Bitty Buddy

 Bitty Buddy, you are my shadow. I promise to stop thinking of you as a pathetic loser. I know after Karen died and you were sad and sick with asthma and couldn’t read and started banging your huge head on everything and needed to get stitched up at the ER all the time and kept catching yourself on fire and couldn’t sit still in school or church or anywhere you found that anger and rage became the only way to deal with a world that could be so cruel. Your constant need for attention and ability to push yourself beyond maximum fatigue paid off in a lot of ways physically and made you quite an athlete. You overcame so much with effort and determination. You learned how to cope with bad health, pain, grief and failure. In spite of everything you learned how to make people like you. Even the bullies you bullied became your friends. You learned how to forgive and you learned how to love. I want you to know I like you. I love you. I am proud of you. You are the best part of me. Thank you for never giving up on us. I want you here, now, always. 

Sincerely,

William Anderson Keith 

2024 Is Here and Where Am I?

 Dear Dad,

It has been a few years since i’ve written to you here on. This month it’ll be 19 years since you’ve been gone. Suzy and i will have been married 25 years this Spring. i remember when you glued 25 Silver Dollars to a board in the shape of a heart for your and Mom’s 25th anniversary. That would be like almost $1,000 of silver now days. Pretty cool memory memory but i really don’t remember much about it other than it happened.

i had my knee replaced a couple months ago and had back fusion surgery a few weeks ago. Was in quite a bit of pain, but have turned the corner a bit as far as healing goes. Have thought a lot about you and the pain and suffering i watched you endure. I’m 57 now and just before the holidays was laid off from work. Writing this makes me realize why i haven’t done it in so long. It hurts. Your struggle with life from about the age i am now until death is something i wish not to recreate. The heart disease, diabetes and strokes are something i’m working really hard to avoid. I realize now that being let go from my soul sucking job may have been the best thing that could’ve happened to me. Not sure what the future holds, but I refuse to play the victim here. I have some severance pay and FMLA and short term disability pay coming my way to help us get to my next job, but my ego is in check for the first time in a long while. I got what I deserved. Now I’m going to make something of myself. Someone real. i have faith i’m going to make something special happen in the next couple of months. I promise i’ll come back here and tell you about it when i do. Sure your with me anyway, but I love this blog. Can’t believe it’s still up. My website is still up too andykeith.com and i haven’t touched it in years. I have been paying Godaddy all this time but was still surprised all the links to my books on Amazon are still good and all my other blogs too. I guess i’m going to start writing again. For fun. Going to update my website and start blogging again. I have quite a following on Tiktok and Meta too and Social Media is something I actually enjoy. While writing this the idea to do a post on Linkedin about myself and current predicament might be cool instead of just looking for work there might be pretty cool. 

Tell Mom I miss her,  Karen and Carol too of course. J’s doing really well, but guess you know all this. Thanks for being here. I love you.

Sincerely,

Bitty Buddy💛