"Marvin Gaye and Memories"

MEMORY is a funny thing...at least mine is!!

Yesterday at the Post Office I learned that MARVIN GAYE is on a stamp now (why, I don't know....but that's not the point, Lol!!  I suppose if LENNON can be on a stamp after "Imagine", so can MARVIN be on after "Sexual Healing.")  Anyway, seeing Marvin's painting on the stamp yesterday for the first time (done VERY well, by the way) reminded me of how his dad shot him to death 35 years ago, in 1984.  It also brought to mind an incident with MY dad that took place 20 years later, and after I explain the incident, maybe you'll see the reason my mind connects the two.

It was Fathers Day, 2004 and I went to visit my dad in Pennsylvania at the house he built out in the remote mountains.  Dad was drinking and turned really ugly to me, raising his hand as if to hit me.  He was FURIOUS and all I could think of was "He has shotguns in this place, and they're loaded, I don't want to end up like Marvin Gaye" so I got in my car and drove home for the three hour trip without saying Goodbye. The next day (15 years ago yesterday) I tried to call him, figuring he was sober and I could explain why I took off like that, but my stepmother wouldn't let me talk to him.  This led to a five-and-a-half year ALIENATION from my dad...didn't see him again till a few days before he died on Christmas Day, 2009.

Had I not seen the Marvin Gaye stamp yesterday I would not have remembered that sad 15th anniversary when our separation began, but God has a purpose for EVERYTHING that happens.  (If you'd like to read a HAPPIER blog, check out the one I wrote earlier this morning, Lol!!   It deals with the PLEASANT aspects of God's Providences!!) So that's the connection between Marvin Gaye, me, and MY father.  As for a connection between Lennon and Gaye?? Both were assassinated...maybe that creates a sympathy factor which makes people want to see them on stamps, who knows.  In my opinion, NEITHER of them contributed enough for society which was positive in order to warrant what USED to be, I thought, an extreme honor (being on a U.S. stamp.)  But, we're becoming a "Third World Nation" and in THAT context, yes, I can see why those two are remembered as they are.