The Cold, Dark Night

I heard a rumor that boneless, skinless chicken was on sale at the grocery across the street, so I decided to find out for myself. On the way, I saw an obviously homeless man sitting on a low wall in the parking lot of our apartments. He was leaning forward and swaying back and forth a little, clutching a water bottle in his left hand. I couldn't see his face because he was leaning so far in, and the hood on his jacket was covering his face.

I wondered what I could do for him. It was cold outside already and getting colder by the hour.

I didn’t know what to do, so I kept walking. The grocery had closed early, so I turned around and came back. I thought that maybe I could figure out some way to help him in the meantime. Beyond giving him cash, I couldn’t think of anything.

It didn’t matter ultimately: he was gone by the time I got back. So I went on down the parking lot to get some things I had left in the car. As I was opening the trunk, I heard a familiar slow, metallic “tap, tap, tap.” It was the sound of a metal cane on a hard surface.

I looked farther down and saw him. And his cane was splayed out like the man I wrote about here. I wondered if it was, so I started following him.

He had a head-start on me, but I saw him turn onto one of the sidewalks leading to the interior of the property. When I got to that sidewalk, I could still hear the slow “tap, tap, tap” ringing in the cold, dry air.

But then I lost him.

I walked around for a while in the trying to find him, but all I found was two little raccoons playing. I watched them for a while, all the time wondering where the mystery man had disappeared to.

And I don’t know what I would have done had I found him. Give him money? Since he wasn’t soliciting for any, would that insult him? Give him a blanket and then let him sleep out in the cold?

Things like that baffle me on both moral and spiritual levels. My ingrained beliefs tell me to help when I can, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do that, far too often. It frustrates me.

We’re sitting here watching TV in the relative lap of luxury. No servants, but a roof over our heads and a refrigerator full of food. Central heat that will stave off the cold night. A car that is less than 2 years old with less than 10,000 miles on it that gets amazing gas mileage. Health care. DSL. Magazine subscriptions. Books everywhere you look. And a warm, very comfortable bed.

It’s New Years Eve, and there’s an old man out there in the cold, dark night slowly tap-tap-tapping his way to a destination I don’t know. I wonder if he realizes that a new year starts in less than two hours, or if he even cares. He’s probably more worried about survival.

I can only hope that he does survive. He went out of my earshot and into the care of God. I hope and pray that God watches over him this cold, dark night.

The Warren Report

When my mother and I were visiting my father in the CCU in the final couple of days of his extended illness, I turned around and was startled by a tall man standing in the doorway. With the light from the hallway behind him, he looked like an angel. And turned out to be one.

He had been watching us for some time, I guess, and didn't want to intrude.

It was Mama's preacher. He had already been to St. Louis to be with the family of a congregant who was having a transplant of some sort, but he spent the night in the hospital with us in Memphis (120 miles from his home and family), then went the next morning to see someone who was having heart surgery across town, but was back in the evening.

And he was there when Daddy died later that night. To offer compassion, comfort and counsel.

The preacher's political and social views line up with Rick Warren's, but that did not stop me from valuing his presence and support, even though I'm a middle-aged openly-gay man who's unabashedly liberal.

That’s why this whole brouhaha about a conservative preacher delivering a prayer at the inauguration of the century baffles me. He did, after all, host a forum for the two candidates to talk about what they believed.

People are more than their political views. And many on the left make the mistake of not seeing beyond those political differences to see the value of a person.

2 days after we buried my father, I took my mother to church and saw her preacher in action. And he’s good: charismatic in the pulpit, preaching a message of hope, rather than the hell-fire-and-brimstone sermons I heard growing up.

For a small town in West Tennessee, it's grown into a mega-church. And I can see why. People always will take hope when it’s offered. While I didn't agree with everything he said that Sunday, I agreed with most of it.

He's a good man, an intelligent man. We don't see eye to eye on everything, but I'm sure we could many interesting conversations about our differences.

Jesus told us repeatedly to love those that would persecute us, the ones we don't agree with who might have power over us, as did Mohamed, Buddha, Krishna and, most lately, Dr. King. Only then is peace possible. Both within ourselves and within the larger social context.

That's the context the Warren controversy might best be seen in.

For a New York Times op-ed piece, go here.

JibJab2008

Abs Fab

The President-Elect:
We already knew he was pretty, but my, oh my. . .

The Card

About the pictures
The Texas capitol with this year's Christmas tree and fireworks. It never happened but should have. It's cobbled together from a couple of photos. Sometimes we need to see beyond the real to dream of what is possible.

The one below is what's inside the card..

Shannon and I don't do a lot for Christmas. This year, we're hosting a friend and his daughter for dinner, and we've given money here and there for worthy causes that impact our local community. And since it's a lean, scary year, that's about it.

No presents to speak of. We only bought something for Shannon's nephew. He's autistic, and his birthday is also Christmas day, so he gets short-changed usually. He doesn't understand that hard times mean no presents, so I put together something special for him.

The one thing that we do, and hope to continue doing, is Christmas cards. They're also locally oriented. Some go to people around the country, but the majority stay here in the area. For the people that live somewhere else, I want to show them what Christmas is like here in Austin and why I love living here so much. For those in the metro area, my goal is to remind them of the beauty all around them.

It's not much, I realize, but people seem to appreciate the effort that went into it. And if they had seen Shannon laboriously signing all 80 of them, they'd appreciate it even more.

Now, it's time to start planning next year's

Busy Being Busy

We got a Christmas card a few days ago with a usual year-end newsletter. But those things are seldom usual. I got one a couple of years ago that told me that two of my friends from grad school had lost all the parents they had left. The one I got a few days ago told me that the second year of grieving is harder than the first. Her mother was killed in a car wreck a little over a year ago.

I knew about the second year, already. I lost my first partner about 13 years ago, my best friend 8 years ago and my daddy 1 year ago. I'm not sure which was the hardest. They all hurt in different ways.

Rich, because he was the first man I ever loved. And we had a great life together for 5 years. His sudden death at the age of 28 left me adrift. I spent the next several years doing things I'm not too proud of today.

(We won't go there. Not this time. Possibly never.)

When Bucky, my best friend, was diagnosed with cancer in an advanced stage, I knew the prospects were not good, but I put on a brave face. I told him he'd come back to exactly what he left behind, knowing full well that he he'd probably not come back at all.

In the mean time, I met Shannon. He was the only person that didn't run away from Bucky's illness. I don't know if it's a gay thing, but nobody really wants to talk about someone who's most likely dieing or to anyone who knows him.

Shannon was different. He stood by through the uncertainty and bad news that got worse every day. He went to Bucky's memorial with me. He held my hand and let me cry on his shoulder, literally.

Then Daddy got sick. He was sick a long time, and Mama didn't tell me how bad it was until near the end. She probably didn't want to say it out loud. That would have made it more real. Too real.

In the end, I lost them all.

At first, there were details to attend to that kept my mind occupied. Then utter and sheer exhaustion, when my mind didn't process much except the basic things to keep me going to work, eating and craving sleep. After that, a period of disbelief, the conscious denial that what happened was real.

A year or so later, it finally sank in: it was real, it did happen and ain't nobody comin' back.

It didn't sink in so much as fall like a stone wall collapsing on top of me.

At that point, the real battle begins. One can either go crazy, like I did when Rich died, or stay busy.

Staying busy is like aspirin: it doesn't fix the problem; it masks the pain. If you're busy enough, you can take the pain in smaller doses that don't push you into the abyss of grief and anger and hopelessness.

It helps to have a partner standing by, but even they can't share the absence so palpable that you can reach out and touch. It's a void that they don't feel. Not because they don't care, but because they didn't have the same relationship that you did with your partner or best friend or daddy.

They may have an idea how big that hole is, but they can't touch it or live with it every day. Even as a son who lost his father, I can't know what void my mother lives with that I don't know about. Between Christmas and New Years, they would have celebrated their 48th anniversary. Add that to the 3 years they dated, and they were together for about 50 years before he died. 7 years longer than I've been alive. Only 20 years longer than she's been alive

She stays busy. Volunteer work at the church and with the high school band my nephew used to be in keep her busy. And if the house is too quiet on a weekend night, she goes to local high school basketball games. She doesn't have a stake in either team any more, so she just has fun.

Mama played basketball when she was in high school. She's only 5'2", and she told me they had to special-order her uniform. She had an 18 inch waist back then. And not because she was malnourished. She was quite buxom, in fact.

We deal with loss in our own private ways. We stay busy. Whether it's working too much (as Shannon says I do) or writing or going to basketball games, that's the way we work these things out.

In the end, it makes us stronger, better and more compassionate people.

I just hope this round gets over soon. I'm tired of being so busy.

How to Maintain a Happy Home (a 12-step program in disguise)

Live in the present.

Plan for the future.

Take care of the past.

Hold those you love close.

Let them know they’re loved.

Forgive.

Forget.

Allow others to be the flawed human being that you are.

Be.

Don’t just exist.

Never forget where you came from.

Live.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Winter in central Texas means two things: erratic weather with temperature swings of 30 degrees or more in a few hours along with unexpected ice storms and cedar pollen. I’m not sure which is the more difficult to live with. The first makes my bones hurt in ways they don’t usually, and the second leaves me sneezing, sniffling and draining with itchy, watery eyes that aren’t much good for anything.

Yesterday at 2 p.m., it was warm enough that I was a little too warm in short sleeves. Mid-to-upper seventies. When I left the office at 5 p.m., it was cold, with fierce winds howling out of the north and west. The direction changed so quickly and frequently that I couldn’t get used to being barraged from one direction before another took over.

By 8 or so, we had sleet and rain, and by midnight, snow. The temperature hovered around freezing from about 9 on. Not cold enough to mess up the roads, but just cold and wet enough to be miserable.

And then there’s that other misery of central Texas winters: cedar fever. A particular variety of cedar that thrives here and surrounds us for a hundred miles or more and creates a vicious pollen in huge quantities. Image cedar trees enveloped in clouds of orange dust, emitting huge plumes of it when the wind is blowing enough to stir it up.

Cold weather triggers its release, and we got the first of it today. A mild dose, for sure, because it usually takes a couple or three cold days for it to get into high production, but we have them coming up over the next few days. Tomorrow, the temperature supposed to go from 28 overnight to 60 at some point. And more of the same the rest of the week and weekend.

I don’t much care for cold weather, especially the wet, blustery kind we’ve had the last couple of days. And I don’t care at all for swollen, dripping eyes and a scratchy, itchy throat.

Austin is an urban paradise, except when it isn’t. Personally, I favor a giant dome with filtered air and climate control over the entire city. Just the city, though. The suburbanites can fend for themselves.

As it is, I’ll tough it out, yet again. Keep my supply of tissues and antihistamines up to date. Wear warm clothes and dig out a scarf from where-ever we put them last spring.

Then, I'll start over again.

Waiting to Pee

It started at 4 o’clock this morning when both of our alarms went off at almost the same second. That’s not a good time for me. When I was younger and just getting home at 4 a.m., I handled early hours much better. And it’s infinitely easier to go to bed at 4 in the morning after a night of doing things that I’m not going to talk about (I have a constitutional right to not incriminate myself) than it is to get up at that un-Godly hour after a boring and blissful evening sitting at home.

When we did get on the road, I remembered yet again why I don’t drive at night. Between the time the sun goes down and comes up again, I have little to no depth-perception. The road in front of me curves where there are no curves and narrows where it does not. The normal optical tricks of perspective multiply exponentially to the point that I can’t tell where the road goes until I get there.

Road signs might as well not exist. I can’t read them until it’s too late to take the right exit. Sometimes I can’t read them at all.

So I missed the exit to the hospital because the sign identifying the street was only 2 or 3 seconds away from the last chance to take it.

I took the next exit, made a left, then another into a McDonalds’ parking lot with the intent of cutting through back to the highway. Turns out the street I had landed on was one-way, going away from where I needed to get.

On the other side of the parking lot, the street was one-way going the direction I needed, but it was divided by a barrier. The part I could get on didn’t go where I was headed. I didn’t even realize it was one-way until I pulled out onto it going the wrong direction.

A quick right turn put me back on a two way street. So down the way, past the original one-way street that had landed me in traffic-planning hell to a funeral home parking lot where I could turn around and go back down the same two-way street to get on the one-way street that finally took me to the highway.

All of this in the dark at 6 a.m. on 4 ½ hours sleep with bad eyes.

We made it to the hospital on time, and even had enough leeway for one final cigarette (for Shannon at least) until we went in. (The only benefit of getting there so early in the morning is that I didn’t have to park four blocks away. I got what someone I know calls “rock-star parking”.)

After checking in at the out-patient surgery desk on time at 6:30, we waited. They had given us one of those buzzing-flashy coaster things that some restaurants use to tell you when you table is ready, and as people trickled in, everyone’s coaster went off but ours. When it went off we were supposed to go through the “authorized personnel only” doors to see what was next.

Kind of like a game show.

We waited 45 minutes, and finally got our chance to go through the magic doors.

Our coaster flashed and buzzed, so we went in to sign waivers that pretty much said that they were not responsible for anything. That was what was behind the magic door.

That done, they whisked Shannon away for pre-op, told me to wait until my coaster did its thing again, then go through first set of magic doors to a second glass door. “Follow the red line. Push the silver button on the wall, and the door will open. It’ll be 10-20 minutes. Just depends on him.”

2 hours and 15 minutes later, they finally summoned me. The hold up was that Shannon couldn’t pee. He’d been trying for 2 hours, but with no liquids since midnight, he didn’t have anything to contribute. The anesthesiologist wanted a tox screen before he put him under, just to be sure that Shannon hadn’t been out the night before snorting coke, smoking crack or shooting up heroin. I assured them that he had not.

So they gave up on the pee sample and took him on in for the main event. I asked the nurse how long would it be and did I have time to get something to eat. It was after 10, and I was starving.

She said they had him booked in the OR for an hour, so allow that, plus 30 minutes to one hour more. He was going to be taking a nap, and they can’t always predict how long it takes someone to wake up from one.

He got to take the nap that I desperately wanted, but I went in search of food, instead. And also ditched his clothes that they gave me in a plastic bag, his cane and coat in the car with rock-star parking so I wouldn’t have to tote them along with a tray when I finally found food.

The cafeteria at the VA’s hospital in Temple is okay, but nowhere as good as Seton’s in Austin, but much better than the Methodist Hospital in Memphis. Seton always has heart-healthy options, like baked chicken and fresh veggies. Methodist has over-cooked canned veggies, macaroni and cheese and fried whatever-you-want. The VA had a mixture: the option of a salad bar, sandwiches or fried chicken.

Being a dyed-in-the-wool Southern boy, I went for the fried chicken with fried potato wedges. (We call then Jo-Jo potatoes up north in the south. Not sure why, but the ones up there are better.) Not knowing when I’d have a chance to eat again, I went for the heartier meal.

(Rating hospital food must be a sign of aging, by the way. I've been around long enough to be able to do it.)

After eating, retrieving his clothes, cane and coat from the car, I went back upstairs to wait for my coaster to go off again. Wait and wait and wait.

2 hours later, the surgeon came out to tell me things went fine. Shannon was awake and alert. The doctor didn’t anticipate any problems. They would buzz and flash me back soon.

An hour later, the trusty coaster hailed me back behind the magic doors. He was fine, sitting up and eating a tuna fish sandwich. He was ready to go. As soon as he peed.

Three small sodas, three glasses of water and two containers of orange juice later, we were still waiting for his bladder to work. He doesn’t pee well on a good day, so having to pee behind a curtain with noise all around and someone waiting for it makes it almost impossible. But they wouldn’t let him go until he did.

I was ready to take the IV out myself, give him his clothes back and make a run for it.

Instead, I picked up his prescription from the pharmacy and got a big cup of iced-tea from the cafeteria. (He had fluids coming at him from everywhere, but I’d been sitting in a waiting room, parched and dry.)

In the end, we spent most of the day waiting for Shannon to pee.

We got back 11 hours after we got up.

All to get a small toe fixed.

Right now, there’s something that looks like a push-pin coming out of his second left one. The ice bag on his ankle (I don’t know why the ankle, but that’s where they said to put it) has to be taken off and put back on every 20 minutes. And he is to stay off his feet as much as possible.

Still, it was necessary. And I’ve come to expect that anything involving Shannon and hospitals will not be easy.

This time, I didn’t anticipate the source of the difficulty.

After all, who would have expected that it would take four hours for anybody to take a whiz?

Survive

Any number of people wouldn’t and don’t know why I love Shannon. He’s a fair amount older than me, has health problems and has been known to go crazy from time to time. I have to drive him to Temple every time he has to go to the VA hospital for routine stuff. It’s a 130 mile round trip, too far for him to do safely on his on.

All I have to say to people who question our relationship is “what planet are you from? Don't they make people who love each other where you came from?”

Those folks are focusing on the little things and not the big picture. Like the life we’ve lived together for somewhere between 8 and 9 years and continue to (The time frame's a little fuzzy as to when we actually committed) .

The big picture is coming home every day to someone who really wants to see me, and that I want to see, as well. Having common goals. Being there when the other needs picking up off the metaphorical floor yet again.

That metaphorical floor is not so much a solid surface as an abyss. A metaphorical one, but one that sometimes doesn’t seem to have a bottom.

He’s lost weight in some places and gained some in others. So have I.

We’ve both gotten older and changed shapes over the years, but one thing hasn’t changed: we take care of each other. He is my guard-rail on the edge of the abyss.

I’m his, too. And if he goes over it into never-land, I’ll be there to pull him out.

We’ve been through too much, me and the old man, to give up now. And it hasn’t been a leisurely stroll through an enchanted garden. At times, it has been nothing short of hell.

Dealing with serious mental illness takes a resolve and understanding I didn’t know I had before I had to deal with it.

It’s made me a stronger and better person, though.

I’m more patient than I ever have been and have enough perspective now to understand what’s important and what’s not. Watching someone writhe in mental anguish, tied to a hospital bed in ICU, not knowing who he is but is living inside a nightmare has a way of creating perspective.

Like Tammy Wynette, I stand by my man. Good, bad and worse. The “good” is great, the “bad” can be very nasty and the “worse” can be downright ugly. But without that commitment, nothing else really has any meaning. At least as far as defining a relationship is concerned.

I’m an aging, stubborn old coot. I take the bad with the good. That’s the only tenable position I think anyone can or should take.

And when things go bad, my motherly genes kick in. If that means I've have to go a couple of days without sleep because I have to, I will. If it means sitting in a hospital waiting room for hours, I will.

Any time I need reinforcements, I put Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive” on the play list.

What God can’t cure, disco can.