Abandon (verb) - Abandoned (adjective)

verb : to give up to the control or influence of another person or agent
adjective: to be given up : forsaken

Interesting - I find myself thinking that the verb contradicts the adjective.
It's easy to adbandon a task that you cannot simply complete, because you don't have the right tools, or it's a scientific equation that you can't understand, no matter how many times you read or have read about it. Or you abandon the control and attempt to influence another person, because you finally accept that nothing you say or do will get that person to stop doing what they want to.

But adbandonment is what I experienced very early in life. I had no influence, no control, no desire to control another person (well maybe my younger brother) and I certainly did not have the ability, nor was I even in the right place to stop my mofher doing what she did.

I suspect that I had experienced abandonment as in "being left", in the years before my mother's death when I was 5. Before that I had lived in one place, and I had also frequently stayed with an aunt during my mother's pregnancy with my brother. We also lived in the same house as that aunt's mother in law. So when the four of us moved to a new house, I must have felt abandoned by my aunt's mother in law. I remember she was a kind woman.

What I remember of my mother's death is very little. I think that I must have waited for ages for her to come and collect me, before the nuns gave up and sent me home alone. I can only imagine a 5 year old having to take two busese and that she must have been afraid, because those big red buses still loom so much taller than me in my memory. And I can clearly see standing in a dark garden holding my brother's hand, while adults rushed around us.

I do not remember being taken to my father's parents later that night. I do remember that I was a bridesmaid at my Aunt Tricia's wedding (that took place 2 days later after my mother's death - because it was too late and too expensive to cancel - I can't imagine how awful it must have been for Tricia and Bill getting married. And I remember that there was a balcony that ran around the whole hall, which I ran up and down the stairs and around and down again, tearing the netted hem of the dress.

I do not remember that my brother was sent away to stay with my grandparents in Ireland. (We each learned this only a few years ago that he was sent to Ireland for between 12 and 18 months.) I must have felt very lonely and I had to go to a new school, where I knew no one. When he finally returned, he spoke with a thick Irish Cork accent and I would translate for him.

I do remember the click of the grandfather's clock, I remember we didn't have bathroom, just a toilet. I remember baths in a tin one in front of the fire every Saturday. I remember listening for my father's footsteps (he took up tennis with ferocity after his wife's death) when he returned each night from the club a few doors away from my grandparent's home. I remember my brother and I sliding on the lino floor in the bedroom he shared with Dad. I remember sleeping in the middle under the sheets in the bed I shared with my Aunt Jacqueline and remember frequent nightmares.

I can't remember how old I was, but I remember that my father had gone to the North of England for a meeting and that the train he was due to take back crashed. Many people were killed. I remember there was a lot of fear at home, because we had no phone and therefore no news. Just sitting, waiting and waiting.

When I was 9, my father remarried. More abandonment. Another home left, where at least I had felt safe. I cannot say I always felt wanted. My father was my grandmother's favourite child and I was a "competitor", and she made it clear that looking after my brother and me was more a duty, than something she wanted.

As I write this, I am feeling abandoned totally. I can't reach my boyfriend. My phone; which we share; and which the answer machine worked when I called it earlier today and left a message, is no longer on.

Panic attack immediately. How to describe a panic attack to someone's who's never experienced one. And I am sure they are different for each of us that have them. Mine feels like my whole body will simply fly into different directions and completely fall apart, my blood pressure increases, my forebodings grow by the minute, my imagination goes into over drive. My boyfriend is dead, my boyfriend has had an accident, my boyfriend is missing, my boyfriend has left me - he has abandoned me. And it is the last that is the strongest and most difficult feeling to deal with.

Last year, my brother for all but 15 months of my life and I had a bad argument via email. Stupid. It's not that I haven't learned in business, be careful what you write. Once written, hard to retract. Mean and nasty words were shared, his as bad as my own. I have tried to make peace twice now, but no, he will not cross back over the line and I know that nothing between us will be the same. More abandonment. But he isn't the brother of my childhood, nor the brother who visited me each June when I moved to LA.

I have no influence over his opinion. I only have any influence over what I should do and how I feel. My immediate response, it's fine, let it be. But still abandonment.

I have had a very successful career, and became one of the leading executives in the music industry. Now that I am over 70, I would like to return to the country, where I was born. I leave for the UK on February 11th

Now a friend of many years has died. He had a fear of dying alone, and I promised him that I would never let that happen, but I left for the UK on Thursday 17, and he was admitted to emergency on the 19th and died in the early hours of the 20th. He would have been 57 in April.

How Do You Mend A Broken Heart? Including Becky

A long time ago in a far away place lived two children One girl, the eldest and one boy born 15 months later.
They had each other. They played,they romped, they tumbled, they fell and always they laughed, happy in each others company. She had a little red metal car with pedals, and he was welcomed as a passenger. And probably at some point he passed the test, and was able to drive her.
When they went to Ireland to stay with their mother's parents who had a small farm in a small village in County Cork, named Liscarroll. They ran and ran through green fields and ate food cooked on a stove that was heated with wood. They ate porridge and chickens that their grandparents kept for that reason, and for the eggs the children ate too. They played cowboys and indians with their cousin Tony, who lived with their Irish grandparents, and one time their mother came too.
They went riding with aunts and uncles on big big farm horses,they went to church every Sunday morning. They just had a great time and when they were a little older would attend school for a few weeks, before returning to England. Their mother took them on one visit, but their father couldn't go with them as he had to work - he was a very talented mechanical engineer (and went on to develope the fuel injection system fir the diesel engine.
Their parents loved each other very deeply; and had fought both their families to be with each; because in those years of the 40s and the 50s people had a strange habit called prejudice.
And sadly still, in 2011, that strange habit exists. It's easy to understand why you wouldn't like another person because they did mean or hateful things. But not easy to understand why someone should dislike another because they had a different colour skins, or worshipped in a church, or a synagogue or a mosgue. Or why someone should go to war
bealthough were not always that gentle with each othter, the Dad having a tendancy to tease his beloved wife a little too much. Not meaning to be cruel
H

My mother committed suicide when I was 5 and I can remember David and I holding hands in the garden as adults and police milled around us.

Eventually Dad took David and to Nan and Grandpa Munday's where he told her mother to look after us, as he was going to join Doreen/Deirdre.

David was sent to our Irish Grandparents

I had a childhood of physical, mental and sexual abuse.

I was good enough to go to art college, but my step-mother wouldn't let me, and Dad wouldn't stand up to her.

She left him.

He completely fell about.

This was a woman who had hurled Danielle across the room.

Chris decided he needed a break.I came home to cook Sunday lunch, but Dad would not listen to me and after lunch went to sleep.

I took his sleeping pills and if it hadn't been for Debbie, I would have died.

I was taken to hospital.

June dared to visit me, but I refused to see her.

Uncle Bill picked me up from hospital.

The hospital had told Dad that I could deal with my job, the house, the children but I couldn't cope with his pain.

They asked him to stop talking to me about this.

As soon as Dad had picked me up, he started on the same subject again.

I called my close friend Maris, and her mother picked me up.

And she wouldn't let Dad talk to me. She told him that I had had enough.

Nan Munday moved into my room so that there was some propriety with your mother living there.

So when I did eventually come home, I only had a sofa to sleep on.

With the help of Maris' mother, Dad was awarded custody of Danielle.

I know for certain that my step-sister, Debbie loves me very much.

And I have many friends that really love and care about me.

I have helped many people.

Without the kind of help you got I rose almost to the top if not quite the top of the music business.

Not that I am detracting from what you have done, which is amazing and I am very proud of you.

I no longer care whether I speak to David and either of his children again.

I gave them everything I had and I ended up homeless living in one room

From the beginning I started a strong career (in spite of the fact that I have PTSD, depression and acute anxiety disorder) in the music business working for a man, Robert Wise who put no boundaries on what I could do.

I became one of the most prominent women in what was then very chauvinistic music business.

I have worked for other interesting enterprise after the music business, including being asked by the owners of Portmeirion whether I would consider representing them in America.  But i knew nothing about that market.

I am deeply sad that Becky will not even consider forgiving me.

I have absolutely no idea what I did or said.  And I will repay her money.

I gave Sami and Vanessa everything.

I sat with David through hours and days of chemotherapy. I think three or six moths.

There is absolutely no way that he would have got custody of his two daughters without some help from Allan, and a great deal of help from Tom and me.

I sold a home I loved and I am fortunate that the music business helped me.

I have the love of all but one of my Irish cousins.

And it was great to hear from Jacqueline.

But Becky has devastated me.

Homage to Allan Rinde

It was my very first day at Chrysalis LA. Sitting enjoying a patio with humming birds and plants, I waited for my first appointment.

Artie Wayne arrived, and with him Allan Rinde.

Artie I had met at a year before at Midem, and had a cassette of some of his songs, one of which I was convinced was a hit. I also subsequently introduced him to my successor at Chrysalis Music UK, Chris Stone (where is he now?) and he had also invested in Artie's music.

Linda Kendricks, a great singer (also the pregnant woman in original Hair) with stunning blue eyes and a bit crazy, who I'd met when she was back singer to either or perhaps both, Kiki and Elton. We needed a song, as Private Stock was interested in signing her and came up with money for a single. Pete Gage produced, and we used one of Artie's songs, which title will not escape my memory. After recording it, seemed something was missing, so a bridge was added.

Now you'd think after learning a bit about copyright at Music Sales (and with the help of the really learned Bernard Brown of Apple who helped me when I was gen. man. of Elton's and Bernie's pub. cos), I would have known better.

However, I had had both the imprudence and the impudence to suggest a bridge in the first place.

Now I had a very irate Artie sitting in my new office angry that I had descrated the song he wrote for his grandmother. I was totally horrified that I had upset him so much. Not, as I learned later; and Artie can write about it better than me; quite the reaction Artie was looking for.

Coincidentally, that same evening I was to have dinner with Ten Years After's Ric Lee (another good man), and can't remember whether Allan had invited me or Ric had.

Anyway, a lifelong friendship, which I cherish continues to this day from an inauspicious start.

Allan introduced Blondie to Chrysalis, although to the best of my knowledge, he has never been given credit for this.

Allan has rescued me so many times. In the beginning from my heart break over a major crush on a worthless man, who didn't like the way I cleaned the faucets and who also took me to Joshua Tree, where he simply ignored me. The end. Although I still have a two toned pink scarf bought from BoJangles in Palm Springs, and I did have fun driving my bmw at 100 mph along the desert roads.

Allan's knowledge of music is all encompassing and I owe meeting many interesting people, including Kenny Schaeffer (for the second time, the first was at Joshua Tree, where he also ignored me, however, he had a beautiful brunette model with him) and Michael Ochs, another man with a keen sense of humor, particularly about underwater bars with mermaids.

Allan's and Richard Kimble's Laurel Canyon house became my hang out. They made me laugh so much, as they did again when I visited Richard's and his wife, Patti's house in Palm Springs in 2008. They really should collaborate on a book.

When Allan was designing Genghis Cohen, I was frequently invited for dinners with Chinese chefs he auditioned and that was great fun. I miss him being near.

When David's family problems overtook my life, Allan was there for me so many times