Lloyd Faber #4

Lloyd Faber likes to walk dockside in the early mornings. Waves lap quietly on the pier, the tinkle of halyards slap masts on the boats anchored in the harbor, a gull laughs in flight. The salty scent of low tide and engine oil flavor the air. Only a hint of a breeze. The sun rises low over Glen Cove across the Sound, and on a crisp fall day like this it lights a blaze on the calm waters and warms his face. Lloyd pulls the brim of his khaki Bernard cap down low.  

Lloyd is a tall, sinewy, weathered soul, some six decades into the merry-go-round. He wears a well-trimmed mustache, gray turning white, and his deep-set eyes give him a haunted look. Strong hands, calloused and gnarled, are scarred from close work on hot engines and sharp fittings in salty water. Every evening he irons his khaki uniform and spit shines his black oxfords for the next new day.  

He drives a launch for the club, ferrying folks back and forth to their boats. When he isn’t driving the launch, he helps man the front desk of the club’s rambling Victorian mansion, a rich multitude of rooms and stairs and niches of polished wood and bright brass and aromatic leather, finely made ship models under glass cases and jewelry grade barometers etching pressure lines on paper rolls, the bemused chuckles of the members enjoying cocktails drifting out of a cozy bar looking out over the harbor.  

Lloyd takes his job seriously. Check that. He takes his calling seriously; a minor but revealing example is that he won't sell club mementos in the display case to guests. Only to members.  

A stickler for things like that, Lloyd is, the gatekeeper to an internal code he projects on the world. Propriety first, rectitude second, and the bark to enforce both, third. If Lloyd were to allow a guest to purchase an item that might indicate membership, then brandish in public their Zippo lighter or Cross pen emblazoned with the club burgee, well, that would be false witness, no more and no less. He growls deep in his soul just thinking about it. 

Which he is doing right now, soul growling, and does, quite frankly, most of the time. But this is a dream growl, a moan really, which always drives him to these dockside walks early mornings. Lloyd again awoke in confusion; did I really see that, or was it a dream? Whose arms were waving? Who was she? If I open my eyes right now will I be in my room or...there?  

Then, tremulously, he let one lid peek out, and, as usual, he was here, not there, wherever “there” is. He toileted, he dressed, he left his clubhouse quarters, he went outside carrying a deep ache within him.  

Lloyd now watches a cat’s paw kiss the water lightly. Its ripples shape-shift into an angel, a horse, an anvil and then wisp by him, lightly ruffling his trouser cuffs, disappearing like the old illusive memory, remnants of disconnected thought, each once perhaps part of an event disassembled now, laying in an unruly scramble in his mind that he can never quite put back together. Who was she, we, it, and why can't I forget if I can’t remember? 

Son of an itinerant boat mechanic who had worked in a number of yards up and down the Atlantic seaboard, Lloyd has been around boats his whole life. He has scraped barnacles off boat hulls on hot summer days, some of the dirtiest work around if not down in the bilges deep in oily water fixing a pump or repacking the stuffing box around an old driveshaft. His father, Lloyd Sr., had taught him the trade and he had learned it well. The two had lived in an old Airstream, hooked up in whatever yard was employing them. Theirs had been a gypsy life, off the grid mostly, paid in cash and barter. 

Lloyd never knew his mother. She had died birthing him, Sr. told him, but not to worry about it. It wasn’t your fault, said Sr. over and over. What did she look like and who was she, Pa? She was an angel who came from the sun and swept me up in her wings and gave me you and then flew away. And that was as far as Sr. would go with it.  

Sr. didn’t talk about the past. He didn’t talk about the future. In fact, he didn’t talk much at all. Sr. had been quiet, an old father, 45 when Lloyd was born. He had kept Lloyd close, and others had stayed away. The path from their Airstream to the day’s repair and back had been their journey. Those who had employed the two over the years learned quickly that “the Lloyds” did their work well, and they wanted to be left alone. Lloyd had learned the ways of silence. 

They had followed the seasons up and down the coast, and their reputation gave them steady work. In the Airstream after a day’s work, they followed a routine. Sr. cooked, Lloyd cleaned up. They discussed the technical details of the job. They watched movies on DVD. They read old trade magazines discarded by the yard’s sales office. They kept life simple. 

Sr. died at 76, on the job, slipping off the deck of an old dry-docked Cheoy Lee ketch, breaking his neck on the pavement. It was quick and painless. The yard boss had been very solicitous and kind to Lloyd. He paid the crematorium costs of the funeral home and had given Lloyd his father’s ashes in a cardboard box. Lloyd had taken it back to the Airstream and stowed it in a lower cabinet.  

“And then I just drove away,” thought Lloyd, remembering the moment, more cat’s paws stirring the still water below him. And it was when the dream began. For thirty years now, at first every so often, but with greater frequency with every passing year. Several times a week now. 

The dream. He senses sadness and alarm. The sound of weeping or just its despair courses through his synapses. A dark room, he is moving, carried through this space by a force enveloping him as he passes an open door, slender arms waving inside, surrendering, and sinking into nothing. The weeping trails away, the despair remains, following him down, deeper down into a maw that disappears into flashing light, a pounding heart, an agony of fear and loss, a voice whispering, “who was she, pa, who was she, who was she, pa, who was she, who was she, pa…” until he wakes up, confused and desperately needing…what?  

Lloyd takes a few deep breaths, and the ache begins to disappear as the shadows shorten with the rising sun. He walks over to the launch and begins unsnapping its fitted canvas to get ready for his first call, three blasts of an air horn from a mooring party ready for the club grillroom’s legendary breakfast buffet. 

Emma Knotwell #3

Emma Knotwell leaned against the counter in her small kitchen, absently stirring a cup of tea she held in her hand and staring out the window at the boy cutting grass across the street. She was a slender and plain woman, tall and erect, a wan round face framed by unapologetically graying hair that fell thickly and haphazardly to her shoulders. A simple light green and brown print dress hung loosely on her spare frame, falling just below her knees. Brown ballerina flats lay near where she had kicked them off. Emma had just gotten home from work, a secretary for a local bail bondsman with offices near the county courthouse.

The late afternoon summer sunlight gleamed off the boy’s sweating torso.

Emma had never married, and her only experience with males had been a few clumsy encounters in 9^th grade. That embarrassment could still redden her face with shame, so she learned to like very much her own uncomplicated company, and she liked to read.

She was also a compulsive pack rat who could never bring herself to throw anything away. Boxes of stuff, the origins of which she had long ago forgotten, lay stacked on tables, the floor, and along all the halls in her house. She skillfully navigated increasingly narrow spaces as time wore on.

Nobody really knew her, other than her boss, Bucky Best Bail Bonds, and a train of unsavory clients of Bucky’s who had both benefitted from his work and rued their fate for ever having met him.

Emma had learned how to vanish, as it were, as the youngest daughter of the town fire chief. A garrulous and hail fellow to his friends and neighbors, Dick Knotwell was a taskmaster to his three daughters. He had always wanted a son, but he and his wife Mary never had one. He had tried to train his oldest daughter, Conway, to do “boy” things like playing catch, whittling, going fishing, and cutting firewood, but she never took to it. She preferred ballet.

He again tried with their second child, Dani, but she was seriously injured snow-boarding after her father had insisted she give it a try. Emma was just old enough to remember hospital visits, her mother crying and her father shouting, Dani’s homecoming, and then the ever-present wheelchair and Dani’s withering legs.

Emma had been a “mistake,” born eight years after Dani. Her father had not wanted another child, much less a girl. Growing up, Emma sensed his estrangement and kept her distance. He would not experiment with gender mechanics again; Mary had forbidden it.

By the time Emma turned teenager, both Conway and Dani had left the house for marriage and school respectively, and the Knotwell household had become quiet indeed.

Emma had been closest to Dani. Perhaps she felt a kinship between cripples, Dani by accident and herself by design? By her father? By her personality? She wasn’t sure, but Emma was as cocooned away from people as Dani was from walking. She never forgot what Dani said to her as she was packing to leave for nursing school. “Emma, honey, I can’t walk, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get to where I want to go. You can walk, but please don’t do it alone. It would be a sad journey.”

Emma watched the boy cutting rows, back and forth. She was thinking how her hair had started turning gray when she was in her 20s. She would see the odd strands in the mirror, and being very much in tune with her inner self, figured that the emerging colorlessness suited her just fine. But now she wondered why she had thought that. Today, she had found out that she very much did not want to die alone, colorless and forgotten.

Bucky had been processing some bail releases, one after another on a pile, when he stopped suddenly and muttered, “well, goddamn…” He was staring at the local paper and looked up quizzically, catching her eye.

“What?” she asked.

“Remember the Rodman case, drug rap, 20K bond that skipped?”

“What, a few months ago?”

“Yeah, that one. Dead. It was the smell.”

“The smell?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, “the smell. Buried under a pile of hubcaps in his apartment. Dead for a month, they say. Neighbors finally smelled him, called the cops.”

“Hubcaps?”

“He collected them. Hundreds of them stacked ceiling high. I’d seen them when we first bonded him. Weird, I thought, but whatever. He must have been lying under them when I was knocking at his door a few weeks ago. Didn’t smell anything then, though,” he paused. “Maybe we can get the bond back, now.”

“No friends or family?” Emma asked.

“Nobody knew him at all.”

The boy across the street finished his mowing and killed the engine. A lone fly buzzed up against Emma’s screen window. The boy used his tee shirt to wipe himself down, draped it over his shoulder, and walked into the house. Emma thought of the boxes stacked in her house as she followed the boy’s denim backside disappearing behind the front door.

John Jakes #2

This is the 1970s, lower East Side in New York City, between 1st and 2nd Avenue. Grime, abandoned cars, and ramshackle tenements blight the streets much like other parts of the city; Central Park’s hard dirt and disrepair is hazardous during the day, a war zone at night, and the South Bronx resembles Dresden in WWII. Down here, bruised and beaten Bowery drunks stagger around cars at stoplights smearing windshields with oily rags hoping for handouts.

The city closed its last opium den in the late 50s in a highly publicized raid that netted a couple of kilos of opium paste and some heroin, but this is New York City. If it exists anywhere, it exists here. And this opium den exists here on E. 1st St. because nature's original elixir, “the breath of God” that has beguiled and transfixed humans since the beginning of time will always find its place amongst the connoisseurs of a mindful, if manufactured, paradise. Especially for those with enough money and desire.

It’s dark. The few working streetlights cast dim shadows on this hot and humid night. The stench of urine from a nearby subway station thickens the stale air. Midblock, a set of stairs lead down below street level to a steel door, bolted from within. Periodically, a taxi arrives and a man -- almost always a man --gets out, descends the stairs, and knocks a code. The door opens, and he goes in.

This time the man was John Jakes. He lays adrift now on a cot inside, wearing dark Marc Jacob slacks, Ferragamo tasseled loafers, and a wrinkled Brooks Brothers ecru dress shirt, “JJ” embroidered on each cuff (he had left his Rolex at home). Jakes has been wearing these clothes since he arrived here a few days ago. Other prone figures lay on platforms surrounding the room, sucking in opium vapors from caramel dollops of kneaded goo heated just so in a clay pipe that hovers above a gas lamp. The scent of roasted hazelnuts rides the smoke. It is very quiet. Flower courtesans, beautiful Asian women, carry trays back and forth serving their customers.

Jakes is in an opium dream, a beatitude, a dizzying evanescence in its vanishing entirety, inside and outside of him, a heavy weightlessness, a blind vision, a silent hallelujah of release. He doesn’t just live for this. He is this, until he isn’t. And then he starts again.

As a young boy at the Tingley School in New Jersey, Jakes had experimented sexually with some of his mates. Not an uncommon thing for young adolescent prep school boys confused by the strange longing in their loins but still uncurious about, much less attracted, to girls. But when all his friends found that attraction, Jakes didn’t. He long wondered why, and fretted when, but it never came because he learned finally, to his great horror, that he was a “mo” in the parlance of the times, and nobody could know. His social world would not allow it. The closet beckoned, and he went in.

Even as he enlarged his inheritance as a savvy financier on Wall Street, married a wealthy socialite who gave him two boys and two girls, went to all the right parties, cultivated all the right people, and lived on an estate in the rolling hills of New Jersey horse country, he simmered with schizoid rage. You wouldn’t know it. Handsome, auburn hair combed straight back like Barrymore, impeccably dressed, and affable to a fault, those who knew him best would say he was such a sweet man, a kind man, a suave and cultured treasure at any party.

Which is why, when he would stay overnight on “business” in the city, nobody questioned it. He could stay away, be himself for a few precious hours, go to the right bars, enjoy men, and be in his chosen
demi-monde that his other life would abhor. Returning, he would pick up his old role, and start to die just a little more each day.

His wife, Barbara, spent so much time on the golf course and charity balls and bridge tournaments that she didn’t care to question her husband’s growing silences when they were alone. All the kids were either grown or in boarding school, and the two could co-exist easily in their big house for days without talking to each other. Barbara neither sought nor offered sex, and Jakes was thankful for that small favor. But in his absences she had begun meeting other people, very hush-hush, and finally had an open affair with another socially prominent divorcee that led to the ultimate breakup of their own marriage, not to mention feigned shock and dismay throughout their social world and headlines in the NY Times society pages.

Finally freed from his wife and with his kids absent, Jakes went full demi-monde, making up for lost time. He would disappear for weeks, and as he managed his own investments with the help of a private firm, no one really knew where he went or what he did. They certainly would never have imagined John Jakes lying on this cot and dreaming this dream, or that a demon roamed the same streets as John Jakes, or that the elegant and impeccably groomed John Jakes was beginning to rot from inside out.

Melody Rimes #1

You wouldn't need to see the Harley Davidson handlebar tattoo on the back of her shoulders, the handgrips angled slightly down on each scapula, to know that Melody Rimes didn't give a shit. She was a stone in skintight jeans, a black teeshirt hanging loose over bony shoulders and small breasts. Her narrow eyes and sharp nose gave her face a slight ferret quality, but it somehow worked for her. A cigarette dangled from her grim lips, and she brushed back her spiky black hair with her left hand, black enameled fingernails hiding the oily grime beneath. Melody was staring down the street. Her dark brown eyes glinted into the sun setting between the buildings, which cast into sharp relief the receding silhouette of the only man in the world who could talk to her "like that."

Melody Rimes had long ago learned how not to give a shit. Raised on the wrong side of the tracks, of which there were many in the coal town of Sprague, West Virginia, she often slipped away from her family after an early and mean supper to sneak up the hill and beg for handouts from the "rich folk" enjoying their lawn parties and cookouts on The Heights. Melody didn't give a shit because she was hungry. Raymond, her father, was a disabled coal miner and her mother, Betty Lu, was a corpulent, smock-wearing, chain-smoking, former high-school beauty queen who started and ended each sentence with the word "fuck." Between buying cigarettes, Zelko vodka, and lottery tickets, the Rimes didn't have much left to put on the table. So Melody begged.

And Raymond and Betty Lu had to name her Melody, too, in probably one of the last light-hearted moments either of them would ever know. Melody had to live with that name every day at school, kids calling it out in singsong monotony and rhyming nonsense words, laughing at her clothes, her hygiene, and her nasal twang learned from a life in the hollow. She was an outcast, friend to nobody and nobody's friend. Misery was her life, so as soon as the law allowed, at 16, she dropped out and started bagging groceries at the local Piggly-Wiggly, hiding her paycheck from her parents who thought that she still was going to school.

At 18, she left home, used the only thing she had to find a new life with a local biker gang. They all did her, she didn't mind;  Rambling Jack Rose and the Chief and Buttergood and Cueball and others. She actually kind of liked it sometimes. At least she had something that somebody wanted. Cueball knocked her up; she wasn't sure it was him, but close enough. She had the abortion, and then more sex, drugs, and wild rides with whiskey filled out the gang's days. They'd score some Oxy and meth, and keep the local junk dealer busy. Paycheck in, sweet oblivion out.

Then, the only man in the world who could talk to her "like that" showed up. Melody and Cueball were watching NASCAR on ESPN from the threadbare sofa of their "clubhouse," a two bedroom clapboard structure they rented from the guy who owned the Railcar, the only real bar in town. Cueball was fiddling with his key chain and smoking a Camel, slurping Natty Bo in between drags. Melody was thinking about her father, not a bad man really, but feckless and sick. He had gotten Black lung working in the mine, one that turned out to be notoriously unsafe. A cave-in killed dozens of miners soon after Raymond went on disability and the laundry list of safety violations ignored by the CEO, including faulty air filters, eventually sent him to jail. With each year a little more of Raymond wasted away, and Betty Lu began adding more "fucks" into the middle of her sentences until she became profanity itself. Dying quickly in a cave-in might have been better for her father, Melody was thinking.

She had just come back after seeing him when she went to the house to pick some things up. He had been sitting in his chair, plugged into his oxygen tank, sallow and rheumy in equal measure . Betty Lu was out somewhere, "anywhere but here," Melody had thought. She had hoped he would be asleep. He wasn't.

"Girl, what you doing?" he had wheezed when she came in the door.
"Nothing, just picking up a few things, that's all."
"Then you going back to that house?"
"Yeah. That's where I live."
"It's a dump. Why you gonna live in a dump?"

Melody looked around the room, dishes piled up, the odor of fry oil hanging heavy in the air, duct tape over a crack in the front door window.

"A dump, Pa?"
"Yeah, a dump."
"Do I need a reason?"
"No."
"Then I ain't got one."

And so she had gone into her room, got her things. and walked past him and out the door.

"Just want what's best for you, Mel, that's all," he had muttered as the screen door slammed shut.

And Melody had kept walking. And now she was thinking, sitting there on the sofa with Cueball and listening to the roar of engines on the tube, that she was nothing more than a big greasy fur ball hocked up by fate; capital "F" fucking Fate, that is.

Cueball had nodded off. Over the whine of the race cars Melody heard someone knocking at the door.

Four years later...

I just found my blog again, four years after my last post. I think this is a good time to start it up again. I think. I will.

Factoid of the day

The top 5% of households in America account for 74% of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home). So, why are we so worried about civil service salaries again?
 

Fwd: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Part Deux

Just read this legislation: it is an astonishing giveaway. It allows no bid contracts to sell public property at whatever price the agency feels proper without any approval and such sale to be automatically deemed in the public interest. Where the hell are we going!!??

 

 

Sent to you by Cullen via Google Reader:

 

 

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Part Deux

via Balloon Juice by E.D. Kain on 2/21/11

Ed at Gin and Tacos gets into the less-discussed weeds of Scott Walker’s budget [pdf].

Apparently, governor Walker likes his union-busting to come with a side of crony-capitalism:

16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

Ed writes:

If this isn’t the best summary of the goals of modern conservatism, I don’t know what is. It’s like a highlight reel of all of the tomahawk dunks of neo-Gilded Age corporatism: privatization, no-bid contracts, deregulation, and naked cronyism. Extra bonus points for the explicit effort to legally redefine the term “public interest” as “whatever the energy industry lobbyists we appoint to these unelected bureaucratic positions say it is.”

In case it isn’t clear where the naked cronyism comes in, remember which large, politically active private interest loves buying up power plants and already has considerable interests in Wisconsin. Then consider their demonstrated eagerness to help Mr. Walker get elected and bus in carpetbaggers to have a sad little pro-Mubarak style “rally” in his honor. There are dots to be connected here, but doing so might not be in the public interest.

I wonder if Walker was hoping all these protests would deflect scrutiny from the rest of the budget?

 

 

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Good times

The U.S. has the lowest income tax rate since 1950, private unions have been all but obliterated, Citizens United allows unlimited corporate mischief in political campaigns, the regulatory environment is about to be undone, the richest Americans are not coincidentally enjoying a new Gilded Age, and the Koch brothers have bamboozled millions of ordinary Americans into carrying their water with their astroturf tea party groups like Americans For Prosperity. 

Which makes me think this statement in a letter from the Koch brothers asking their gazillionaire friends to attend a retreat designed to keep the good time rollin' sounds somewhat hyperbolic (my emphasis):

"If not us, who? If not now, when?" said the letter, which invited other conservatives to a retreat in January in Rancho Mirage, Calif. "It is up to us to combat what is now the greatest assault on American freedom and prosperity in our lifetimes."

Unnnnhhhhh....

This is a great article about the constipated world view of originalist theory, as outlined by Justice Souter in a commencement speech to Harvard. Scalia's hemorrhoids are as big as his brain.

Roaring Cliche (but useful nevertheless)

I’ve often cited Andy Rooney’s metaphor for life: a roll of toilet paper that keeps going faster the closer it gets to its end. But (poseur alert), I'll instead use a cliche rushing headlong toward its sea, buffeted by the rocks of days, sometimes dammed up, but then bursting through with unstoppable energy, racing and then meandering through all terrains, from the still spring of its mountaintop to the coastal plain below, its roar now quieted, its pace slowed, depositing into the delta all the nutrient rich detritus accumulated during its journey, yielding new life as it joins the great ocean beyond.

But seriously….

During the last several years, the days and weeks and months and years do indeed seem to roll by ever faster. It could be a function of working in a stimulating job, but more likely it’s the simple and profound fact that I’m embraced by a warm and loving family every day that I come home. That’s something many others do not have. Yes, I have experienced grief without depth (but who hasn’t, or won’t?), but when profiled against the utter misery and despair visited upon millions of people throughout the world, my life is beyond good, beyond anything I could have ever hoped for.

That gives me the luxury of contemplation which, if you were to ask my family, I do in great quantity. Sometimes, the wonder and the magic of life can literally take my breath away. There are moments of such spacious and transcendent beauty that I just know, know, that I’ve tasted a tiny dollop of the nectar. In those moments, one understands how ill-equipped and unprepared we are as humans to fully grasp such boundless clearness without being blinded in all of our senses. There really aren’t words that describe what we would be blinded by. But getting a glimpse of that clarity surely means that one is not simply imagining things. One is experiencing them, albeit in necessarily small doses, but enough to make the logical conclusion that something is truly there. It’s like my West Virginia forebears who would go down to the railroad tracks and scoop up coal spilled from the passing coal trains for their fireplace. Even if they didn’t see any cars or any locomotive, there was a track and there was coal along it. So, there must be a coal train.

ISS Brat

I am completely spoiled now. I have seen the International Space Station (ISS) and the space shuttle in trail, on a cloudless clear night. They crossed the dome of the sky, traveling NW-SE, about a 3 minute track across the sky. A recent Touch app alerted me to it. It predicts when, where, and at what intensity the ISS will cross the sky in your area. By a stroke of good fortune, the space shuttle was disengaging from the ISS after a weeklong (or so) attachment. Wow. As I said, spoiled.

Letter to Mom, February 26,1986

Let me relate how Jackie and I coped with her sickness.

You may remember us talking about "wa," the Japanese term for a hard-to-define sensation of personal grace, an area within you that harbors the soul from the awful mordant surprises of life. It's there in all of us, by degrees larger and smaller depending on how much it's exercised, like a muscle. It's not there to deny one's pain or fear but to defuse it, to render it manageable, isolated, contained and ultimately powerless. It somehow ties us in with all of existence, with everything that's ever happened and everything that will happen, let's us look at ourselves from a very lofty vantage point, refreshes us like a psychic splash of fresh spring water.

But essential to this concept is the absolute belief that our lives here are a very tiny part of an infinite whole.

I think the most virulent feature of psychic pain is its omnipresence, the way it looms over everything, travels with us like a silent enemy and lies in wait for us at every turn. But that's only because we let it. In isolating it we've beaten it, like a vicious criminal behind bars without possibility of parole. No one can deny he's still there and as vicious as ever, but we no longer fear him. If he'd been feeding on our fears, he'd die.

Long before Jackie was sick we used this principle to help us through trying times. On a daily, weekly, monthly basis, depending on the amount of stress, one would tell the other to "remember your wa." I can't tell you how much that helped. Blurry fears would come into sharp focus and I could see the little whimpering creature, its fangs and hairy arms and bloody talons no more than a silly costume I had wrapped around it.

When Jackie was diagnosed, we honestly believed she'd live. That belief alone carried us through the early period. But when we knew she was going to die, our concept of "wa" again became critical to us. Even then, writhing in agony and with a fear of death so strong it had an odor, she could step back from herself and regain her "wa" so the pain and fear could become bearable. Not that she could then dance and sing, but by putting the pain back in proportion to her whole being, she could dominate it, realize how small a part it played in the infinite future she could so clearly see. And that's why her "wa" helped her: she could see with more than just her eyes.

Your pain is very real and very potent. You'll never stop missing Jackie or wishing she was still here. Neither will I. Missing our loved ones is our monument to them, the highest honor we can pay them. Memories of pleasant times and wonderful places will always haunt you, as they do me, but hopefully in an eerily beautiful way. And you feel other people's pain as much as your own, a selfless and admirable trait, but one that needs tight discipline to keep it from overcoming you. You, more than anyone I know, needs to develop this sense of "wa." Put your sorrows and pain in their place, know their dimensions and the infinity inside you that- dwarfs them. Feel Jackie within you.

I’m very sensitive to your pain, Mom. I understand it. I don’t mean to preach or sound as though I have the answer. I’m just trying to tell you what I’ve learned in the hope that it may help you. There is peace and tranquility inside us and I call it “infinity.” Look for it. You are a sweet and wonderful woman and I love you.

P.S. Our figurines arrived yesterday intact. They’re absolutely beautiful and we can’t wait to display them under my homebuilt manger next Christmas. I’m going to try to rig up some subtle lighting inside the manger to cast a sublime feel to it. Thank you very much.

Letter to Mom, January 22, 1986

I just finished reading Stones For Ibarra. I understand why you wanted me to read it.

I've tried to address directly in my writing the questions that Jackie's death raised. But I've always had to stop; I can't get beyond its grisly side yet and write metaphors about the carcass that lay beside me.

For example. this paragraph:
"'Some day we'll all be unnecessary,' he thought,looking at her lying stiff-legged on the bed. It had been a long night. Where the dark had left any openings the sound of soft, guttural scratchings and mournful groans had flooded in. He had paced the room all night pleading with her to stop but she, of course, couldn't hear him, He remembered bringing his face up close to hers and seeing the hopelessly cracked lips and the short, short hair, bristly and mean, and her half open eyes staring through him. He had held a cup of water with a straw. He had put the straw in her mouth but she wouldn't clamp down onto it. He knew she needed water. He had to keep the fever down. He had screamed at her, "drink, drink, goddamnit!" but her eyes hadn't even fluttered. She couldn't hear. She couldn't drink. It was Easter Sunday and the smell of fresh flowers and warm earth was in the air."

And then...where could I go from there? Though I wrestle with trying to bring to print the… the what? You see, even here, I can't describe what it was she went through. I'm still too close, the range of emotion is too wide, and the underlying "meaning", if there ever was one, is still obscured by an impenetrable barrier of disintegrating flesh. Life is more dear to me than ever but that thought alone isn't enough to send me into paroxysms of inspiration. So I sit here, frustrated, having to approach by oblique metaphor an experience I'd rather tackle head on, then pick it up off the ground, shake out its meaning and stare at it until it lowers its eyes and submits.

Harriet Doerr wrote about death as if she were a stone that could speak. I don't see any other way it can be done. Death silences its victims and numbs its survivors, leaving around the body an anesthetizing haze and a vacuum that leaves all breathless. Her matter-of-fact tone was so right. When death looms we talk about it in everday language, as though we're planning a vacation or a trip to the store. And everyone knows how absurd it sounds. Jackie’s statement, “I want to go home to die," is so taut, the underlying psychology so confused and brokenhearted, the true meaning so beyond comprehension, that it's almost imbecilic to think that those seven short words could even begin to convey what it really means. But, of course, words are our only tools for expression, however inappropriate or inadequate they may be. Maybe if telepathy were possible and our emotions could flow between us like tides, unsullied by the mechanics of language, we wouldn't cry anymore frustrated by our inability to show truly how much we love someone. Maybe that's not so good.

We are doing well in Wolftown. As I told you before, every time I look at the pineapples in the foyer I think of you. That's a lot of thinking. I reckon we'll have to wait and see about the launch. We're planning on going down there anyway to go sailing with Bob. Since you'll probably hear something before we will, please let us know. Corey is doing very well. We still chuckle thinking about her experience with Santa, her unabashed joy, and her question, "How did he know?!"

Mom's look...

...the one at the moment of her death, when she lifted her head slightly, grimaced, and sank back to the pillow with a last breath and a sigh. I think it about it every couple of days. It always brings me up short. I honestly don't know what to make of it. I can posture about it; that it was like the frisson we get at the top of the roller coaster just before it falls, or it was her fear of entering the vast unknown ignorant of what is about to come, or just her mouth muscles contracting in a death rictus -- and nothing more. Or my discomfort may be rooted in what happens to those who witness the act of death when life seems to escape into thin air. I will never know or, if I do, won't be able to share what I learned. I think my distress stems from the fear that at that supreme moment, when every sentient being who has ever lived with a generous heart surely must earn the right to die in peace, she did not. But that must be wrong. It must be.

Mom is gone

Mom died peacefully yesterday at 6:21pm in her home surrounded by family. Lori, our hospice nurse, said that even though Mom wasn't responsive near the end, she could hear us. So we talked to her a great deal as the hours winded down. I was giving her morphine to ease her breathing and later atropine drops in her mouth for the growing congestion. We would stroke her hair, hold her hand, and occasionally swab her drying lips with a soothing solution. When she no longer responded to the knuckle-in-the-chest stimuli, we knew she was almost in the next place. Her breath grew more labored and slowed. Only minutes remained. We told her it was okay to go. Her eyes began to open and she slowly scanned the room, looking at everyone. She looked directly at me for some moments. I whispered in her ear, "it will be wonderful. It's okay Mom. You can go now." Soon, her breathing slowed and stopped momentarily. She then raised her head slightly and with a slight grimace that trembled with determination and sadness, she closed her eyes, lay back on her pillow, and was gone. Aside from the muffled sobs of our family, all was quiet. Dad sat on his walker, tears streaming down his face, and blessed everyone in the room for being there for Essie. In that small room, Grant, Louise, Susie, Corey, Rachel, Justin, Dad, and me saw Mom go peacefully and with great dignity exactly where she wanted to be.

Later, after we had cleaned up the room and the funeral people had removed the body for later cremation, we went out on the balcony overlooking the city. We could see and hear the July 4th fireworks at McIntire park, cheering what we saw as a colorful and noisy celebration of Mom's life. We all agreed that such a day is a fine one for a loved one to go. As it happens, our dear Nora's mother died eight years ago on July 4th at about the same time of day. Now, when the next July 4th rolls around, we can think of both of our moms enjoying peace as we celebrate the life they shared with us. That's a nice gift.

Mom is dying II

As I entered their apartment for my daily visit, Dad was sitting a the kitchen table, a half-eaten sandwich by his elbow. He was reading the paper waiting for our hospice nurse, Laurie, to arrive. He was in good spirits as always, but frank in his assessment at Mom's condition. She couldn't turn the light on last night to go to the bathroom, became disoriented, and sat on the floor not knowing where to go. He had helped her up (I didn't want to know how).

I went into their bedroom to see if she was awake. She was laying asleep on her side, her left hand cramped up like a claw. Her breath came in shallow, irregular gasps, and she had a pained look on her face and a light bruise on her upper arm.

Laurie arrived and we talked about the course of treatment so far, and then visited Mom. Laurie explained to Mom how they will keep her comfortable. She explained why the cancer was so evidently painful right now. Mom watched her intently, flat on her back, her eyes still alive with movement, the rest of her body lifeless. She has gone downhill very fast. She speaks only in whispers, and it comes out unintelligible at times. I followed Laurie out of the room when she went to make some calls to get more supplies. I asked her, what did she think. Laurie gives her less than month, especially since we will be using morphine for pain and respiratory help. That tends to put the patient on the quick road to the end.

During all this, I at times stroked the bottom of Mom's feet, and the top of her head, and she held my hand tightly when I stayed by her side. As usual, she worried about what food we will have this weekend (Grant, Louise, Corey, Justin, and us Wolftownees will be there) and that she was interrupting our schedules. She is Mom to the last. I told her that SHE was our schedule and to not be with her would interrupt it. Waves of weeping kept trying to break through the thin membrane of my eyeballs; with great difficulty I pushed them back.

I don't think she will last much longer than a week. I called Bro to let him know so that Hilary could get an earlier plane here to see her before the end. I think she plans to be here on Monday to  join Corey and Rachel visiting with her.

"Another A-Plus Day"

That is my dear, sweet father describing this day. The hospice people visited and officially brought Mom into their program. "Another" refers to yesterday when her oncologist assured us that Mom would feel no pain as she deteriorates, would have no putrid exterior tumors to befoul the air around her, and that hospice would indeed be available.

First, this shows my father in his true light. He sees nothing but the best in people, he feels nothing but the deepest love for his family, he generates happiness to everyone around him. He bounces with energy, even with his recent broken hip that had to be surgically reconstructed. Second, his true nature represents the very essence of the human spirit, if allowed to roam. We can find joy even in our darkest hours if we only allow ourselves to see it. Imagine for just one moment that you are ecstatic because you won't have "putrid exterior tumors befouling the air around you." WooooHOOOO! Does it get any better than that?

So, what were you just worried about?

As Mom dies, she and Dad teach me. Death itself, life's best teacher, is teaching all of us.

Mom is dying I

Last Friday, tests confirmed that Mom's earlier breast cancer has metastasized. It is now in her lungs, liver, bone, and lymph nodes. Already suffering from COPD and tired of living, Mom sees the diagnosis as a form of relief. Before, she could see no end in sight, other than one self-inflicted. COPD does not kill. It maims, slowly and relentlessly. Now, she is on a path with a more definite outcome, both in terms of cause and date. She has become more focused. She is not afraid of dying. She repeated that to me yesterday, but she about broke my heart with her next sentence. Speaking in a tiny voice, her lower lip trembling and eyes moistening, she said only, "But I'm sad." I stroked her head, pushing some strands of hair off her face, my own eyes tearing up. I could only respond, "I know." And I do. She is already missing her full life, her loved ones, the boys she loved and raised, the whirlwind world tours with Dad and the deep love they share. I know that the same kind of sadness will likely engulf me when my time comes. Her simple statement confirmed that. It resonated deeply.

I see as if yesterday her brilliant smile, the young, stylish, beautiful, vivacious mother, her reddish-blonde hair blowing in the breeze on the shore of the Long Island Sound. I see her profile in the driver's seat as she drove me down Route 11 deep into Virginia and Briar Hills, and feel the homesickness as she disappeared down the dirt road on the way back. I can chuckle at her contrariness that lurked barely beneath the surface of her suburban housewife facade. She is a brilliant woman who, had she lived in a later age, could have become a respected professional in any number of careers. She knows that, and it has rankled her for as long as I can remember. Sometimes the resentment would bubble up, but her love for Dad and his for her always won out. It was the salve that soothed the abundant inequities she endured as an accomplished woman in a man's world.

Rachel's first song

Racheo just recorded her first song, yet to be named, and one that the two of us will be working on once she gets home for the summer. The chord progression --D Asus Em G Em D -- makes nice use of a "sus" type chord which begs for resolution from the fourth to the third. It's both sweet and longing, and very satisfying. And this is her Itunes album artwork, taken some years ago, where she presciently strums a D.