th3ruffian's avatar

th3ruffian

Keep calm and carry on.
33 Watchers590 Deviations
19.1K
Pageviews
The tomatoes are up, and have just been separated into individual pots. They are bright little sprigs of green in a still muddy, brown, yellow, and grey spring from a winter that just wouldn't go away. Seedling tomatoes will always make me think of my grandma. She was something of an epic gardener...

In February, my 98 year old grandmother passed away. It was as peaceful and quiet as things like this can be, I suppose. My mother, father, and myself were there with her, during a terrible blizzard that prevented the rest of the family from getting there. In a way, I think that's how she would have wanted it. She wasn't aware of individuals, but knew she had loving, warm hands around her. She was a private, quiet person, who didn't like much fuss or bother about things. She was a nurse in the Canadian Women's Army in World War II, and was very proud of being a veteran. She then came home and farmed with my grandfather for decades on the farm that my uncle now has... And during that time, she grew a lot of very delicious tomatoes.

We had her funeral, also on another terribly snowy day, during which I had a snowball fight with the aforementioned uncle in the parking lot of the funeral home. It seemed like the most appropriate action at the time. Up until now, it has been helping do running for my ma to help her and her brothers settle the estate. Mostly driving so mom can sign off on things.

But I got a note in the mail the other day from a woman, 86, who knew my grandmother well. My mother had sent her a copy of the short eulogy I gave at her funeral. She said that it was so lovely and well-written that she hesitated to reply. Consider me floored. Not everyday you get confirmation that you impressed an 86 year old... Here is what I said if you'd like to read it...

It's difficult to wrap your mind around a life that encompasses daily horse and buggy travel to space tourism. It's easy to get caught up in the length of time and not in the quality of it.

Grandma's life covered a lot history, but there are equally important things to be learned in how she lived it. Looking around today, I think she did okay. She was an excellent teacher in her quiet way, and here are a few things that even a bull-headed grand-kid like me managed to pick up on.

In our hyperactive world, we get caught up in screens, and worry, and distraction... I'm not saying we should give up the wonders the modern world has afforded us with. All I'm doing is giving a gentle reminder to look up and around yourself and take a moment to appreciate the world around you.

In her later days, grandma really appreciated textures, and she would without hesitation reach out and gently touch whatever it was that had caught her interest. That lesson is simple. Don't be afraid to experience the world. Engage yourself as fully as you can under the circumstances. Grandma and her sisters would spend hours walking to places for dances or skating and often the journey was as important as the event itself.

From her military service we can learn an important message on the nature of service. Service, for your country or your fellow beings, should not be done for reward or recognition. You do it because it's the right thing to do. You do it well because it's worth doing... Achievements, and in particular money, are not everything, but they don't hurt. Just be sensible about them.

The last thing I have to ponder on is grandma's sterling record of how she treated others. She would assert herself where necessary, and she would gently correct people where needed. Lately, it would have been my spelling when I would write messages in large print when she couldn't hear me... Don't worry though, I've run this through a British spell-check. It's okay.

Mildred is rock solid proof that a good life, a life of value, doesn't need to be high profile. What you need to do in this life is what you're good at, and be good to others. At the end of your century or so, what will matter in the hearts of others is how you treated them. Even if they are people who will pass very quickly out of your life, kindness shown is a thing people carry with them and then give to others. It is the simplest and most humane thing we can do for others.

I'll end with a somewhat obscure, paraphrased quote from Stephen Fry. It was about a literary figure, so I think grandma would approve: "(She) taught (us) something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind."
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
It's been a year since I updated this journal, and oh the fucking stories I could tell you. I've broken an ankle and recovered (mostly, it was a bad break), been fucked over royally on construction jobs (I'm still owed thousands. Literally thousands of dollars), slugged away at a dying retail job (which I am going to miss like fuck when it's gone soon), driven through winter nights which I would never do again if I had my choice, I watched my best friend's dad die way before his time, I've worked past the point of exhaustion (say hello to a 6am-1am shift, which beats my previous record of 10am to 2am) and never been poorer in cash flow. I'm exhausted, in debt, scared over my future, and I have decided to give up...

...But not in the way most people think of giving up. I am giving up and being a fucking artist. Finally. Really this time. After January and until April, I am good and fucked for a paycheck. There's nothing coming in. I am lucky that I have very supportive family. But in this time, I am going to publish my first novel, open an Etsy store for my art and now jewelry making, and take my friend the wiz-kid knitter along for the ride.

Ya see, it started a few months ago with a turtle. My best friend's husband (who calls me Wifey 2.1, and I call him Hubby 0.5) that I do renos with, got the call to do a concrete counter top. He's done plenty of these before. I haven't (exactly none). However, he needed me. The person who wanted it, lost her husband early in their lives together. Their last trip was to Florida, and she had some river rocks she wanted made into a stylized sea turtle, set in the island counter top, removable, so she could take it with her if she moved. Hubby 0.5 is a fantastic renovator and digital artist in his own right, but this was tactile and needed someone who could draw freehand.

So I got a Ziploc bag of river stones and was told "make a turtle"... So, Hubby 0.5 and I made a fuckin' turtle. Now, I'm not sure I could tell him this (unless quite drunk), but he's got this ability to make people trust their own abilities. I never once worried about carrying off the project. It's been a long damn time that I haven't second guessed myself. Maybe the first time. By all accounts the customer is thrilled with the result. I'll see her tomorrow to confirm when we install the counter top.

Waaaaay too long story short, even he and I don't make a go of the renovations thing, I've got what seems to be the worst fall back in the world: being a damned artist, which is something I've avoided for the longest time. I live in an extremely blue collar family. "So I fiddle when I can, work when I should" kind of people. And I have that mindset. However, me working straight jobs just doesn't work out. I am functionally unemployable. I am on my own. And I'm getting to be okay with that. Wish me luck. I'll try not to take another year to keep you informed.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In

Ache

3 min read
I have reached another one of those periods when creativity is low, though the desire for it is not. It's just that time is short. I am pressing hard, harder than I have in a long time. But I am pressing towards a new career, one where I call the shots. I'm tired of making someone else rich, so I'm raging seven days a week for minimum 12 hour days. The reward? Cash of course, and experience, and building myself up. I don't want to blow this chance at making something for myself. I mean, any idiot can learn to do renos and construction, but very few of them are asked to do the level I'm at right off the start line.

I am reminded of a period almost exactly six years ago. I was building towards something, and then I was wrecked by the death of a close friend. One of my best friends, actually. I think it's taken this long for me to really pull myself back together. But his memory has been popping up lately. The first song I really remember listening to after he died has been cycling on the radio frequently. I found his obit the other day when cleaning out old things (no need to worry, I kept it). He lingers in my life, but it doesn't make me sad anymore. I miss him, but I'm so grateful that he was there at all. I was so lucky to have had him around to save my life a couple times. I know that most of this is coincidence. I know that I am making connections in chaos, as the human mind tends to do. But I won't ignore those connections, those little nods from the universe.

So I am cracked. I ache. But I know that my friend suffered a long time before he died, and he did it with grace, and compassion, and love for everyone. I know that he wasn't perfect, because he trusted me enough to see his humanity, his anger that he had to go sooner than he wanted, because he knew I was also strong enough to bear suffering. Physical pain I deal with every day, and I can live through it. I won't let something so small as that keep me from improving my lot. My friend would have kicked my ass if I wimped out on anything that could have made my life better. So I'll take my courage and will from his memory, and let pain, physical and spiritual, flicker out of my view.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
So I've been writing a speech for a friend's wedding this Saturday. I realized today that it will be taking place on a deceased mutual friend's birthday. I don't think she knows that, and I'm not sure I should tell her. I don't know if it would bring her down, and like hell I'm going to do that on her wedding day. I was originally asked to be in the wedding party, but had to decline as life has been going a million miles a minute for me of late. But I'm taking my time. I'm not running myself into the ground. I'm exhausted, but it's a good exhausted.

I've got focus, and in some ways it feels like the first time I've ever really worked for anything. I know well that is not the case, and this is not the first time I will change my life.

And it could change my life. I'm choosing to plant my heels and give something a try, a real try, and though it is not what I had pictured for myself, it will pay the bills... To the point where I may one day be able to do what I want to do, and still pay the bills. It's terrifying to be perfectly honest, but I know I have the smarts to pull it off. It ain't rocket surgery and I'll have a very good teacher.

The teacher and I have much in common. We've both been kicked around a bit by life and circumstances, and have had our confidence shaken a few times. But if he can teach me what I need to know, I can keep us both positive to carry us through. I can do realistic positivity. I've been doing that for years.

The best part about this is that it will still allow me to pursue passions. I've got three weddings lined up over the next year and a bit for photographs, and I'm still finding a bit of time to cook up ideas for the novel. I want more time for that, but I just need to start carving out that time in between everything else. I wrote some of my best things while working 67 days in a row once. Of course the pneumonia at the end of that run was a good lesson. Don't do that shit again. Work your ass off, just do it right this time.

Roll Away Your Stone - Mumford and Sons

Roll away your stone, I'll roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find
Don't leave me alone at this time,
For I am afraid of what I will discover inside

You told me that I would find a hole,
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal,
And all the while my character it steals

Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek

It seems that all my bridges have been burned,
But, you say that's exactly how this grace thing works
It's not the long walk home
that will change this heart,
But the welcome I receive with the restart

Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek

Stars hide your fires,
And these here are my desires
And I will give them up to you this time around
And so, I'll be found
with my steak stuck in this ground
Marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul
hide your fires,
these are my desires
And I will give them up to you this time around
ADD:And so, I'll be found
with my steak stuck in this ground
Marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul

But you, you've gone too far this time
You have neither reason nor rhyme
With which to take this soul that is so rightfully mine
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Well, we've been slightly stalled on the renos to my house. We've been waiting on windows to come in. However, waiting for them means we got them for a third of the price. Presently, I am also waiting for some rain to roll in, and it's already much needed as my lawn is turning brown. It's going to be a long, hot summer here I think.

And this is all a new experience for me. I am basically trying to keep up my writing while still in high gear. The tourist season is here, five openings for plays this week. Apparently most reviews have been good to little ol' Stratford, especially since our Jesus Christ Superstar has been tearing up Broadway. I'll be headed back to work at the bookstore full time in the next couple of weeks, for probably what will be my last season. It's been a good ride, and given me five years of stability to start to put my life together.

But things change, as the sky outside looks more and more like tornado weather.

I have to learn to just write when I can. In the ten minutes I wait for my boss to show up at the store in the morning. While cooking dinner... Just keep buggering on. I have to jot notes no matter how tired I am. Which brings me to the brilliant night I had on my deck a couple of nights ago.

I set down with a bottle of rum, and two litres of Coke Zero and said: "I am going to sit here until I tie up the plot for the second book."

And be damned if I didn't have it by drink number two. Oi.

Just keep swimming folks.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Featured

Hold on Little Tomato by th3ruffian, journal

Trying to be more up beat... by th3ruffian, journal

Ache by th3ruffian, journal

How This Grace Thing Works by th3ruffian, journal

The Value of Drinking by th3ruffian, journal