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— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 27, 2024

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.

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.

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:

Why I Love My Girlfriend Pam

Besides the fact that she's beautiful, kind, thoughtful, and a damn good cook, my girlfriend Pam trusts me, my judgement, and thinks before she speaks. It is uncanny how much we are alike in this respect. I would rather stay silent than say something I'll later regret, and she is cut from the same cloth.

After all, we both share the same Chinese astrological sign: the goat.

She is artistic and deep. She not only completed a college degree in fine arts, but has been employed as a graphic artist for many years, now. We both look at life through the same lens, it seems.

We're about to celebrate our first year together in a few days. It may sound cheesy, but it's true: we have never had a cross word between us. If we disagree with the other, we pause, think about it, then ask questions instead of rushing to conclusions and reacting.

These are just a few of the many reasons I am drawn to her, and feel very lucky to have found her. Here's an email she sent me yesterday:

A Great Lesson on Socialism.

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before, but had, once, failed an entire class.

The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said okay, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little. The second Test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. The whole class failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder it is to succeed, the greater the reward, but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try so no one will succeed.

A pretty smart teacher...

She's not your typical woman, and all of her unique qualities are for the better. How many other American women have taken the time to think critically about life, instead of being consumed with the usual selfish concerns that all too many are: looks, your feelings, clothes, and...did I say looks?

Don't get me wrong: she dolls up real nice, as they say, and has a great eye for clothes when she goes shopping with her mom, but these things are not where her mental energies stop. She understands why veterans are a special breed, has immense respect for my military experience, and doesn't think it backwards or neanderthal to carry a weapon. She has a few, herself.

Sound like a unique woman? Like I said, she is, indeed.

I try to do nice things for her when I can. We both don't come from money, and I don't get to buy her all the things I think she deserves. Of course, we're happy without all of those trappings, anyway.

She and I are into music, and I love to share my collection with her. I've been making mixed cd's for her for months, now. She is a big fan of Sanrio's Hello Kitty, so I adorn each one with a different HK image:

First, you print out the cover/liner notes on special paper:
Next, assemble the burned cd, jewel case, and paper inserts:
And viola':
The "G" on this one is to serve as a cataloging method for easy reference. Instead of saying, "Let's listen to the one of Hello Kitty flying in a biplane", we can easily say, "I want to listen to C".

These are the reasons she means so much to me. Having been around the world, lived a sex, drugs, and rock&roll life as a radio dj for more than 20 years all over this great nation, I finally feel that I have found the perfect match for me. I often wonder why I deserve her.