very sentimental to me that needed the time to develop  vs. writing many stories for the entire month of November and December. It is a piece near and dear to my heart and is a true story.

 

I hope you join me for its debut on Christmas Eve 2013.  

"Gold Rings"

 

By: Stacey L. Bolin

"The Seabee" Written by: Stacey L. Bolin

“The Seabee”

Written By: Stacey L. Bolin

Veterans Day – Monday November 11, 2013

 

I lay motionless next to my sleeping husband, tears slowly traveling down my cheeks to pool onto my pillow, as the darkness of an evening sky slowly allowed the morning to creep through the window into our room. Outside the wind howled while it danced through the threat of rain and snow upon this solemn day that awaited all of us. In a few short hours another brother-in-arms would be placed into the earth as his soul goes home to be with our lord and savior. A day that we had all been warned about - feared - and prayed that the angels would make an exception and grant us a miracle that once again, this brother-in-arms, would be healed and be as he once was before stricken with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). I try to close my eyes and convince myself that I have only awoken into a dream that is not of any reality and that when I awake again, I would find myself home in our own bed and no illness has taken anyone from us.

 My husband rolls over and pulls me deep within the loving embrace of his arms. A temporary feeling of calm and contentment warms me while I rest my head on his chest listening intently to the sound of his heartbeat. I begin to think about a wife who no longer can do the same – again the tears fight to become present.  I tell myself, I must be strong, that tears must be kept aside, but the pain that my husband’s best friend – a mother’s son – a wife’s husband – a child’s father – a child’s grandfather, will no longer live in this present life and no longer be a phone call away. It gnaws away at my strength exposing my soul to the unanswered questions of what lie on the other side of life. To know that he will always be alive in our memories, pictures and stories provide me no comfort at that moment – I’m angry! – He’s too young! – He fought a war and came home to later have to fight a new war, twenty-two years later, against his health! I just don’t understand! My face remains expressionless, while my eyes tell a different story and reveal that I am overwhelmed with my emotions – but my husband knows and understands my struggle with grief and holds me tighter as he lets out a sigh of sorrow.

 

Outside the bedroom door, the house is still, no movement, no sounds. I wonder if this family is thinking as I have, that it is all a dream and that to sleep is to awaken to the sounds of our brother-in-arms, walking through the front door from a morning of hunting and free from illness. I listen while secretly hoping for those sounds of this man’s life to be upon us once again, but the house remains silent and still inside while outside the wind wraps itself tightly around it. Eventually the family finds their inner ability to rise and prepare themselves for the drive into town for a morning funeral service.

We follow the family in our own vehicle to allow them their privacy. The ride feels longer than ever before as the weather in the area, as we drove to Yale, Michigan, has the same wet, windy and raw, appearance as hunting seasons where I grew up in New Hampshire. I find myself breaking the silence by stating this resemblance that I have noticed and feel it was a way that the heavens were telling us that our bother-in-arms, no longer suffered from the illness that disabled him here on earth. A brief, yet tender smile finds a place on my husband’s face.

Our arrival to the funeral home is met with a friendly and professional staff member who is both kind and focused while guiding us to our parking location while arranging the car line to prepare the funeral procession. My husband parks the car where instructed and then sits for a moment to collect his thoughts. Without any words - I reach out to touch him – I’m there for him. He is suffering a tremendous loss and I feel helpless when I finally muster up the ability, through the knot in my throat, and ask is there anything I can do for him. In a whisper filled with deep sorrow he replies, “You can bring my best friend back.”

From the area that we chose to sit, during the service, you could see our brother-in-arms at rest and dressed in his military dress blue uniform.  The minister speaks from quotes from the bible, but I can’t hear the words through the noise of a thousand questions all screaming for an answer in my mind. My husband sits next to me as we hold hands. For years we have had our own way to talk to each other through various grips, and this time would be no different as we helped one another deal with the loss of our dear friend and its effect on the family and friends that remain behind. Special moments were added to the service with music chosen by the wife and her family. How beautiful it was, and I couldn’t help but wonder how difficult it must have been on all of them to go through old pictures and then find the right music. They certainly had more strength than I. As the service concluded, the congregation stepped into the adjoining lobby as the attendants and the minister prepared for the final journey. As I stood in the lobby, trying to console my husband and a favorite uncle of the family, a player grand piano, began playing a melody I knew all too well and was a symbolic piece, and an emotional trigger, to a time when I myself struggled with a Cancer illness and feared what would become of my family if a cure was not found.

 I’m listening to this right now, to help with the next several paragraph that for some reason my mind wants to lock away and not deal with the pain. For me, I have found that writing is the only way I can share my true feelings –especially when it comes to a deep feeling of sorrow. So hold on and listen with me as you read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcdcwnBUowc&list=PL752FB5D5DEBCB651

I saw years of great times, hardships, losses of friends and family, births of my boys, life in the military, California, Port Hueneme, and the first time I met my husband’s best friend and his wife Shelly - my whole world. I couldn’t hold back the emotion that was rushing in like a small town in the path of an unexpected flood. I looked up at my husband as my eyes welled with tears and told him, I needed closure, I needed to say what I needed to say, before his friend was lay to rest and I needed to do this on my own and alone.  Quickly I excused myself through the crowed room to the back and entered through a set of open doors to find myself standing beside the open casket.

Our friend was gone, and I felt so guilty that a cure had not been found for him. I put my hand on his and found the ability to just speak out loud through the cracking of my voice and from my heart. The funeral tenant granted me a moment with him and stepped aside to move the lovely arrangement of flowers to the side of the casket as the minister watched on.  I’d  like to think they knew I had not taken this moment during the viewing the day before, but desperately needed this time to help me understand what was happening and chose to deal with the situation instead of trying to block pain and hurt like I had taught myself to do for many years. I began to just let my feelings out and speak.

“Fred, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do? I don’t know how to help these people though this, but I’ll keep my continued promise to you if you keep your promise to me. I will do all that I can to help your family and watch over them, if you could just find the strength up there to watch over Ron and help him fight the war of a memory of war in his mind and the pain of losing you. He is such a wonderful person and no matter what happened over there in the Gulf, and I may never know, the fears that you both faced together, the worries of not knowing if you’d come home, what I'm trying to say Fred - he still needs a guardian angel and that angel has always been you.” I’d like to think that somewhere deep down I heard an heavenly angelic voice that replied, “Thank you and I will always be there.”

I then leaded over him, and as I had done during that July morning when I had last seen him, before my family and I headed back to Maryland, I found the strength to give him a good-bye kiss on his forehead and said, “I love you Seabee, you are so going to be missed, rest in peace.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes and then turned slowly to walk back to find my husband standing with several other veterans who were asked to be pallbearer’s. There was something about my husband, that captured my attention, and help me focus and finally see completely what it was and still is, that has me so deeply in love with him. I saw it, a moment in time that I had not seen for many years. A moment of the first time I feel in love with him mixed with a special ingredient. If you had ever been in the military you would know what the special ingredient is, as the other veterans wore the same – Military Bearing. You could feel the sense of honor, duty, pride, respect, and determination - that no matter what lay outside those doors of the building that day, no matter the weather, no matter what dangers may linger, they would see that this fallen brother-in-arms would reach his final destination.

Only the pallbearers were asked to accompany the funeral director back into the room the same way that I had chosen to enter, while the entry doors to the parlor still remained closed. I stood there, looking at the numerous faces of grief, by friends and family members that wore shrouds of bravery, to ward off the sorrows temporarily, as they anticipated the flag draped casket that would soon appear as the doors opened. They stood in silence as they watched as the Veterans escorted their brother-in-arms through the lobby. The Veterans made no eye contact as they slowly and carefully made their way to the gloss black hearse that awaited them outside. Never once loosing focus, their military bearing was at full attention to uphold the honor and the duty that had been bestowed upon each of them by the grieving family.

As I stood by the doors, I watched my husband’s face try to fight the pain he was feeling as they closed the doors to the hearse. I wanted so much to go over and put my arms around him and tell him that everything would be OK, like he had done for me for so many years, but this time it wasn’t OK - His best friend and war buddy would not be there when he needed him or just needed to hear his voice.  I knew that the only thing I could give him at this moment was time. There was nothing I could say or do as the hardest part was still ahead of him.

We walked back to our truck and waited for our time to pull into the funeral procession that would follow the hearse to the cemetery. As we drove, I saw something I have never in my life seen before. Vehicles one-by-one pulled off to the side of the road. There were no cars in a hurry to get anywhere. Nobody cut through the line. These people, who may or may not have even known who lay inside the flag draped casket, still honored him, as they sat on the side of the road in their cars with their heads down. I don’t know if they did this because it was Veterans Day, or if life there is just different and it didn’t matter what day it was. There was just a sense of utmost respect that I had not seen like that - in person – ever.

We arrived at the cemetery where the family had already taken their seats beside the grave site. My husband, without delay, immediately found his place at the head of the casket. I stood beneath a rainbow colored umbrella that clearly was out of place against the traditional brown and black ones used by others. I watched as the Veteran’s lifted the casket and carried it against the wind and the rain. None of it seemed real as I told myself to make a mental note of what I was witnessing. My husband, in spite of his daily back pain, with no jacket, no rain coat, no protect from the elements, wasn’t feeling anything but sorrow and the determination to be sure he would help be the one to see his best friend laid to rest – anything else – didn’t matter.

It was a full military funeral, and I wouldn’t have expected anything less. As the Active Duty military personally took their positions at the casket, the command was given to stand and those who were military or retired military could render a hand salute while the soft somber tone of taps being played accompanied the wind. Every one of us Veterans stood at attention and provided our best hand salute. I don’t remember when the orders for the 21 gun salute was given, but I do know that it is a haunting feeling that I had only felt one other time when my step father George had passed away in 1991. Something about that sound makes things seem so final, and that all that is left are the memories and mementos that are left behind.

To watch the strength of this now widowed wife, and longtime friend of ours, accept the perfectly folded flag seemed more like a movie that my brain kept waiting for the film director to yell, “Cut…that’s a wrap.” I didn’t want to leave; I didn’t believe that any of this was happening and I just wanted some kind of sign to tell me that although our dear friend has passed, that he no longer suffers from the horrors of ALS. I believe that those who have passed on have ways of connecting to us, we just have to be opened minded rather than brush things off with the thinking it is merely a coincidence - it's not, it is so much more. I got my sign as I had hoped for as I sat with my husband at a banquet hall at their local golf course. The family decided to put together a gathering for friends and family to come together to enjoy a warm meal and talk about the life and times of their lost loved one.

I have five loves, my husband, my two boys, family, and snowflakes. As my husband and I sat at a table drinking coffee and speaking with the minister, something outside the picture window had caught my eye – snow – the cold and dreary rain had turned to a soft billowy snow that danced effortlessly upon the wind and feel softly on the autumn leaves that had not found their way onto the earths floor.

My question had been answered. Rest in Peace – Fred, Rest in Peace.

Fred and My Husband Ron - Feb 2010

 

Creepy Myths and Legends - Revealed

 

 

 

Below are five paragraphs that have been categorized as either a legend or a myth. Did you guess which one's were which? Did you know what was the truth or what was fiction?  You don't have to wait any longer. Oh and before I forget - HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

 

 

 

#1. The Legend:

A young man is dropping off groceries at the house of an eccentric old lady when he notices an old photo that makes the hair on his arms stand on end. The photo's normal enough--a young boy in his Sunday best--but something just seems off. He asks the old lady who it is.

 "Oh," she replies, trying to stuff a cat in the dishwasher "isn't that beautiful? You can hardly tell he's dead."

 

The Truth:

While most folks today are too squeamish to take more than a glance into the casket during a funeral, in the late 19th through early 20th centuries someone dying meant it was time to break out the camera for a family photo. The practice was known as memorial photography.

And, while it all sounds like the set-up for some terrifying practical joke on the photographer, there was actually a somewhat reasonable explanation for the practice. The process used to take pictures back then was expensive enough that it was a once in a lifetime (er, or shortly after a lifetime) thing for most, and required people to sit perfectly still for a couple minutes for it to turn out properly. And if there's one thing dead people are good at its sitting still.

So, the bodies were dressed and propped up, with their eyes held open. And in case they still weren't giving off that lively "I'm not a corpse harnessed to a chair" vibe, some color was added to the faces in the photo. And just look what they could do with special effects in those days!

Some photographers also offered to add stink lines, but it never really caught on.

Eventually the practice of memorial photography went out of style, maybe because picture-taking became more affordable and didn't have to be reserved for special occasions such as death. Or, possibly everyone just sat up all at once and said, "Wait, what the fuck are we doing?"

 

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_16721_6-more-creepy-urban-legends-that-happen-to-be-true.html#ixzz2jJ0CGOKl

 

 

 #2. The Legend:

A sick woman arrives at a hospital and when the nurses withdraw blood it is so toxic that it begins making everyone around her sick too. Realizing they're dealing with the human embodiment of the creature from Alien, the nurses flee for their lives.

 

The Truth:

On the evening of February 19th, 1994, Gloria Ramirez was admitted to a California emergency room, suffering from an advanced form of cancer.

When a nurse drew Gloria's blood she detected a foul odor, so foul in fact that hospital staff started gagging and even collapsing around her. Eventually as many as 23 people were affected. The ER was evacuated and a decontamination unit brought in. So more like the creature from Alien crossed with a fart, but still.

The case was quickly written off as mass hysteria, but considering that the worst affected victim spent two weeks in intensive care suffering from hepatitis, pancreatitis and avascular necrosis (a condition which literally causes your bones to die) we'd say either this was some serious damned hysteria or the guy who decided that got his degree from Dumbass University.

As for Gloria, she died just 40 minutes after arriving at the hospital. Her autopsy was performed by men in full hazmat moon suits and, despite one of the most extensive forensic investigations in history, it's still not known what exactly turned this woman's blood into toxic sludge. Granted, the experts on the case have refused to take off their hazmat suits since that day, and have now retreated to a small island which they have surrounded with barbed wire, but those are probably just the usual precautions.

 Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_16721_6-more-creepy-urban-legends-that-happen-to-be-true.html#ixzz2jJ0f7gQf

 

#3. The Myth:
A prop at a carnival was discovered not to be made of the usual combination of papier mache and carni spit, but human skin and bone. All the little kiddies at the haunted house had been poking and giggling at a real, mummified dead body.

 

The Truth:

 Apparently the smell wasn’t just coming from the convict manning the corndog stand. Back in 1976, a camera crew filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man began to set up in the haunted house at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, Calif.

As they were moving aside a "hanging man" prop, they accidentally knocked off its arm and discovered human bones inside. Bionic, this poor sap wasn’t.

The story gets stranger. The body was actually that of criminal mastermind Elmer McCurdy, who was killed in a shootout after robbing a train in 1911. The princely sum old Elmer got killed for? $46 (and two jugs of whiskey).

McCurdy was embalmed by the local undertaker, and apparently the guy was so darn pleased with his work that he propped up the corpse in the funeral home as evidence of his skills. People were charged 5 cents to see the corpse, which they paid by dropping a nickel in the cadaver’s mouth. Remember that little bit of history the next time somebody turns their nose up at you for liking Hostel 2.

Think it can’t get any stranger? Oh, you naïve fool. After several years of raking in the nickels (how exactly these coins were retrieved after being dropped into the corpse’s mouth is something probably best left to the imagination) our enterprising undertaker’s scheme was ruined when McCurdy's brothers showed up to claim him. Of course, these guys weren’t his brothers at all, but wily carnival promoters. From that point on, McCurdy’s mummy went on a morbid mystery tour all around America, popping up at carnivals all over the country before finally coming to rest in Long Beach.

 

 McCurdy is now buried in Oklahoma. Because McCurdy apparently had the most entertaining corpse in history, they prevented anyone else from taking him on tour by dumping concrete on top of the casket. No, really.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_15628_the-5-creepiest-urban-legends-that-happen-to-be-true.html#ixzz2jIySC7gM

 

 

#4. The Legend:

Every day, millions of us put our lives in the hands of skilled physicians, dentists and white van tattoo artists. Whether we're getting wisdom teeth removed or our boobs corrected so they're the same size, we're working under two assumptions: A) The doctor in charge knows what he's doing and B) There is no way a doctor could be a psychopath who just went through medical school so he'd have an excuse to mutilate people.

The Truth:

Glen Tucker was a terrible plastic surgeon. In fact, he was worse than that -- he was sadistically incompetent and left a trail of mangled patients behind him wherever he went. Like the man who came to see him with arm spasms and ended up having his arm amputated. Or the woman who went in for breast implants and somehow, against all odds and laws of physics, ended up with square breasts, covered in Frankenstein-like scars.

So Tucker's faults went far beyond just being a crappy doctor. Take the story of Jan Lehman, who had nothing more than a broken nose when she came to see Tucker. Midway through surgery, she WOKE UP to find the "doctor" wheeling her into a strangely dark and deserted operating room. She then passed out, but awoke again as Tucker brutally tore tubing from her nose, destroying her stitches. Later, after filing a complaint against Tucker, Lehman reported seeing him following her in his car. He wasn't just inept -- he was Cape Fear crazy.

The complaints and lawsuits mounted, and then one day Tucker tragically drowned in a boating accident. Except of course he didn't actually drown, and even if he did, it probably wouldn't have been that tragic. No, he just flew the coop to Florida, leaving numerous barely stitched together patients in his wake. Years later, a TV producer tracked Tucker to Florida, and the doctor gave this eerie statement: "If I get driven too far into a corner, if it got to the point where life was no longer worth living, then I would not want to go alone."

He didn't. Several years later, Tucker loaded his .45 and killed his wife, himself and, yes, even the cat.

 

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20126_7-creepy-urban-legends-that-happen-to-be-true-part-6.html#ixzz2jIyyILxq

 

#5. The Legend:

Everyone knows the feeling. You're alone in your house when you get the unmistakable sense that you're being watched. It's like you can feel another human presence in the house with you, even though you know you locked the doors and windows. This spooky trick of the mind is probably why so many of our ghost stories are about someone being inside our house. There's the call that was coming from inside the house, the killer who hides under your bed, the guy who wakes up to find a note taped to his forehead or even the monsters living in our closet. But those fears are irrational, right?

The Truth:

A 57-year-old man living by himself in Japan began to notice small things amiss in his house -- objects wouldn't be where he'd left them. Food would disappear that he swore he didn't remember eating. He'd wake up to strange sounds in the middle of the night, but every time he'd go and check them out, the door would be locked, the windows tightly shut. Nobody was there.

Was he losing his mind? Being messed with by a shy poltergeist? To find out, he set up a series of spy cameras around his house. The next morning, he ran back the footage on the camera and that's when he saw it. A strange woman crawling out of a cupboard like it was the TV in The Ring. And if you think that's terrifying, imagine what happened inside his stomach when, at the end of the video, she crawled back into the cupboard. The one that was just a couple of feet away from where he was standing, watching the video.

Presumably in an effort to maintain bowel control, the man assumed the woman was a burglar who was only temporarily hiding in the cupboard, and had since left. He called the police, who pointed out that all the locks on his doors and windows were undisturbed. There was simply no evidence whatsoever that anybody had broken in -- in other words (cue dramatic strings) the woman had been in the house all along.

After a thorough search, the woman was found nervously huddled in a small cupboard. Apparently she had sneaked into the house and slept, ate and even took showers there for an entire year without being detected. Think of all the things you've done in your most private moments -- the things you thought nobody would ever see. Now imagine a homeless Japanese woman had been watching it all. Yeah. We'll let that one sink in for a moment.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19503_7-creepy-urban-legends-that-happen-to-be-true-part-521.html#ixzz2jIzgNt71