Lost Connection
Connection is Key
Lost Connection-Lost Connection
Wandering around my home I hear the call of the Bose Bluetooth audio speaker.
Lost Connection….Lost Connection.
My device is out of range.
It makes me think about being out of range of people. This can happen for various reasons. Geography, miscommunications, estrangement, divorce, illness, and death. I have always said I TRY to tend to my friendships as I would a garden. Sometimes my thumb has not been properly green, and I have made mistakes. Sometimes there is a lack of growth and rarely, in my life, weeds need to be picked. I can forgive and I can forget. Life is too short to hold a grudge because I understand that we are all simply human.
Simply human? Don’t make yourself and your life too complex….
It can jam you up.
Social connections and friendships are risky. But human connection is sharing the gift of presence, and it is an active skill. Like any talent, it can be learned, and it can be improved. We are all constantly learning this skill as we move through the years. You must be vulnerable and unafraid. Come on, nobody will bite you.
Lost connection. Lost connection.
Sometimes our loss has nothing to do with social skills and our garden. Shit happens. The grim reaper knocks upon all our doors. Hey, but you can’t come in!? Good luck stopping that fucker.
You may not be ready for the reaper, and you may not be ready for loss. As a youngster, my Aunts and Uncles were all falling off their perch. The New Hyde Park Funeral Home was where many a viewing was held. The Requiem Mass and the funeral procession to some cemetery on Long Island was something I knew well. Our wakes afterward were held at Koenings in Floral Park. The smell of holy incense and German beer can take me back decades to a time where connections were broken. Forever.
At times, thinking positively, connections were also made stronger with loss
My Mom passed way too early when I was 17.
Dad died when I was just 24.
I was still becoming a man and I had to move ahead with no guidance or unconditional love from my parents.
My Mom never saw her grandchildren and her offspring move entirely out into the world. I never got to hold my Mom, Virginia, as a man. We never got to reminisce and re-tell stories that were part of our history. I don’t dwell on being cheated of that, those are just the cards I was dealt.
Lost connection.
My friendship and relationship with my Dad suffered because of the loss of our loving matriarch and his dearly loved partner. Their love was massive. My family was scarred. That deep pain has faded over the decades just as my open heart surgery wound will fade if I live long enough. This is a big part of our familial story.
Dad died when he visited my brother’s family on Ngunnawal Land (Canberra) in 1982. He had come with his sister to connect with the down-under Busch clan and meet his grandchildren and commune with his oldest son. He had 2 heart attacks after he arrived, and he passed on my brother's couch one evening.
Lost connection.
We were all orphans now.
Connections with my past were now limited. Ancestral tales were passed from the memories of my generation. I had never met my grandparents and they were long gone too. There were few elders to pass on the stories. It's funny how now I find my place as a storyteller and, eeek, an elder.
My lineage is German/Irish and I know little of the Busch/Greene family tree. Some time ago we had a document that held some information but as people moved and aged that information is gone. My story began as a New Yorker and that defined me for 27 years. NYC was the center of the universe, and I thought I would never leave.
Lost Connection. Lost Connection.
The feminine voice alerts me from my speaker as I move away from the source.
My migration was driven by connection. A connection to be near a brother for a little while in this beautiful land of Australia. He was the explorer of my tribe who came here over 50 years ago. As an orphan I came here for a holiday and felt within my bones at 27 I must come back. Something about this land and the way the sun hit my face told me to give it a go as they say.
A new connection to place, people, and family here I hardly knew was forming.
Leaving my NY roots and siblings and cousins and friends was easy at first because who knew if this grafting of my soul and heart to another land would be permanent. 40 years later I am a part of this country and most of my adult story has been written on this land. My 6 children may hold both passports, but they are Australian.
New loves, new friends, and new jobs, all came over the decades. My blood and tears have dripped into this land but my life, in my white male skin, has been privileged. Over time my tribe here grew and for that, I thank the great spirits. Migration can be difficult for some.
I was no refugee.
New connections.
You feel it and you share it and you work on it. It can be downright scary to build a new life. Mine is a simple story of choice and it is a piece of dust on a grain of sand hurtling through the cosmos. But yes, I made this decision and that is a position of power and privilege.
People have had to move to save their lives and the lives of their families. Indigenous people have lost their connections to people and land because of colonisation. This was not a choice.
Nations that existed for tens of thousands of years were wiped out and land was stolen along with children
My adopted land was a land of….
Lost Connections….
The great unlearning takes a lifetime and there is only so much I can wash from who I am.
My loss of connection is via natural causes and choice. And I don’t consider it a lost connection as it’s just migration and change of circumstances and growth. There are pains in my heart but a phone call or a message can heal that in a moment.
But I ponder the pain of the original people of this land as I am about to embark on a journey to a homeland in the far north of this country. The original people had no choice. They were slaughtered, separated, and told to assimilate (or not) and then to live with the consequences. They were called savages when their familial units were structured around ceremony and nature.
No different than what occurred in my homeland or many other lands on this beautiful Earth.
This land was and always will be Aboriginal Land as Jim Bates said to his son William , both proud Barkandji men, in the 1980s. These are connections that are part of the land, part of the dreaming, and part of the stories that can never be lost. They run through the streams, fly high with the birds, and are held in the pouch of a wallaby.
I only have so much breath left to conspire with everyone and sitting around a fire learning about your place and mine is all I have left. Move with love and care and an open heart and all will be revealed. Share your stories before they disappear.
And although people will come and go remember they are always part of you. Hold onto the good that you’ve experienced, learn from the hardship, and grow and share.
You can make this a beautiful experience or you can pull your head in like a turtle or bury it in the sand like an ostrich. Most of you know that your great life stories involve people. Hold onto that as you continue to live.
The voice from my audio speaker continues but it is just technology.
Lost connection lost connection.
No more.
My speaker also says: “Ready To Connect”….I like that.
Your last piece was sublime