Half-Empty Jars

January 13, 2008

"Here, do you want to take these?" I was looking at a handful of half-empty jars of shaving lotion that my grandmother was thrusting in my face, as I sat down in the living room for the first time since he passed, earlier that morning.

"No, that's ok", I politely responded to her. Her nerves are completely shot. I am almost certain that the reason that she is worrying enough to scurry off to the bathroom to collect something as inappropriate for the moment as old, mostly-gone lotion, when I'm just about to sit down to the fact that I've lost the grandfather that I've lived with for the past three years…is because she's still in shock. And that's very understandable. She has just lost the man she's loved and lived with for 64 years.

Even though we've been prepared for this inevitability, we have been even more acutely aware of his frailty of life. He went down in the first week of September, four months ago. It was his breathing at first, but mainly his heart. It was giving out. He was flown to Health Park three times the first month, each for a weeklong stay. His prognosis was extremely grim each time, but he managed to hang on, fighting as any soldier does, emerging in a bedridden condition. He has lived the past four months on his back, in a hospital bed, in our living room. His mind was there, but his body was giving out.

There is a wash of emotions that come over you when someone that close passes. Something you think that would be met with high drama and intensity is actually calm. Sorrowful, numbing, humbling, yes. But simultaneously calm. Perhaps it's the knowledge of his long, rich life that has outlived all the odds. Perhaps it's the gratitude that his long battle is over. Life lived on your back is like a prison of sorts. The chains of emphysema and heart disease were strained against for many years, and he fought to make it for 85 years.

We have all been moving as if in slow motion for the past 4 months, running on adrenaline alone, sometimes. The needs for him were great, and the round-the-clock care was filled, mostly by my grandmother, my mother, and me. But that's what you do when you're in a family—you rally. You meet whatever task at hand you must, and think less of what impact it has on you. Days go by; everyone is clenched, nervous, and spending a LOT of energy in keeping a good front, expecting death at any minute. Then, days turn into weeks. Schedules are formed as to when to pick him up from either the bed or his wheelchair. Or from the porta-potty. That was my job, mainly. Although he'd lost some weight, he was still too heavy for my mother and grandmother to do with great care.

And weeks turn into months.

My mother lives in Va, so she had to fly down when he first went down—it hit us all pretty quickly in Sept. If she had driven, it would have required 19 hours straight on the road, and at the time, we weren't sure he would last that long. She flew back two months later, after living out of a suitcase for all of that time. He was debilitated, but stable for the time being. She stayed back in Va for about a month, then came back in early December. This time she drove.
And it's a good thing, too, because she just drove my grandmother back to Va, where they buried my grandfather yesterday.

He woke up last Tues, January 1st, saying that he wanted to "start the new year off right", by becoming more mobile than he's been for the last four months. He thought that he would try to stand up. He scooted to the edge of the bed, where my mother helped him swing his legs down to a stool at first. He sat there for many minutes, thinking. Finally, he thought better of it. Reluctantly lying back down, he resolved to try a few leg exercises instead. He tried a couple of repetitions, then quit. He complained of, "Not feeling very well."

He started getting grey soon after that. We called the EMS folks, who were there in minutes. "This time it looks bad", one of them said. We were all in the hospital within an hour after it all started that morning, and didn't leave until late in the evening. I had to work the next day, Wednesday. The prognosis wasn't good when I left, but it was undetermined as to exactly when it might happen. Hours, a day, three days…kinda like back in September, but even more certain-sounding. We found out that the loss of oxygen for the past 12 hours had damaged his brain. This wasn't good at all, of course. This was probably going to be his final passing.

I hadn't been asleep long when the phone rang. It was my mother. Very tired, and somber-sounding, she told me that it was probably going to happen soon. I said, "I'll be there in a half hour". She said no, that she and Granny were going to be leaving soon, themselves, and that there was no need to come out expecting him to be alive when he probably won't be. At almost 3am, exhausted myself, knowing I had to be at work in a few hours, I decided to concede.
Minutes went by after I hung up. I was dozing between conscious and unconscious when I was suddenly jolted awake, feeling a definite unexpected rush in my mind, a sudden increase in my heartrate. For minutes I was affected by this sudden reaction. Indefinable, but undeniable.

"They're good lotion; he had a bunch of them. Are you sure you don't want to take them home with you?", she said, her voice starting to trail off, realizing the way she was speaking in the past tense about him.

What Is Love?

September 18, 2007

Thank God for women. Allow me to rephrase that: Thank God for my mother and grandmother, and women like them. There may be a few like them, but I'm not so sure anymore.

You know, we men think that we can do most anything at all under the sun. If we can't do it with our bare hands and our back, just give us the right tool, and we'll figure it out. This much may be true, but not everything worth living for or accomplishing can be done with a circular saw, a wrench, or a computer. We may need to admit that when this whole thing we call Life is over, the measurement of our soul's greatness won't rely on how well we fixed a car, built a house, or wrote a web application.

My grandfather has been the subject of the last few blogs on here, I know. Writing about his sudden cardiac decline has helped me get some of the emotions out of my system, to a degree. I have a good many people I call friends, and a few that I call my closest friends, but I don't completely unload all that I'm going through to these very few. They know some of the details, but they don't know what I'm about to talk about here. Only these two women, my mother and my grandmother, are the ones who are around me the most. They are showing me an example of what it is to love someone.

With the gradual failing of his heart, my grandfather is highly restricted in his movements. A wheelchair is a great blessing to him, but I have to lift him in and out of it every day. From bed in the morning to the chair, then to his soft recliner in the living room. From the recliner to his portable potty chair that we keep in the living room. From the potty chair back to the recliner. From the recliner at the end of the day to his wheelchair, then out of the wheelchair to bed again.

His progress is practically invisible, but my Granny acts like he's making great strides, and kisses his forehead with genuine love. "Honey, you're doing so much better", she says as I laid him in their bed the other night. He needs to hear that. It's an illusion that he's actually getting better, and she knows that. But this woman, who's been in his same bed with him for 63 years, and couldn't lie in front of him even if she tried, sincerely tells him how good he's doing as she excitedly leans in for a kiss.

There is no more shame about seeing my proud grandfather half naked. It's hard to still feel embarrassed when you've had to pick up a man dozens of times, sometimes with his pajama bottoms down around his ankles. Or handing him his urinal as he tugs down his waistband. Then picking him back up to scoot him him a foot back into his resting position in the recliner. The odors begin to collect, especially in this Florida heat.

The potty chair has begun to be optional, now. Stool softeners aren't having their desired affect on him. Suppositories aren't allowed anymore, due to chemical reactions with his poor heart. This is where it begins to get rough. He now feels that the only way he can expel his waste is to lay on their bed. Granny got a plastic sheet recently, and she actually assisted in his elimination the other day. She was completely unphased by it, and all I could do is to look at her with wonder and respect.
She's 85, diagnosed years ago with atrophy of the brain, contracted breast cancer 5 and a half years ago—17 lymph nodes infected with the cancer and removed—and she is completely wound up like a clock with worry at all times. But she shows nothing but love and patience through all of these grueling tasks, saving the worst of her fears and agony for when she's talking to me and my mother out of earshot of him.

She's so careful to treat him as if he was an infant, needing the most delicate of care. And she's been with this same man for 63 years. You'd think she was in their 'courting' phase, with the way that she dotes on him and never lets up. As if she hasn't already proven herself to him over, and over, and over again.

I've seen other elderly couples who bark at each other at every turn. But not her. And not him, either. I've told her many times what a love story theirs is. One for the history books, indeed. Their next-door neighbors just went through a similar ordeal. Tom passed at 89 years old, just two months ago. His wife Emily is a sweet soul who accompanied Tom everywhere. They had been married for over 50 years. His decline lasted for months. She tried to get him to eat better, but his weight just fell off of him, finally succumbing to the grim reaper while weighing maybe one-hundred pounds. She was out playing cards with her bridge club the day after Tom's funeral.

Me and my Granny kind of chuckled about that, but not for long. Poppaw's heart started to give out shortly after Tom died. Granny has been completely focused on nothing but him ever since then. The nurses came today for their scheduled visits. They got him to actually stand up, with their help for support, but that's about it. When I got in this evening I saw Granny sitting on his recliner's armrest like I've never seen her do. She was talking in soft tones to him, which is unusual for her.

I can tell the end is near.

I Got My Choppers In

September 09, 2007

As far as Sundays go, this one is nice. The Florida weather is usually stiflingly-hot through these months, and only tolerable in the winter, but this afternoon, at 1pm, it's only up to 88 degrees. Usually by this time it's in the low 90's. Perhaps the tilting of the Earth is about to bring some relief.

I hope so for my grandfather's sake. I'm hoping that he can remain as comfortable as possible in these days of his twilight. He was supposed to see one of his three doctors this past Wednesday, but instead it turned out to be the day he finally gave in, allowing my grandmother to call for EMS. He was succumbing to the fluid collecting around and in his lungs, completely immobilized at this point. His heart can't take much longer of this. I was trying to do something, anything, but I was completely helpless, watching my poor Poppaw turn grey, losing consciousness.

The EMS people came quickly. A team of five of them were strangely quiet and grim as they tried to prepare him to be moved. Watching them made me realize that poor Poppaw should have been in a hospital at least a week ago, before Labor Day's incident. It took them a half hour to get him out of his chair. His breathing was preventing him from the smallest of movements. My Granny was starting to become inconsolable. Frantic, panicked, and beside herself. I have been her watchdog and pincushion. I'm trying my best to build her up and console her through all of this. As they wheeled him out, I was standing there, holding onto my grandmother, as she called to him for what seemed like one last time. He didn't respond.

I saw him trying to throw back his head, involuntarily trying to make a gasp for air. The EMS folks had trouble rounding him by the corner on our patio, and I was a little upset when they just muscled him through it, jostling him to the point of visibly shaking his frail body. I told myself that they were probably worried about getting him to the ambulance quickly. Otherwise, in my mind, I saw myself grabbing the one who was pushing him, and throwing him through a window. Pure emotion at this point. "Don't you know that's not just some sack of potatoes, there?"

He took even longer in the ambulance to be transported to Cape Coral Hospital. After several minutes of standing with Granny, watching nothing but the side of the ambulance, I realized that I needed to take her upstairs to sit down. I guided her there, and we spoke about it all. She began to tell me everything that needed to be done. After letting her recite everything she needed to say, I saw her getting up, saying she was gonna drive herself to the hospital. She was worried about me being able to make it to my last night class that night, to take my last finals exam in order to graduate.

It was a silly concern to me, but I acted like it was kind of her to be worried about me, but that I was going to take her to the hospital. She gave in to allow me. "Granny, you need to change your slippers, and put on a pretty face for Poppaw in case he becomes cognizant. Give him something nice to look at." She got a look of determination on her face, and told me she'd be downstairs in ten minutes.

We got to the Cape Coral hospital, me carrying my grandmother's night bag and shawl. We came up to the lady behind the desk, and I could feel the trepidation from Granny as she asked about where he was. Would he be safely in a room, or already expired? The nurse behind the desk began to flip through paperwork on a clipboard, obviously not finding his name. Suddenly, a man appeared from behind her. They compared notes, and the lady looked at us. "He's not here, ma'am." I was alarmed. "He's at Health Park—they had complications along the way, and diverted him. It's his heart, isn't it?", she asked. "Well, it's his lungs, but I don't…", my Granny stammered back to her.

We drove twenty more minutes to Park Health, with my grandmother in a mix of emotions. "That's a good place, we've been there before", she was saying. "We wasted 30 minutes by going to Cape Coral! I don't know why they didn't call to let me know!", she said. I was trying to offer anything I could to keep her from losing it. "Maybe they called home while we were on the road", I said.

We made it to Park Health, and went past the grand piano player, who was set up in their atrium. They volunteer to come and play for us, I was told later. Nice touch, I thought. We were given sticky badges and allowed to enter the double doors into their critical care unit. Deep breath as we neared the rooms. I entered behind Granny, and was relieved to see him alive. Hooked up to massive amounts of machinery, but alive. We made it, I thought.

He looked pitiful. A once-proud, strong, Indian, shaped by 31 years of vigorous training in the US Army, resulting in a quiet, spiritual man who was thankful for his life, and always tried to look at the good in people. But also a man who would reach across a desk and put the fear of God in you if he thought you were doing him wrong. He was now shriveled, paralyzed, and had so many tubes keeping him alive. I eased myself around to the other side of his bed as Granny was seeing if he was in any pain. After a few hospital folks had come in and out, and Granny wasn't talking to him, it was ok for me to try to speak to him. His oxygen mask muffled his words, making an already-awkward moment even more so. I tried to keep a pleasant expression on my face while I had his attention, but I was awash in fear.

"How are they treating you, Poppaw?", I said, forcing something out of my mouth. "Oh, not bad, son", he said back to me. It was hard to make the words out through the mask. He suddenly looked at me with a sign of life and energy in his eyes, and wanted to say something to me.

"I got…chopper…in", he said with a smile, and it became obvious to me that he must be on some painkillers, because he didn't have enough consciousness an hour ago to even recognize me and Granny telling him goodbye as they wheeled him away. I didn't know what he meant by choppers, but didn't want to ask him to repeat it, due to his lack of oxygen. So I just smiled back and nodded to him. I assumed he meant that he had his upper teeth in ("I got my choppers in"). He hadn't been able to get them in for the past week, having lost so much weight that they wouldn't form correctly in his mouth.

About that time, my grandmother started talking to him again. They exchanged a couple of words, and then Poppaw repeated what he had told me, almost like an excited kid who's telling everyone that he's got a new tooth in. "I got choppered in", he said. Granny and I looked at each other with wonderment. The doctor explained that the ambulance had to call in for an airlift to meet them on the side of the road to transport him even quicker to a better facility. His heart had gone into arrhythmia within a few minutes of the ambulance ride, and the EMS folks were worried that they'd lose him on the way to Cape Coral Hospital.

Luckily, it's not just me and Phoebe here to help, anymore. My mother flew in that day. It was very questionable as to whether she'd make it to the hospital in time to say goodbye to him. The long and short of it is this: he can't walk, and his time here is short. The doctors are saying that if he can't walk, then he should be heading to a rest home. He is against that, and is preferring to die at home. His vitals are weak, but miraculously (their words) almost stable. They can't believe he hasn't passed, given his condition on Wednesday when he was admitted. He may come home in a wheelchair within a week.

The Buddhist Bell

September 03, 2007

Today is Labor Day. My regular AM talk shows won't be live on this holiday. Except for Dennis Prager. Dennis makes a point of working on most holidays throughout the year. It's more of a feat than it sounds, really. Performers who get behind a microphone every day for a living are doing something that rare and few people can achieve successfully: they present a consistent mental attitude EVERY day, on cue, without fail. Can you imagine doing that? How often is it that you come to work with a less-than-positive attitude? How about occasionally being mentally distracted while you go about your workday? It happens, doesn't it? It's understandable, too. We're only human, and it's next to impossible to come in 5 days a week to our workplace and be the exact same person, day in and day out, year round. And I'm not even mentioning the added pressure of being a performer on a stage in front of thousands or millions. Could you open your mouth and have every syllable scrutinized for 3 or 4 hours a day without occasionally sounding like you're running out of things to say? Do you have a mastery of facts, and enough well-rounded knowledge to speak in an entertaining fashion without missing a beat for hours on end?

Few of us do. And that's why I say that these guys on the airwaves deserve a break when they can take one. Those of us who enjoy their shows can almost immediately tell when we're listening to a recycled broadcast. For many of us who don't like to listen to reruns, we're left with little alternative to occupy our minds while we go about our day.

That's not the case for me this Labor Day, though. My grandfather is dying. He's upstairs right now, in his bed, struggling to draw his next breath. My morning started with my grandmother's voice piercing the stillness of my sleep, as she yelled into the intercom we installed a few years ago. I hopped out of bed immediately after responding back to her, and then hustled outside to climb the stairs to their front door. I live in their hurricane room downstairs, a 12 x 12, with my dog Phoebe.

As I scaled the stairs, I barely had time to anticipate what I would find when I got there. All I could think about was my poor grandmother's state of mind. She sounded awful on the speaker. I was roused from a sleep, so it all was a cloudy mix of fear, panic, and sorrow. When I got there, she was wide-eyed and frantic. He was in bed, reaching upwards into thin air, with a look of someone who was submerged in the water, trying to surface to the top. "I'm OK", he was saying, with a dazed, far-away look in his eyes. My grandmother was trying to catch her breath, explaining to me that he was slipping away, unable to breathe when she called me. She had apparently startled him back to consciousness when she screamed for me into the intercom by his bedside.

The EMT people called within the minute after I was there with them. Granny had mashed his 'life alert' button that he wears on his wrist amidst the whole ordeal. They were calling to see if they needed to send a rescue unit to our house. She was nervous on the phone to them, but told them it wasn't necessary to send one out at this time. My grandfather kept saying, "I'm OK, I'm ok", in an effort to keep her from sending them out to get him.

He's a proud man who doesn't like for people to make a fuss over them. At 85, he's well outlived his expectation for at least 10 years, by now. He's been on oxygen for 8 years, has heart disease and emphysema, and was an Army infantry soldier for 31 years. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes for 40 years, a pipe for ten years after that. Between the stresses that are inflicted on a body from infantry training for thirty-one years, and all of the smoking with heart disease, it's obvious that the only reason he's still with us is because of Granny's constant care and feeding of him. She tries not to take any credit for it, saying that he's held on this long because he doesn't want her to be left alone. And that's true, too.

I stood around and tried to ensure that this was indeed a false alarm. After it became obvious that my grandfather was conscious and somewhat cognizant, I tried to ease myself away from the room, not wanting to alarm my proud grandfather or embarrass him. We men are like that, and I can feel it from Poppaw that he's still a proud Indian, not wanting to admit weakness or that he needs others to do the simplest of things for him. I turned my attention to my grandmother, who was easing out of the bedroom with me, telling me of his symptoms just before she called for me, keeping a furtive eye back towards the bedroom the entire time.

The conditions and details are grave, and I can't bring myself to write them out at this point. Let's just say that the doctors have diagnosed him as of Thursday as being in the "end-stage". The end for him is near. I thank God that it is at least somewhat peaceful for him, and that he's not in some sterile hospital room, being attended by nurses he doesn't know. My grandmother warns me that it still may come to that, but at this point we're not so sure. He is pretty immobilized in his bed after not sleeping too well last night. For the past week, he has been in his recliner, unable to make it into his bedroom at night. The fact that he made it to the bedroom seems almost ominous, being in a horizontal state for perhaps the last and final time.

I went to the Winn-Dixie down the road to get Granny some food for lunch. She didn't ask me to do it, but I know she's too petrified to leave the house at this point. When I asked her what she wanted to eat, she grabbed her stomach and made a gesture to say that she didn't feel like eating. I said, "I know, Granny, but I'll get something that you can put back in the fridge to eat later if you can't finish it." After saying that she'd made some meatloaf yesterday that didn't turn out that well, I said, "Granny, I'm going down to the store anyway, so I'm gonna get you something from the deli—fried chicken, roast beef, or something." She told me that her and Poppaw like the chicken tenders they make there.

When I got back home, she seemed glad that I'd made the trip. Poppaw was awake, and almost lucid. I went in to talk to him briefly. I could tell that he wanted to say something to me as soon as I entered his room. I tried my best to relax, and to lean against his dresser, as if it was just any old day. What was it he was going to say to me? Was he going to have an awkward talk about how he's dying, right in front of me? Was he going to say the things one thinks might be said just before we pass? I listened intently as he asked me for some peppermint hard candy. "Sure, Poppaw", I said.

I got right back into the car and drove back down the road to Winn-Dixie. Peppermint candy. In a way, I was somewhat calmed by this request. Kinda Zen. With all of the obvious things in the air at this moment: tension, fear, panic…and my dying grandfather just wants some simple candy. I hope it's this way for me when I'm about to go. He's a model for me. Always has been. His precarious health is the reason I moved down here almost three years ago. It is now time to be there for both Granny and Poppaw.

I sat with my Granny in the living room as she ate one of the chicken tenders. I listened intently as she ran through all of her worries, nearing tears all the time. I tried to remain strong for her sake. "Granny, don't worry about everything that's about to come—I'll be here to help with the house, the paperwork, and everything else. You just need to watch out for your health, and don't worry about more than you need to right now." My attempts to reassure her were only mildly calming for her. She's a sharp woman, and has waited on my Poppaw all of his life. It's instinctual for her to be a chronic worrier, especially with his bad health for the past 10 years.

"You know, Granny, his life has been a blessing because of you. He wouldn't have made it anywhere near this long without you taking such good care of him." She tried to deflect my sentiments, but she and everyone in the family knows it's true. "I just don't think I can live here, in this house, if he…" she says as she begins to cry. "I know, Granny. There's no reason why you'd have to. Momma has plenty of room back in Virginia, and so does Aunt Erlene in North Carolina, and you could easily divide your time between both…"

Just about that time, we hear a little 'tinkle-tinkle-tinkle.' I looked at her with a quizzical look. She stopped eating, and a look of purpose quickly came across her face. "That's your Poppaw. He must be awake. That's his Buddhist temple bell I told him to ring if he needed to go to the bathroom."

Why I Asked Pam To Marry Me

I am a very lucky man. I asked the best woman I have ever met to marry me, and she said yes.

Pam and I are so much alike that it sometimes stuns me. We are both introspective, sensitive people who seek harmony with others, and are all too happy to stand alone if no one understands that. In fact, we have both been loners most of our lives. However, she hasn't let the world crush her and turn her bitter. She has a quick laugh, and I'm forever blessed that she sees humor in the same things I do.

She has just finished working at Sally's here in Ft Myers for the past year and a half. She took the job when 99% of the women out there with her college degree and experience wouldn't have even considered a point-of-sale retail job. The job is for women who are knowledgeable in hair care, preferably former hairdressers.

She had many fears about answering all of the customers' myriad of hair treatment questions when she first started. The women she worked with were a mixed bag. They were mostly cool to her, and her manager has been less than professional the entire time she has worked there. Pam is the only dependable person on the staff (only one with a car, who doesn't steal from the register, and doesn't leave the store early or call in sick), and that means even more resentment from her co-workers.

But she has smiled to every customer who walks in Sally's door, listened intently as they described what they wanted to do to their hair, nails, etc, then thoughtfully offered them appropriate product choices. She read up on all things hair coloring, and has turned into the one person on the staff who customers enjoy and trust.

But Sally's has only given her one raise in 18 months, a measely 50-cent bump from a minimum-wage start after working for ten years making twice that as a graphic artist. Sally's management is so unprofessional that they don't even know how to treat someone like Pam when they are lucky enough to find her.

So we are finally leaving Ft Myers.

Don't get me wrong-I am motivated to leave for my own reasons as well, but what this town has to offer professional, caring people like Pam has left me cold.

We are leaving in ten days to Omaha, NE, after many months of diligent research. It is a midwestern state with the best economy in the nation right now. Omaha is a hub city, where many large companies seek to build because shipping and distribution is more cost-effective. Besides being the home of the world's most wealthy man, Warren Buffet, it is home to five Fortune 500 companies' headquarters, and many more solid, time-tested businesses have called it home for a long time.

Florida has suffered from a climate of here-today-gone-tomorrow type of businesses, which attracts the kind of scurilous merchants she and I both are tired of. I am anxious to take her to a better place, and she is more than ready for the change.

And that is the kind of thing that makes me realize just how lucky I am to have her: she and I have the same kind of value system. It is why I asked her to marry me on Stone Mountain, Georgia a few months ago: I didn't want to let her get away. My life has been spent with too many women who didn't share my worldview, my sensibilities, and I honestly began to think that I was the one who was wrong to feel the way I did.

Finding Pam was like finding myself. After being with her, I began to feel more acceptance in myself, the way I view things, and how I feel about people, events, and life. Needless to say, I have a much better outlook about life than I have ever had. For the first time in my 43 years, I can now say I have found someone I want to have a family with.

Life Without Phoebe

I first noticed Phoebe's decline when she couldn't walk up the stairs like she used to. What used to be a steady stride up the 20 steps turned into a chore for her. Life now dictated that she slowly attack the first 10, then rest. I had a feeling of panic when I saw the look in her eyes as she rested before scaling the final 10. "Oh my God", I thought. "She's having trouble with those stairs. It must be arthritis", I remember telling myself.

Phoebe was 9 and a half years old, and I'd never experienced a health problem with her, save for the time she had an ear infection about 6 years ago. My beautiful Golden Retriever never spent a night away from Daddy for ten years, and he was accutely aware of any deviation from her normal behavior.

She was my child. And my dearest friend.

Me and Phoebe visiting my home place.

It was late 1999, in rural Virginia. The mountains have a sky full of grey, low clouds, contrasted with the ridges, hollows, and mountaintops full of bright oranges, purples, reds, and browns. I was travelling on rt 460, to a puppy farm of Golden Retrievers on the edge of Montgomery County. I turned right on srt 624, heading east on Mt Tabor Rd. It was only about 8 miles down this road where I found Phoebe's birthplace, a typical small farm with nice folks who ran it. I saw her parents: a masterful, barrel-chested father with energy, and her reddish-haired mother who showed great interest in this newcomer without any scent of other dogs on him.

The owner led me to the barn where the pair had given birth to 6 little beautiful pups. They said that mom and dad had just had a litter 6 months before, and that this one started right after that one. It was an "accidental litter."

There was a short segment on one of the news channels shortly before this, detailing methods of attracting the right dog for you when in one of these exact situations. Standing on the December soil, scattered with straw, I could smell the distinct mixtures of manure, wood, and livestock. At my feet were half a dozen squirming, cute, puppies. The temptation to fixate on the one with markings that appealed the best arose quickly in me, but I came with a plan from the experts on the news channel: I knelt down with them and licked my hand, then held it down among them.

I picked the one that responded the most to my hand: Phoebe.

She was with me during my 30's, a somewhat chaotic period. She slept on my bed for the first 5 years of her life. It wasn't until I moved for the first time during her life to Florida that I started the "no more sleeping on Daddy's bed" rule. She seemed bewildered at first, but not especially mournful, as the floor was something new to her: carpet. Her bones and joints weren't resting on the same wood floors she had known.

Phoebe was the best friend I've ever known. She never complained about anything, despite eating the same food every day and living life on a cable run. I would have let her run free, but I haven't lived isolated from others in 25 years, now. My family always kept at least 4 or 5 dogs at a time. They all ran free on those Blue Ridge mountains while they lived. Having known that life until 17, I never knew how special it was. How I wish I could have given Phoebe more, but it was beyond my reach to live that life again. She lived now with close neighbors, close roads, all dictating that I needed to keep her on a run when I let her out every morning.

"Im not sure what's wrong with her. I saw her begin to have problems with the stairs a couple of weeks ago, and I wrote it off to arthritis. I went out and got her some daily supplements for dogs with joint problems, and some better food", I told the veterinarian a few months ago.
"Was she having trouble chewing her food?" he asked.
"Yes. She just all of a sudden stopped eating her dry food not long ago. When the supplements didn't seem to help her with the stairs, I decided to bring her in."

The doctor took a blood sample, and asked that I wait in the front office with her while he did some quick analysis. It was then that I started to get a worsening anxiety about my dearest friend. We sat there in the July heat, me wishing that the little building had better ac, as I watched Phoebe pant continuously.

Then again, she'd been panting a lot lately at home, too.

This last year was rough on her Daddy. Having lost my job a year ago, we had to move because Daddy couldn't afford the rent anymore. Off we went to a one-roomed existance, crowded by not only the bed, but desk for Daddy's computer, a chest of drawers, and boxes. She never complained, or acted like it was less than another adventure that her and Daddy embarked upon: strange at first, but all ok because she was with her Daddy.

God I miss her.

"It looks like Phoebe's white blood cell count is down", the vet said. "Before I do anything drastic, which could even mean a blood transfusion, I want to prescribe her some medicine and see how she looks in a few days. How about Monday to bring her back?"
"Ok", I managed to respond.

I followed the vet's prescription exactly for the next few days. She actually seemed to respond positively to it. For weeks I had to carry her up the stairs every time she went out. Soon, I had to carry her down, as well. But after a couple of days on the medicine, she could actually go downstairs on her own. I momentarily had a glimmer of hope. The next visit dashed my hope and spirit, though.

"Her white blood cell count is dropping", he said sympathetically to me. "I'm afraid for the worst for her. I'd like to send a sample of her blood to a clinic nearby to do a full analysis, but it's a little pricey."
"I'll do it", I replied. The results came back; Phoebe was suffering from anemia, and she was dying. The only thing that could be done was to either euthanize her or try to make her as comfortable as possible until the end.

I somberly told the vet that I may be taking the route of euthanization if I see her in pain. He prescribed her some cortisone, and told me that a week would be most likely the length of her remaining days.

I crushed up her pills each day and put them in a syringe for her, in the morning and at night. The illness progressed, and I continued to carry her up and down the stairs for three more weeks.

Here was my closest companion for the last decade of my life, panting and gasping for her every breath, but trying to smile for me. I couldn't pass her without laying on the floor next her, coaxing a kiss from her on my face or nose. Many a time I lay there at her feet over these 10 years, needing her exchange with me. She would nustle her nose in my neck, then start to wag her tail. When I have been at my lowest, she was there for me. Something that made me feel like my life hasn't been such a waste. I have no child, no wife, no one who depends upon me except myself.

But Phoebe depended on me. And she showed me ten years of utter devotion and worship. I am a better person because of Phoebe, and her time here on Earth. She forced me to think of someone other than myself in real, life-or-death aspects. I never had to lay a hand on her, and my voice was never raised in anger at her. A truer friend a man couldn't get.

Phoebe finally passed back in July. My girlfriend fed her some leftover gravy she made for our biscuits that morning, and she loved it. I fed her that gravy until the end, a couple of days later. I was in shock and deeply affected when it happened, at three in the morning. I had told myself only hours before that I would finally have to take her in the next day, to be put to sleep.

She left before I had to make that terrible choice, though, and that fact provides me with only a small amount of solace in her wake.

I hadn't been sleeping well at all for weeks, and was in and out at 3am when it happened. I stayed with her while the death throes shook her, and for a short time after everything stopped. I couldn't look at her face. I carried her downstairs immediately in a burial blanket. For the next hour and a half, I dug her final resting place in the middle of her run path, where she was always at ease and amused with all of the Florida critters only feet away from her in an empty, overgrown lot that had it's own small ecosystem of birds, snakes, armadillo's, rabbits, squirells, etc, that kept her fascinated when she wasn't resting in the shade.

Phoebe's pssing affected me more than I anticipated, but who can know what life is like without our loved ones until it happens? I find myself thinking about her at least once during the day now, three months since she left us. The house is quieter, there's no one waiting for me when I get home, and there's no one who licks my face anymore.

I'd give anything to have her back.

Trip To Tampa: The Florida Aquarium 06/01/09

This past weekend, my girlfriend Pam and I left for a nice 3-day trip up to St Petersburg and Tampa. It was a blast, mainly because of the chance to get away from home a bit for once. We were able to just let a whim carry our direction for three days.

We took some shots with our still cameras, as well:








































And here are some of Pam's shots:

Beautiful Sunset At Historic Pineland, Florida

I have been trying to learn some videography skills, and this is part of that process. I added a terrific (abbreviated) speech from Ronald Reagan's campaign stump speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964. In it, you will hear the "rendezvous with destiny" line used for one of the, if not the, first times in Reagan's public history:

I'm Not Catholic...But He's Right

Pope Benedict before his Good Friday address.

I was raised as a Baptist for the first 12 years of my life. From there, I began to drift away from the church as many do. By the time I'd turned 18, I was finding great energy from studying Plato and Socrates.

I still had a Christian identity, but my "seeker" soul was telling me that there is more out there.

Later in my 18th year, I found myself jumping out of planes with the 82nd Airborne. I joined the Army and volunteered for paratrooper duty before I'd ever even ridden in an airplane. I had no idea what to expect, of course.

During one particularly bad flight (there were a few), I found myself being airsick. For those of you who have never had the privilege of suiting up with the red berets, you are crammed into the belly of a cargo plane (C-130, C-141, and a few others), and you are treated to every smell, heavy engine noise, and elbows and knees from the men surrounding you.

You don't want to be that guy who throws up during mid-flight. Besides the immediate shame and ridicule you will most certainly endure while heaving your last meal all over yourself, and them, you will also have to be stuck with the smell and wet, sticky results for as long as your mission lasts after you hit the ground. Plus, the mere smell in highly cramped quarters like that will trigger others to lose their dinners, as well.

It's a good way to 'never live it down' in a painful way for an 18 year-old like I was. Simply put, I was terrified of puking.

So I started silently reciting to myself a Buddhist chant which I had recently learned at a Fayetteville temple. I still remember it, over twenty years later: NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO. It came in handy. My mind stopped swimming and the nausea ebbed. Thank God.

My fascination with Eastern thought was heightened a couple of years later, when I was stationed in South Korea for a year. I had been searching and searching the American sources for Buddhist truth and wisdom, but, unfortunately, all I was finding in these "temples" were pamphlets which featured famous actors and other celebrities who were claiming to have enriched their personal finances and career advancement through the practice of Buddhism.

I was definitely young, then, but not too immature to see a bastardization of what I considered to be a true fount of spiritual enlightenment, truth, and wisdom. So my hardship tour in South Korea was something of a blessing to me, I thought.

They work you an extra day in South Korea, simply because there is much more trouble you can get into in this developing nation. (prostitution is quite legal, along with no drinking age restriction for American GI's) I was lucky enough to get one weekend off that entire year. I had been in country for over 6 months at that point, and decided to take a bus tour for a day to see some of the surrounding regions.

To my immediate delight, the guide told our bus that we would be making a brief stop in a remote wilderness area, where a narrow footpath through the forrest led to...a Buddhist Temple! This would not be the "Buddhist Temples" I had been accustomed to in Fayetteville, NC, I gleefully told myself.

No typical American-style concrete building that looks exactly like every other business structure you run into in the US...

No disappointing American-style version of this ancient, Asian philosophy...

No round-eyed American citizen greeting me at the door, shoving some pamphlet in my hand with Richard Gere's mug and self-righteous nonsense quote...

So the bus stopped. I quickly got up, dismounted the bus, and started my walk on the serene, unfinished, footpath to what I had been searching for for years at this point. I had just turned 21.

Lo and behold, after a small crest on the trail, the trees parted, and I saw a beautiful building that looked like it had been built by the monks of the old order. I was SO excited!

And do you know what I found when I got to my final destination after ALL of those years of searching?

Nothing.

There was no one inside the Temple. No spiritual guide to learn from. No Buddhist monk whose brain I could pick. No master from which to sit and learn.

Just some brass urns with incense. And some beautiful colors around me.

I came to realize, after a year or two of pondering on the irony of my long search, that this incident was, indeed, a Buddhist lesson in itself. All of the outwardly searching, the traveling across the world to sit at the feet of masters, all of the effort was something of a...mistake. I was chasing an illusion.

The answer is inside myself. And inside all of us. Just like Christ said 2,000 years ago. And just like Buddha said, also.

I have seen the last 20 years pick up in speed across the world. There is less and less appreciation for the ancient. I feel this, and see it every day in my life. I hear grown men and women openly mock the spiritual journey and its goals laid out by the greats, be it Christ, Buddha, Yahweh, etc. I still cringe when I hear people ridicule Christianity for all of the ill-informed reasons that have become all too fashionable: Judeo-Christianity is sexist, homophobic, superstitious, and laden with every logical pitfall immaginable, as illustrated last year when the enlightened Matt Damon said, with a straight face, that he just wanted to know if Sarah Palin, who simply admitted to revering the Bible and Jesus Christ, "believes that dinosaurs roamed the earth 4,000 years ago."

Yes, yes, I know that Damon is merely an actor. But in my life, I'm hearing more and more of that kind of smug disregard for Christianity and those that seek its answers...from all areas of this country I've lived in for my 41 years. You almost get the feeling that you have to apologize for seeking Christ's message and answers.

My own return to Christianity happened not long after my return from the war (Desert Storm). I came to realize that I was probably a Zen Baptist at heart. I find the life of Jesus Christ particularly inspiring, and have invited him into my heart as my personal savior. I don't walk the life of a perfect Christian, but none of us do, of course. The trick, I believe, is to never lose sight of the goal: salvation. The afterlife of the soul seems to me to be the result of how you passed this test we call Life On Earth.

Eastern thought speaks of it in terms of "nirvana". The way you ponder on your own awareness and being on this plane will dictate your next domain. Reincarnation comes into play, which I depart with as a belief system. Another aspect from which I depart is in how Buddhism doesn't have a God in their framework of cosmic understanding. You are the only God in that respect. Nice thought, but a little too convenient for me.

Are you able to rise above the slings and arrows of this Earthly domain, to remain thankful, balanced, and mindful of a Creator who gave you all? Are you lost? Are you vengeful and chaotic?

As I get older, I seem to see more and more of my fellow human beings who, indeed, seem "lost".

That's why I understand Pope Benedict's Good Friday message. Here's today's story about it:

Pope Benedict XVI last night attacked the rise of aggressive secularism in Western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a 'desert of godlessness'.

He used his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to remove religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified.

'Religious sentiments' were increasingly ranked among the 'unwelcome leftovers of antiquity' and 'held up to scorn and ridicule', he added.

'We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink,' said the Pope at an evening ceremony at the Coliseum in Rome.

'Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today when things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being trivialised, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode.

'Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard. Jesus continues to be ridiculed.'

The German-born Pope, who turns 82 later this month, prayed Christians would respond by growing in faith.

'May we never question or mock serious things in life like a cynic,' he added. He also condemned the oppression of women, saying there were 'many societies in the world where women fail to receive a fair deal.'

'Christ must be weeping for them,' he said. (source)

Winter In Florida

We've needed more rain for the past three years, but the colors are still turning out ok.

It's hard to believe the amount of new growth, budding flora, and vibrant tapestry that Florida has year-round. According to the texts of some of the earliest Europeans here in the 16th century, the first thing you notice when coming off the ocean after weeks of nothingness are the rich flowers and vegetation as you sail your caravel or nau up one of these rivers. The Spanish were the first European power to lay claim to this peninsula, and the name Florida ("flower") stuck from a time before the first colony in North America had even been established.

The one above is a Hibiscus. To see these blossoms in December-March still leaves me slightly disoriented, having been raised in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, along the 37th parallel. There is snow and freezing temperatures where my mind's eye is tuned, but these are the only images I survey at this time of year. I took these all today:

Pre Destruction

[Listening to King Crimson now, "Matte Kudasai"]

It's three-thirty am going on two-thirty am Sunday morning, a mere two days away from the selection of our next president, either Barack Obama, or John McCain. I say 'selection', too, as a distinction of the possibility that this election COULD land itself in the courts upon completion, compounded by the many stories of voter registration fraud by Acorn et al in various cites of key swing states.

In saying that, I catch myself. I only believe that a near-loss by ONE of these candidates would result in a selfish struggle to contest it's outcome:
For John McCain, my guess is that he would concede the election, without drawn-out protestation, lawsuits, etc., if the margin separating these two candidates is anything close to that of 2000 or 1960. Nixon was wildly urged to contest the outcome of that election against Kennedy, separated by some 200,000 votes, but he coolly declined, saying that he didn't want to put the nation through that kind of anguish. McCain is cut from similar cloth.

[Sara Malachlan in the room, "Angel"]

I am acutely aware of the world's condition right now, particularly from my own place in it. I have led a great life so far, and despite whomever becomes our next President, it will never diminish the full life I've led up to this point.

And a home-made hip-hop video from one of the guys from my regiment at Bragg:

I've jumped out of soaring airplanes at midnight with the best of America's men in the 82nd Airborne while under Reagan's last two years in office, and the next two under Sr Bush 41. Rest assured, it was an extraordinary thing to withhold. The life of an infantry soldier is spent in the field, sleeping on the ground, and being around many different men, their tempers, their drunkeness, and their flaws for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for many years. The life-threatening things we were doing together there will last a lifetime in my mind's eye.

This is what it looked like most of the time (notice the amount of gear on each one of the men, compared to daylight jumps in the videos above):



To have survived the four excellent years of trainning, from Bragg to camp Hovey, and finally, Hopkinsville, KY, all of which were light infantry units that I was graced to have been assigned, seems only a gift of fortune from God above. To have landed in the best-trained fighting force that the world has ever known, at America's apex of cold war threat with its arch enemy, the murderous U.S.S.R....and to be on the tip of that spear, as an 11C 1p, constantly trained and rigged to deploy anywhere in the world in 18 hour's notice, to be dispatched by parachuting out of a C-131 or by rapelling out of a UH-60 Blackhawk at 4 am is the proudest accomplishment I have yet to surpass in my 41 years.

God's grace got me through it, to be sure, including the eternally great luck to have not been born into any of the billion other possibilities that any of us might in a similar life: a Hindu in a war-torn village on the Pakistani-Indian border; a Mayan youth chased down by Aztec warriors for temple sacrafice in 1520; a Burmese farmer with a tattoo as a brand of the feudal lord he serves in 1780.

No outcome in two days will take away from the satisfaction I feel since I patroled the DMZ on the 38th parallel in 1988. I was part of a once-great nation that sent a totally volunteer force to stand guard against tyranny, despotism, and total ruin for a people I'd never met, and would never see again. Who else can claim such an experience? Chances are, it's one of my brothers who was with me when I did it, and he is around you now, quietly facing each day with you, never too brash or presumptive to get freaked out about civilian life. He is quiet and resolved because he has been through things which thoroughly tested his steel.

I was with this great beauty when it mattered, this American experiment, in ways in which ALL other men want, but only few are brave enough to win it. And I came back from it all a better man. It is a spiritual endeavor to have served something bigger than yourself, because your life and the guy next to you is dependent upon your focus, your courage, and your discipline. It is a life which forces you to put your money where your mouth is, and it stays with you forever.

[Morcheeba, "Trigger Hippie"]

The most meaningful accomplishments were available to me, (like a college degree [two], a career as an FM radio announcer in many diferent cities, states), an American, because men sacraficed to create a free market nation, where the notion of competition, education, and merit meant more to us than probably any other nation in this world.

I was able to compete for entrance into four-year colleges on the merit of my test scores; I was able to compete for skilled positions in radio stations based on my talent and gifts; I was able to contract for work from area car dealerships based on how well I could paint their automobiles. Only in America could I have had this much opportunity to develop a skill, to learn a new craft, and actually compete in the marketplace of ideas. Try that in Sudan, North Korea, or the Ukraine.

It keeps you (mostly) honest, having to produce something in this world of consummerism, today. And it still is true, even if you work for yourself or someone else, as there is always some alternative to the product or service for which you get up every day. Being thankful for what you have while in America is a precious thing, I believe. Being a citizen of America affords you the best chance to enjoy the best that life has to offer.

This is the music of my people, filmed in Norton, Va, just a few minutes down the road from where I grew up. Ralph Stanley is performing "Stone Walls & Steel Bars", originally made popular by Ralph & Junior Brown:

Growing up in the mountains of southwest Virginia was a somewhat lonely experience, as my father's people had been there for over 200 years, progressing from farmer to farmer, many drunk a lot of the time, living in the remote reaches of the Appalachian mountains. I've done well, and so far, what I've come to think about my place in this world can be summed up thusly: It's been a great life so far, and I hope that I get another 41 years on this wild ride, but if I am stopped short of that, it won't have been a lesser experience.

Unfortunately, my beloved Dr Ralph Stanley is just as capable of disappointing me when it comes to a particular artist opening their mouth to offer political wisdom:

I have just moved back to a small hurricane room in a small fishing community in south Florida. I have lived here before, as it was the same room I lived in while taking care of my frail grandparents from 2005-2008. My grandfather passed a year ago, I moved across the county, and my grandmother moved to Virginia to be around the rest of my family, my mother, my brother, his 4 yr-old girl, and wife. She will be back for the winter months, trying to sort out the details of this widow's house.

I was laid off three weeks ago, and couldn't afford the rent on the duplex I was living in for the past year.

The neighborhood wasn't great, but for my salary it was the best I could afford: (Just left it for good, yesterday.)

Now I'm back, and this is the look of my surroundings before I mess them up from cramming stuff in every corner and nook of this 12 x 12:
My network:

My girlfriend gave me the great bamboo plant for my birthday. She's great:

(Web url is a tech's site for diy radios. Pretty kewl)

Had to find room to complete my 5.1 dolby surround sound with my Polk center speaker--stand came in handy to allow for heat transference from my Onkyo a/v receiver.

Phoebe decides to look off-camera for dramatic effect. She's been my best friend since I got her 9 years ago. She's made every move with her father, never complaining once along the way, whether she had a place with 6 rooms and a backyard to romp around in, or just 2 in this case.

Bedside reading and security.

Bathroom/espresso bar/dog-feeding station:

Shower stall:

These pictures are what my world looks like, "Pre Destruction", while things are newly in their place, relatively neat.

This is what our nation is like, "Pre Destruction", before what may be the election which hastened her fall.