Philosophy 101

It was Nietzche who has been paraphrased (most notably in "Steel Magnolias") as saying "that which does not kill us makes us stronger." He was a cynical son-of-a-bitch, though. Spent way too much time analyzing his existential angst (even though it would take the French a few more decades to invent that--he was ahead of his time).

I love taking pot shots at philosophers, 'cause they're all full of hoo-ey. Collectively, they've generated enough hot air to power several small cities until God comes back.

Once that happens, I guess you don't really need the power.

My theory is that, the older we get and the more relationships we have and the more we have invested in our lives, the more we have at stake. In many ways we measure our lives in terms of what we have to lose, and what we have to lose tends to increase over time. And making sure we don't lose what we have takes a little more time every time we add one of those things to the list.

A bit convoluted, I admit. But it's the closest I can come to making sense out of the universe. What with inept politicians posing as leaders (a city in Vermont wants to be able to arrest Bush and Cheney on war crimes charges), the cost of living not even keeping close to real earnings and the construction at Northcross Mall making it impossible for me to keep my car clean (she's my baby, and the dust that blows off that site is not treating her kindly), the best I can figure is to muddle on. Through the muck. Through the mire. Through the forces that don't want you to be happy.

Life is a challenge, I know. It's tried its best to keep me down. I've had my rounds with depression and stupidity but have lived through them. There have been times I've contemplated suicide, but realized that, in the end, I had too much to live for.

That's when I adopted the Scarlett O'Hara principle of crisis (and time) management: "I'll think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day."

Who'd a' thunk that a British actress using a bad Southern accent could crystalize such a response to Nietzche?

And tomorrow is another day. One to have with the people we love, and one to miss and love the ones who aren't here physically any more. I have a small collection of the latter and a larger collection of the former.

As I grow older, that balance may shift. It's the price of out-living other people.

But tomorrow really is another day, full of promise and possibility. It's usually us that inhibits its achieving its full measure.

Do the Right Thing

We mourn this weekend the untimely passing of our sister, Mrs. Bhutto.

She bravely and valiantly was the voice of the disenfranchised people of her country. She fought for freedom and equality. She took on the nastiest people, both in the government and those acting outside of it.

She was taken from us prematurely and for no good reason.

I had seen earlier in the day that an explosion had been heard near a rally she attended. I didn't find out until later just how close it had been.

And now no one can agree on what killed her. Bullet? Shrapnel? Hitting her head on either the sun roof or a lever inside the car?

Doesn't really matter: the ending is the same, regardless.

She's dead because someone shot her and then exploded himself.

I'm not sure the details are that important.

Her life and values, her dedication to freedom and democracy, her absolute refusal to be intimidated, her love of her country and its people: those are the important things.

The questions about cause of death are largely an attempt to deny her the status of martyr. A twisted concept that has almost been turned into a middle-eastern industry.

There are no martyrs. There are brave people who risk their lives by standing up to intolerant bullies. And there are others who have no respect for human life, not even their own.

Life is a precious gift that comes from somewhere we don't know. Nevertheless, it's more valuable than any price that could be put on it.

And whether you take your own or someone else's or both, you squander your fortune like the Prodigal Son.

So Mrs. Bhutto, I hope you don't become a martyr so much as a symbol of heroism. That is your proper legacy.

Someone who risked her life and lost it trying to do the right thing.

THC

I love seeing hypocrisy avenged, and I got a chance to late last week. The court had a decision in the case of the controversial Wal-Mart: the hypocrites lost. They’re the ones that won’t admit that their only problem is the retailer in question.

No one has yet raised a question about the Office Depot (another big box store) that’s going in across the street. And the incredibly enormous Lowe’s (a far bigger box) a few blocks away hasn’t raised an eyebrow that I can find or triggered any lawsuit on record.

You either oppose big box stores in commercial areas that border neighborhoods, or you don’t. Or at least you’re honest about why you don’t like a particular one.

I’m reminded over and over of Big Daddy’s speech in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, the mendacity one. He knew people were prevaricating, dodging honesty as fast as it came. Evading honesty.

He could smell it, and I can, too. He didn’t like it, and neither do I.

Me and Big Daddy’ll stick together on this one: mean what you say, but for the love of God, just be honest.

The litmus test on this one is fairly simple: would you support a Whole Foods at the same location that was developed with similar or identical standards? If you can’t honestly answer “no” to that one, then you have no business raising a ruckus. Your motivations are insincere and your message is corrupt.

It is but a clanging gong or clattering cymbal, shrill, hollow and without meaning.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. (No THC, so you’ll pass your next drug test. Well, not at least if THC doesn’t stand for The Hypocrite Coalition.)

Energize

I’m amazed at the power of a simple, random word to evoke overwhelming images in 3D Technicolor with a Dolby THX sound track.

We’re watching an old, old re-run of Star Trek, and Spock said “Energize.” For a brief moment in time, I was once again dancing at the 57th Street Dance Theater in Waco, TX as a grad student. It was the hippest place in town: an old movie theater that had been transformed into a dance club. Sofas in the lobby, and even in the men’s room. A giant movie screen with curtains that opened periodically to show videos.

And me on the dance floor, cuttin’ loose and feeling free for the first time in my life. I had only been in town a short time, didn’t know anyone else there and so was free to recreate myself as I chose.

It was the beginning of my being honest with myself and everyone else. It was the beginning of freedom.

On a dance floor in a dance club in Waco, TX. Who’d have figured on that? Not me, certainly.

I’ll always remember, though, that song with over-dubs of Spock saying “pure energy.” “Energize” is close enough.

A strange thing to be thinking about as we approach Christmas, especially since we have a friend who is seriously ill and probably won’t go home from the long-term care facility he’s in. His dementia seems to get worse every day.

Parkinson’s takes no prisoners.

Still a simple word will sometimes remind me of something so vivid it haunts me, and it’s usually something important.

I don’t really understand why until I sit and think a while about it.

Usually, but not this time.

I heard the word and knew: that was the moment I first felt free. Free to be me.

Bliss, in a word.

I didn’t grow into it for a while, but that moment of realization that I can be who I am and still be happy stays with me.

"Energize."

Secret Santa

I've recently been in contact with an old high school friend who sought me out to offer her condolences after Daddy died. She knew I lived in Austin and managed to get a letter to me. It was guarded at best, because there are apparently more than 1 of me in town. Or at least that share my name.

Once I confirmed my identity by asking about what ever happened to her old boyfriend, Scott, it was just like old times.

Well, except that she's married with 2 kids (adorable, both) and I'm gay with a dead husband and new one of 8 years. (Actually, 8 years doesn't count as new.)

But she's the same as she ever was. We used to talk about important things, like religion and faith and how it fits into our lives. And that's what we've been talking about lately.

As usual, her latest email made me think about something I hadn't before. She asked me if I went to church, because worshipping with other people is so important to her. Sounds like a simple question, but it got me thinking about why I don't.

There are plenty of congregations in Austin that would have no problem with me being gay. Unfortunately, they tend to be the hippy-dippy type of liberals who have never thought about why they are liberals. It's just trendy in "intellectual" circles in Austin.

Oh, it's also trendy to be "intellectual".

Said it before, and I'll say it again: "liberal" does not equal "intellectual." Unless you know why it is you believe what you do and can talk about it intelligently without resorting to truisms and cheap shots at those who do not agree with you, you're either unintelligent, uniformed or just don't care enough to think.

Having said that, that's not the real reason I don't go to church.

It's all about secrets.

I wasn't honest about who I was, even with myself, until I was 23 years old. I kept my sexuality a secret, even from myself. I got used to living apart in one part of my mind while I lived among people who didn't really know me.

Keeping that secret made me a very solitary person whose life of the mind is sometimes more real than the one that I can touch. And even though people are more open to homosexuals than they have been since the days of Greece and Rome, to one degree or another, I've lived with this secret in one way or another most of my life.

And still do.

I consider carefully whether I use the term "partner" or "roommate" when I refer to Shannon. The two words have totally different connotations that sometimes still matter. Unfortunately.

It's not a secret for the most part, but I still keep it that way when I think I need to.

It keeps me apart from people, and I've grown used to that. And no matter how much I would like it not to be an issue, it is always, on some level.

So I keep to myself. I never know who's ready for the truth, and if I don't know them, that's one bridge we don't have to go over.

I live a very private life with a limited number of people who know the whole story. I prefer being alone more than being with other people more often than not. That way, I don't have to decide who I'm going to lie to.

I've grown used to it. It may not be every one's model for a happy life, but it's the one I've built.

In secret.

Friends in Deed

John was transferred to a long term care facility earlier today. Shannon said that he had been expecting something like that, just given John’s general incoherence and disorientation. His problems aren’t so much needing urgent care as much as needing someone to make sure he eats and takes his pills when he should.

And of course, I had already ordered flowers in memory of his mother, who died over the weekend, and that were to be delivered to the hospital he was in. Because of the heavy delivery schedule around Christmas, they’re not canceling or revising any deliveries this week. I did get an email saying that they would provide a replacement order, so I sent them the new location and will see how it all shakes out.

Shannon has gotten the impression that John’s daughter has become so overwhelmed by the situation that she’s distancing herself from it and everything to do with it. I’m afraid that it may fall to us to take care of things we weren’t counting on taking care of, but we will certainly do what we can. We’ll what we can and have to leave it at that.

Shannon and John go back decades as friends. (I was probably in middle school when they met.) And Shannon and I are in agreement that we help friends out when they need it. Even if it’s nothing more than calling regularly.

Shannon’s physical condition precludes many things, and his mental condition sometimes makes it difficult for him to deal with the totality of the situation. And my hours of availability are limited by my job. I have tons of vacation time racked up, but I have to approach taking unplanned time off very carefully.

Even though I have an assistant again, we still have very little duplication of responsibilities. That means most of my work is waiting when I get back. One of the pitfalls of making oneself indispensable, I guess. Job-security: yes; convenience: no.

Hopefully, things will settle down sometime soon. Given the last several months, I don’t hold out much hope, though. They’ve been some of the hardest of my life.

Still, we’ll muddle on, soldier through and tough it out. We’ll do what we can and hope that it’s enough.

Neither Shannon nor I take relationships lightly, whether they be romantic or Platonic. It took months of his pursuing me for me to commit to anything more than a one-night stand. Many months.

When he stood by me while my best friend was dying of cancer, he turned my head a bit. He didn’t run, like most people do any time death enters the equation. People don’t like to be associated with death, no matter to what degree.

And few of them would go to a funeral with you.

I guess this is the long way around saying that we’ll be there for John, even though his condition is only barely treatable and most certainly terminal. Parkinson’s takes no prisoners. Nor does it spare anyone.

So the days, weeks and months ahead are going to be more difficult, rather than less, I’m betting.

And all we have to give is our friendship in deed.

Next?

I’m getting around to Christmas a bit at a time. The cards are finally here and in the mail. The menu is planned, sort of. It’ll mainly depend on what looks good at the Sun Harvest next weekend. I decided against the only prime rib I could find because it cost $40. And change. Plus tax.

Flowers are on the way to John in the hospital in honor of his mother, who passed away this past weekend. I’m still not clear on exactly when it happened, but dead is dead, so it doesn’t really matter. What matter’s is who’s left behind.

I have clothes in the laundry even as we speak. Enough to get us through until my next day off.

The car’s paid up for another month. And the insurance is good until February.

We made it to Temple and back today so they could do tests on Shannon that neither of us know the reason for. The VA operates more efficiently than ever before. Perhaps too much so.

They schedule appointments that they don’t tell you about until you get a letter and then have to reschedule it because it’s just not possible. Along the way, they never tell you why they scheduled it in the first place.

On my list is getting presents off to our mothers. Tomorrow. UPS. Much more reliable than the Post Office.

Right now, I’m going to focus on the laundry. I’m sure I’ll remember what it was I forgot tomorrow.

And as a devotee to the Scarlett O’Hara Principle of Time Management, I know that tomorrow is another day. I’ll think about it later.

And hopefully remember it in time to get it done.

If it’s real important, I will.

If it’s not, it’ll just have to get in line.

Jingle Bells

Winter has finally caught up with us. It’s cold, clear and crisp as a well-tuned bell. And getting more and more so as the minutes pass.

I heard the last of the thunder rolling out about 7 this morning. It started about midnight, so I went to bed before it got here. I can’t go to sleep when it’s storming. I have to get to bed before it gets here and rely on God’s good grace to see me through.

The skies cleared up and the wind started blowing. Blowing cold and mean.

Fitting weather for the events of the day.

John’s mother died last night or early this morning. He wasn’t quite clear about it. He’s in the hospital and is giving up on his battle with Parkinson’s. Now that his mother is gone, he doesn’t seem to be able to find a reason to hang on.

Trying to wrap my mind around yet another death is taking its toll. It leaves me addled and confused. I can’t quite get my thoughts together enough to get them down on virtual paper.

Thank God for Lucy. I’ve never seen a cat that gets right up in front of the TV and watches the pictures changing. She gets so intense that it becomes comedic.

A little ray of sunshine, wrapped in orange-tabby fur, on a cold, cold night.

Cold, clear, crisp.

But no more bells, please.

Contraband Christmas

A number of years ago, me and Rich (my first partner) were so dead-broke that we couldn’t afford a Christmas tree. I was working in real estate at the time, and December’s a great time to show property, but the commissions don’t start rolling in for a couple of months. And Rich was trying to get his small business building and restoring harps off the ground.

Money was scarce, and we needed most of it for bills. It wasn’t that we had so many bills; we just didn’t have much money.

We allocated $20 a piece for presents, enough to make a good Christmas dinner, and there just wasn’t enough left over for a tree.

I knew that Rich was sad not having one, so I hopped into my trusty Nissan pickup one Saturday morning and headed to Bastrop in search of the perfect tree.

Who needs store-bought when you can swipe a really fresh one for free?

I landed in some indeterminate development that had not been developed beyond dirt roads and a few trees cleared. I walked around looking like I was considering buying a piece of land, found a tree I liked, cut it down, threw in the back of said Nissan, and drove like hell for home.

I figured that if anyone saw me doing the deed, I’d be back in Austin before the authorities got to the crime scene. And it was muddy enough I’m sure my license plate was obscured.

We had a nice Christmas. One of my best.

I learned a lot about the role that material possessions should play in one’s life. The lesson came down to one simple principle: “not too much.”

Me and Shannon are not much better off this year. We’re not broke, but we definitely are affected by the higher cost of everything.

And we don’t have room for a tree, so that part’s out.

Besides, I wouldn’t want to get the car all full pine needles.

And I don’t run nearly as fast as I used to.

Darkly, Through a Glass

John’s back in the hospital. He was home a few weeks from his last stay, but this time he won’t be going back home. At least not according to his daughter.

The Parkinson’s has gotten to the point that he couldn’t keep his medications straight. He didn’t take some and maybe took the wrong ones at the wrong time, so he’s in pretty bad shape right now. He’s going to have to go to a nursing home when he gets out of the hospital.

This is the beginning of the end that I’ve dreaded since I learned about the Parkinson’s. John must know the same thing. Up until now, impending death has been theoretical. Now it’s more real than ever.

It’s big, it’s ugly and it’s not going away. It’s the specter that will loom over all of us, most darkly over him. And I wonder if somewhere, in his heart of hearts, he isn’t looking forward to no longer being aware of what’s going on. It’s been a long and bruising battle, with many more steps backward than forward.

I wonder if he’s just finally tired.

Shannon’s taking all this pretty hard. He and John go back decades, and this is just one more step toward the inevitable that’s been casting ominous shadows for the last several years. And it’s making the inevitable more real than it ever has been, giving that shadow dimensions it never had before.

Illness shows no discretion: it inflicts its malevolence indiscriminately. It comes and goes in its own time afflicting whomever it wants with no apparent rhyme or reason and, certainly, no apology. It is the one fact of life I cannot reconcile with the concept of a just God.

I will go on reconciling, at least trying to, and maybe at some point I my life I will have the wisdom to see how any of this makes sense. Right now, I just can’t. And maybe I’ll have to pass on to the next realm to ever have an inkling of an answer.

St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians tells us that “For then we shall not see darkly through a glass, (as we now do,) but we shall see face to face.”

Maybe I’ll find an answer then. Until I do, I’ll just go on pondering and meditating on the issue. I hold no great hope, though, for divine wisdom until then.

And I certainly don’t have to like it until I understand it.

How Does One Spell "Email"?

The issue of language usage and spelling came up at an office meeting not too long ago. “How do you spell ‘email’?” was the question. E Mail, E-Mail, e-mail or email. And for that matter, how do you spell online? On line, online or on-line.

Is website one word or two?

The answer is that there is no answer. Because there is no consensus. Because the words haven’t been around long enough to generate a consensus.

The beauty and elegance of the English language is that usage evolves over time by consensus. While the Modern Language Association (MLA) may dictate how an academic humanities paper should be put together, even it evolved between the time I bought my first MLA manual as a college freshman and the time I was in grad school. Standards changed, usage changed and even the stodgy MLA changed.

American English is perhaps the most democratic language in the world. It’s the product of writers and thinkers that decided that they would spell one thing this way and punctuate thus.

It’s the result of consensus.

A consensus that has evolved from Shakespeare to the Victorians to the Edwardians to the Modernists. And consensus develops only over time.

So we may not really know how to spell “email” for a while. For my part, “email”, “online” and “website” are each one word. If you separate them, they mean something different that if you take them together.

That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it.

And it’s my contribution to the great experiment of the consensual English language.

Complications

Shannon’s brother, Gary, stopped by tonight on his way home from work. Well, it’s not really on his way, but he was waiting for the freeways to clear up some and drop off a couple of things.

He asked me about work and how the year-end was messing up my life. Not much, it turns out. All we have to do is W-2’s and 1099’s out before January 31.

But when I started telling him all the other complications of working for a company that provides administrative services for 3 other companies, one of which operates in 13 states, has 17 checking accounts and keeps 8 sets of books, he got thoroughly confused. That’s the usual response I get when I try to explain what it is I do for a living. And it’s why I just tell people I do accounting work when they ask.

And as I was talking, I realized that it really is more complicated that I ever think about. The complications have built up over time, so they have aggregated into one giant complication that’s hard to get a handle on from the outside. It doesn’t seem so much so from the inside.

But the idea of a Texas professional association that has an affiliated non-profit company that operates in 11 states (I think) and exists to provide funding to two other affiliated non-profit companies makes most people’s heads spin. They all think that non-profits either don’t make money or spend all they have.

It’s a common misconception.

Non-profits that last, like all companies, must have reserves to survive the inevitable rough patches. And ours just celebrated its 100th year in existence.

But I digress.

I suppose my job looks complicated, and for a lot of people, it would be. For me, it fits like those beat-up but very comfortable shoes I wear whenever I get the chance.

Keeping track of 4 corporations, 8 sets of books, 17 checking accounts and multiple investment accounts is second nature to me, now. It didn’t come overnight.

On my current assistant’s first day, I told her that she wouldn’t learn the job in 6 hours, 6 days, 6 weeks or 6 months. It’s been about a year now, and she’s just getting to sorting out the complications. She was hired primarily to do data entry, but even her position is complicated.

Nothing’s simple in that world.

Redirect

There’s a story out of New Orleans today about what happened to several patients at Memorial Hospital in the aftermath and fiasco of Hurricane Katrina. It doesn’t really answer any questions, but it raises quite a few. Mostly about the ethics of suffering.

A report obtained by CNN paints a conflicting picture of what really happened. The city was flooding and the lower floors of the hospital were under water; there was no electricity. Patients on ventilators had to be ventilated manually. Someone had to stand there and squeeze a bag steadily over and over again to keep them with oxygen in their bloodstream.

It was a nightmare I hope I never have to live through.

The doctors and nurses implicated have repeatedly said that they were trying to alleviate pain by giving patients high doses of morphine and other drugs. Their patients were suffering, and that’s all they had to give.

I have a hard time separating that from the conferences my family had with the team of doctors at Methodist Hospital in Memphis when Daddy was dieing. They assured us that he was on enough medication that he wasn’t in pain. I didn’t really believe that until he became totally non-responsive.

When we made the decision to cut his life support, they gave him extra doses of pain medication. I’m guessing it was the same kind of morphine they used in New Orleans.

I’m not sure what the difference is. The only one that I can see is that my family made the decision. I’m not quite sure that the folks at Memorial Hospital could have found a family member, much less gotten them through the water to the hospital.

I don’t know what really happened in New Orleans, and I probably never will. But it reeks heavily of someone who should have had an evacuation plan in place ducking responsibility.

It would be more productive to find that person and hound them the way the doctors and nurses at Memorial have been.

And eminently more just.

Homeless for the Holidays

Every year, my company undertakes charitable projects. They’re entirely employee generated and not endorsed by the company, but likewise not discouraged. And with Christmas looming large, we have a new one: giving food and warm gloves and hats to the people that live under the bridges on MoPac.

The bridge people live in and around some of the most affluent people in Austin. But I have been told that they are among the most resistant to seeking help, either from shelters or other social service organizations. From what I can gather, most of them are mentally ill and suspicious of the people that could help them it they would just allow it.

When I think about how close I’ve come to losing everything, including my mind, I can’t help but feel a responsibility for those folks. There, but for the grace of God, go I. And Shannon was on a road towards that when I met him.

Shannon is different in that he has recognized that he needs help and has accepted it. The bridge people can’t quite get there.

I don’t know if handing out stuff will help any, but it might keep some of them from dieing the next time we have a really bad cold snap. It only takes a few hours of exposure to very cold air with wind to kill someone.

And while they’re mostly crazy, that’s no reason for a death sentence.

This one has hit home, so that’s what we’ll do with the money we don’t spend on other people.

No one that we know actually needs anything that we could give them. They have the same problems as we do, but they don’t really need anything that we could give them. And God knows that me and Shannon don’t need anything we don’t have.

We don’t have a lot, but there are many more who have even less. “Less”, by the way, means “nothing”.

Something to think about as the Christmas frenzy ramps up into high gear.

Sneak

The holidays took me by surprise this year. Thanksgiving showed up too early, and now Christmas is bearing down. Charlie Brown Christmas is on tonight, marking the official beginning of the countdown to the new year.

Don’t be fooled by Dick Clark starting 10 seconds before the big moment: the countdown starts tonight.

(Dick Clark, by the way, has made a deal with the devil, I’m convinced: “I’ll host the show but only if the passing of time doesn’t count for me.” Or maybe his agent made the deal, and he doesn’t know yet. Either way, is he really the most appropriate person to mark the passage of time?)

It’s been a hard year for Shannon and me both. We started it in a psychiatric hospital. Since then, this year has seemed to be about death more than anything else. It’s reared its ugly head more times this year than I can ever remember.

There have been good things to rise out of the ashes of destruction, though. Mama and I are talking more that we have in decades and both being honest. Shannon and I know who our friends are, and our friends know that we care for them as well.

Bad years like this often drive wedges between couples. The stress can seem overwhelming sometimes and lead to frayed nerves and temper flare-ups. Not to mention the residual stress on already-tight finances.

That hasn’t happened to Shannon and me, thank the good Lord. If anything, this awful year has brought us closer together and made us appreciate each other a little more. We’ve both had lessons about the fragility and precariousness of life. For that reason, we hang on to each other more tightly than we ever had.

And we’ve learned more than we ever knew before that some things just ain’t that important. I’m not sure if we actually knew it before or just suspected, but now we know with the certainty that rises to the level of faith.

So let the countdown begin. May the new year be brighter and happier. May it resonate with joy and peace. May our lives and those of our families and friends be abundant and filled with joy. May we all know the peace that passes all understanding.

It’s never too early for that to sneak up on us.

One Potato, Two Potato...

Universal health care has become the hot-potato of the Democratic primary that raises more questions than it answers. It’s a nasty multi-headed monster from Greek myth that will turn you to stone if you look in its eyes.

I work for a small company and pay $150 a month for my health insurance. The company picks up the extra 75% of the policy. It costs the company about $10,000 a month to pick up the remainder for the ones of us that they cover.

I know, because I pay the bills.

We have a “rich” benefit plan (in the parlance of insurance agents) that Aetna doesn’t even offer any more to new clients. The rates went up in July. Aetna has us over a barrel: keep your current coverage and pay more or pay less and get much, much, much less.

Throw universal care into the picture, and I’m not sure where that will leave me. If a government-sponsored alternative is available, I’m not sure that our Board of Directors wouldn’t opt for it. It would save about $120,000 a year. And doing so might be good financial advice.

Still, I like my expensive, although it be totally private and unsubsidized, health coverage. But working in finance, I would have an obligation to point out that any federally subsidized alternative would need a close looking at. If there’s an alternative to $120,000 a year, I am duty-bound to point it out.

$120,000 isn’t a lot as far as day-to-day operations go. We routinely write checks for much more and transfer much more than that between accounts to keep the wheels greased and running smoothly.

Still, when we close the books out on June 30, $120,000 can make the difference between profit and loss. I just wonder what they Board would do if they had the option of getting rid of that $120,000 liability.

Most of them have really good healthcare coverage because they work for hospitals. I just hope they remember the little people when they make their decisions.

Thus, the hot potato.

I hope they at least have some butter and freshly-cracked pepper as a consolation prize.

Enter Stage Left; or, Lucy and the Big, Big TV

Several months ago, Shannon and I were in a pawn shop looking for something that we didn’t find. But on the way out the door, a big, big TV caught my eye. It was marked down because it had been there too long. One look, and I fell in love.

I picked it up the next weekend, and soon discovered one of the possible reasons it was on sale: it really needs two grown men to pick it up. Taking it out of the back of the car almost wrecked my back. Once I got it on a dolly and had rolled it into our apartment, I decided that it would stay on the dolly until I had help to pick it up.

I may have testosterone surges that allow me to achieve Herculean feats, but I’m getting older, the testosterone ain’t as strong as it used to be and I’ve learned the hard way when enough is enough.

Enough is enough is always enough. (Eat your heart out, Gertrude Stein.)

Enter Lucy, stage left.

She’s our little red-headed kitty. And she loves the big, big TV. When she’s not harassing Amanda (our little black kitty) or knocking breakable objects onto the concrete floors or begging for food, she loves to hop up on the cabinet where the TV sits. She gets right up in front of it and watches as things dart back and forth. She bats at images on the big, big screen. She occasionally jumps up and tries to get inside the TV to play.

Lucy is a bright spot in our lives right now. We’ve been surrounded by death and illness and misfortune lately. It’s overwhelming sometimes. I just lay in bed and pretend I’m asleep so I don’t have to get up.

But enter Lucy, stage left.

She’ll be chasing a moth or watching TV or just curling up and being cute in a way only cats can be. She loves to curl up in my chair every time I get up. Sometimes I just stand for a while to let her enjoy whatever it is she’s enjoying.

But it’s my chair, so she has to leave, eventually.

She gets a kitty-air lift over edge of the desk and onto the couch. And then she starts sucking up to Shannon.

Red-heads are fickle.

But they're eteranally entertaining.

Simple Gifts

Thanksgiving has come and gone. Thank goodness.

Not that I didn't enjoy it.

We had a quiet dinner, took a nap and went to see John in the hospital to spread the joy that we can. Being in the hospital on a major holiday bites, and I wanted John to at least have some good home-made food, even if it didn't have any animal products in it. Well, other than the butter (lots of it) and eggs. (Most vegetarians draw the line somewhere between principle and wanting and needing good food, like dairy.)

John's doing ok, all things considered. I don't know that he'll ever do great again, given the Parkinson's. It's a disease that doesn't lend itself to much progress. It seems to be more a matter of trying to hold onto whatever one has than ever believing in getting better.

That, in and of itself, is depressing. The knowledge that it's all down hill from here must be overwhelming. Fighting that is certainly honorable, and it reinforces my belief in the unusual strength of the human spirit. But some days, it's just got to be a pisser.

John liked the fruit salad most. It was one of my best. Substituting clove powder (which I couldn't get from anywhere I would buy it from) with allspice gave it much more subtlety. After many versions and incarnations, I think I have that one right.

I said earlier that I'm glad Thanksgiving has come and gone. Not because I don't like it--it's really my favorite holiday of the year. No expectations of gifts, and if you can get a good meal on the table in a reasonable amount of time, you're a hero.

That said, our world has been upside down of late. And feast days always bring to mind why we're not spending them with our families. The reasons boils down to distance and dysfunction.

It's an eleven hour drive to Mama's house. If the weather cooperates. Shannon has problems with long errands around the neighborhood, so an eleven hour drive is out of the question. And I refuse to leave him here alone on a holiday.

The dysfunction comes in with my sisters and Shannon's brother. It's there, but we're just not going to talk about it. Rehashing old grievances and pointedly pronouncing judgement of the present don't make for a good dinner.

So, we had a nice (very tasty, if I maybrag for a second) Thanksgiving dinner. Everything got done early, so we just ate early. Didn't have to worry about anyone showing or not showing up. Didn't have to entertain.

We just enjoyed each other's company and had a nice meal.

For that I give shameless, unabashed thanks.

God is good when he wants to be.

He was.

How to Make a Perfect Bird

Shannon called me at work last Friday to find out how big a turkey to get. He's pushing 60 and had never bought a turkey in his life. I told him to get the smallest one he could find.

He kept asking me "Well, how big is too small?"

I had to tell him over and over again that he couldn't possibly find a turkey that was too small. "It's just going to be the two of us. How much can we eat?"

He did good. Brought back an organically raised almost 11-pounder from Sun Harvest.

That's how you make a perfect bird: you start with a good product.

All I did was add sea salt, fresh ground pepper and some melted butter.

Oh, and fresh sage. Lots of it.

We now have the leftovers I predicted, and anyone who visits this weekend will have to take some back. Until this bird of paradise is fully consumed, all visits come with take out.

With visit, you get turkey, sage dressing and giblet gravy. We're running out of carrots and potatoes, but we also have a stockpile of holiday fruit salad.

You like?

Google: the New Walmart

A judge holds the fate of the Northcross Mall development in her delicate little hands. She heard several days of testimony, and I’m sure her head is hurting. She’ll issue a ruling in mid-December. Just enough time to get rid of the headache and be able to consider the facts of the case.

The whole thing gives me a headache and makes me wonder if some people don’t just have too much time on their hands. I’ve only had the time to send a letter to the editor of the Statesman and found it was published when someone left a very threatening message: “Watch you back, bitch. I know where you live.”

I haven’t had time to do much else. Life got in the way. That, and making it to work on time (or some semblance of “on time”—what’s 5 or 10 minutes one way or the other?).

All those shrill people who stand on the street corners with their big, red signs don’t live in my neighborhood. They’ve never slogged their way in the rain across that damned parking lot with water up to their ankles. They don’t worry every morning about how safe or unsafe it is to cross Northcross without getting run over.

The whole thing brings to mind the concerted effort to kill, or at least immobilize another corporate giant: Google.

Yes, Google collects information from your computer every time you do a search. And if you have their toolbar installed, it collects information about every site you visit. And, yes, Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick poses some anti-trust questions. It could possibly lead to an anti-competitive market dominance.

Yet the shrill detractors are framing their arguments to the FTC in the terms of privacy issues. Their argument seems to be that Google is already too big and shouldn’t be allowed to get any bigger. That it’s invading every aspect of our cyber life. That, because it collects information from its users, it should not be allowed to acquire an ad company.

If you don’t want Google putting cookies on your computer, it’s simple enough to turn them off. And if you really hate Google that much, just don’t use it.

I’m sure those two idealistic boys who started the company never imagined the firestorms they’d set off.

And Sam Walton (“Mr. Sam” as he was known to just about everyone) would be perplexed, too.

If a store’s not right for a community, no one will shop at it. That’s the law of supply and demand at its simplest, most pared-down version.

And even though this is an affluent neighborhood, there are pockets of poverty not too far away. The Albertson’s closed at 183 and Ohlen Road. The next closest grocery is the old HEB on Burnet Road, but it would require a bus trip and maybe a transfer, depending on where you’re coming from.

Having a thriving, revitalized shopping center across the street will almost certainly mean that getting across Northcross ain’t gonna get any easier. But they’re digging out an enormous (at least 12 feet deep) retention pond that will be hooked into Shoal Creek at the extreme western edge of the property.

That should put an end to slogging through ankle-deep water on my way to the office.

And that’s what living in a neighborhood means: if you ain’t slogged, you don’t live here.

Many Thanks

Thanksgiving snuck up on me this year. Last week, I asked my boss, “Is it really Thanksgiving next week.”

“Yep,” she replied.

Between death and travel and more death and apartment-repair nightmares and friends in the hospital, the last several months have run together into a blur. Not to mention cash flow problems caused by all of the aforementioned issues. We’ve managed to compress an entire year’s worth of problems into a few short months.

Still, I’m thankful. I’m still alive and human enough to be moved by other peoples’ pain, as well as recognize and embrace my own. We had the resources to pay for all the extra expenses we’ve had. My mother and I are closer than we ever have been.

Sometimes, I look back on the year and start to get depressed.

But then, if I’m honest, I’ve had the good with the bad.

Yes, I mourn Daddy’s death, but then I remember that I had the privilege of knowing him for 42 years. And, yes, the repairs on our apartment have been a nightmare. But many people would love to be able to complain about that, because all they have to repair is a cardboard box. And certainly not one in a nice neighborhood.

And I have a good job. It’ll be eight years November 30.

With all the chaos of this year, I have constants to sustain me: a committed partner, a job I like and a roof over my head. And then there’s faith.

It’s been a bad year in some ways, but in others it’s made me a stronger person who’s more committed to and secure in my priorities.

So now to my current priority--the menu:

Roast turkey
Giblet gravy
Mama’s cornbread dressing with sage (fresh, of course)
Honey-glazed carrots with tarragon
Green beans sautéed in olive oil and garlic
Mashed potatoes with garlic and dill
Fruit salad with holiday spices

Plus a special vegetarian version of the above (no turkey, of course—they aren’t veggies) for John, who’s still in the hospital.

Eat, drink and be merry, all ye (3 people) who read this.

We intend to do the same.

Gobble-gobble

Negative Space

Tomorrow is Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. I’ll have to call Mama. It’ll be the first one since Daddy died. She’s going to have dinner with her sister and taking the free turkey she got because the walk-in fridge at her church went out a week or two ago. She was around to take it, and Baptists that feed other people can’t stand to see anything going to waste.

Especially not food. God sends people to hell for wasting food I’ve been told.

I’m glad she’s going somewhere e
lse for the holiday. On Thursday, the house would only feel more empty than it already does.

I’ve often wondered what painters and sculptors meant when they talked about “negative space”. They’ve been talking about for years, but they do so in the argot of artists, who speak a language I don’t always understand.

Now I understand “negative space” in a palpable way.

It’s what’s obviously missing.

It’s the element, that by just not being there, becomes all the more real.

It’s the void that remains while life goes on around it.

This will be a bitter-sweet Thanksgiving. Sweet, because I have been shopping so much that Shannon and I will have our own private feast. Bitter because I miss Daddy.

Life could be worse. Then again, it could be better.

I keep telling Mama over and over and over again that we made the right decisions, that we did what Daddy wanted. She’s not always convinced, and one of us always ends up crying when we talk.

It’s usually me.

Still, I have a bitter-sweet thing to be thankful for: we did right by Daddy.

Most importantly, I did right by Daddy.

Consciously letting go of someone you love, making decisions to end his life in God's time (read: real quick) and then living with the aftermath is no easy chore.

After Rich, my first partner died, I questioned the decisions I made that led up to his death. His situation was hopeless. He had a massive septic infection in his lungs. One that had little to no possibility of treatment.

I had an obligation to honor his wishes, that he not be kept alive artificially, that out-weighed my own.

As I told Mama in the hospital, it'll be the easiest and the hardest thing you've ever done up until now. You'll know when the t ime's right, and you'll do the right thing. You won't be able to do otherwise.

It’s going to be a strange holiday season without him. To be honest, it’s just pure-strange to be without him.

I’ve decided in the aftermath, though, that I can never miss Mama’s birthday again and that I need to buy her something pretty and useless for Christmas. Daddy was always the one who gave her the one present she wanted most.

That one’s on me, now.

We’ve had our problems as a family, and I can’t be responsible for that. What I can do is move forward and try to help Mama do the same. My sisters can fend for themselves. Neither one seems to be open to the fact that Daddy’s gone.

Denial is futile, and it only leads to other problems that can escalate into full-blown craziness. I know because I have personal experience on that topic.

As I see it, my job is to fill that negative space with things that are meaningful. Whether it’s a phone call, flowers or a pretty little sterling pin with Austrian glass I found at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower center.

I’m flying in the face of modern art, but I think negative space is vastly over-rated, and something I definitely don’t want or need in my life.

I’m more concentrated on positive ones.

The Unsinkables

My mother and I had our very first real and honest conversation when Daddy was in the ICU at Methodist Hospital in Memphis. She refused to leave the hospital from the time he was admitted until he died, several days later. I spent my time there, too.

There’s something about stark mortality staring you in the face that makes everything else insignificant. It’s one of those highly-focused moments that obliterates everything else.

Focusing on the hallways and elevators between the waiting room and Daddy’s room. Remembering each turn, because getting lost might mean a few less minutes. Forcing myself and her to eat.

Not because we had an appetite, but because we knew that we wouldn’t be much good for him if we didn’t.

Since Daddy died, Mama and I have talked several times about how some things just don’t matter that much. About how life is too short for not loving the people around you.

Daddy’s death was a slap in the face to the both of us.

She’s opening up to me, and I’m opening up to her.

When she calls now, she usually spends a while talking to Shannon before she talks to me. He says he can tell a difference in her attitude toward him since before.

When me and her talk, one of us always ends up crying. Usually me.

But we talk about things that are important in and around the trivial (it rained one building over but not on us, and, by the way, every time I look at Daddy’s picture, I start to cry—that kind of stuff).

Such twisted conversations that only a mother could put up with.

She keeps comforting me as I comfort her. She says “It’ll take time.” 5 minutes later I tell her the same thing.

We’re messes, me and Mama. But finally, after 42 years, we’re in the same boat.

And neither of us intends to sink.

Patience

When I finally got an assistant, after several years of the position not being funded, I told her two things: “You won’t learn this job in 6 days, 6 weeks or 6 months;” and “There are at least a hundred mistakes to make. I know, because I’ve made them all.”

I wasn’t that good of a manager with my last assistant. Granted, he didn’t seem to like the concept of work or the impositions it posed to his social life. That probably made me more intolerant of his mistakes.

And it could be the case that my current assistant really likes having things to do, and I cut her some slack.

Still, things that might have pissed me off a few years ago don’t anymore. I’m amazed at my patience with her. I’m assuming that, if I had been kidnapped and replaced by aliens, I would know. They would be doing strange things to me instead of letting me go to work every day.

So it has to be me going to work every day.

Maybe my patience is just a by-product of me dealing with Shannon over the last few years. Maybe my priorities have changed after such a hard and painful year. Maybe I’m just giving people room to be human.

Since Daddy died, Mama and I have talked several times about why some things just ain’t that important. We were mostly talking about me being gay and my sister not speaking to me. Two topics that wouldn’t have come up with such honesty before he died.

Maybe some of that bled over into my workplace.

I know that dealing with Shannon’s mental health issues has helped teach me understanding. I still get impatient sometimes, because I tell him one thing and he hears another. But, by and large, I have learned the patience of Job.

It doesn’t come naturally. Most of us have to learn how to be patient. And I am chief among them.

I don’t know when that fundamental change occurred. Maybe it’s a product of aging, but I doubt it. I know too many people who are a good bit older than me who remind me of myself as an adolescent.

Most likely, it’s life-experience. Even though I haven’t consciously done it, I think that my experiences of the last year or so have made abundantly clear what is important and what is not.

Now, if someone could convince my older sister of that, I’d be most grateful.

If you try, good luck.

Intelligent Design?

I'm watching a show on PBS (Nova) about intelligent design and a lawsuite that revolved around it. And the only things I can take away from it is that, not only is it not intelligent, but that its proponents show a startling lack of faith. After all, it takes much more faith to believe that God works things out in his own way and time than it does to simply conscribe things you don't fully understand and can't explain to the junk heap.

It's certainly a simpler explanation that some higher being poofed the entire universe into being 4000 years ago than to argue that our universe is the product of billions of years of development. Most people have a hard time wrapping their minds around a concept like "billions of years." And I am among them.

The more complicated explanation, that life developed on Earth by way of an infinitely enormous number of mutations that favored one creature over the other, is more difficult to try to understand. Humans, by their very nature as temporal creatures with limited life spans, will never be able to fully comprehend the concept of infinity.

Faith is the belief in things not seen. Or fully understood. Faith requires us to accept things that we cannot grasp the totality of because all reasonable evidence points at them.

Faith and science have little to do with each other, except where accepting that the science one doesn't understand is an accurate explanation for a phenomena that we cannot comprehend fully.

Intelligent design is faith masquerading as science, and not particularly good faith, at that. It requires that you constrict God to a little box. It doesn't allow for the truly amazing and awe-inspiring: that we got here from where the whole process started.

Faith and science need not be enemies or even uneasy bed-fellows. They are not mutually exclusive and can coexist in peace.

In fact, science can reinforce faith, if you let it. If you think about how incredibly complicated our universe is, you should be awed. And many scientific laws and principles are so elegant that, if you understand them, reinforce the idea of some power we don't understand and will never fully comprehend.

That's faith, baby.

Vanity Fare

Unless you are an extreme masochist who enjoys having your entire world turned upside down while someone who does not speak English tries to fix your apartment the wrong way, don't ever, ever, under any circumstances try to have major work done on your domicile while you're still living in it. They were supposed to be done by no later than last Wednesday afternoon. Since they didn't get here until late Wednesday morning, that didn't happen.

Our apartment management has hired someone to replace the vanity in the master bath and mitigate some other water damage that previous managers have ignored to the point that the cumulative damage can no longer be ignored. They hired a contractor in good faith, and the guy that showed up to do the work thought he was there to replace a vanity bowl. Just the porcelain and not the cabinet, woodwork and drywall around it. Plus fixing the drywall in the dining room and painting the ceilings in the master bath.

It's gone from bad to worse to insane.

The cabinet he got to replace the water-damaged vanity we had is very pretty. It has six nice drawers, 4 more than we had before. The drawer pulls are lovely, as is the counter top.

The only problem is that, when they put the face frame back on the doors, those lovely drawers will only open a few inches.

On top of that, he didn't close off the wall behind the vanity, so I could see the framing timbers for the building and a nice, convenient route for mice, rats, squirrels and bugs into our cabinet. His answer was to try to use spackling compound with nothing behind it to seal up the very large hole.

On top of that, it's still leaking.

On top of that, my floors look like crap because he only made the most cursory effort at cleaning up after himself. I have spackling and drywall dust mixed with a little water and smeared around quite liberally in my dining room and master bath.

I took off early today to meet with the apartment manager and show her my concerns. She wasn't real happy, but assured me that the floors can be fixed. She also said that the people they hired were going to have to rip everything out and start over.

Good news and bad news, at the same time. Good, because things should get fixed. Bad because it's already been a week, and I'm not sure how much more of this we can take.

Living with these kind of projects going on around you is kind of like making a little voodoo doll of yourself and then sticking in full of pins in all the sensitive places. And when that doesn't hurt enough, sticking the pins in your living, breathing and frustrated body.

Unless you can go and live somewhere else while the work's being done, just don't do it. Take my word on this one: you don't want to live with it.

Enjoy what you have, imperfect though it may be. Fixing it could lead to divorce or murder.

It's only a vanity, and I'm not that damned vain, regardless of what you've heard.

The Other Side

Palliative Care from the Other Side

I’ve worked with nurses for eight years and heard clinical terms I don’t understand all too often. They tend to end in –itis or –osis or something else I don’t understand.

It often seems like they're using a foreing language I just don't quite comprehend.

I didn’t know what palliative care was until I started working there. It’s not a topic that comes up in many conversations. And when it does, most people just don’t want to talk about it.

Then, my dearest, closest friend in the world, Bucky, was diagnosed with cancer. The outlook was bleak from the beginning. The tumor was wrapped around his brain, stretching from his throat up and over, like a boa constrictor. Not the news I wanted to hear.

He went to MD Anderson and went through one round of radiation treatment.

He said “enough is enough.” Or something to that effect. He had to write things down because his tongue had swollen so badly that he couldn’t talk.

He died in hospice care.

Fast forward eight or so years, and I got a call from Shannon, my partner. He just said, “You need to call home.” I could tell he was on the verge of tears. Then he told me Daddy was in the hospital, and Mama didn’t sound real good.

Daddy had been diagnosed with liver failure a year or two before. He was waiting for a transplant and for him to be healthy enough to get one.

To this day, we don’t have any understanding of why his liver failed. It looks like a random event.

That said, I drove up to Tennessee with my older sister.

It took 15 hours, and by the time we got there, visiting hours had long come and gone.

We came back the next day.

He wasn’t doing well. He promised me that he would fight, if only for my sake.

Two days later, he died. surrounded by his wife, children, grandchildren, a brother and a sister, as well as a couple of in-laws.

We watched the heart monitor slow down to a flat line and then settle into a distracting alarm.

The nurse turned it off.

The hospital (Methodist University in Memphis) had assigned a palliative care nurse to us. I didn’t realize up until then that there was such an ANCC designation.

She made everything easier. As Daddy was making his way into the next world, we sang “In the Sweet By and By” and “Amazing Grace.”

She had already told us what to expect and made sure that our requests for the removal of live-support were honored.

I don’t know how that little short APN with palliative care credentials deals with death every day. My guess is that she has enough experiences with people who appreciate her to make it worthwhile.

I can’t imagine any other reason for anyone to make witnessing death a career.

But Daddy died in peace.

It’s not what I wanted, but it’s what happened.

And I thank God that it happened the way it did.

With me there to tell him “I’ll see you on the other side.”

And in a good bit, thanks to her.

Payback

I spent the weekend working a co-worker's computer. I knew I was up for a challenge when I booted it up and it said "No." For whatever reason, it would not allow access to important parts of the hard drive. It even told checkdisk to go away.

After consulting with a friend who makes me look like an amature (that's because she's a network administrator and I'm an accountant and, therefore, an amateur), I decided to reinstall Windows. And of course, it didn't install a number of important drivers. I downloaded them from Dell's web site and installed them manually.

And then came the endless updates. Thank God for broadband.

As I was going down for a nap Sunday afternoon, my co-worker called. Her 11 year old son wanted to see if it was ready yet. He wanted it back, and now.

I told her it was more or less ready. There were some things like Flash and Java that I wasn't sure were up to date, but otherwise, ready to go.

She stopped by with her son. He's a real cutie. He'll be a heart-breaker one of these days. Blond hair, big old eyes that only kids and cats seem to have.

I started showing them a few things that might be different (like the anti-virus program) and he almost started jumping up and down. "Look, mom. It's better than it was before."

I carried it out to the car and put it in the back seat. He crawled in next to it and curled up around it, hugging it the way someone might hug a favorite pet.

His mother told me that he insisted on going home immediately. When they got there, he her to go away when she offered to help hook it up. So she went out and ran the rest of the errands she had planned. When she got back, he had everything hooked up and told her, "Mom, this is so much better than it used to be."

Silly, inconsequential story, perhaps. But seeing that little boy's face light up like it was Christmas morning was more than worth it all.

My co-worker kept on telling me she wanted to pay me, but I told her that I've had a lot of help from other people over the years. In fact, without their help, I wouldn't have been able to do what I did for her.

It's payback. The good kind.

The Accidental Accountant

I have no credentials to do most of what I do at work. My educational background is English literature. Medieval English literature, to be more precise, along with a fairly firm grounding in Southern Literature and a smattering of Jewish literature.

I can also carry on intelligent conversations about the Romantic poets (Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats), but that usually just degenerates into me insisting yet again that they all needed an editor.

Several editors, in fact.

Too, too many words. Meaning often gets lost in the verbal flatulence that the Romantics loved so well. I have no love for such florid writing.

Give me Emily Dickinson any day. Or Eudora Welty. John Donne. Thoreau. Anybody but those verbose, pompous Romantics.

Sometimes less is more. Actually, most of the time less is more.

But I digress. (At least I admit it.)

I work in finance and accounting for no reason I can see, except that it seems to fit me and the job was there.

I quite fell into the profession by accident and discovered I loved it.

I love the combination of ambiguity and preciseness that the job entails.

Contrary to what many people think, accounting demands many more judgment calls than those same people might be comfortable with. It’s more like an art than a science. And if they knew, they might be a little uncomfortable.

But it’s a mentally challenging job—sometimes more than I really want it to be. Especially on Mondays or the day after I've taken vacation time or the day after I just really had a bad day before.

I'm not complaining. I'm lucky to have a job that engages me on so many levels.

Of late, I’ve been stepping outside my credentials again, helping to put together a website with a bunch of people who don’t really understand how things like that work. Cleaning things up after the fact can be mess. But it can be done.

My world is small and big at the same time.

I’m not complaining. Life’s usually good if you let it be. Or at least tolerable.

So I’ll go on doing things that I have no credentials, but plenty of qualifications, to do. I’ll keep stepping out of the box and creating my professional life as I go along.

Learning on your own doesn’t come with credentials, other than personal integrity and a proven history.

And the day I stop learning new things will be the day I consider my life officially over.

It wouldn’t be much of a life, now would it?

Vacation: Interrupted

I took a couple of days off work this week so I could have 4 days off in a row that did not involve death or illness.

It’s been a hard year on that front.

It was about a year ago that Shannon went to the hospital for the first time. Psychosis isn’t pretty and time off to care for a psychotic patient is no vacation.

We also spent Christmas and New Years at Seton, Shoal Creek and then Seton, again. That time it was 14 days.

In February, Pinto, our 18 year-old cat, died. I took time off to help ease him into the next world, take him in to be cremated and then, later, pick up his ashes.

July came, and I got a call from Shannon at work. “You need to call your mother. Your dad’s in the hospital.” I pulled my boss out of a Board of Director’s meeting and told her that “I have to go, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

It was about 2 weeks later.

The day I got back from burying Daddy, I found out that a close friend’s mother-in-law had been killed in a car accident, so I took off an afternoon later in the week for her memorial.

Then, the next month, I went back to Tennessee for several days, a trip I had already planned and paid for before Daddy died. It was a good trip, but the sub-text was always death.

Last week, or the week before—I’m not sure, one of Shannon’s closest friends called to say that his mother had died. And, oh, his apartment had caught on fire. No time off work, because the services were in Waco, a little farther than Shannon can travel these days. We sent flowers and a plant.

Today is the first of my two paid days off, and the phone rang a little after 7:30 a.m. I very often don’t answer the phone. We get too many spam calls. But at that hour of the morning, a call is not just a call. It’s probably important.

The long and short of it is that John’s in the hospital again. I have no details except where’s he at. But I don’t feel good about it.

John has Parkinson’s and has been hospitalized before. The last time was for a month. He got better for a short while, but all the progress with motor skills disappeared almost as quickly as they had come.

The Parkinson’s has been advancing steadily over the last several months. Like Sherman’s march to Atlanta, it has been deliberately and methodically practicing a scorched-earth policy. It destroys so thoroughly that there is little, if anything, left to build on.

So that phone call this morning quickly became ominous.

Maybe I’m over-reacting. In fact, I hope I am.

I should probably take comfort in knowing that we have the resources, both financial and in time off when I need it, to respond appropriately.

But I’m tired of death and illness.

I’ll soldier on and do what has to be done, make no mistake.

And it’s probably just as well that we couldn’t afford to go to Bastrop this weekend, to our little “Hobbit House” in the pines. They don’t have phones there, so I wouldn’t have gotten that call that I didn’t want but really needed to get.

God has either not been in a good mood for the last year or I don’t understand the reasons for his or her decisions. At this point, I’m left without insight. Just pain and trepidation.

And, like this piece, no satisfactory closure.

Enough is Enough is Always Enough

Republicans everywhere should quit raising money and spending it on candidates that have almost no chance of winning a general election. Put it in a tax-deferred trust fund or retirement account. Don’t throw it away on candidates that have to fight the Bush/Cheney legacy.

Bush/Cheney and Carl Rove effectively eviscerated the Republican party. They systematically destroyed anyone that did not agree with them.

They have not provided a chain of succession that most administrations do.

Instead, they used a jack-booted thug mentality to kill any opposition, even among their political colleagues.

They ate their own.

Human sacrifice didn’t end with the Inca’s or Aztec’s. It’s alive and well in Washington, DC.

The last several years have made me more jaded than ever about our political leaders.

I don’t like it.

I want a leader I can believe in. One who isn’t unduly influenced by a too-powerful VP. One who has the common sense to lead the free world on his or her own.

W & Company have made that almost impossible for any Republican to accomplish. The ones that didn’t agree with him got destroyed. The ones that did have to explain his ridiculous policies.

So, Republicans everywhere, take advantage of tax laws that allow you to shelter money in tax-deferred accounts. Don’t give it to candidates that have almost no chance of winning.

Invest your money wisely. Take advantage of the time you have before the laws change.

They will. And not in your favor.

“Enough is enough” is always enough. And most of us have had enough. And then some.

Climb down off that high-horse and talk about the things that concern ordinary people: the rising cost and increasing un-availability of health care; the inability of Federal agencies to respond to national emergencies; the precarious military situation that has left our country pretty much unable to respond to a direct attack; the failings of our educational system; the un-Godly high price of higher education, which makes it impossible for many people to get without amassing mountains of debt that will take most of their lives to pay off.

Enough is enough. And I’ve had enough. And them some.

I don’t think I’m alone one this one.

Ring of Fire

When Daddy died and me and Mama were picking out music for his funeral, I suggested “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” Daddy always liked Johnny Cash, and I was just trying to get the details done before I started crying again.

Mama said, “No. The circle’s already broken.”

I let it go. We ended up with some nice music, including a really good Faith Hill song my niece wanted.

But I still keep thinking about that circle, and I’m not sure it’s broken. At least not in the way she thinks it is.

I hadn’t been home in 15 years when Daddy died. I knew my mother didn’t accept my “lifestyle”. I keep telling everyone that I can’t afford a “lifestyle”, but that doesn’t seem to keep them from making assumptions about me that they shouldn’t. I don’t know if that’s what Mama was doing or if it was mostly in my mind.

Needless to say, we just didn’t talk much, and when we did, it was not always comfortable. She didn’t tell me important things that I had to find out about from my older sister. Like my nephew getting arrested for shoplifting. Like how much my niece despises her mother. Like my other nephew (in middle school) getting caught taking his mother’s pot to school.

When Daddy started getting sick, Mama kept on editing information. And in retrospect, I think it may be that she was only telling me the part of reality that she was able to accept at that time.

She was only beginning to accept the reality of Daddy’s condition when she was sitting in the CCU waiting room at Methodist Hospital in Memphis. She had always known that Daddy could die soon, but she had never accepted it.

I can’t judge, because I hadn’t either.

In those few days, we went through a whole bunch together that I never thought we would ever have to. It made me appreciate her more, and her appreciate me more, I think.

She got to see me at my best. She saw me honoring my father and making sure that he died with dignity. I set off a fire storm when I insisted that we cut off life support a day before she wanted to. When I her told why, she agreed: he was hemorrhaging all over and getting worse. His bruising had gotten much worse, and he was bleeding from his eyes. He was likely to bleed out in his stomach over night.

I didn’t want him to die alone. And he very well could have.

Faced with the facts, she agreed.

We proceeded, and Daddy died very shortly after being taken off life support.

But he was not alone. He was surrounded by his family: a loving wife, 3 children, 2 grandchildren, a sister, brother-in-law, a brother and a sister-in-law.

It was hard, but it was what he wanted. And what we wanted, as well.

She also saw the bad side of me, my temper when I get riled and my habit of cursing anywhere, even in church. (She swatted me for that one. I may be 42, but she’s still my Mama. She has the right.)

Since then, we’ve become closer than I think we’ve ever been.

My older sister and I aren’t really speaking right now because of some things that happened on that trip home. She was inconsiderate and I was irritable. Not a good combo.

Mama doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like to see her children divided. She said that “sometimes, that stuff just ain’t that important.”

I agree.

I’ve offered an olive branch to my sister. I got a jar pickled olives back.

I told her we needed to bury the hatchet because it was hurting Mama. Let bygones be bygones. No one blames the other for anything.

Her response was a very terse email: “Okay. Sounds fine to me.”

That’s the last I’ve heard.

And I keep coming back to that circle. And, Mama, you’re right. It is broken. Just not in the way you thought.

The arc that goes from me to Mama is stronger than it ever has been. We talk about things that we wouldn’t have 6 months ago. We’re honest, and she tells me how hard it is to be alone. I tell her that I know, because I’ve been alone, too. Rich and I only had 5 years together, and she and Daddy were very close to their 50th anniversary.

The arc from me to my older sister is mostly a dotted line, if a line at all.

On this one, I’ll side with my mother: some things are more important than petty disputes.

The circle should not be broken.

Right now, the closest thing we have to a circle is a ring of fire.

Thank heavens for Johnny Cash. He’s always there when you need him.

Scrapes and Burns

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ documentary series about WWII on PBS. I’m a news-junkie and a documentary-freak, so I’ve enjoyed what I’ve watched so far.

Mostly, that is.

Not because of the quality or content of the presentation, but because of the implicit commentary that lurks between the lines of the entire series. And I doubt Ken Burns set out to do anything other than create an accurate and compelling history of one of America’s most-defining periods in time.

The men and women interviewed talk about things very matter-of-factly. They recount horrors and shortages and courage and necessity in the same tone of voice. The subtext--that our country had no choice but to mobilize our military personnel and industrial resources—almost drowns out what they’re saying.

Their words hold a quality of inevitability and righteousness that paints a stark contrast to our contemporary world, where the US is deeply divided about the necessity and righteousness of the Iraq war. Few speak of it with the conviction or dedication that they did during WWII.

What Ken Burns’ film does, without ever mentioning it, is call into question the arrogance and cynicism of our contemporary leaders. It never mentions Afghanistan or why we have inadequate troop levels where the real war should be. Never even hints at it.

It doesn’t have to.

Any thinking person who sees the film would likely arrive at the same questions.

Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice, Except When it Does

We have the two most perverse cats I have ever seen. Amanda has refused to drink from a water bowl since day one. Our bathroom tub had a leaky faucet, so she decided she preferred the drip-water over bowl-water.

These days she prefers the kitchen sink, with a slow trickle of water that she can stick her head under and let it roll off her head. She catches the water in her mouth as it rolls over and down her pretty black head.

Tonight, Lucy demanded to have the water on so she could do likewise. I found her sitting in the kitchen sink whining at the faucet. Sure enough, when I turned it on, there her head went right under it.

I don't know if Amanda has been teaching her bad habits, or if she just thinks she's missing something by not getting her head drenched.

Personally, I don't see the charm in drinking water that has already coursed through my hair.

So, we have about the only cats in the universe who don't run from water unless it's in a dish.

Go figure.

I Love Lucy

We have a new kitty. She's only a few months old and is the spitting image of a young, skinny Pinto (our 18 year-old cat that died in February). An orange tabby with beautiful markings.

She was a stray that wandered up and settled in at one of Shannon's friend's house. He already has more than he can really take care of, what with leukemia and all.

So he called up Shannon and said "Have I got a cat for you". Or something to that effect.

Neither Shannon nor I have had a kitten in a long time. She turns from whining to incredible silliness on a dime. Everything is a kitty toy, whether it is or not. She's like the child that opens up Christmas presents and plays with the boxes.

We've named her Lucy. After that other silly red head.

She's putting on weight and has a little tummy now. Half of her weight, though, must be ears. If she ever grows into her ears, she'll be a plus-size girl.

And did I forget to mention the beautiful eyes? They're different from Amanda's, but just as striking.

Lucy made herself at home immediately. I think that she has spent some time as an indoor cat. She knew what the litter box was for and wasn't afraid of the sofa (AKA the Buick). She knew instinctively where to sack out to get the best attention. (That would be next to Shannon, on the Buick.)

She's also decided that my computer chair actually belongs to her. It's one of her favorite places to curl up into a comma.

She's a challenge, no doubt. But she's help lift a pall that had overtaken this house. Between the deaths that have come and the very real possibility of others to come soon, we need a little silliness in our lives.

She makes me smile when I haven't in a while. She still hasn't figured out that her tail is attached. She runs around in circles trying to catch it, and, when she does, goes immediately into grooming mode.

For someone who lost his innocence decades ago, she is refreshing. She reminds me that all is not bad in the world. That innocence exists. That hope does, likewise.

Amanda's other name is "Little Miss". I've taken to calling Lucy "Little Mess". Just 'cause she is.

She's a mess, our little Lucy with the giant ears. But she's our mess.

It was time.