“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But they never realized just how fragile life is or how very short it can be.
They say “The hottest love has the coldest end.” Now in my opinion and throughout my 6-decades of life that is painfully closer to the truth.
They say “The eyes are the window to the soul.” Yes. This entire week my eyes have been swollen with tears bearing open my ripped and bleeding soul.
It is sometimes said by them “It’s a broken heart when you’ve lost a soul mate,” but that’s only part of it. I hurt in my whole body, to the marrow.
But enough of what they say.
On Thursday, June 29, 2023, my lovely Hat Burglar boxed up and shipped my fourth or fifth package of what she always called “Surprizzles.” If I made a list for you of everything she has shipped to me from Georgia, USA, I’d have a 3- to 4,000 word post. So suffice it to say that she lives and loves to make people’s lives a little easier and a lot happier. And she is the Queen B at it. She is just as gifted in calming you, making you burst out in laughter, while simultaneously sorting out the berserko chicken-pen with chickens running amok with heads lopped off. She rightly earned the title of “Supreme Chaos Manager.” It is sheer black or white magic, a sight to behold actually, to watch what she can make happen; the consummate Doer! And with that my Doer did and with no delay, my box of Surprizzles was on the way …to my door.
But I want to jump back to and ahead in this story.
In the United States we have a non-existent FTC that is supposed to protect individual American consumers and phone users from insane amounts of telemarketing sales calls, AI spam callers, and other invasive businesses blowing up your phone’s call-log and voicemail capacity. A few wireless carriers offer a very basic spam-protection feature and/or app, but they too are near useless. I hate this infuriating marketing with an intense bitterness and our nation’s defunct economic model these wireless phone-cancers feed off and breed from: Free-enterprise or Hyper-capitalism. My fury is boiling just below atomic eruption when one listen’s to my cell phone voicemail greeting aimed at all telemarketers and AI spam-dialers.
Growling, my attempts to waste as much of their time as they would mine with my 2-3 minute greeting-of-torture, are not as effective as I had hoped for several reasons. One thing that is recognizable in my tone and attitude to this American AI plague is my enormous growing aversion and maddening for all-things-technology and their blatant abuse by sales and marketing departments upon my precious time. I mean, I’m ready to push the red-button labelled “Never Push This Button.”
Unknown to me, my lovely Hat Burglar often called my cell just to listen to my polite rage, or in her message to poke me with the proverbial stick inciting her grumpy grandpa (me) and make me either more grumpy or tolerably grumpy, just for her own amusement and entertainment-fix. Here are a few of her voicemails I will treasure for the rest of my life:
April 8th, 2023:
May 16th, 2023:
May 23rd, 2023 with her son Jay calling me:
June 29th, 2023 – her latest, and last VM to me:
∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼
In the late morning of July 2nd, 2023, between 10:31am CDT, my time, and 1:40pm my time, my Soul Mate and Twin Flame, my Hat Burglar, who I’ve written about so affectionately since May 11th and she wrote about me/us June 6th, died suddenly of a severe heart-attack. Her husband tried to revive her several times with CPR, but the attack/seizure was simply too harsh and too swift. She was 47-years young. I don’t want to let her go…
Her box of Surprizzles arrived, wanted and unwanted, three days later on Wednesday, July 5th, 2023. It had her typical flashy, Gothic, dark stickers smacked everywhere on the box. One sticker was the Jolly-Roger skull and crossed bones. It said on it in large pirate-script: Poison! I knew inside there were specially baked chocolate-chunk cookies (lots of them!) along with my various surprise items of shock-n-awe and/or uncontrollable laughter. In this reaction Jodi never failed; she was undefeated against me at 8 — 0. But her box sat there in a living room chair all morning, all afternoon, and into the evening. I could not muster the courage to open what should’ve been a sensational Cloud-9, Made-my-day moment… that instead would make all the life-long memories very different than intended.
Around six or seven PM, I don’t remember exactly, with Mom nearby I opened the box. There were eight to ten containers of big cookies, a book she knew I would love reading (she was spot-on, 10x better than Robin Hood’s second arrow through his first arrow), and then the real kicker; another envelope with her handwriting.
Out of all the surprizzles she included in this, her last shipment to me, this one in particular item/envelope evoked the most intense mixed emotions I have experienced in my life to-date. Forgive me, but to fully understand its profound euphoric and devastating impact on me, it requires some past context.
One afternoon in June when I was out running errands she called my cell. I always have the car stereo semi-blasting (not), playing my many favorite songs from several genres. This one time she called me while driving—then I pulled over of course for public safety reasons—and after 3-4 rings and her call almost ready to go to my voicemail greeting, I caught her just in time! However, I had not had a chance to mute/turn-off my loud music. Hence, she immediately heard this song (we both love) blaring on my stereo CD’s. Try to listen to its entirety and lyrics:
My Hat Burglar has or had an exquisite talent for imagining, creating, and manifesting serendipitous, life-long moments and memories for everyone around her, especially those she adored and loved most. For example, my heart-wrenching, gut-punch special envelope with cinematic directorship of exactly how we would part after finally meeting in person after a long, trouble-making, breathtaking weekend with sore face-cheeks from too much smiling, on top of sore ribs from laughing non-stop, she included this:
“They say crying makes the heart lighter.”
If that is true, then my heart is weightless; it is gone missing… with her. The rest of this earth-shattering, upside down, euphorically crushing, unfair life, for me, will NEVER be the same until my last breath. This painful emptiness, why? How?
— Photos below of Jodi, my Hat Burglar, added July 12, 2023 —
The Professor’s Convatorium © 2023 by Professor Taboo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
The Professor's Convatorium 
I CANNOT mark this post with a “like” but know that I read it and weep with you. So very sorry.
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Perfectly understandable Nan. Just your words, your sincere heart-felt sentiment, means a TON to me right now!!! Thank you a 100x Madame. 🖤
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Too terrible my friend.
I echo Nan’s comment.
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Thank you my all-time favorite footballing Mate—out of one 😉 —even for this. These are the things, the times that just cannot make any sense to any empathetic, freely-love-giving, most beautiful female creature put on this pseudo-ordered, yet diametrical planet of life… and those she touched and changed. It makes absolutely NO EFFIN SENSE to me!!!! 😔 If there was ANY-F*CKIN-THING this planet needed badly and was in very short supply of…
it was her. Period. Stop. (throw tha damn mic)
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I liked the post for the intensity of emotion. I used to have Irish Wolfhounds and they have incredibly short lives, only 6 to 8 years. But those are six to eight years when one is graced by such a magnificent presence, it outdoes whole lifetimes of other presences. Sometimes that’s the price, you have something so incredibly special it ends.
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Thank you Pink. There are a (rare?) few in our lifetimes who easily lure that emotional intensity out of us, am I right? It’s the even fewer of those few where the luring, the animating, the pumping in and fire-hosing out of us willing victims… that in my experience are the precious few you always want close, nearby, and foolishly try to resist and keep at safe distance when it suites you. The latter defense is more harmful than you’d expect—I assure you.
Irish Wolfhounds, huh? She would LOVE those energized canines to death! They just got a black Schnauzer puppy in April that is just a terrorist of all things chewable or bouncy. The videos she sent me of “Dante,” yes, in reference to inferno, the Schnauzer with no off-switch until he literally collapses, are freakin’ hilarious! Similar case and point below:
Yes! I’ve seen Dante do that, make staircases look like a disaster zone, and when exhausted but in need of walking, Jodi and hubby Phoenix showed me a 12-15 second video of them dragging him with all four legs/paws spread, literally… and refusing to walk. They later said to everyone, “Sorry, we must take Dante out for a drag.” 😂
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Wow. Just wow. I loved hearing Jodi’s voice as i never got a chance to actually talk to her. It was always chatting to her via the stream or discord. And just as i was about to give her my number this horrible event happened. Her laugh is infectious and I love it.
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It is absolutely infectious! It’s a huge reason why she moved, touched, and changed SO MANY others around her, particularly “her/our Tribe, her/our People” like you, Phoenix, Shenanigans, myself, and far too many others in our community to list. To say she’ll be sorely missed is the understatement of the decade, probably the century. 💔🖤
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My deepest condolences.
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Thank you SAQ. 🖤 I can’t make heads or tails about it, but it was TRULY, hands-down, the BEST 3-months of my life.
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Oh Prof!!! I was reading, listening to her voicemails with amusement, and then … it was like a gut punch to learn of her death, so I can only imagine what it was like for you. I am so sorry you have lost your Hat Burglar, your Soul Mate, your Twin Flame … and in these times when you need her most. I have no words, but know that my heart is with you, that I actually shed a tear or two even though I never knew her. Hugs, my friend.
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Thank you Jill. 🖤 I assure you, your “tear or two” is shed along with countless others Jodi touched, loved, inspired, and made giggle/laugh like small children. She did that to those closest to her with ease, El Naturale. I was astounded, to put it mildly. 💔
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I wish I had known her … just listening to the audio of her voice messages made me giggle!
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Pewce, man.
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Peace, man.
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Thank you rawgod. 🖤 That “peace” will elude me for some time, but talking about her in the present-tense, remembering fondly how much she changed my life for the BEST… I’m finding therapeutic, healing, and does so for the many, many others she grabbed, growled at, and hugged. 😉
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Some people are full of love, and willing to give it to everyone they meet. In the one brief exchange I had with her on your post, that love came through. The thing is, and I don’t care who says it, she is still in your heart, there for as long as you will want her to be there. No one can take her away.
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Yes, always till my last breath.
Back in late April, maybe early June, one of many Surprizzles she sent me—knowing I love everything Victorian-Edwardian, Steampunk—she included one of those men’s vest-watch where the glass cover opens up. Do you know what I mean? I’ll include a pic of it below. Inside the watch case was ancient Viking-Nordic script, an Ankh, and a lock of her hair. This keepsake I now wear around my neck every single day—it will stay there until 2083, if I live that long. So yes, she remains in my heart as well as on top of it. 😉 🖤
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Nice watch. Nice gift. Precious memory.
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Poignant and heartfelt. Your loss and affection stands like a beacon on the page.
And a soaring golden tribute to someone who had a bright vest for life, and I’m reckoning the world will be a measure poorer for her not being around.
My coalescences to you and by association her family.
Although, truly words sometimes don’t just cover it.
Take care.
Roger
UK
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Many thanks Roger. 🖤 Yes, “the world will be a measure poorer for her not being around” is a certainty. She and I talked every single day, afternoon, and night starting with either her “Good Mourning, Love” text message or mine to her, “Good Moanin’ Lovely Tigger!” because she loved to ‘tackle’ me and a few others, metaphorically or in-person, like this:
https://gifdb.com/gif/tigger-tackle-winnie-the-pooh-d6gyi3ijoxvvgb9x.html
It’s very hard for me to think how I will be better off in this life without her. 😔
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This is hard, and no words from others will truly fill the gap.
We keeping on keeping on I guess.
I wish you well 🙏
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Wow, I don’t know what to say. I felt some of your pain reading this. One of my friends also had a close friend die suddenly in a similar fashion. I send you my deepest condolences, you will get through this.
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Thank you Liberated. The empty feelings will remain for a very long while; one cannot forget someone like my Hat Burglar. There’s not a minute that goes by when I don’t think about her and how deeply I miss our daily chats, texts, and talks on the phone. There were so many plans we had laid out through December, right down to the times we’d arrive and/or depart. Ugh. 😞
Many thanks in stopping by and your kind sentiments. ❤️
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!@#$%^&*() Sorry for the swearing but I stopped by to thank you for the like and you gut punch me putting me on the floor in a fetal position. I thankfully cannot begin to comprehend your pain. Please excuse my intrusive contribution to your stream of tears.
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It’s fine ryinger77. It’s your heart-felt sentiment that counts and I thank you for that. 💜 It will be a very hard, long and lonely road ahead without my Hat Burglar. She is greatly missed by EVERYONE who knew her and she touched, inspired, and constantly made laugh to no end. 💔🖤
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Oh man, oh Prof this is jut too sad. Sorry speechless.
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It is the most painful experience I’ve ever had since my father’s suicide and how that affected my Mom, sister, my uncle (Dad’s closest brother), and most of all the MASSIVE pain on my paternal grandmother. I am so very, VERY tired of death and pain and losing people so irreplaceably close to me. 💔 Just being brutally honest Brian.
Thank you for your comment Sir. Hope all is well (better?) for you my Norwich friend. 😉
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