For The Heart Cries

April 8, 1994 "Love and memory last and will so endure till the game is called because of darkness."                                                                        Gene Fowler  -  Skyland Around 5:00pm yesterday afternoon I walked into Dick Mack's Pub where I met old friends Jay, Oliver and Geraldine. For the next four hours we drank Guinness, swapped stories, joked and laughed. And they updated me on all the local gossip. Jay introduced me to a local doctor and when I told him that I forgot my blood pressure medication, he wrote me a prescription for hydrochlorothiazide. I had a great time, was relaxed and funny - the best since I met Robin at Saint Leo. At 9:00pm I said goodnight and left the pub drunk and tired. When I stepped outside I was immediately hit with an overwhelming sen...

April 7, 1994 "I've been a wild rover for many a year and I've spent all my money on whiskey and beer."                                                              The Wild Rove   _ An Irish Folk Song Jesus, what a shock I just had! A short while ago the people sitting next to me on the plane woke me up, and told me we had landed and it was time to leave. When I got off the plane and stepped into the terminal I didn't know where I was - nothing was familiar. I asked one of the passengers where we were, she looked at me as if I was crazy - how did she guess? - and said we were in Dublin.  Dublin! I was supposed to get off in Shannon!  She then asked, "Didn't you hear the announcement?" I told her I was sleeping - passed out was more like it.  She explained that the plane couldn't land at Shannon Airport ...

April 6, 1994 "We're going away to Ireland soon, we're going away to Ireland...we'll try not to get in the way of guns as we always do."                                               The Roches   -   The Troubles In a few hours I'm off to Ireland with my two little critters, Tiny Teddy and his flying friend, Berry Beagle.  I've had these small stuffed animals for about fourteen years and they always travel with me.  They've been to Ireland many, many times. Although this is our last trip together, I've left instructions for them to be buried with me when I die. During the three years I wrote Travels With Tiny Teddy for the Cape Cod Times, I was in heaven - writing about them was so much fun and they brought great enjoyment to many children.  During that time I had a schoolboy crush on my editor, Amy - a cute Tar Heel with a sharp min...

April 5, 1994 "Is there no way out of the mind?                       Sylvia Plath  -  The Bell Jar I awoke this morning engulfed in the blunt blackness of blinding depression.  I can't understand how such destructive and debilitating depression can sneak up so silently in the night as I sleep - and then slither under the sheets and slip into my skin.  What causes these attacks?  More and more often, I am being ambushed by such onslaughts.  Was it seeing Maggie last night? Was it something she said?  I don't think so. Does it start with something submerged in the subconscious that gets startled into consciousness? I believe Andy and Yoyo may have been responsible for this morning incendiary incident.  Seeing them last night and seeing how happy they were to see me, brought joy to my heart.  It was te happiest moment I've had in over a month.  But when I left them I was overwh...

April 4, 1994 Easter Monday "The opposite of love is not hate but apathy."                             John LeCarre  - A Small Town In Germany A month ago today I left my home. Earlier this evening I walked into the house for the first time since then - to some clothes, a couple of notebooks and a few books.  Andy and Yoyo were oh, so happy to see me. Andy jumped up on me, licked my face and the followed me as I walked through the house. Yoyo kept brushing herself against me.  I finally picked her up and she put paws on my face, rubbing them along my cheeks - she was purring so loud I thought she was going to explode into an eruption of ecstasy.  While I held Yoyo, Andy kept looking up at me smiling and barking cheerfully. They remembered me and still loved me, and their behavior showed that they missed me and wanted me home. As much as I wanted to cry with joy, I forced myself to suppress...

April 3, 1994 Easter Sunday "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.  Do you believe this?                                                                 Gospel of John The forty days of Lent force us to focus on remorse and reconciliation, and to fast, abstain and sacrifice.  And from those dark days we awake to bloom in the beauty and brightness of Easter - and proudly proclaim the radical revelation of the resurrection and redemption, of renewal and rebirth. Lord, I do believe You but sometimes I have doubts.  What happens after death is life's greatest mystery and the hope of the afterlife is comprehended only by faith alone.  Is the resurrection Christianity's Easter carrot to keep us virtuous...

April 2, 1994 Holy Saturday "Let us forget and forgive injuries."                                     Cervantes  -  Don Quixote Holy Week is a reminder of the importance of forgiveness.  Just as I ask and expect God's forgiveness for the harm my sins have caused Him, so too, must I forgive those whose sins have injured me.  But it is much easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to bestow it.  For months my mind and soul have been in a battle between revenge and forgiveness - to attack or to grant amnesty. Will the time ever come when my mind and soul are in agreement?  And can I forget and forgive those who mistakenly believed that they were doing right?  And should evil receive justice or mercy? Everyone is a misconception to someone else. People perceive but do not see - they see us, for the most part, as we appear to not as we are.  Maybe God i...

April 1, 1994 Good Friday "Whoever wants to come with me," said Jesus, "let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me...for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul."                                                                               Gospel of Mark What is the significance of Good Friday falling on April Fool's Day?  It's that a good man died on a cross hoping to save a fool like me.  And what can be said of the man who spends his entire life as a loser and failure, gains nothing and gives up on the world - does he also lose his soul? My prayers have gone unanswered because I am unworthy and ungrateful - besides there are those more desperate and in grater need than me.  I have 45 more days to live, so I will sp...

March 31, 1994 "Loves endures only when the lovers love many things together and not merely each other.  Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are really not to be envied.  Love and nothing else very soon is nothing else."                                               Walter Lippmann   -  Reporter/Political Commentator Opposite attract, make a compact, gradually lose contact and eventually nothing remains intact. That's a fact!  That's Maggie and I!  You can look it up!  Lippmann's words describe us perfectly. As I look back, I can say that we were never right for one another and had nothing in common except for our religion. Although we did many things together, for the most part it was either I was going along with what she wanted or she was going along with me.  There weren't many things that we loved toget...

March 30, 1994 "Hear our prayers O Lord for animals...and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words.                                           Albert Schweitzer  -Theologian/Philosopher This morning I met Maggie at 7:45am, outside the Jack Conway office.  She had some mail for me and I surrendered my key to the house.  I also signed our refund check from the IRS, the money is all her's. She then asked me when I was going to get my stuff out of the house and did I get a job in Florida?  I told her I didn't look for a job in Florida and per our arrangement, everything will be out of the house by May 15th. She wasn't happy with my reply and wanted more definitive answers, but I just repeated what I said. When I was in Florida I decided that on my return, I would answer Maggie's questions with the fewest words po...

March 29, 1994 "Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for but never seen."                                                                         Anne Sexton  -  Poet Saturday night as I slept at the Ramada Inn in Newburgh, New York, I had the following dream.  I dreamed of Harold Holbrook, my parents' longtime neighbor and friend , who died a few months ago.  Harold was in a celestial chamber - he was wearing a white robe and was smiling as he reached out his arms to welcome me.  His face was warm and joyous as he softly told me that everything is all right and not to be afraid. Since he was the last person I knew who died, he was there to meet me and lead me home. He said it was the custom of heaven for the last person someone knew who had died, to greet th...

March 28, 1994 "Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me."                                                 Emily Dickinson  -  Poet Cemeteries, libraries and churches are my favorite places to read, write and think.  They are places where you can be alone and no one will bother you, your privacy respected.  You can stare off into spaces unknown or simply read or write at your leisure. In cemeteries and churches you can cry without being unduly noticed. I am parked near my nana and grampa Frawley's grave - it is where I'll be buried. There is suitable somberness about this place in the early days of spring.  The trees are bare, the grass is withered and a yellowish brown, old Christmas wreaths hang from some gravestones and there are no flowers in bloom - although there are fresh bouquets on the graves of the recently...

March 27, 1994 Palm Sunday "I drink to keep my body and soul apart."                                         Oscar Wilde A few hours ago my mother told me I was drinking too much and I should go to bed.  I told her I was just trying to relax and unwind after a long drive from Florida. I was going to tell her that I'm celebrating Palm Sunday and Christ's triumphant return to Jerusalem - but knew if I did, she  would definitely know I had too much to drink. If she really wanted to see me have too much to drink, she should go to Ireland with me next week - and watch me drink Guinness by the keg with side bottles of Jameson. But she is right, T am drinking too much - not just tonight but every night.  I drink become it sometimes allows me to escape from the pain of my body and soul.  And it allows me to enter the dark corners of my mind to find the inspiration an...

March 26, 1994 "How does it feel! How does it feel! To be on your own with no direction home like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.                                                            Bob Dylan  -  Like A Rolling Stone Simple, small everyday things that surround us daily can suddenly bring me to tears. This morning I stopped at McDonald's in Fredericksburg, Virginia. When I came out there was a car parked next to mine, with a dog poking its head out the window. The dog was looking towards McDonald, it's tongue out and it was smiling and laughing - waiting for its master and probably hoping for an Egg McMuffin with hash browns. I began to think of Andy and Yoyo and how much I miss them. I wonder if they are in the den looking out the window, waiting for me to walk down the courtyard and open the front door? ...

March 25, 1994 "What a wretched gamble is the game of human life."                                                       Voltaire Three weeks ago today I was required to leave my home.  Time passes, twenty-one days, one by one. When looking back time seems so close, the past a shadow on my shoulder.  When looking forward times seems so distant - beyond the horizon, beyond even beyond.  I am as empty and as ho;;ow as a discarded fifty gallon oil drum. If you were to beat it, you would here the echoes of my cries. As I drove today I thought of my old girlfriend, Mary, and the wild argument we had on Friday March 14, 1980. She was mad because I had to work the next day and for most of the night we quarreled - and the more we drank, the more heated it became. Around midnight she stormed out of my apartment and drove home. On Monday, Sa...

March 24, 1994 "It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer."                                                      Terence McSwiney - Irish Rebel&Hero The history of Ireland, including the current problems in the North, prove Terence McSwiney to be correct.  He suffered and died in a British jail in 1920 after a 74 day hunger strike.  But this act of suffering also carries over to Irish-Americans. There is something about suffering that appeals to the Irish - and not for the religious reasons about offering it up to God or for the poor souls in Purgatory.  I think we suffer because we are good at it.  After centuries of persecution, hardship, famines and stern and strict sermons, suffering has become embedded within us that is just comes naturally - usually wrapped in guilt....

March 23, 1994 "The heart is a lonely hunter."             Carson McCullers  -  Author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Yesterday I stopped again at the Ted Williams Museum, then began my drive to Saint Augustine.  When I reached Starke, home of "Ol' Sparky," Florida's electric chair, I stopped at McDonald's for iced tea.  Last May Maggie and I stopped here on our way back home from Key West.  It's to comprehend how so many changes can take place and how lives can be altered in just a ten month period - how one's life can be transformed in a second and you never seen it coming. When I was at Saint Leo on Monday walking around the campus and Abbey grounds, I though of my generation - the kids I grew up with and the friends I had at college. We were entertained by Howdy Doody, inspired by JFK, influenced by Dylan, enlightened by the Beatles, encouraged by professors, offended by Johnson, disillusioned by assassinations, en...

March 22, 1994 "The path of life is seldom straight, around every corner adventure waits."                                                Thornton Burgess  -  Children's Author To which I add - so, too, does the unexpected and a chance meeting with someone you'll never forget. Ten seconds after I wrote the last words in this journal yesterday morning, I turned around and there looking at me was Robin - the young woman I had just wrote about and came here to thank. I do not know who was most surprised, her or me.  She smiled and then gave me a kiss on the cheek. Suddenly, I'm in love with a twenty year old college junior - yes, there is no fool like an old fool. And just as suddenly I feel as though I'm just as young as the students walking this campus. I told her I came to Saint Leo for one reason, which was to thank her for coming over and tal...

March 21, 1994 Feast of Saint Benedict Today's cartoon in the Saint Petersburg Times, Hagar and his sidekick are at a crossroads. There is a signpost with two signs pointing in different directions. One sign reads, " Point Of No Return" - the other, " "Path Of Least Resistance" - and Hagar is yelling,  "Guess!."                                                               Chris Browne  -  Hagar The Horrible This is a very painful day.  Although Saint Leo College and Saint Leo Abbey hold many happy memories, what I remember most this morning is my two day visit back in December - Thursday the 9th and Friday the 10th. A few days earlier Maggie had told me that she wanted a divorce and not to come home. The two days I spent here I wad a nervous and an emotional wreck  - lost, bewildered and frightened. ...

March 20, 1994 Passion Sunday "Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell."                                                           Marianne  Williamson   -   Return To Love Life doesn't flow gently like a stream. Life is a river with bends and falls, with raging rapids and still waters. It can overwhelm and flood its banks and can diminish to a trickle - it can hold pleasant surprises and can hide fatal consequences. As life's final destination is death, so, too, does a river die when it reaches its final destination, the sea. I am flowing and floating freely towards the sea - but I think that beneath the surface I'm looking for an excuse not to kill myself. It isn't that I'm any doubts about dying, it i...

March 19, 1994 Feast of Saint Joseph "The most important thing a father can do for his children is love their mother,"                                             Theodore M. Hesburgh - (former) President of Notre Dame When I was in high school I was taught by the Sisters of Saint Joseph, and we would be off this day in honor of their patron and the patron of fathers and  workers. I am off this day and have been off for some time - off center and off my rocker. From the day I was married I prayed to Saint Joseph to help me a good husband - and when that special day would come, he would help me be a good father. I failed, neither happened. It is said that God helps those who help themselves. That's mostly true but there are some people, of which I am one, who have difficulty helping themselves and need more of God's help. Maybe He did try to help me more b...

March 18, 1994 "Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."                                            Friedrich Nietzsche I woke up this morning thinking of plays. Although I have only seen a few plays in my life, I have read many plays. In the play, No Exit, Jean Paul Satre writes about a man and two women sentenced to hell - their punishment is that they to be confined together for eternity. The message of the play is that hell isn't fire and brimstone, but that hell is other people. In his play, The Cocktail Party, T.S. Eliot writes, "Half the harm done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. The other half by people who want to feel power." Most of the pain and suffering, fear and hopelessness in this world is not caused by disease, famine and natural disasters, it is caused by people deliberately hurting and killing others - through ...

March 17, 1994 Saint Patrick's Day "What is it but nightfall? No, no not night but death; was it needless death after all?"                                                         William Butler Yeats  -  Easter 1916 As I watched the Weather Channel this morning it was snowing in Boston, three to five inches expected. A typical Saint Patrick's Day in Boston, bad weather. The influences of the Irish are everywhere, even in this historic Spanish city. In the Cathedral of Saint Augustine, there is a side altar dedicated to Saint Patrick. The phone book is filled with Irish names and there are Irish shops and pubs. This afternoon I will have a few pints of Guinness at the Blarney Stone Pub, where I'll listen to Irish music and sing along when I know the words. I'll probably share some Blarney bullshit with stranger and before the nigh...

March 16, 1994 "Help us accept with patience the evil that comes to us. Help us accept with patience the burdens that come to us."                                      Prayer from today's Mass Jose Canseco, in Sports Illustrated, talking about his recent divorce, "I still think, what could have been done? I've never figured it out, how it happened so fast."  I know the feeling, Jose, really do. In a blink of an eye it's over and it's like being hit head-on by an eighteen wheeler. POW! The other afternoon I was in the St. George's Tavern, a real dump but cheap Bud and overheard the following conversation between two women. "How's your husband?" - "We're separated, didn't you know?" - "But I see you together all the time." - "Yeah, I know. But we don't live together anymore. We just date every night, it's more fun that way."  I wonder if Maggie would be open to such an arrangeme...

March 15, 1994 "There is no greater grief than to remember happiness, to remember days of joy when misery is at hand."              Dante The first time I came I was a sophomore in college and it was love at first sight.  It is uniquely different from most of Florida - it is old and historic, it has charm and beauty. What I like best are the Old Town and Bayfront areas  and the clacking sounds of the horse drawn carriages. There is here, a homeless man who collects aluminum cans and pushes a shopping cart everywhere he goes. To me the cart is full of junk, but to him it contains all of his most prized possessions. Every morning he pushes his cart down the sidewalk and leaves it in the Cathedral's courtyard while he goes to Mass. And every morning I leave him a bag of my empty Budweiser cans. He looks like Santa Claus. He has sparkling eyes, a warm crimson face, a glowing smile and a huge white beard. Maybe he is Santa Claus, down her...

March 14, 1994 "You say goodbye, I say hello. I don't know why you say goodbye? I say hello. I don't know why you say goodbye? I don't  know why?'                                              John Lennon/Paul McCartney  -  Hello Goodbye Why is life so fragile? People so frail? I think it is because we are too possessive of ourselves and that most of the time even simple acts of kindness are beyond our capability. We falsely believe that such behavior protects and insulates us, when in fact it exposes all our weaknesses - thus we are, in all our essence, vulnerable, brittle and porous. After knowing one another for almost fourteen years, Maggie and I left the courthouse last Wednesday and walked away from each other without even saying goodbye - we simply parted company without a word. I thought of that while sitting in Churchill's Attic drinking beer ...

March 13, 1994 From today's Jacksonville Times-Union's Sunday comics - "Now, how about our prayers?' - "Oops, almost forgot! Do all little ants say their prayers every night?" - "Suppose to!" - "How can God hear so many prayers all at once?" - Hmm, prayer waiting." - "Oh, yeah, right."                                                                               Johnny Hart - B.C. How can God hear so many prayers all at once? I have often wondered that, sometimes I wonder if He hears any prayers at all? And if He does hear our prayers, how does He decide which ones to answer? Who is more deserving, the forsaken and forlorn man who cries over his cat and dog or the hungry child starving to death who needs just a simple bowl of rice? Both wait for God's kindness in vain. There is little just...

March 12, 1994 "But in the real world there are things that we can't change and endings come to us in ways that we can't rearrange."                                       W. Jennings/R. Kerr  -  In The Real World Exactly three months ago today, December 12, 1993, I flew home to Chatham from Tampa - and descended into the twilight zone of divorce, despair and devastation. Today I am in Room 116 of the Monterey Inn in the historic district of Saint Augustine - the same room I was in back in December when I called Maggie and she told me she wanted a divorce, not to come home nor even back to Chatham. This morning I left Fredericksburg at 3:20am, drove another 700 miles and arrived here at 2:30pm. I will probably stay here until Friday, then drive down to Melbourne to see my friend Carl from the Jack  Conway office. As I drove today I thought of Maggie and the times we dro...

March 11, 1994 "A man, if he's any good, never gets over of being a boy."                                                       Mark Twain I am at the Days Inn on Route 17 at route I-95 in Fredericksburg, Virginia  -  exactly 700 miles from Chatham. I left at 4:00am and arrived here at 3:45pm. It was an uneventful drive which is the best kind. Thank you Saint Michael. Part of me didn't want to leave Chatham, can't explain why. But I know I need to get away, to escape top a place that is warm and familiar. Besides I have no place to stay in Chatham at the present time. So, for the next few weeks motels will be my home. This trip is also a journey back in time, to retrace and to relive memories of a happier time. I know that such memories will make me sad and bring tears to my eyes - but so be it, after all tears of sadness are with me ...

March 10, 1994 Casey's Birthday "Death is not the greatest loss of life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."                                                                                           Norman Cousin My nephew and Godson is fourteen, may his birthday be happy. I pray that he has a better life than I did - that the crosses he may someday have to bear be smaller and lighter than the ones I carry and drag behind me. I pray that he'll always be free of depression and despair that haunts me - that he never be discarded and doomed to death as I am. God, I am so full of sadness that the only words I can use to describe it, is death. I feel like death all over. Death has taken over my mind, body, soul and spirit. The feelings of de...

March 9, 1994 "This is the last day of our acquaintance...I know you don't love me anymore, you used to hold my hand when the plane took off...Two yeas ago there just seem so much more and I didn't know what happened to our love."                                          Sinead O'Connor -  The Last Day of Our Acquaintance Dreaded "D" words - divorce, despair, doomed, distraught, destitute, dishearten, discarded, devastation, depression, death. It is said that the first casualty of war is truth - the same can be said about divorce. Truth isn't necessarily what we believe, but what we say and what we tell others. Truth is whatever we say it is. Like war, the basic human instinct of divorce is self-preservation - which I abandoned months ago but which Maggie embraced brilliantly. The only form of self-preservation that remains within me are the words I write. My words are...

March 8, 1994 "Let people slide up close, let them peek in to see your all loving unblemished soul, and they will scratch hatred on it."                              J.P. Donleavy  -  Fairy Tale of New York Tomorrow we go to court for our divorce hearing - and just like that our years together have slipped away, our time together has passed. We have come to fulfill the words of Dorothy Parker, "scratch a lover, find a foe."   We have scratched hatred on what were once loving souls. Thus is the beast of divorce, love fractures into foes. Two things are certain, I will never date again nor marry - and it's just as well that time prevents  me from doing either, because today there is a gender war, a battle between the sexes. The February 14th cover of Time magazine asked, "Are Men Pigs?" So much for hearts and flowers on Valentine's Day - instead female cupids are aiming their arrows...

March 7, 1994 "Tears and loss and broken dreams may find your heart at dusk."                                    Carl Sandburg  -  Dreams At Dusk I feel terrible this day, mentally, physically and emotionally - between the divorce, moving out of the house and the craziness of my thoughts. I ache all over and am entwined in pain throughout my entire being. I have deteriorated    to a point beyond despair - have entered a twilight zone of deplorable derangement. I have come to the conclusion that I'm afflicted with a severe mental sickness, an agonizing torture from which I cannot escape. My brain is on fire, yet nothing is consumed - thoughts rage out of control and I am just a submissive bystander. Too bad there wasn't some form of electroshock therapy that could zap and sap the mind of all thoughts and memories - back to the beginning where one would have to relearn the...

March 6, 1994 "We have met the enemy and he is us."                       Walter Kelly  - Pogo I was too critical of Maggie and made comments, far to frequently, that never should have been said. Sometime they were made in front of others and were cause of embarrassment. Usually I meant my remarks to be  funny but most times they were not taken that way. I never learned and seldom kept my mouth shut, always opening it at an inappropriate time with an irreverent comment that was meant to be funny. But Iv'e learned the hard way that laughter isn't so funny when the joke is on you. There were times when I drank too much and this took time and enjoyment away from our marriage. I would spend an hour or two on a lot of Saturday or Sunday afternoons drinking with friends at the Squire or Wayside Inn - and I would continue drinking when I got home. Today I see that such conduct was wasteful and harmful. Neither Maggie nor ...