Membership

The law of unintended consequences: "Any intervention in a complex system may or may not have the intended result, but will inevitably create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes."

I am working on arrangements for Mom's burial, something which is turning out to be more satisfying than I thought it would be. Trappist monks outside of Dubuque make really beautiful wooden caskets. The people in charge of the Old Welsh Cemetery in Sharon Center are very pleasant and helpful. After the roads dry out I'm going to go out and pick out a spot. "Tell him not to come yet!," Mr. Pate hollered from the background as I talked with his wife, "it's a dirt road. He'll sink to his axles!" The Pates live on a century farm nearby which they'd be proud to show me. It sounds like fun.

My mother's family is prone to hyperbole. Actually, I'm prone to hyperbole. They just lie. If the sentiment calls for it, or if it makes a better story, they just make it up. My Aunt Joan and my mother were close, and they would get together, knock back a few martinis, and tell each other that they would take care of each other. "We promised we'd always be family for each other," Mom told me. It didn't really work out that way. After Aunt Joan retired, she sank into alcoholism and dementia. Her beautiful apartment, filled with marvelous antiques and art, devolved into squalor. She had her groceries and liquor delivered by John's grocery and she didn't leave the place. At the time, I lived three blocks away but she never once visited our home, telling my mother "I can't smoke there." We invited her a few times. I would stop and chat on our way to and from.

At the time, Mom was preoccupied with taking care of my father in their home and had little time for anything, not even grandchildren. She felt guilty and did nothing in response to Aunt Joan's decline. Her relationship with my father trumped all, and perhaps that's as it should have been. They had a unique, intense, and very loyal tie, those two. I remember visiting them after I married my first wife, Nancy, and realizing that I was no longer in that "club." Close, but no cigars. Perhaps that's what growing up means to everybody. To me it was both a sadness and a relief.

Aunt Joan told Mom that she had a "plot" at the Welsh Cemetery and that there was a place beside her when she died. That's where Mom wanted to be. It's a lovely old place, grassy and well kept, with graves dating back to the 1800's and a small church next door. Knowing that things are not always as they seem, I asked the Pates to look and see if there was anything there with my mother's name on it. There is not. What is there is a "plot," which means space for about seven graves.

I messaged my cousin Paul on Facebook to see what he knew about things. He first sent me a medium length message telling me that he was sorry about Mom and that he didn't do messages on Facebook. My email server was down yesterday, so after a while he sent me another rambling message full of good will and some useful contact information for his sister, the cousin with the paperwork for the plot. As his message continued it recounted the recent feuding amongst his clan, full of misunderstanding, spiced with recrimination. I recalled Mrs. Pate saying that Sarah called, very angry, reminding her that "My mother paid for that spot!" (There were some mix-ups with the last sexton, I guess, and the Pates have been organizing the mess, according to Jerry, the minister of the Old Welsh Church.)

Paul told me about Aunt Joan and Sarah going together to the plot and picnicking together. Sarah and Aunt Joan had a close, tumultuous relationship. Aunt Joan was a fierce and angry parent, prone to guilt trips, moody and intimidating. (She was always very kind to me, I must add, but by all accounts as a mom she was a bumpy ride.) I suspect that further inquiry into this plot may lead to more drama and intrigue than I am ready to undertake. I suspect it would make me more satisfied with my status as an only child, now that the logistics of moving, repairing, selling, inveigling and persuading are mostly finished between my mother and I.

Mrs. Pate has explained to me that a person can decide to purchase a "plot," which has room for a number of burials, "more room if you cremate!", she informed me cheerfully, or a person can buy a "membership" in the cemetery, which allows for a single grave. I'm not a big joiner, but there's plenty of room amongst the decaying Welsh folks of Sharon Center, according to the cheerful Mrs. Pate, and I believe a single spot, near Aunt Joan but perhaps not right beside her may be just the thing.

I'm thinking a little bitty graveside service with Jerry, the Congregational minister, with the cool wooden casket, perhaps in secret to avoid family hyperbole, and then a memorial service for Mom in Wichita, where her active life and contributions happened. Funerals are for the living, mostly, right?

dental work and other intricacies

There was a very popular book in the '80's (I think) called Passages, in which Gail Sheehy outlined the many stages of life. I think I'd better actually read this book. The idea is that there aren't a few - there are many of them. I agree. It's probably on my Mom's bookshelf.

Taking Mom to the dentist yesterday gave me a lot to think about. She can barely stand up and has poor balance these days. Her cognition, such as it is, lasts moments. I had to remind her that it was me pushing her in her wheelchair. At the dentist I stood in front of her so she'd have a frame of reference. Transferring her from chair to car and back was an interesting dance. I learned quickly that you can't muscle her. She moves very slowly and with much anxiety and my urge was just to pick her up and move her. She told me "that feels like knives!" I learned to have her put her arms around my neck and dance with me with slow small steps, explaining each step as we went and praising her. The hug was reassuring and she seemed to calm down.

I prepared the dentist's office for the visit, explaining that Mom was in "end stage Alzheimer's" and thankfully they understood that long term dental prophylaxis made little sense. My once patient Mom now suffers little intrusion and has been known to clock impertinent Summit Pointe staff with her coffee cup. If you leave her alone she's fine in a minute (literally) but woe betide you if you push your luck! Dr. Berst looked into Mom's mouth and found that there are no rotten teeth (the reason for the visit). The exercise in patience ended with the attempt at bite wing xrays. I stepped out of the room for a second and heard Mom: "Get away from me!" The dental tech was good, but she's the loud chatty one. I can't tell you how often I have wanted to say that. Home we went with a new flossing tool and some mouthwash.

What I appreciated about the visit was their understanding that these days it's about making Mom as comfortable as possible. For a while the cardiologist still wanted to see her, the optometrist insisted on running her through a bunch of tests, even though she just needed to replace her glasses. We're not sure how Mom is processing visual input these days anyway, and she's lost those glasses again. If Mom's tooth is not rotten and there's nothing giving her pain, she gets a free pass from dentistry. A major heart attack at this point would not be the worst outcome. Somewhere, the spirit of my Mother, often absent from this withered body these days, is hovering and saying "screw cardiology!" It's my job to remember her, even in her presence, and to be pragmatic.

Mostly Mom sits in a comfy chair and sleeps, waking occasionally. Her hands roam around her lap, feeling and investigating wrinkles and folds in the blanket, her eyes closed. Sometimes she's mutter something. "See you in the morning."

I had forgotten that bedtime ritual from my childhood. Every night when she tucked me in:

"Good night." "Sleep tight." "See you in the morning!"

The other morning I had just helped her sit down in the big chair. She really hates sitting down. She can't see what's behind her and she feels as though she is falling. It feels very out of control and she says "ohh, ohh!" and we have to talk her through it. I forget what she said, but it was something about how pitiful and helpless she felt.

I told her: "Mom, you're a very accomplished person. You taught the most disturbed kids in Wichita for 12 years. You worked for Cerebral Palsy Research and supported hundreds of disabled people through the process of deinstitutionalization. You started the Independent Living Center for brain injured people, the Women's Equality Coalition, and Woman Art/Woman Fair to promote female artists. You took care of me and took care of Dad."

"Thanks," she smiled. "I needed that," and leaned back, and dozed off, hands again wandering her lap. Good night. Sleep tight. See you in the morning.

brief revery - no photo

It's been an interesting week, full of ups and downs, opportunities to engage my better and "worser" self, to enjoy both Spring and Winter (in that order), and perhaps today more Spring. I left my photo stick at work, and I'm on Walker's computer, so there is no photo today.

I discovered that my camera does not like being cold and demonstrates this by refusing to download pictures. I had to take it out of my car, which is where I like to put it. Now it goes back and I have a lot of shots I have been thinking about taking all Winter. I can feel my thickened blood stirring. I can hear my expanding gut remind me that I vowed never to get to 260 pounds again and urging me to get moving. It's time to pump up the bicycle tires on the mountain bike and see how things work. The road bike has low handle bars and would require me to look up from a very low position. I suspect that this posture is no longer possible. From now on, it's straight handlebars for me! The larger impediment at this point is sloth, and I'm very pleased at this. There could certainly have been more serious impediments than my old familiar one. I'd also like to try and run again, but I think this process will be gradual -- a little walking, a little running, more walking -- because lifting and jarring my spine are still touchy activities. People are now espousing the benefits of running barefoot because people naturally avoid hard heel strikes and use their feet better when they run this way. Except for all the rocks and glass on the road around here, that might be a pretty good idea. I understand that there are shoes being made that imitate the benefits of not wearing shoes. Sounds pretty paradoxical to me. A person could really riff on this concept. Not this morning, though.

My soon had a big party last night at our house and Robyn and I played dead upstairs. It was an enthusiastic event with a lot of singing together and by the sounds of thumping, much romping with the dog. Tye's arthritic foot is acting up this morning and he's limping pitifully. We old dogs need to learn restraint. Good luck with that. This was a "clean" party - no drugs or alcohol - and I am left wondering how loud they'd have been if they'd had beer! I had clean parties at Walker's age, too. My behavior didn't nose-dive, really, until college. It was a fine nose diver and I (mostly) don't regret it. I'm not predicting Walker will meet a similar fate. He seems to have a mind of his own.

As to my better and worser selves, they continue to be in protracted talks. On a good day my better self speaks and my worser self merely mutters. Today looks like it may be one of those days.

inertia and osculation

We watched a movie about spectacular vengeance last night. I don't even remember the name of it this morning, but the plot is familiar: A man's family is brutalized and murdered before his eyes while he lies on the floor, duct taped and helpless. He is let down by the system and left alone and profoundly let down, everything he's ever had to love in his life destroyed and no justice to show for it, the evil doers plea bargaining their way to easy street. This pathos gives way to massive amounts of vengeance and lesson learning unleashed upon the hypocrites and evil doers by the suddenly empowered and brilliant formerly-helplessly-suffering-guy who has monster abs by the way.

It was very satisfying. It made me want to convene my own military tribunal and railroad somebody.

I fell asleep pretty early and woke up early, here in my somewhat less clear cut world. Winter has thickened my blood and I'm peering out the window thinking about somehow moving more quickly. I'm dragging with me a foggy cloud of ennui that I haven't been able to shake for weeks. When I'm occupied, I'm fine. Things have been busy and so mostly I've been occupied. Sometimes, though, in the silence of an empty cluttered house the fog descends and I look around at all the things to do, tasks not done, riddles unsolved, loose ends untied, and I'm inert. Perhaps I'm an emotional shark and must keep moving to survive. The warm weather reminds me of my bicycle and my running shoes. It's time to test my titanium spinal superstructure and get myself some endorphins.

Today Caitlin flies to Germany for a senior trip. She'll visit Berlin, stay with a host family for three days in a small down to the south, and then visit Munich. All told she'll be gone ten days, which is about as long as she's ever been gone from us, I think. We all view this as a rehearsal for college this Fall. She's a ready as any of us ever are for what passes as independence when you're eighteen. She was taunting her mother last night with threats of "making out with German boys" to "see if they do it differently." A cultural saliva exchange! For peace! Robyn played along threatening dire consequence if Caitlin is flown home in disgrace. I worry for the poor unsuspecting German boys, personally.

I doubt that the Teutonic method for osculation is any different. Lips is lips. I had a girlfriend once who was enamored of the French. It was her major after all, but I was an unsatisfactory boyfriend in that I didn't share her passion and hadn't learned that being supportive is part of the job. My observation was that minus the accent, her French friends were no more interesting than my American ones. There was one really mad fellow named Andre I really liked but he seemed more temperamentally Russian than French. I never kissed any of them, but I think my girlfriend did. I think they supported her passion better than I did.

Soon I'll head to Iowa City and visit with my ornery kids. We step onto the moving sidewalk with little time to reflect, doing and doing. Inertia is like that: it moves until it stops, stops until it moves.

If I can ever lose my blues
Walk on over and turn on the tv
What I'd like to do is lie down on the sofa
Later on
I might walk my dog, baby

--James Taylor

management

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you
--e.e. cummings

I avoided funerals for a very long time. I had a good excuse. Dad took 10 years to die of ALS and before he died Mom had Alzheimer's disease. For a long time I hid from death and its trappings. In my cowardice I avoided funerals in particular. It wasn't the reminder of death that scared me, I think, but the intimation of my own enormous grief, waiting patiently for me to finish my dance, my drink, my long rationalization, waiting to enfold me in its inevitable arms.

When Dad died he was in many ways a stranger in town. He wasn't capable emotionally of maintaining many friends. The emotional strains of intimacy and the ensuing analysis of others motivations made it a painful adventure for him. I assumed his funeral would be a small, almost secret affair. What I failed to understand was that my mother and I had brought many people into his world. Those people came and sat with us, showing up for a ceremony that allowed us to close Dad's book. What I expected to be a lonely exercise was about community and appreciation. Even the old veteran with his bugle, who apologized for muffing a note in Taps, cared for us that day.

While I can write about them, I am not very successful in managing my emotions. This is because, I believe, emotions happen first. If we're centered, we sit with our emotions and learn from them, decide what they mean, and perhaps what we need. I've always been an "emotional optimist." It won't be that bad. I'll be fine. See! I'm fine! This isn't bothering me that much at all. Then, a few days later, something hits me like a baseball bat, an assault in the dark and, surprise! My feelings are what they are and I can't manage them. I'm not the only person who has to learn this lesson over and over again, and thus I make a tidy living.

A 16 year old girl dropped dead this week. She was a classmate of Walker's and we have seen her around since Walker was 5 years old. Katlyn was athletic, smart, and genuinely decent. The autopsy was inconclusive. She just died.

I had really planned to avoid her funeral, and did, but my daughter, another Caitlin, asked me to go with her. "It won't be that bad," I thought. . . .

I must say that this was the most emotionally ravaging viewing I have ever attended. After about an hour of standing in line with the entire community, looking at pictures and mementos of this beautiful, vital young woman, we came to her family. They had learned to intercept the conversation and thank us for coming before we could speak, sparing them more memories when they were trying to hang together. They were almost not in their own bodies. The word "devastated" is overused. The casket was open and I won't describe its contents except to say that the contrast with our memories, with the photos, was stark. Punch in the stomach. Hit by a truck, a mudslide, a tidal wave. We winced and moved as fast as we could toward the door.

Yesterday morning I was gripped with overwhelming anxiety over things that don't amount to much. I felt horrible, guilty, angry at myself for saying something minor the night before, all out of proportion to the "crime," which really didn't exist and was easily remedied. After about two hours of misery, it began to dawn on me that I was familiar with this "trip." The dance of deferred emotion, the contrived incident followed by all out of proportion guilt and self admonishment.

I'm sorry that you died, kid. I'm sorry you had the same name as my daughter and dropped dead for no reason. I'm sorry I felt relieved that it was you and not my child lying there, a husk, a corpse that no amount of make up could remediate. I'm sorry that I shied away from your parents visceral pain and rushed for the door gripping my daughter's hand. I'm sorry I don't know your family well enough to do more than show up, witness their pain and run for the parking lot. It was what I could do. I showed up. I can't get them out of my head.

Karkowski night

It was an interesting weekend, much in the usual way. I saw clients on Saturday morning. They are always interesting and pleasant (no joke - if you see clients and don't find them interesting and pleasant you should find something useful to do - sell shoes!). I drove around in my new Golf, which is mostly a carbon copy of my old Rabbit, with fewer doors and a manual transmission. Anyone who hung with me had to hear about how something is wrong with 2nd gear. One should not have to double-clutch a new Volkswagen. Interesting, but as mundane as a Christmas letter, you're thinking. True.

In the evening I spent some time at a benefit for Russell Karkowski, a furniture builder and craftsman who fell off his roof and landed on his head. Russell is doing pretty well, all things considered. His personality remains, by all accounts, as does his determination to recover. He's learning to speak, to use his body, staying longer in rehab because they believe there's more progress to be made. Apparently if you're discharged quickly from rehab it's because they feel they have achieved what we in the human services used to call "maximum benefits." That's social work speak for "shit, we give up!" Russell, God bless him, has not met Max yet. Good man.

Will and I got together and sang and played a little and then went down to the Mill and sang about a half hour together. It was a loud crowd, not particularly attentive, there for Russell and each other. This is as it should be. Any experienced musician knows that sometimes the crowd is (are?) into each other and not us. We used some tricks to quiet the crowd and create space and had a good time doing duo work, which requires less precision and uniformity than working in a four or five piece group. I love Will and he loves me and I trust and hope that we'll always be able to tune in and make music together. I thought of our friend Cam, who jumped ship this year and the times we spent at the Mill singing as a trio together. In his honor, I mentioned that Cam had no butt. Of course now he's missing more than that, but it felt important to tease him in absentia.

What was most interesting though was that discussion turned several times to my own injury. Now, I'm not 100% yet, but I'm enjoying my life again and exercising the privileges of autonomy and independence. Some would say I'm also recovering my cognition, although that may remain to be seen.

In any case, what's happening to Russell absolutely dwarfs anything I experienced. I had the good fortune of avoiding coma, brain damage, and physical incapacity. We were worried about whether I'd walk, but I walk and I had all my potential gratifyingly in line as soon as I recovered from surgery. My toes wiggled and that was it. After that it has been a matter of endurance. I'll admit to employing some determination. I'll admit to despairing of ever being able to get around by myself again at some points, but those points were located over the span of a few months. Going on about my experience at Russell's party did not feel appropriate.

Faithful readers may recall that as I lay on my back in the hospital, fresh off the helicopter, recently off the side of a county road in Wisconsin, I was told I'd have to wait a day for surgery because I was "stable." They boy scouts riding in an SUV on the highway had not been so lucky and they got to go first. I found I couldn't argue with that. I was very uncomfortable but my condition was not going to deteriorate further. I was able to think and speak (sort of) and feel impatient (then guilty for it). I dozed off into my narcotic haze counting my blessing that I was not a boy scout late of an SUV.

Russell, by all accounts, is showing great attitude, love, and determination each day. His future is uncertain. A master craftsman and furniture builder, co-founder of the Artisan's Gallery, labors on in rehab to master every day tasks. His great courage dwarfs any I might have summoned. Russell and those boy scouts - upstaged again, and grateful for it.

RIP William Morrison

William F. Morrison died yesterday. He invented the Frisbee, surely the cultural totem of our generation. Morrison had to sue to retain the rights to his invention, which I believe he copied from pie tins tossed around by college freshmen. The work Frisbee was imprinted on the bottom of the tin. If the toy had been invented in Cedar Rapids, it might have been named Kathy's Pies.

My friend Roger comes from a family rife with entrepreneurial spirit. They are successful car dealers and investors, always looking for the next thing. Roger's dream in college was to be the inventor of something like those little spring-loaded hands that everyone in the 80's suction cupped to their car window and imprinted with various slogans. "Honk if you love Jesus." "Baby on board." Roger's sense of irony attracted him to particularly worthless inventions that nonetheless catch on. He now owns a successful Honda franchise in Wichita. The irony, I suppose, is that although he is a success, Honda's are useful, and so his youthful ambition is ultimately foiled.

Morrison, and Wham-O!, working "together," if invention and subsequent theft can be described as cooperation, produced a toy that is wonderfully simple, even tacky. It has spawned any number of wonderful games (ultimate frisbee, disc golf. . .) and given many a boomer an excuse to run and throw and catch without being a "jock" about it. Some of us may have engaged in simultaneous recreational activities that were less than healthy, but we got our hearts moving and we found joy. My old pal and erstwhile musical partner Swinton and I used to spend hours throwing a big frisbee long distances over the lawns of the Oakdale campus, between tall oak trees, working up a sweat and taking intermittent smoke breaks of one kind or another. I cannot help but associate the frisbee with enthusiasm and youthful joy.

My friend Kevin's dog Truly is a champion frisbee catching dog, with several trophies. His teeth are worn down from grabbing and clenching hard plastic in mid air. Truly is a dog obsessed and although he weighs well over 100 pounds, he is so filled with motivation that he can fly. My dog, alas, is more obsessed with tennis balls and crotches than with frisbees, and so athough he has some neat moves in a closed course, he does not compete. At least, not until there is a competition involving tennis balls and crotches.

When I was a freshman living in Burge Hall in Iowa City, my friends Brad and Nick threw the frisbee down the long narrow hall of our dormitory floor. This required a strong, straight side-arm flick that I never mastered. It was very impressive, and we all got used to peeking out of our doors cautiously in order to avoid being incidentally decapitated. Our RA tolerated it amicably until the second time an errant throw shattered a light fixture, something even Brand and Nick could not manage on purpose. Compared to many of our other Burge Hall activities, this was good clean fun. (256 false fire alarms during our first semester . . . the "mercy day massacre" culminating in the frat house across the street with all its window broken out by frozen rock cornish game hens, courtesy the cafeteria work study folks).

My good friend Chris, leader of our pack in age at least, turned 52 yesterday, which means as surely as snow melts that I'll do it, too. I had a conversation last night with a young man who was worrying about where his life was going. He's 24 and I didn't laugh as I told him I still wonder the same thing sometimes. My accomplishments in life have been both tangible and evanescent. Our kids are certainly top notch people. I have been a good therapist and social worker. My friends and I have made some good music together, both literally and figuratively.

I wonder if Mr. Morrison appreciated that his invention was actually pretty profound. It wasn't just a toy that "took off," like the yo-yo and silly string. (There is a case to be made for the profundity of the yo-yo, actually.) The frisbee is an important part of three or four generations worth of lives. My son's favorite part of cross country practice is playing ulitmate frisbee on the fully lit football field after games. Generation after generation, the cheesy plastic disc marches on!

A man could do worse with his life. I'm just sayin'.