I wish things could be
As simple as they were
Back then when I would
Pick you up at school
And we'd drive
All day long
Routeless

PeterGerstenmaier

Routeless

Jun 5, 2026

June 2026

2026

Anger & Conflict - June 2026

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Heartbreak & Loss - June 2026

Historical & Ancient - June 2026

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removed.-67kd

weeping-willow

Wonderfully spoken, so miss the days of youth when life was easier and free in so many ways ;-]

removed.-4rc2

FUNNY that you should just write this, and that I should read it (as someone else just reading it).

Just yesterday morning, pillow talk after waking up, first a discussion about a certain word. My friend but more than a friend told me if I'm expecting to hear a certain word from them I'd be waiting forever, that they can't, that they don't ever want to be in a relationship again because they have it in their head that they have a curse on them that anyone they find true love with ends up dying, and given their track record I can understand why they feel that way.

So, they said, we'll never be in a committed relationship, and that's just the way it is. So, I said back, well, we've established that neither of us are looking for anyone else, that if we happen to find someone else we want to be with, we'll have a discussion about it, and not break up with anyone because we won't be together in the first place, but that I'll welcome to stay over anytime, even move in if I want to save rent money, and they're welcome at my place anytime as well, and they said, yes, to all these things, "But we're *not* in a committed relationship? OK, gotcha, Jason {laughing at him}", to which I added: "Was ist das schon: ein Name. Duftet die Rose anders, wenn wir sie anders nennen?", and then he laughed, seeing how silly this is, but, I understand, I don't need to hear any particular words as action speaks volumes sometimes...

But that's just background, he said as we were both laying there listening and starting at this big ceiling fan slowly turning, and I said it remined me of the bhavachakra, the wheel of life (I'm Buddhist but also Catholic, a strange combination perhaps, but he's Catholic yet follows all the beliefs of the Lakhota people, too, so he understands). I'm new to this, so if I'm writing too much, please let me know, I don't the unwritten rules yet here, Peter.

He replied he was just thinking of life as a teenager, how he remembered just bouncing out of bed each day, ready to "take on that world", excited to find out what the day was ready to gift to him, that each and every day held the promise of it being the VERY best day of his life. I asked what changed, and he said probably just the pressures and worries of adulthood, that maybe we are all just destined to lose that feelings, sadly.

He had a cracked molar since July that had him in agony, but he neglected it, his pregnant wife was murdered at the end of August. And, and many people wouldn't understand this, but anyone who's been through war would understand completely, that convention and conventional wisdom goes right out the window, and if you find someone who makes you happy, regardless of anything else, you grab 'em, you hold on for dearest life to happiness, and to them.

So, had a partner again, his late wife's best friend, or one of them (I was another one), and they were expecting, and things got crazy, he was supposed to be married to her today, while instead we're waiting for a flight from Vancouver to Auckland for her funereal instead after she died very tragically. So we was as low as low and go.

He spent the morning getting EIGHT root canals, and with three molars had four holes drilled through each down into and wayyy past the pulp of his gums, to drain the pus that was causing such pressure. He has sepsis in his blood, his bladder, kidneys, and live shutting down. His doctors begged him to stay, they had oral surgery booked for tomorrow, but he said he'd rather die than not be there as Aroha's husband for her ceremonies, and he'll take his chances until we're back in Canada on Wednesday.

I wish he'd have gotten the surgery, we could still have caught the last day, the most important one, on Monday, but that was his choice to make, and I wasn't going to interfere with anything. It shows at least me that he still has an unwavering commitment to her that death has not ended, or separated them. I don't feel jealous at all, and in her suicide video, which unfortunately included her shooting herself, which Jason watched again and again until I said he had to stop or I couldn't be in his life... no more self-harm, physically or otherwise, or we'd have to say goodbye.

I had giving ultimatums, but I gave one nonetheless. But back to my point. As I waiting anxiously in the dental office receiving room for hours, nervous about how it was going, I thought a very long time, and in much detail, about this thing of waking up with the feeling that the very best day of one's life wasn't in some murky past, but could be that very day!!

Why do we lose this feeling? Can we get it back? I believe I may have cracked the Rosetta Stone of what the secret to that feeling is, and the desire was clearly there, and I'm a mathematician by discipline, so I approached it like a formula, and this is what I came up with:

How to find MAKE that feeling that every day hold the promise of being the VERY best day of one's life:

SO, my equation, VERY best day of one's life =

The right desire, this one is easy, almost everyone has it
+ The right attitude, you have to *BELIEVE* it's waiting there
+ The right motivation, you have to want it for the right reasons (though just to be happy & fun is a good enough reason!)
+ The right opportunity, even should the universe just be dying to give you this best day of your life, you have to show up, you have to put yourself in joys way, you have to get out into the world, so that mean the right actions as well
+ Finally the right people or person to share it with, though sometimes that right person is just you

After his harrowing 3 hours in the dentist chair, and when the Novocain wore off, a crescendo to the physical agony he'd been able to put on pay-no-mind list since July, but now, catheter in, kidneys & liver shutting down, jaundice, sweating bullets with a fever of 103.2F and because not urinating so sweating out toxin, my friend here said it was rock-bottom, lowest point in his life. Just since April four women he loved have died, he was hoping this illness would kill him, fully given up on life. What could I do?

"Right, well, we're gonna have the best day of our life!", and he almost was mad at me, like I was mocking his utter despair. And he'd lost a lot before, he was a survivor, he'd had his mental toughness tested in all sorts of training, it took a lot to get him to give up, giving up wasn't a part of his usual lexicon, but he was at a spot where most people would break. I wasn't gonna let him.

"First, two rules in your life. You're on permanent disability, so you start considering it instead an early retirement where you still get 75% of your salary. And that's more than 50% of all Canadians make, Jason, so surely you can make do on that. I'm used to a teaching salary, and I'm scraping by on a cashier's job now, so quit feeling sorry for yourself that your career got cut short, it could have been a lot worse, Reihl.

You haven't been appreciated or taking full advantage of the spot you're in where you can do anything you want. So these are two new rules for you, and they may seem silly, but just start putting them into practice: (1) If you want to do something, then DO it, and unapologetically to ANYONE!! (2) If you don't want to do something, then DON'T do it, and, again, without apologies or even consideration for ANYONE. Now, you might feel this is selfish, but I know what you want to do and what you don't want to do is already guiding by virtue, so I'm confident you won't hurt anyone, and if anyone is hurt by this that only will show they're over-controlling in your life like that Sarah woman. You don't need people like that anyways.

Incidentally, I think those two rules would be a good thing, simple as they are, for everyone to follow as much as their circumstances allow. And it might sound like pure hedonism, but no, if one has a conscience they can follow those rules without doing anything harmful to themselves or others.

So, it happened to be a very, very nice afternoon, it got up to 26C which for October 17th was a new record set. First, we went shopping at the local 2nd hand store, and bought put together the craziest outfits we could find, I made a faux 1920 film-idol outfit, complete with feather boa, the whole thing, and did my make-up like Clara Bowes, ahaha. Jason bought slacks and pinstripe vest, and when we went to an antique store off the Trans-Canada Highway there was a perfectly matched fedora that I swear must have been waiting for him for yesterday for many years, outfits complete with a pair of brown-and-white tu-tone dress shoes he already had.

We next decided to pretend we were 5 and buying candy, bought with an unlimited budget. We got a little crazy in 7-11, and got a lift-time ban from all their stores in Moose Jaw, ahaha, complete with having pictures taken and added to the very top of the wall of shame, for having a candy fight, and when the cashier was trying to stop us he chased us around the stop while we pelted him hard as we could with sour gummy worms, we're lucky we didn't get arrested, and we didn't pay for anything, we offered, "I don't care what you take, take it, take it, just never come back!!!".

We headed over next to Shopper's Drug Mart, for more candy, of course, and he noticed on the way out, "Hey! Mad Magazine is published reprint issues again, I LOVE those when I was a kick, I collect every issue from 1968 onwards!!", so I grabbed one for each of us, for a game I had in mind. We sat on the side of the sidewalk on Main Street, people staring, we didn't care, eating out candy, and candy ALWAYS taste better stolen!!

And we got BELLY ACHES like we'd forgotten about, do you remember as a child eating too much sugar, the intense stomach aches that gives?? OMGosh, his hit first, and he was rolling around almost clutching his abs, groaning, and with how much pain he was in already, I couldn't believe it could be that bad, so I started tickling him, "No, no, don't, Mari, it hurts sooo much!!", "Oh, you big baby!!" Famous final words, I was on a sidewalk with my stomach feeling like an internal blowtorch was at it!!

Once we recovered I thought, well, and he and I are both Galiziendeutsche by ethnicity, so Austrian, and I knew hiking would mean a big deal to him, just like me. Certain conversations only hiking brings out between two people, and I'd been up at 3 AM making my special buttermilk, pepper & garlic marinated fried chicken, dredged in 1/2 flour 1/2 corn starch (it's really good!), we had a picnic kit back-pack, complete with gingham red-and-white checkered blanket, filled two thermoses with cappuccino, and parked at the very end of civilization in the Qu'Appelle Valley.

It was a slow and easy hike, he is allergic to antibiotics so was on strict bed-rest, but I'm a medic, if there were any emergencies I knew what to do, and my heart told me he needed sunshine on his skin, and some light exercise and joy more than anything else. Him having given up, that can affect an immune system most definitely. 

About 30 minutes from where I'd parked my car, I stopped, took off my boots, then my dress, then my bra and panties, and he eyes bulged, "Maria Katharina Reichert, what DO you think you're doing young lady??", in half-faux shock but more delight, lol, "You're German, too, you know Katy, Em, and Roh nude sunbathed every chance they got, it's part of our culture, now strip, Reihl!!", and he's a nudist anyways, if he's at home, he's naked, period, lol, and I love that because I'm the same way!

So we went nude hiking, and we taught each other hiking songs, mostly English ones, and talked about the crazy things you only talk about when hiking (I bet you know just what I mean by that Peter!), and around 3 PM had our picnic, and we could only use our hands to feed each other, though with the piping hot cappuccino we decided better to let ourselves drink with our own hands.

Then we read our Mad Magazines, and the game I made was each person had to describe when was going on on each page to the other, the other using their magazine to judge, and whoever did the best job got 3 minutes of any sexual activity/pleasure they chose from the other, but they weren't allowed to move an inch themselves. He won every contest throughout the magazine (secret? I let him win, ahaha). And then we just threw the magazines to the side, and he had done this since a teenager, I NEVER had, but we made love outside, totally safe, no one could possibly see us where we were, and at the beginning he said he was afraid he'd been bouncing from woman to woman using love to mask grief... I said love is always a good thing, and these rules about having to wait a certain amount of time after losing a partner are arbitrary and stupid.

Lots of cultures don't have sure rules, and they do just fine. And, besides, we're both former soldiers, we know how fleeting life, hasn't life since April taught you that more than anything? And Aroha, remember, in Ukraina she was my best friend, and if it wasn't for me she'd be alive, Jason, us spending that day together as friends, she was right, it was platonic, but it WAS a date, it was all my fault she died. And that snapped him out of his survivor's guilt a bit, telling me that everyone own's their own life, and if they choose to take it, so be it, but it's no one's damn fault but their own, and their own short-sighted stupidity!!

I needed to hear that, and making love in the grass on our picnic blanket under a super warm sun in the middle of October, I'll never, ever forget a moment of that. We had a bath when we got home to his place, and bought water-guns on the way back, and we each had a lid from a pot as a shield and had a pot of ice-cube filled water to refill in so it was rather unpleasant to get hit, so we had to use our shield.

We went up to his loft ostensibly to records a song or at least just practice or sing and play together, but we only made it halfway up the stairs, and put those stairs to good use twisting each other up into all sorts of creative positionings, ahahah. I'm 39, and I feel like the day had shaved a good two decades off of me, and I haven't laughed so much since my two daughter were killed in Russian shelling of our former home in Mariupol right at the beginning of the invasion. I went years thinking I'd never smile again, that the happiest of my life was far in the past, but I was wrong.

October 17th was the BEST day of my entire life, and of Jason's, too, because we just followed that formula, and it worked!! SO I gift that secret equation of life to you, Peter, go forth and find your best day of your life ever, and then find it again, and again, and again!!

badwords

It's not unnatural to fall back onto a memory of what is lost. It's a simple path. Alas, everything is perpetually undulating and in flux, change is the only universal constant. For what is lost today, will be the window for what is gained tomorrow. Hurt & pain are milestones, mile markers. we can rest forever at these junctures or move forwards, that's a choice always afforded to us. While a brief reverie back into something that 'felt good' at a prescribed time is useful to set a new trajectory. We must not languish too long lest the world passes us by. good words.