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Linda Marie Grant, born April 14th, 1952, died August 1st, 1988.  20 years ago today.  She had three kids; me, Kristen and David Joseph Lenz (Borden?).   I miss her more than I can describe.  I can remember her smile and her sickness.  I remember Cabrini Green where she lived and the oxygen tanks in the corner of that dark, cold, shitty apartment where she lived last before the hospital stay.  She lied about the oxygen tanks, said they belonged to the previous resident to try to spare my sister and me the knowledge of her pending death.

She died in a hospital without her kids.  She’s buried in a grave without a headstone.

There is a brother out there that I don’t know, one of the last connections I have to my lost mom.  My brother’s name is David Lenz and he was adopted or fostered in Illinois.  As long as I’m seeing search phrases like what are pictured in the attached pic, I’m going to keep on hoping to hear from him someday soon.

I have sat on this post since Aug 1st, the 20th anniversary of her death.  I didn’t really want to post it and I deleted some of my more personal memories and thoughts.  I changed my mind today, when I found this site, it’s a diary of a dying mom.  She gave me the courage to remember my mom so publicly.

I have high blood pressure, it runs in my family.  I was officially diagnosed today by my doctor and I’ve got mixed emotions about this.  A) (good) I’m glad a potential long term medical condition has been identified and is in the process of being treated. B) (neutral) I’m likely going to be on medication for the rest of my life.  C) (bad) This is just another reminder, a pretty prominent one at that of my own mortality.

I had six vials of blood drawn today, and I’ve still got many more tests to run before all is said and done with this diagnosis.  El doctoro expects all the results to be normal as I’m pretty healthy, active and (relatively) young.  So, in the end it will be chalked up to genetics.  I’ve got my dad to thank for this apparently.

Thanks dad.

I bought an Enya CD after I got all this crappy news and am listening to that right now.  Music plays a huge part in calming me down.  I know I’m high strung but I also know listening to classical music and beautiful vocals like Enya relaxes me.  I can feel my pressure dropping already, or at least I feel more serene at the moment.

That and the fact that I got some potentially good news about the gimp and the pimp maybe being able to make CoS ‘08 trip today.  It’s all about timing; the gimp might need a later launch date than what is currently scheduled and the pimp might be able to get time off later than what is currently scheduled.  So, with just about a month to go before the trip, again all the variables are up in the air which just does wonders for my blood pressure.

Thanks guys.

In my never ending search for my brother I scour television shows (or you could say I watch TV because I’m lazy) for references to my brother Dave (david) Lenz (Grant).  Well, whaddya know, on CNN today there was an interview with a Farmer, Dave Lenz from Oakville Iowa talking about the floods.

He looks about the right age, hair color and maybe bone structure.  But the teeth/mouth look wrong.

Interesting either way, now I need to call Ted Turner according to Mr. Gant.  If you have his number, let me know.

I often wonder if my brother, David knows he has a brother. I wonder what his foster/adoptive parents told him about his birth family, if anything. I wonder what his adopted parents know about his birth family and why David was taken away. I wonder how he took the news that he was adopted, when he eventually found out, as he must have. I wonder if he has any pictures of us or him as a small child.

I have a few pictures, we were at Nana’s house, which was a little red brick house with a huge yard and two apple trees out front. My sister and I would get paid to pick up apples from the yard, I remember that they were bitter little things to eat. David was there, I think he was already fostered out and my sister and I were visiting from California. That may have been the only time that we ever met as children, I coulnd’t have been more than 10, so Tina was about 8 and David may have been around 5ish? I remember that day mainly because I have a few pictures to remind me of being there. Without pictures of that day and what he looked like, the concept of me having a brother would be more of an abstract idea instead of a hard actual personal fact. I hope he does have a picture, or some memories of us.

I wonder if he’s ever googled my name, or his mom’s or sister’s name. Does he even know our names? I am almost 100% sure his name is David Joseph Lenz, he was born David Joseph and I don’t know the last name. I’m sure he knows his mom’s name, Linda Marie Grant is what she’s buried under and the cemetary is less than an hour from where he is supposed to live.

I hear he’s in Algonquin, when I was in Chicago last year I found a number for a Lenz family in Algonquin and called them. I left a message, but never heard back. I have no idea who his dad is, but we share our mom. Her death really did fracture what was left of the Borden clan, sending shards from California to Chicago. She is missed, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I can however, find my brother.

The triathlon was great for a bunch of reasons. One of the things that I keep going back to though is the families I got to interact with. Jared’s entire family; Liz, Jared’s brother, brother’s wife, dad, and mom were all there to cheer him on. Gant’s entire family was there as well; dad, mom, brother and brother’s wife to cheer on the two Gant brothers in the tri.

Both sets of families were really close, really friendly and were great to watch them interact with eachother. It was a sober reminder of what I will never have. I’ll never have my mom, dad, sister and brother (wherever he is) as one cohesive unit, supportive and tight like that. The other thing that it made me remember is that sometimes people really don’t appreciate how much they have, because they’ve never been without it.

What I’ve been trying to figure out is what I have that I’ve been taking for granted. I’ve got my health, my family, a house to live in and good friends.

I’d like Jacob and Attia to grow up like Dan and Jared, where the family is so solid and stable that it’s taken for granted.

I’m currently in the air, I’ll never get over the sense of wonder I feel when flying. We’re somewhere over Colorado right now and getting some nice turbulence becuase of the storms out here in the midwest, so that’s not all that great but flying itself sure is. Thanks to my spiffy little Suunto I know that the airplane’s cabin is pressurized at 8000 feet.

I have a half brother named David Lenz who I met when I was about seven or eight. I think I’m about 5 years older than him but I’m not exactly sure. He may or may not live in the Arlington Heights area of Illinois, just NW of Chicago proper. I’m going to try to track him down if I can. I’m not sure of the specifics but my mom lost him when he was young and I think he was foster cared out, so no visitation was allowed. So that’s one thing I’m going to Chicago for. The other things include the following; see my step mom, Laurie for the first time in about 10 years. See and meet some cousins from my mom’s side of the family who have been taking care of my grandma. See my grandma. See my mom’s grave. See the Cubs play at Wrigley for the first time since mom took Tina and I… way back when they didn’t have night games there.

An interesting thing was said to me recently. I was talking about finding David and I got the reply, “Are you sure you want to?”. To which I said, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I?” at this point she said, “You don’t know what he’s been through or what he may be.” This was a true statement. My mom was a rock and people too close to her broke themselves on her determination. Obviously David, not having my same dad wasn’t ‘rescued’ from that environment, he stayed and then was fostered out. I don’t know how hard that must have been on him, and I wish I could have known or helped him in some way.

Another way to look at it would be that all of my mom’s offspring are like her in the sense that we have some of her in us. I have faith that David, wherever he is and whatever he went through is still her son. Because he is her son I know that he was sufficient to weather any tribulations thrown at him. I’m looking forward to finding out.

So far so good on the FTO program. The real beginning of the public contact/interaction starts this Saturday, but everything up to here has been going smoothly. That is all, feel free to return to your regularly scheduled lives at this point.

Today I was hoping to see my sister up in San Jose, so I called her in the morning from Morgan Hill where I was doing a load of laundry. We made plans for later in the day and I called Scott to see if he wanted to waste any time with me until then. Turns out him and his wife had no big plans this weekend, which is shocking in and of itself as those two are always out doing something or other, so I went up to his place after going and seeing Ryan and Tyler’s gravesites at Mount Hope.

So, the three of us went to a newly redesigned and reopened Oakridge (mall) and had a look around. After this was done, Scott and I went out and played 6 games of 21, of which he won 4. Despite the fact that he hasn’t played in over a decade, that fool has some solid D. I’ll have to work on not being thrown around by his superior bulk. Hopefully as we play more, he’ll get into better shape (read as: lose some weight) so he won’t be able to use that fatass of his to move me around so much.

Then I got back to the academy grounds, since my sister wouldn’t be able to meet me up until later in the night that I was able to stay out. When I got back, I took care of some errands/crap that I needed to and went over to the piano to practice the little bit I know. It just soothes me, while I play that stupid little set of keys I smile, my heart calms, my mind relaxes and I’m just in a different mood/mode. As I was fumbling around, one of the other people in the hall came over and helped me out a little bit, showed me a couple other things to do and played the piano very well, I didn’t catch his name, though I appreciate his help.