HomelessInDownstateIL

It’s Father’s Day and I’m thinking a lot about my Dad this weekend.  For those following along with my emerging Pandemic Memoir, he died 5 years ago next month - and his death set off a chain of life-altering and very chaotic events in my life - some of which I have yet to make any sense of even to this day.   I remember when he was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism five years ago. I went to the hospital chapel and I begged God to spare him.  It is worth noting that I had not had a conversation with God in over 30 years at that point - so I wasn’t surprised when my prayers went unanswered.  In my experience, God isn’t in the habit of placating crisis-oriented believers.  In fact, most days I feel like instead, God smote, smoked and fully rebuked me - in a way that set off the catastrophic chain of events that happened in the aftermath thereto- just because I had the audacity to ask Him to save my father.  I’ve since come to learn that God doesn’t ...

  CHAPTER 5:  HOME AT LAST WITH A MARINE, A MUTT AND (UNPLANNED) MARITAL MAYHEM  Most people when they hear even 10% of the story of what happened to me during the Pandemic say some variation of this sentiment: “I don’t know how you survived? I would have just quit or been catatonic in a corner somewhere…”  No you would not.  Well - not most of you would not have just “quit” or otherwise surrendered to the certain death that cumulative traumas often cause.  How do I know this ? Because I survived. And you’d be surprised how strong and filled with perseverance you can be when being strong and persistent is your only option. I had survived the often lethal outcome of: first-time homelessness experience in Illinois, the janky for-profit Medicaid nursing homes scam system existing in Illinois, and the damaging mental health system that is so dangerously broken in Illinois (and America.) And then realized, much to my horror, that IF I wanted to heal both medic...