Life and Death

“I am not going to miss you.”

Been thinking about those words quite a bit lately but maybe not for the reasons you might think. You can blame Glen Campbell.

Can’t say I was ever the biggest fan but there are a few of his songs that have always enjoyed listening to. Wichita Lineman, Rhinestone Cowboy and Southern Nights comes to mind, but it is his most recent release that is just tearing me up a bit.

He has Alzheimers and he is well aware that his time is limited.

“I’m still here, but yet I’m gone
I don’t play guitar or sing my songs
They never defined who I am
The man that loves you ’til the end

You’re the last person I will love
You’re the last face I will recall
And best of all, I’m not gonna miss you
Not gonna miss you”
I’m Not Gonna Miss You- Glen Campbell

The brutal honesty and awareness here just kills me, I suppose because I fear very few things but this is one of them.

The idea of losing faculties and not recognizing family and friends bothers me more than I can say.

I don’t think about it much, if ever. It is not a disease that my family has a lot of experience with but I have seen my great grandparents slip into dementia and there were a couple of longer hospital stays that impacted one of my grandfathers.

That gave me more insight into what it could be like than I wanted.

“I’m never gonna hold you like I did
Or say I love you to the kids
You’re never gonna see it in my eyes
It’s not gonna hurt me when you cry

I’m never gonna know what you go through
All the things I say or do
All the hurt and all the pain
One thing selfishly remains

I’m not gonna miss you
I’m not gonna miss you”

But if you asked me to define why it bothers me I would say ever since ‘D’s final battle with the brain tumor I have thought about it on and off.

That is because there was a moment in time when the tumor cut off his ability to have real conversations and I never got to tell him what I really thought and felt. Never got to tell him that he didn’t have to carry the load by himself and that his friends loved him enough to try and help shoulder some of it.

He might have told me to stick it and said it was his own battle but I would have told him to go fuck himself and given him a big hug. I would have let him know that I would walk with him right up to the edge of the damn cornfield.

If you ask me if he knew this I would say yes. I don’t doubt it but some times you need to hear the words from that other person. Sometimes you need to say it.

Hell, this moment is one of those reasons I miss the guy because it would have made an interesting conversation.

****

Anyhoo, when I think about that song I can’t help but put myself in Campbell’s shoes. It has to be terrible to know that your mind is slipping away and that it is likely that one day you won’t recognize the most important people in your life.

I hope that my family never has to go through it. I hope that we never face a moment where I don’t recognize their face and they don’t recognize mine.

How Do You Say Goodbye?

I am not a big fan of saying goodbye, never have been. Most of the time I say  “see you later” or “so long.”

If I say “Goodbye” it is usually in the context of ‘I am done and this is over.’

Can’t say that is how it is every time because it is not, but it does go like that. Kind of funny to write about it because there are people who think I can’t say goodbye but that is not true.

It has happened more than once and it probably will happen many more times in my life. When I am truly done with you, I am done.

*****

When you know as many people as I have who have died from terminal illnesses it is hard not to think about saying goodbye. Hard not to think about what you would do in their shoes.

I never want to find out but if I was forced to learn I am not certain if I would want a chance to sit and have a last conversation(s) with many people.

I suspect there would be a small number who I would want to see and the rest, well…

Quick and painless would probably be my choice and my request but we don’t get much say in that matter now do we.

*****

A final comment to share here.

It is important to me to shine a light on the shadows inside my head and see what lies under the dust. Sometimes I like thinking about the hard stuff so that I can communicate my wishes to those who are likely to be here when I am gone.

If my gut is right that won’t happen for another 90 years or so, but it could happen tomorrow so it is worth thinking about.

Shit happens and people get surprised so I might as well do the best I can to live fully.

What about you?

How do you say goodbye?

Almost midnight and I can’t sleep because thoughts are flying through my mind. I have this image of witches flying around in circles at some sort of witch jamboree.

My mind is noisy and I am fighting to find my center, to quiet the screaming of the jet engines inside that destroy tranquility. The internal editor is screaming too, arms flailing around because he can’t find the words.

But I know the source of his gesticulating is fear that the words I place here won’t have a flow or rhythm to him. That fucking madman is far too self conscious and while he worries about his image I am pushing ahead because what powers my posts is momentum and if I don’t keep moving inertia will kill my panache and the machine that powers these fingertips will cease to work.

“I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman

It would be false to say fear doesn’t push me to keep moving but it would also be false to say it is the sole motivator.

If I were given the opportunity to speak with my good friend Mr. Whitman I would pepper him with questions about his work. I want to know how he found his barbaric yawp and what moved him to sound it.

I think about these things more often than I once did. Maybe it is because I can hear the tick-tock of the clock. My gut always tells me my time on the earth is far from done. I’ll see many more sunrises and sunsets but that never eases the feeling that I need to run harder than I am or I won’t get it all done.

It frustrates me to feel this way because it conflicts with my desire to be present in the moments. If we spend our days running like hamsters on a wheel it becomes more challenging to enjoy what is happening now and that conflict is a battle I fight each day.

Time isn’t unlimited but then again my daughter will be ten once and I won’t ignore that. Can’t ignore that. I will do my best to be a part of it all and to savor the time as I have it now.

But if I spoke with Walt today I would tell him about the things I feel in my gut, the stuff I know based upon the tickle in my mind and not based upon science or education. I would ask him about how to write about these things, how to take what I see internally and produce it externally.

This is what I am meant to do. I am meant to write. I am meant to take words and find ways to turn them into stories.

Meant To Do Meets The Bills

If you ask me to introduce you to the things I fear I could do so. I could share the list and tell you about the sick feeling that sometimes accompanies a few of them.

Today the one that bothers me the most is trying to find the way to do what I am meant to do and still pay my bills. It is the concern about how to turn the words that flow from the fingertips into a stream of income that makes it easy to support my family.

It is following that yellow brick road into the Emerald City and not allowing the fact that the wizard is a man to stop me from following those dreams. We all have our regrets and I can’t stomach the idea of being beaten by flying monkeys. In the past I might have tried to figure it out on my own.

A lack of trust or faith might have kept me from finding my own scarecrow, lion and tin man to help me but not anymore. These days I have learned to ask for help and to trust I’ll get it.

What Will My Verse Be?

Remember that internal editor I mentioned above?

He is the one who worries about whether you’ll read these words and consider them pathetic, ridiculous and or embarrassing. I believe he is the one who is holding me back. He is the one who sets limits upon what I can or cannot do.

Today I remind myself again of the need to kick his ass and for dad to sound his own barbaric yawp.

If I buy into the lines Robin Williams shared in Dead Poets Society (and I do) than I have to keep pushing ahead and do my best to contribute my verse. I have some ideas about what I want it to be but I suspect my friend Walt would say we won’t know until I am gone.

And now that I have placed these words upon paper the noise inside my head is silent and I am ready to shut my eyes and seek slumber. In the morning I’ll set off on my journey again and do my best to sound and follow my yawp, It is what good father’s do.

John Keating: We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”- Dead Poets Society

The one thing in blogging I have always been good at is pouring all I have inside into the posts I write. It is not something I do every time because it is not needed nor necessary but upon occasion…

I need to do it here. I need to just unload and unleash but I am almost beyond anger so putting words to the page feels…hollow. But I intend to try and then we shall see if I hit publish or if I delete it all.

Delete it all.

Sounds nice. Sounds like a modern way to bleach away bad memories but bad memories and I don’t just let go of each other. In part it is because scars are a writer’s best friend and because I can’t rid myself of the bad without destroying the good.

The good is far too important to lose and the bad, well it helps me understand just how lucky and fortunate I have been.

Unleash Your Rage And Write!

My cousin died. It happened a few days ago and I have been sitting on it, thinking about it and trying to process it all.

It wasn’t unexpected or surprising. She had been battling cancer for a long while. I never saw nor asked for medical reports but I know it was part of the same family as the one that took ‘D’.

Seven years ago when I heard the news about what she had I felt ill because I felt like I knew this disease. I knew that ‘D’ had the best medical care and that hadn’t been enough to prevent that bastard with the scythe from slipping past all of his defenses.

I felt guilty thinking that so I kept it to myself and never said a word. I figured that with some luck and advances in medicine my cousin my beat it.

She lived longer than ‘D’ which is to say that even though she had a good life it was still cut short far too soon.  I can’t say we were particularly close. She was 12 years younger than I am and lived in a different state. I remember her best as a little girl but I knew the woman she grew up to be too.

Death took her just a few days after ‘D’s birthday and several weeks before the anniversary of his death. It is sixteen years since we buried him but I can still feel the shovel in my hands and the sweat in my eyes.

Do not go gentle into that good night

I keep hearing excerpts of that Dylan Thomas poem in my head.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

When I close my eyes I hear the voice and I nod my head. I promised myself the day we buried ‘D’ that I would be the guy who raged against the light. I swore I wouldn’t go silently into the darkness.

Some people give in to things that feel hard or impossible but I have never been good at that. Life has been challenging again, transition time has reappeared and I feel like I am walking through lava while battling a 100 enemies who never rest.

The damn dogs of war have been unleashed and there is no one I can rely on to get me through this besides me. Frodo had Sam, a dwarf, elf and a freaking wizard but not me.

I just have rage and fury and a desire to kick some of the pretentious and self righteous fucks of the blogosphere in their hypocritical cabooses.

Remember that quote I shared in Star Trek & Parenting, the one about not knowing what to do, just knowing what I can do? Well that is how I am handling things.

I am looking for my Spock but doing my damnedest to keep moving forward because inertia kills people.

Don’t ask me to explain why things happen or if we should believe in miracles because right now I don’t have time for it.

Right now I am making my list of good things and trying to wrap myself in gratitude.  My children need to see that our attitudes have an impact upon how we go about things.

They need to see we spend more time being thankful about what we have and less being bitter about what we don’t have.

Live Another Day

I don’t know what happens when we die. I don’t fear death. That bag of bones knows if she shows up before I am ready I will put a boot in his bony ass.

My grandfathers used to laugh when I told them I would fool the Angel of Death by smearing lamb’s blood on the door or alternatively clip his wings,  ten year-old boys can say shit like that.

What I know for certain is I have something my cousin and ‘D’ don’t–one more day. Hopefully it is far more than just one more day.

I am the one who is writing about August memories. I am the one whose life took a detour so that I would be prepared to wait for the click and then act upon it.

This is who I am.

The hard part about all of this is trying to find an appropriate way to teach my children about it all. I want them to appreciate how very short life can be but I don’t want to scare them.

I want them to understand why I promised to rage against the dying of the light and what that means. They are far too young to understand the craziness that comes with being a parent. Too young to appreciate how parents subjugate dreams to make them come true for their kids.

One day we’ll talk about that but not until they are much older. I don’t think they’d get it now and it would turn into some massive guilt trip.

That is not what I want. I knew before I became a dad that this would be part of the package and I am good with it. Doesn’t mean I have forgotten about my dreams, just that I have adjusted how I chase some of them.

What I See

It is well past midnight so I can’t tell you much more. I can say that I have followed my heart and held true to my advice, writing should scare you.

I can tell you that even though I sit at a desk in Los  Angeles I see myself driving back into Texas and walking the streets of Jerusalem.

Somewhere out there my cousin lies in a box and I only wish that I would do more for the rest of the family to help heal broken hearts.

I can’t do much  more than offer a shoulder to cry on, arms to hug them with and a few words.

But what I can do in my life is to continue to rage against the dying of the light and appreciate that the sun still shines in the middle of my sky.

And that is how I will honor their memories, by taking advantage of opportunities and doing my best to suck the marrow out of life.

If you ask me when I first realized that my father was human and not superman it would probably be tied into when dad had a major heart attack and ended up on life support.

You tend not to forget a week spent  sitting at the bedside of an unconscious man praying he wouldn’t die.

But kids of all ages don’t always recognize the moments when their parents are truly vulnerable. Sometimes it just goes over our heads or sometimes we misread a moment.

When my daughter asked Why Is Daddy Crying there were no real tears upon my face.

It took me years before I realized that I had seen my father on the verge of collapse and that it happened years before his heart attack. Don’t ask me why I was so thick headed or slow to recognize it. Truth is it probably doesn’t matter to anyone but me.

What We See

I often think about my dad’s little brother and feel badly that I didn’t get as much time to get to know him as I would have liked to.

He was my father’s only sibling and even though they had many similarities they were very different. Some of it was for obvious reasons.

My uncle was a gay man who didn’t have any children. He grew up in Los Angeles and moved to San Francisco in the early 70s. We visited him often and it wasn’t unusual for him to come down to see us in LA but no one ever talked about his sexuality.

I am not suggesting they should have any more then they should have talked about my father’s. It had no bearing on our love for my uncle.

But I mention it now because of the timing because when I was a kid we used words that are considered gay slurs now without any sense of whether they might hurt or offend someone.

That was a time when it was much harder for gay people to be open than it is now or at least I think it was. I haven’t discussed it with anyone who is gay who lived as an adult through then and now so all I can offer is my perspective and what I remember.

I remember being surprised when my little sister asked him if he was gay and how he laughed and said yes. I remember it making sense but being confused because I didn’t know how to feel.

Sometimes I look back on things I have written about that moment and try to figure out how accurate they are. Sometimes I think about what happened when we found out he was HIV positive and I try to remember exactly how I felt.

The words I wrote only catch part of those moments and I wonder if I left out something important, something critical, something significant that would help.

But I don’t know that I did or if I didn’t. I just know I tried my best to capture it in text and that it is part of how I realized I missed a moment for my father.

When Fathers Become Human

I sure as hell remember getting the call about my uncle dying. I remember telling my grandfather and how he began to cry.

Grandpa was tough as nails. He was a streetwise man who had been a salesman, a pool shark and more but he was a father who had lost a son and that was all it took to make the tears stream down his face.

My father was stoic in front of me. I didn’t think anything of it because it was how he had always been. The men in the family tend not to be big criers.

Mom and dad drove with my youngest sisters to San Francisco but I couldn’t take that much time off of work so I put a day in at the office and flew up.

Two days later my dad and I rented a truck and the family assembled at my uncle’s cottage and started to pack up his things.

That was when I missed the moment.

I can’t remember how long we had been working on putting things into boxes or loading them into the truck when my father pulled me aside and said he needed me to make sure the truck was loaded properly because he couldn’t do it.

He disappeared and I didn’t think twice about it.

I figured it was hard for him and kept myself busy loading things.

But when I think back now I remember how his voice cracked once and how he didn’t look me in the eyes.

Twenty years ago I missed the moment. I should have at least asked him if we was ok, offered to let him lean on me a bit. I don’t think he would have because twenty years ago he would have seen me as a kid.

I expect when my kids are 25 I’ll have a similar feeling.

We can’t go back in time so I can’t change any of that and I am confident my father wasn’t hurt or upset about it because he wouldn’t have held back from telling me so.

But I still wish I had said something but more than anything I wish my uncle was here now.

He was only 49. In many ways he lived a very full life but he missed so much and by not having him around so did we.