Sorting Lives

(Author's note:  As part of this visit to The Ranch, I stopped by to see my Aunt Pat, whom you have very kindly been praying for/thinking good thoughts for.  Imagine my surprise when she opened the door!  She is doing much better, to the point they are thinking of moving her off hospice.  Thank you for all of your kind thoughts and prayers.) 

Two weeks ago, I completed the sorting of the last of the materials at The Ranch.

The moment almost slipped by me without noticing, the last sheet of paper in a pile of papers from the file cabinet that I set aside during my last visit to go through again to make sure I did not dispose of anything that I truly wanted to keep.  I sorted it into the appropriate pile - keep, burn, shred - and looked for the next sheet.  It was not there.

I was finished.

It was an odd feeling, as this is a process that more or less has been going on for the last four years.  We knew this time would come; if anything I was guilty of not being proactive and starting to sort sooner.  That slower pace worked as long as I was able to get back there for one week a month; it did not work nearly so well when a week became a weekend.

Having never sorted a life or lives, it is a sobering thing to realize that you have in essence looked at an individual's life (or in this case a married couple) through the things that they owned.  In some reasons I know why those things are there, in other cases I do not:  Why did they keep this?  What significance did it have?  If I let go of it, am I releasing some precious treasure?

Ultimately of course, all we can do is all we can do:   we set aside the things we know, we evaluate the things we do not know, and let the rest go to some else.

And somehow, suddenly find ourselves at peace.

Eulogy for Mom: Part II

 (Editor's note:  This is (more or less) the eulogy I presented for my mother this past Saturday.  As per usual, I have anonymized locations and names, but the gist of the speech remains the same.  Although delivered at one time, I have broken it into two sections for readability.)

My mother and father had numerous interests they shared. They enjoyed traveling and when we growing up, prioritized taking a trip together as a family. For years it was camping in the same state park (because that is what they could afford); later by scrimping and saving they went to visit her brother R in Hawai’i and Japan and Norway. She and my father discovered a love of square dancing and danced for years with local groups, traveling with them – both in state and out of state. And besides those trips, they took other trips throughout the U.S. to go to my father’s ship reunions or visiting relatives and traveling with their children and grandchildren.

My mother, as mentioned earlier, was dedicated to her family. To her parents and extended family she remained involved and active. When my grandmother had the stroke that eventually caused her death, she took my grandfather down to the hospital every day for a year to visit her. And when my grandmother passed away, she spent the next five years visiting my grandfather on a weekly basis making sure that he ate something like a balanced diet and the house was more or less presentable. When her Great-Aunts were unable to continue to host the family reunion, she started doing to keep a promise to the last of the Great Aunts that she would do it as long as my Great Aunt was alive.

After her retirement in the early 2000’s, she and my father built a house on the land they had purchased from my Great Aunt and Uncle. This was The Ranch, a place that she had been coming for most of her life. A house was built to their specifications, and my mother spent many happy years with space to read, sew, scrap book, host gatherings, and supervise my father as he busied himself with cleaning up the property and cutting wood. An added bonus was that grandchildren were within an easy drive and so they were able to support them by attending their activities as well – in person often for my sister’s children or traveling to see Na Clann once we relocated to New Home.

And then, in 2015, the unexpected happened.

My father had let us know that he had noticed my mother was having problems with words. He had taken her to the doctor and the diagnosis, as he told us, was dementia. It was a matter of fact statement, something that was simply happening. It was only years later when my sister and I had access to their medical records that the diagnosis was in fact Alzheimer’s.

The progression of Alzheimer’s is too well documented to need to cover here. Put in my own colloquial words, it is a fire that burns through the mind, leaving nothing in its wake except smoldering ruins that will not never regrow, a forest fire with no renewal. To be given the diagnosis is a long drawn out death sentence.

Even at this, my mother never flinched.

In the intervening years between the initial diagnosis and the time when we had to move her into a care facility, she never once cursed her fate or bewailed it. She did what she could do as long as she could do: addressed birthday cards and kept the books until her writing failed, cooked until she could not, did crossword puzzles, walked and read. The circle of her life shrank, but she as a person never did.

Even in the last year when it became evident that more care was needed than what my father would be able to provide, she still remained the kind and gracious person she always was. She may not have remembered who you were, but she was always willing to engage in conversation.

During the last six months of their time at The Ranch, I had the privilege staying with them and of being working remotely from their house for one week a month.  “Remind me about your children” she would ask me as I took her and Dad down to Hometown. We would go through the each of them and where they were. She would smile and nod, look out the window, and say “Remind me – do you have children?”

Even in the care home, she remained kind and cheerful when we would come to visit – again, she might not have remembered who you were specifically, but her innate kindness prevented her from acting as if she did not know us. Her rule of “Always wave to a child if they wave at you – even if you do not remember when you had them in a class, they do” held to the end.

By the end – 8.5 years after the diagnosis and 3 years after we had moved her into a care facility – her body was there, but she was not. For the last few visits, she would simply look off into the distance, seeing something beyond the view of the rest of us that were in the room.

My mother quietly held her faith in God. She believed, even in the face of circumstances that said she should not. This, perhaps, was her last act of quiet faith and defiance, to stare the destruction of Alzheimer’s in the eye and look beyond it to what lay beyond then razor-thin wall of the next world.

We all take away things from our parents, whether intend to or not. Like any child, I too have borne away things from my mother that in my case have served me in good stead up to this day and will, I have every reason to believe, continue to serve me through the years that remain.

The first is a love of reading – like my mother, I am a reader and like my mother, I have so many that they are not just items I read and re-read, they have become décor. Reading is not just a hobby for me -like my mother, it is a way of life. I love reading because I had the example that reading was not only fun – it was important and a legitimate way to spend time. And my books, like hers, are not just items that I have read: they are old friends, some of which I have had almost all of my life, with stories to remind me beyond what just lies in the pages.

The second is a willingness to keep learning – my mother was always learning. She took up piano with her mother in her mid-thirties. When electronics became all the rage in the 1990’s, my mother upgraded her manual typewriter to an electronic word processor and then a computer. She took classes at the local Adult School and carefully kept her books and notes on how to send e-mails and print documents. She took up scrap booking after years of just keeping pictures to allow her to tell stories. And almost to the end of her time at The Ranch, she tried to do a crossword ever day – maybe the same crossword, but a crossword none the less.

The third is kindness.

My mother was a kind person – when I say kind, do not mistake it for a marshmallow sort of kindness that is always crumpling under the will of others. She could be stern if she needed to be. But even within that sternness, there was an overwhelming kindness that demonstrated itself in interactions: Do not treat people poorly or disrespectfully. Do not publicly bring up someone’s faults – do it in private, where there is no public embarrassment. Always be kind to animals. We may not always remember what people say or do to us, we will always remember how they made us feel.

I use all of these points in my life, but the last one – kindness – especially in my work life. I try to practice it. I put it on any sort of department values or goals that I am associated with. I use it in interviews as one of the traits that I value the most in myself and others.

“My mother was a schoolteacher” I say when I get what has become the usual follow-on question or quizzical look about kindness as a principal value. “And you should always do what your teacher says. Especially if they are your mother.”

Eulogy For Mom: Part I

(Editor's note:  This is (more or less) the eulogy I presented for my mother this past Saturday.  As per usual, I have anonymized locations and names, but the gist of the speech remains the same.  Although delivered at one time, I have broken it into two sections for readability.)

On behalf of the TB family we would like to thank you for taking the time to be with us today in memory of our mother and grandmother. Your presence means a great deal.

Having to do this same sort of speech only 18 months ago, I approach it with the same sort of trepidation that I did with my father’s. Speaking of the life of one’s parents is something which, under normal circumstances, we assume will happen at some point. The assumption of that occurrence does not make it any easier: as I noted last time, the lives of our parents are in three stages, before we as children arrived, the time we had as a family unit in the same location, and then the time when we head out and our parents return to lives as a couple.

Mom was born on XX January 194X in Hometown. Hometown and the greater range beyond it became the geographic center of her life; other than short periods of living in state capitol to finish college and some time living with my father while he was in the Navy, she lived the rest of her life in the immediate area in which she was born.

She was preceded in birth by her brother R and was followed in birth by her sister J. They lived in the same house that her father had lived in since his early years.

My mom did not often speak of life at there what she spoke of far more often were trips trips to the almost ghost town farther up the mountain, where her mother was born and her Great Uncles lived. Here she got to run outdoors and listen to stories of life in her mother’s time and grandmother’s time, stories stretching back to the 1800’s. Even 60 years later, these were the memories she would talk about.

Hometown was a small town in those days, much smaller than it is now. She walked to to her elementary school and then cut her commute by 2/3’s by going to the high school just down the street. She met her two best friends in elementary school who both lived down the street from her; they would remain friends until death parted them.

At the close of high school, two things happened. The first was that she enrolled in college. The second was that she met and started dating TB The Elder.

They met during their Senior year of high school; my mother and my father never quite mentioned how it happened, other that it did – and it was successful enough of a first meeting that they began dating, a relationship that lasted through my father’s stint in the Navy and my mother’s college years. They were married in the later 1950’s. My mother remained local and finished up her teaching degree and then joined my father for a period of time living out of state until they relocated back to the Hometown area, where she embarked upon her teaching career.

She was a teacher from the early 1960’s until her final retirement in the early 2000’s. She taught at several schools, all local – but spent most of her time in the same district she herself had gone to school, including at the school she had been an elementary student at. She took some years off to have children, but even then was a volunteer and part time teacher.

While she had taught junior high early in her career, she spent the bulk of her years in the elementary grades. At least during our growing up years, she mostly taught between first and fourth grade, her favorite grades being third and fourth, when as she put it “the children could actually differentiate between what was a joke and what was not”. (Editor’s Note: I was informed by my sister and cousin this should have read “Second Grade”).

But, of course, she was not only a teacher. She was, first and foremost, a mother.

Our parents purchased their first home in the mid 1960’s; it would be the place that they lived for almost 40 years. It was here that they put together a home and we grew up.

It was a home filled with books.

My mother was a reader. The hallway had shelves on the wall filled with books and the living room had bookshelves filled with books. Growing up, she or my father read to us every night, until we could read. If she had some time to herself, especially when we were young, she would be reading.

Perhaps not surprisingly, her children became readers as well.

One of the greatest days of the week when we were young was library day at the local Library. For years we would go regularly every two weeks (because that is when the books were due). Originally we were shepherded through the children’s section, but eventually we were let loose to roam the library and pursue any interest we had.

My mother, like my father, was incredibly supportive of all of our activities. What we did, she was involved in – Scouts, 4-H, sports, music, plays – she came to them all. Even if (I suspect) she did not necessarily understand or enjoy all of them, she still came.

But eventually, of course, children grow up and move out, leaving parents to rediscover that they get to have a life again.

(End Part I)

Post Funeral Finalities

This was an exhausting weekend.

The service for my mother went well on Saturday.  All of our immediate family was able to be there, as was a number of family friends and some of her teaching friends (I was honestly surprised at how many of them came).  The service itself was one that my mother would have likely approved of, the core of the Pastor's message being Psalm 23.  My eulogy - which after a some anonymization I will post as I did my father's - was generally well received.  People got up and shared memories, some of which I had never heard before.  After that, we retired for a light repast, making small talk with everyone and thanking them for coming.

Following that, of course, was what probably could have been called a light form of a wake at my sister's house.  All of her children and all of mine were there, along with my Uncle - her surviving sibling and, I think, the oldest member of this entire branch of the family - and my Aunt, his wife.  The Outdoorsman mixed drinks and we all had a good time simply being in each other's presence.

 

That said, yesterday I was completely wiped out:  emotionally, spiritually, mentally.

This was actually a little surprising to me.  I had underestimated the amount of energy it took to "be on" for effectively the whole day - an introvert by nature, I can shine like social star if I need to.  But that, plus being back at the house for the first time since February with the reality that other decisions are coming down the pike (and the simple fact this is longest I had not been there in almost 4 years), plus seeing my own family whom I have not seen in some cases since March or even Christmas - there was a lot of emotion there.  And emotion, at least for me in that amount, can be draining.

Long time readers will recognize these irises.  They are, I believe, actually taken from my material grandmother's garden.  My mother was a great lover of both daffodils and irises.  The daffodils I largely missed this year due to timing, but the irises were there to greet me.

The thing that came to me as I was driving back down to drop off the truck, trailing my family in the rental car, was the finality of things - and not just this, but other things as well. The biggest, of course, is  that my parents are gone with the harsh finality that life gives to such things.  There is no particular regret on my part - I had said what needed to be said and, as readers here will know, this was the curtain call of a tragedy that has been playing out for the last eight years.

But there was other finality as well.

There was a sense - a real sense - that even though I will go back to New Home next month to train and collect my things, it will not ever really be my "home" again.  Even my trips back there after June will be more and more constrained:  one likely in July to pick up the rabbits, perhaps one between then and when The Ravishing Mrs. TB likely moves in October, and then perhaps one of the two holidays of Christmas or New Year's.  After that, I will likely seldom go back at all except for events or possibly Iai training.

Another finality is the estate - not that anything is fully settled (I tried to avoid it on this of all weekends), but that it is now something that has to be actively dealt with and worked on.  Given working out some exigencies, the chances of renting it in the short term are probably low - good for me having to relocate stuff to the barn, a little less good for managing the house and its repairs.  And in a real way, the focal point shifts from New Home to there (not to mention, of course, working out how often I will be able to get there in the next six months to a year).

It was a great deal of change wrapped up into a single weekend. I had anticipated a funeral; what I got was the realization of the entire re-casting of my life.

A Collapse, A Passing, And The End of Things

(First things first - no post from Seneca (directly) this week.  My apologies as the week has taken turns I did not anticipate.)

One of the surprising things about life to me is that sometimes it imitates art; sometimes, that imitation even seems to precede life itself.

That is a bit of a ridiculous statement to me of course; the idea that somehow art (in my case, fiction) can somehow precede an actual change in life or events is the sort of thing of mystical fantasy, whereby the combination of unique ingredients and the summoning of An Other from The Outer Planes results in small glimpses into the future.

And yet, here we are.

Attentive folks have commented on the fact that Seneca seems to have undergone a change, sometime between setting out for what will go down in whatever annals of history are to be kept as The Battle of McAdams.  It is not a hard thing to write, of course; literature and history are replete with the experiences of those that went out to war and what they were like when the return (Note:  The 1920's called, and they are looking for their Lost Generation).  There are events which change us - and not all bad of course: something as benign as marriage or the birth of a child or graduating with a degree can suddenly set a different course.

When I had accepted the new job (was it only a week ago), my reasoning was sound at the time:  not only did I need a job (big one there), this was a job that had a good package associated with it and the potential for growth and even to end my career there.  It also had the benefit of being much closer to The Ranch and my mother.  The ability to be able to get down to see her had become a a very motivating factor - so motivating, in fact, that I surrendered another job option for it.

Ah, the difference of a week.

Since Monday, I have been re-asking myself the question "Did I really make the right choice?"  It is a fair question, perhaps, given that somehow one of the major things underlying that decision has changed and the decision itself has had its own series of impacts.

It is like this when one moves:  the decision to move is rapidly overtaken by a series of tasks that needs to be accomplished.  It is also overtaken by the fact that streams start to shut down, like bodily systems slowly closing out their appointed tasks on their way to death.

That is happening here of course:  end dates of things that I do here are counting down like clockwork.  The last day of coffee bar at Church is this Sunday, as well as the last formal day at the Rabbit Shelter.  The last day of Produce (A)Isle is the following Thursday, followed by the last Iaijutsu training and a departure lunch.    I leave the next day to go to The Ranch to do a quick sweep and meet with the lawyer about the estate.  

On Thursday, I leave for what is effectively a new life.

It is not a new life all at once, of course; these things never are.  But the locus of attention will have shifted. "New Home" is a place that I may still go back to and visit more frequently at first, but those visits will likely taper off as things move on.  As life, really, moves on.

On the one hand of course, it is a great End.  On the other hand, of course, it is a great Beginning.

It is a great Beginning because effectively, I get to re-create a life from scratch. Yes, there is a dojo there in my style and I will train.  Yes, there are rabbits shelters and I will inevitably find one and volunteer.  But both of those likely will be different days and times and probably involve less time overall. 

While certainly it is a not a "Everything burned to the ground and we are starting over", it is somewhat of a "Choose your own adventure" sort of moment.

Or, having seen a major change, everything downstream now changes.

Seneca, perhaps, is on to something.

The Passing Of Mom: Odds, Ends, And Plannings

 The Day After the Day.  The surreal sense of things is still present, brought on by things mostly outside of my control.

The notifications are mostly done.  I had to call my oldest and youngest (Nighean Gheal and Nighean Dhonn) as they are both out of town.  An awkward thing, especially for someone like myself who is not good at discussing my emotions at the best of times.  It is always a hard conversation, some version of "Hi, how are you, I have not the great news....".  Not a surprise to them either, but not any easier because of that.

I have being stalling on The Great Social Media post until we had a funeral date, which we now do - the middle of  May if you are in the neighborhood of the continental U.S. (offer not good in Alaska and Hawai'i). For someone that writes as much as I do, you would think this would not create quite an issue.  It does, though - both because of the fact that it is (hopefully, and possibly in all likelihood) the last one of these I will have to write for a long time (if ever), and partially because it will be seen by a lot of people that may have a lot of questions I do not have the answer to, like "What did she die from?" or "What happens to The Ranch?" or even just "How are you doing?"

Unfortunately, I have no idea how I am doing, well meaning person that is asking.  You and I both have the same question and concern.

For better or worse (mostly worse) outside of family, there are not many people left to contact - my parents have the same issue many of their generation has of having outlived most of the their peers and interest groups.  One call to their former church, one call to a colleague of my mother's - and that is that.  Likely the funeral service will be even smaller than my father's.  In 1.5 years, that seems like an ominous reduction of people.

Although given that I am moving soon anyway I had not initially planned to there again for a bit, but due to this event, I am headed back out the week of 10 March - mostly to go with my sister and meet with the lawyer and see what the next steps are in settling the estate.  While I do not have a lot of discomfort about this - we must be on some kind of timetable, but not a "We need to get it down right now" timeframe - it still makes me unsettled.  This is yet another change in a year which is already bustling with them, and brings to mind a new round of financial planning and repairs and "well, maybe I do not have to pack everything up" that I find myself suddenly unable to deal with all at once. 

And a funeral speech, of course.  I will have to write one of those - again, hopefully, the last one that I will have write in a very long time, perhaps forever.  Fortunately I have two months.

Knowing me, it will likely take that entire time to write.

The Passing Of Mom

 My mother passed away yesterday.  She managed to just slip past her birthday to 84 years.

Apparently the home she was in called my sister and let her know she had evidenced some problems breathing - and suddenly, she was gone.

I went to see her when I was home two weeks ago.  

In going, I knew she had been having health issues.  On my arrival that week, my sister let me know that she had fallen twice and was essentially unable to walk, even with our assistance - something that was not true 4 months ago.  The home had asked my sister to start buying nutritional drinks for her as she was not eating well; recently she would only take her food pureed. 

My visit this time was no different than they had been in the last few months:  my mother was awake (although just as often in the last few months she was asleep) and staring off into the distance.  She would not make eye contact and may or may not have been aware that I was even there.

I had become used to this, of course.  The first time or two it was disconcerting, but I had simply learned to just talk on.  And so this time - as in months past - I said hi and updated her on how the family was doing, where The Ravishing Mrs. TB was off to and what the grandchildren were up to, and what I was up to.  I finished with telling her I loved her, and was on my way.

I was probably there 5 minutes all told.  Even then, the gauntness of her frame (96 lbs. from a recent medical visit) suggested that that her passing was a very real potential outcome.

Now, suddenly, everything is different.

As Nighean Bhan said about the passing of TB The Elder, it is more of a shock than a surprise - after all, the outcome of Alzheimer's is never in doubt.  And my mother is now herself, as I remember her, united now with her parents and sister and all of her Great-Aunts - and TB The Elder, of course.

In the few months leading up to their moving in 2020 and 2021, every night my mother would offer to rub my father's back on the couch.  It remained the one thing that she apparently felt able to do for my father after all the other things she had done over the years had slipped away with Alzheimer's.  And so, every night, she would sit on the couch and my father would lay down and she would rub his back.  Likely they did so the last night before they moved.

As awful as it sounds, it is a great relief.  My mother can finally get herself back. Her long journey of slowly losing herself is going and, as C.S. Lewis would probably say, she is more herself now than she ever was.  But all of a sudden, this year seems a lot less like a musical coda, where one returns to the previous bars of music to repeat, and more like a transition to an entirely different section of the music.

A Visit With Mom: April And May 2023 Editions

 I have not posted as  I should have on my visits with my mother, possibly because there is much less to tell.

There were two attempted visits with my mother in April:  the first I arrived and she was asleep.  The young woman started to wake Mom up but I waved her off; there was plenty of time to come down again.  The next visit a couple of days later went much better.  She was at least awake and if she did not recognize me (I do not know that she does now), she hid it readily enough.  I shared the hike we had been on and the updates for Na Clann, the usual things that we cover month in and month out. The visit was not more than 20 minutes.

This week I went by to visit as well.

My sister had given my a heads up:  when she had visited for Mother's Day, Mom was very much interested in a conversation going on near them, not so much in a conversation with my sister herself.  After a bit, my sister just listened and then helped Mom back in.  So when I arrived, I was ready for something of a disengagement.

When the health aides went to get her, she did not want to stand up and come over.  No problem, I said, I can come sit over there.  I came and sat and just started displaying photos on my phone of our hike in Hetch Hetchy and the graduation/college status of Na Clann and our upcoming vacation. She seemed interested in the pictures and about Na Clann's status as she always is.

I believe my sign-in/sign-out time was 9 minutes total.  No sense prolonging what seemed to be a slightly uncomfortable experience for her.

I am loathe to admit that we may be entering a new stage with my mother.  Perhaps it makes sense:  this June will be two years since she came to this facility and from her point of view, this is home.  This place, these residents, are what she sees and remembers on a daily basis (if she remembers anything short term). My sister and I are presences that more and more are likely becoming remote at best and unknown at worst.

This is a natural progression. For all of my dislike and even fear of it, it is natural.  I try and go into each visit with no expectations.  When I have seen something in the past, some flash of memory, I rejoice.  But I have to counsel myself that as this goes longer and longer, the flashes will likely become less and less until they gutter out completely.

Sometimes, there is nothing to do about the darkness except to accept its coming and know there is a dawn which is beyond my physical eyes.

The Last Argument With My Father

The last argument I had with my father occurred in  a December in the mid-1980's.

My post-high school existence was not necessarily something to write home about.  Having been accepted into a "name" college in the state in which we lived, I only made it a single semester before the combination of being away from home and having my first girlfriend while I was away resulted in me packing up and returning home (also, quite probably, to my parents' and my relief as the tuition was far and above what we could have afforded).  I enrolled as a student in our local technical/junior/community college full time and found myself a series of odd jobs - handyman, heating/cooling duct installer, gutter installer - to generate income while I took classes. The goal was, of course, to transfer to State U after two years of requirements completed.

My transportation at that time was a 1970's Datsun truck, gifted to me by my maternal grandfather when he had gotten a new one.  It was a small, cramped thing painted a now-faded red with a camper shell and a a standard transmission and engine that began to quake the whole truck when one exceeded 60 miles per hour.  It was cramped in the cab - literally only two normal humans could sit comfortably or perhaps three, if one in the middle did not mind have shifting occurring between their legs.  It was the perfect sort of truck for the young man who was just sort of inching his way through life towards a hinted at but not yet seen goal.

It was in the evening on the day in question in December when the initial incident occurred.  I cannot specifically remember why I was where I was but I remember where I was:  On the overpass above the Major Interstate that bisected our town, which likely means I was driving back from the grocery store on one side to our home on the other.  It was snowing, which was not unheard of in my hometown - not the wild blustery flakes of a Midwestern snowstorm which whites out all that is around us, but significant enough that snow was laying down on the ground, the overpass, and the road - which explains why I hit something.

I do not recall what I hit - I believe I have a memory of every car I have run into and nothing leaps to mind, but that does not mean another automobile was involved. It literally could have been the overpass as well.  Whatever it was, what resulted was no injuries - and a small, bend on the driver's side, right in front of the door.  Small, but noticeable.

The next stop was home.  And home meant my father.

The joke between my sister and myself is that our father, TB the Elder (who passed this year), was as a grandfather to our children not the man we grew up with as a father.  As a father, he had the tendency to over-react when something went "not well", going from zero to 60 in about 0.1 seconds - never physical violence or swearing or derogatory language about you, but definitely a great deal of voice raising and yelling, to the point that even today I cannot stay in a room with any sort of conflict or raised voices in it.  What that lead to, of course, was learning to attempt to hide anything that went wrong until either it could be "fixed" or it could no longer be hidden.

My arrival at home was likely quiet, I suspect:  I walked in, talked with my mother and father, and began looking for an opportunity to slip out and try to repair the damage:  likely in my head was the idea of using a hammer or screwdriver to lever out the dent.  My father, who went outside to get firewood, beat me to it.

In retrospect as a father myself, I can understand where some of his rage and frustration came from:  without knowing anything else, he had no idea what had happened.  Was I hurt?  Was anyone else hurt?  Was there a hit and run?  - I write all of this a father now who has thought same things when I have gotten "the call".  But some of it was simply the way that he had always reacted to things:  anger and raised voice.

I stumbled in my responses - I always did when he was that way, and to this day I still am reluctant and hesitant to speak in such moments as I do not react well and I do not trust myself to respond in moments of anger - after all, I am my father's son.  At one point he roared "You never tell me when things go wrong."

"You always yell when I do" I roared back - and then promptly turned and left the house.

This counter-response was so unlike me up to that point that I do not know where it came from - even now, I am surprised that such a thing came out of my mouth.  I never, ever contradicted my father in anything in common speech, let alone when there was this sort of thing.

And so I wandered off down our street into the snow.

I have no idea what I was actually thinking at the time.  I really had nowhere else to go, as it was evening and snowing and late.  And so I walked down to the end of the street, crossed the road, and went over to the recently built municipal park where I just stood with my hands in my pockets, watching the snow.  Perhaps I was just planning to wait it out until my parents went to sleep and I could creep back in to the house and go to bed or perhaps I was waiting for some kind of divine revelation about what to do.

What I was not waiting for was what actually happened:  the crunching of snow behind me as my father crossed the road.

In all my years, I can only recall my father coming after me after a traumatic event once, when we had had to put our dog to sleep and I (much younger at the time) had gone up the back hill at our house to grieve.  The last thing I had expected now was to see him out in the snow, coming for me.

The words of what we said specifically are now lost in the winds of time and snow. He apologized, I apologized, we both walked back up the lane together.  We never spoke of the incident again and the small dent remained a permanent part of the truck as long as I held on to it until later the next year when, as my sister and I were both off to State U, he bought a more reliable car to manage the trek there.

We never had an argument like that again - partially, perhaps, because after that I was off to college (it took the second time) and partially because two years later he had a significant brush with death in the form of Staph Pneumonia that literally almost killed him; when he came out, he was a very changed man and most of what seemed to have fueled whatever caused that anger had dissipated on the hospital bed.

Likely - and I will never know it now - there was a conversation between my mother and father after I had stormed out.  Likely it involved mostly my mother talking and father not saying anything. Likely it involved her telling him he needed to get back out there and find me. It is all likely, of course, but this side of Heaven it now remains a mystery as to its origin.

Which is, I suppose, ultimately irrelevant to the story.  

What is relevant - and what I recall now with vivid force even as I write - is not the accident or the words or even specifically how I felt during all of it.  What is relevant is the picture I always hold in my heart of my father crossing the street to find me, the snow trailing down in the not-quite darkness that only snow clouds seem to hold, a benediction of sorts during the season of The Greatest Giving.

A Visit With Mom - November 2022

 While it appears I have not updated here my visits with my mother since July of this year, they have been going on.

The visits post-July remain much as they ever have.  There is a routine to them almost now:  I call ahead around 1030 on a Sunday or the following Saturday (depending on flight times) to get there after 11 AM, which is post lunch for them.  I punch myself in through the gate and open to door to get someone's attention.  They will respond - they know I am coming and a number of the "regular" aides recognize me - and I will go out and pull a chair into the shade or sun, depending on the weather, and wait.  

They will help Mom on out and get her into the chair, let us know to have a nice visit and "take all the time you need", and leave us to our conversations.

Sometimes it is just myself and sometimes my sister meets me there.  We will comment on the weather, what holiday is coming up, and then I will start to run down the list of family events.  I have to remind myself to give context - names and relationships to me and her make more sense than just names.  She listens, nods, expresses surprise when things like how close someone is to graduation is and things like that.  After a while the conversation lags a bit - even with a monthly visit, we are done in about 20 minutes.  Sometimes my sister and I will just start talking about something tangential and Mom will just sit and listen.

She is still herself, however.  She is always happy to see us, even if she seems to have no idea who we are.  And she will not ever say she is uncomfortable: for example, last month was a bit coolish and while she did not say she was cold, she did say "Why do we not go inside?" - which was her way of saying she was cold.  We laughed, told her it was fine - we were on our way out anyway.

This month's visit (this last Friday) saw a sunny but cold November morning and so the owners very kindly offered to let us visit inside.  I sat across from Mom as they helped her into her chair and put a blanket over her lap. 

As she settled in I talked with R the owner of the facility.  Mom's hair was much shorter; apparently she had been playing with it a great deal. Other than that, her health was fine and she was eating well (they take such good care of her there).   With that, she left us to talk,

I asked Mom how she was doing and she said fine.  Then she looked at me and said "You look like and sound like my son.  I think he is around here somewhere".

This is the first time she has indicated she remembered me - at least - at all in a long time.

I laughed, told her "he must be an outstanding fellow then", and carried on with the update.  She responded as she always did as I shared that Thanksgiving was coming up, what the grandchildren were up to, and that I was taking some time off and a trip soon.  The conversation moved right along with pictures on my phone until, about the usual length of time, it was done.

I said goodbye as I helped her up and the caregiver came and assisted her back to the main living area.  On my way out, R let me know that Mom had developed the trait of walking around a lot, which was new - but there is another woman, also with Alzheimer's, who does the same thing, so they walked around together.   It was a new behavior.  

I got back in the truck and teared up.  It is one thing to visit someone you loved and they have no memory of you at all.  It is another to suddenly find they remember you, even if it is not the you right in front of them.

TB The Elder's Eulogy

 Friends,

I have taken the liberty of presenting my eulogy for TB the Elder today.  It is a little long - perhaps too long for an ordinary blog post - but I feel compelled to share it, if for no other reason the closure that it will bring.  In a very real way, you, the readers of this blog, have been my support group over the last two and a bit years as I we have walked this journey to its inevitable conclusion.  I appreciate that, both for the support as well as ability to write what I cannot always say.

In this, perhaps, blogging and the anonymity it can grant makes such things a bit easier.  The names and locations are changed below, in some cases to places that readers will know in a way the hearers will not, but the content and feelings remain the same.  

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On behalf of my and my sister’s families and of course my mother, we would like to thank you for taking the time to be with us today in memory of our father and grandfather. It means a great deal that you would take time out of your lives to honor him.

It puzzling place to be in, the giving of a memorial speech for one’s parent. What does one say, precisely? As children, we see a specific part of our parents’ lives: there is a whole history that goes on before we arrive, there is a background history that goes on that we are unaware of as we grow up, and then there is the final history where as we go on to have our own lives, and our parents once again have their own.

That said, I can only give you my story of him: of how I saw him, my relationship to him, and what he taught me.

My father was a complex man, something I at least did not come to realize until years after I had left home. I certainly did not realize it when I was growing up. I do not know that he always appreciated his complexity or if he did, he kept it quietly walled off in a place that most people never saw.

His formative years were far different than the experience he gave myself and my sister growing up. We lived in the same house our whole lives provided for by parents that essentially had the same job our entire time at home; he had a life of moving first from the state of his birth and then to what became his home in different locations, following agricultural jobs. We had no major trauma; he lost his brother before he was ten years old and in some ways my mother alluded to but never really fleshed out, was on his own to deal with internally it as his father took care of his mother and his older brother took care of his siblings.

He would not ever really speak of growing up much until years and years later, when we would be driving around to towns in the local area. He would direct me down certain roads and point out houses to me: his grandparents lived there, his one aunt and uncle lived there and the others there. When they moved closer to my hometown they lived there, where the equipment yard was on the old state highway now stands; a field with a remaining tree or two used to be a fruit orchard and there a bunkhouse that he and his older brother shared.

On the meeting of my mother, my father was fairly elusive. If there was a story, he never revealed it. This was a tendency he tended to have as well, this keeping of background which, when it came out, always made for a much fuller view of my father. One prime example that comes to mind is the one birthday of my sister where we had both lost a cat and I have rear ended someone the same day. We sat there quietly at our birthday dinner out in a restaurant, and conversation dragged a bit. At one point my father made the comment he would have had more words had it not been my sister’s birthday. Then, out of the blue, my mother trots out “Did your father ever tell you about the time he took his older brother’s car without telling him and totaled it?”

“No Mom, no he did not”. Suddenly the mood of the table changed: this was not an isolated event, this was family history.

My mother always seemed to know this about my father, this ability to regulate his mood and reset the tone. I have no idea if this was something she did instinctively or had come to it by practice: again, the years of their marriage until my and my sister’s birth were also shrouded in mystery, with vague tales of living others exotic locations like neighboring states and pets we never met and a blank between my father’ s entry into the Navy and their settling at the house we grew up at. I suppose – like most things – they felt it had no significant bearing on their lives as we knew them, although like most children, I confess to a certain sort of curiosity of what my parents were like when they were young. After all, the younger stories are often the more exciting ones.

He always wanted better – for my mother, for his children, for his grandchildren. He never went to college beyond a single day (at which point he joined the Navy instead), but the fact that we were going to college was never discussed; it was simply assumed. He never verbalized why, although I would guess grow up at the mercy of crops and years digging trenches and running lines made him desire differently for his children. For over 30 years he got up early, worked late and never really mentioned it.

And he was supportive of his children – financially of course but also in their interests and activities. I do not believe my father missed a single game, event, or activity that myself or my sister participated in and, when the grandchildren came along, he did the same. Even if I suspect he did not always understand or possibly enjoy everything we did, he came anyway.

I would tell you he was not an outwardly affectionate man, but that is only the view of his son. Perhaps like most grandparents, the experience with his grandchildren was not the experience that we had growing up with him – sometimes to the point that both my sister and I would look at each other and mouth “This is not the man we grew up with”.

I learned things from my father – we all hopefully do from our parents of course. Some things are instinctive and personality driven – an expression or a turn of phrase that makes me suddenly react and go “Good Lord! I’ve become my father!”. But other things are much more conscious conclusions, things that we knowingly adapt as they are modeled for us.

My father seemed to know a great deal about a great deal, although he would always insist that he really knew nothing. He built fences and chicken coops and decks but was no carpenter, performed car maintenance though he was no mechanic, helped herd cattle and feed them and bury one or two, though he was no farmer, and became quite a margarita maker though he was no bartender. He always seemed willing to try anything and usually was a lot more successful than he let on. From this, I learned that I can do almost anything, at least once.

My father eventually did come to grips with the trauma of his childhood. I still remember the day that we had that conversation about his depression and what he was doing about it. From this, I learned that it is never too late to deal with your past.

My father, who was never a reader, suddenly developed a taste for books after he retired. His tastes ran different than mine – sports stories, World War II biographies – but for a man who had never read much more than newspapers or magazines when I was growing up, it was as complete an interest change as one can have. From this, I learned it is never to late to start – or keep – learning.

My father was devoted to my mother his whole life and, after her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in 2015, became her primary caregiver, becoming responsible for the mass of ordinary tasks that she had done for years and making sure that doctor’s appointments, medicines and the like were all attended to. As my mother’s memory became less and less, he coped with continuing to care with a person that was less and less the person he had married. My mother enjoyed drives, so every day they would take a short drive somewhere. It did not matter where: she did not remember they had been there the day after, and he liked to drive. They would go out to lunch somewhere – McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, local diners that they had found over the years – and then drive home. He cared for her up to the point of moving her in to a care facility; only a few days later, he himself had a stroke as if his body and mind, knowing that they had done what needed doing, finally just gave out. From this, I learned and relearned commitment.

After my family’s move from Old Home to New Home, I would call to speak with my parents. I called during the drive home from my martial arts class. Over the years that day changed – sometimes Monday, sometimes Thursday, but mostly Tuesday. Every week for years, I would call at 7:15 or so their local time. The conversation would always start out the same “Hold on, let me go get the other phone –say hello” he would tell my mother as he would get the phone, and we would start talking.

Our talks would be of the most ordinary sorts of things, week after week: The weather. What the grandchildren were doing. The price of gas. What was happening at The Ranch. The quiet things of routine.

And that, perhaps, was the greatest lesson I learned from my father: that even in an ordinary life, there is a simple and quiet greatness to be found.

The Burial Of TB The Elder

 The Saturday of the funeral was cold and overcast - a cold front had blown in ("cold front" being a relative term for my more northerly readers of course), and the wind blew in steadily from the southwest as it always does at this time of year, driving the moisture that will bring the Winter rains.

The graveyard itself is the old original graveyard of my hometown, with graves going back well into the 19th Century and their markers of granite, some old ones stand tall and straight, others askew or akimbo as the ground has shifted.  My mother and father purchased this site years and years ago; in retrospect I have no idea why, other than it was something that my mother's father had recommended to my father (and for anything financial, my father always took his advice).  I had never been to it before today - had never known where it was until the morning of the funeral.  It was there, in the back corner of the downhill slope, surrounded by others who in no way seemed related to my parents in any way.

It was a small service:  our family, my sister's family, and the pastor of their last church.  After the customary greetings and initial small talk, we milled around as we waited for the start of the time.  My father sat there, a small mahogany box upright on the table with the American Flag ready for folding; behind the table was a small hole in the sod with a container for the box.

The Navy Honor guard arrived and The Outdoorsman took the flag out to them as we waited - it is not as if there is any sort of instruction manual on this.  They conferred at the top for a few moments, then came down to the grave:  two men in dress blues, one older and one younger, the older (my guess is a petty officer from the stripes on this uniform) carrying the flag and the other one - younger, with a corpsmans' insignia - an instrument case.

The senior naval man was kind, saying that although he did not know TB the Elder personally, he did know him through his naval service and both knew and honored him through that knowledge.  With that, the service effectively commenced

The corpsman moved away to the side, opened his case, and pulled out his bugle.  After adjusting the mute inside the bell, he played Taps.  It was as haunting a rendition and moment as I can remember: the wind blow and rustling the trees, the sailor at attention, all of us with our hands over our hearts, the song soaring aloft.

After replacing the bugle, the corpsman approached the table and took the flag.  Given the end to the petty officer, they slowly walked it back and unfolded it, then unfolded it again, then with a snap expanded it to its full size.  It was held there for a moment until, they began to fold it back up, first over and then over again, then in the triangles I remember from Cub Scouts and Flag Day.  As a practitioner of paired martial arts, it was interesting to watch the subtle signs of co-ordination between the older and younger man, eyes flickering back and forth and a slight nod, unnoticed except for those who would know.

After folding, the petty officer brought the flag to my sister and said the standard phrase "On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faith service". With that, they saluted one more time and marched off slowly.”

The graveside service was likely the standard one most of my readers will be familiar with: an opening prayer, a reminder that this life is not all there and that we are dust and to dust we will return, the Lord's Prayer, and a benediction.  With that, the service ended and the pastor left us for the service in the afternoon.

All that remained was for my father to be interred.

We looked at each other - The Outdoorsman and I were the most likely candidates, and after a brief exchange of glances, I took the job for myself.  Removing the astro-turf covered board that was on the hole, I knelt down and put the box in the container - somewhat amusingly, there was not really any clear way to do this:  Stand it upright?  Lay it down?  Would my mother eventually go in here?  Finally after some consultation, we laid him down and then placed the cover over the the box.

There was a finality to placing that cover on the box, a finality that was not felt by myself later in the day at the memorial service. That would be a time of remembering. This was a time tying up the last truly loose end with my father over the last 2 year journey we had experienced together.

The wind blew on as we went back to cars to find breakfast although, perhaps out of a grace undeserved, the sun did come out to light our way.

Time Alone And Choices

Funeral preparations are largely complete:  Songs have been selected, pictures prepared for scanning, speech drafted, pastor spoken to about the order of service.   The other items - venue, flowers, after-event meal, interment, gravestone - have all been ably (and thankfully) addressed by my sister and The Outdoorsman.

My part was supposed to take two days.  It really only took five hours.  What this left me with was a lot of memories from walking through almost 60 years of photos, and time to think.

I alluded earlier this week that one of the reasons I write is because it is free, therapy is expensive, and frankly I do not think I would get more out one than the other.  Writing at least lets me throw my thoughts out on paper, to puzzle over and think on as the day goes by.  The same is true of the journal I keep (and have kept for over 30 years - I write, and then I wrestle.  

The joy of this week, the bane of this week, is that I have had the overlay of time and history on top of it.  And all of this is screaming out to me from my writings and my musings as I, in an unusual and meaningful way, walked through my own history.

It is no secret to those that read here regularly that I have apparently reached a crossroads of life, being driven  towards some sort of future choice - a choice which I am in some ways very aware of, but in other ways vaguely aware of.  A lot has changed in the past two years; a lot is changing in the next year.  And as I considered my life at the moment, what I find is a series of overlapping layers of things, feelings, people, and practices, all in some way having some importance - but not all the same importance, and perhaps not all even needing to be pulled into this next phase of life.

It is like the growth of English as I remember it from an textbook:  originally came the root Old English itself, which was then overlaid in time by Latin, Norse, Norman, French, Greek, and then the world as history went on and different influences reached England.  In the modern practice of English, we by default drag all of that history around with us.  And while it is easy to make a personal choice to "avoid" modern English in choosing older words - like "trow" in place of "believe", as it "I trow I have a choice to make" - it is a great deal more difficult to sift through our lives with clarity of choice and in some cases, the ability to select.

Some of this is fundamental to the basics of life, I suppose:  What am I doing?  Why am I doing this?  Why did I start doing this?  Perhaps more importantly, why should I continue doing this?  And that extends not only to activities but to people, relationships, geographic locations, even personal beliefs.

This is an application I think of the concept of "Zero Sum Thinking":  if I were to restart this thing - be it an activity, a relationship, a belief, a practice, a place to live - from scratch without any prior investment in it, would I?  And if not, why am I do it now (the answer there, of course, is often sheer inertia)?  

Commit, decisions, choices - these are the words that keep coming up to me as sat and thought and looked.  It is as if I am getting squeezed into a chute, knowing that things will have to pop off of the pack but not having any idea which or what to pop off - or avoiding the decision altogether.

The reality that haunts me however, is that time is marching on.  In point of fact, that time frame of a year from now is coming not more quickly than I imagine (I understand how quickly time moves), but inexorably.  And if I want to have clarity then, things need to start clarifying now.

On Preparing For A Funeral

 Yesterday, today, and tomorrow I am back at The Ranch.  The focus of the these days is TB The Elder.

That is an odd sentence to write, especially for a man that had been gone for over two months now who is now - frankly - in a small box at my sister's house.  But there are still outstanding funeral arrangements that have to be made:  songs to be selected, pictures to be picked out, and a speech to be written.  All of this was going to be done last month of course, but then The Fire happened and the ability to get here was halted.

I still had two days of unused bereavement.  Far better, I thought, to shorten my time, remove any sort of work distractions, and just come up here and work specifically on these things.

Song selection, I think, will be the easiest.  My father - my parents, really - enjoyed The Oak Ridge Boys and The Statler Brothers (we grew up with a lot of their music), so that part should be relatively simple.  Add in an Alan Jackson hymn, and that should cover it.  No more than 10 minutes worth of music.

The pictures - in this case, lots of real, physical pictures - should take somewhat longer.  I have already made my categories sub-dividing his life into stages.  I believe the funeral home said five seconds a picture; by my math that divides into somewhere between 54 and 60 pictures.  At least 40 of those will be the pre-electronic physical presentation ones.  Everything will need to be pulled out, inventoried and numbered (so it can be put back, of course) and then taken down to The Outdoorsman so he can scan them.

The speech - I have written funeral orations for my material grandparents and presented them (I am not a lot of things, but I am a decent speechwriter and public speaker).  But never have I had to write this sort of speech before - not just about someone, but about my relationship with someone in a way that no-one else would have ever experienced, not even my sister (in the same way, at least).  The thought of compressing 50+ years of a relationship into something like a 5-10 minute speech is daunting: What do I include?  What do I leave out?  What do I make relevant?

To be fair, this has been in the back of my mind since 21 July, the day after TB The Elder passed.  I knew I would be the one to give the speech (in my family, this is the way it works). And I want to give a good speech - after all, in a meaningful way this is literally the last gift I can give to my father.  

The one thing all of this does - and perhaps this is the underlying reason why I choose to come out here for shorter period of time, isolated and alone - is emphasize the fact that things have changed and are changing, somewhat more than I believe them to be.  For that reason, I need to acknowledge that this is happening and give myself the gift - and it is a gift - of simply being able to focus or not focus, pick and review or simply remember, without the sideshow of the transient things I so often confuse as "life" with the things that ultimately do matter.

A Visit With Mom - July 2022

 During my last visit - finally, on Friday - I got out to see my mother.

It is always a matter of timing when I am there, mostly for the schedule where she is living.  They prefer a visit after 11 AM to allow them to finish eating, but given the time of year - especially Summer and Winter - the temperature is a factor as well.  Add to that 11 AM local time tends to fall around prime working time (and the fact that I was on a hike that weekend), and one tends to compress to Friday if nothing else.

My mother remains as she has always been:  she is still able to get around (with someone there just in case), still happy to see us, still polite enough to pretend that she knows us.  The conversation with her and my sister covered its usual set of topics:  how the grandchildren are doing, the hike the Outdoorsman and I went on, the vacation we recently took, the weather.

There was a point in the conversation where my mother seemed very convinced that she remembered something about myself and my sister, something that had happened in the past.  It was a little vague - well, it was a lot vague - but the face that she felt like she remembered who we were, no matter who she thought we were, was an unexpected joy.  And a welcome one, given the state of where we are.

At no time during the conversation did my father come up.

This was not terribly surprising to me and I had prepared myself in the event that it happened, but for better or worse, it did not.  His absence with us at the conversation was not noted or commented on.  The fact that he had been "gone" for almost two weeks never entered the conversation.   

In a way, of course, this is the best of all possible worlds:  the other option, that my mother could not find my father and did not remember he was not longer there, would have been worse.  At least this way, there is no sadness, no concern, just a sort of eternal sense of having always been here.

On the one hand, it does make the upcoming visits easier, as there will be no emotional baggage to have to pack and unpack every visit.  On the other hand, it does leave a lingering note, at least for me, of sadness, the sadness of a tone slowly decaying away until it simply disappears.

Return And Grief

The hike went well.

I have pictures to post, of course, along with the pictures from our trip last week.  But my heart is not really in it.

It is not in anything, really.

The break was nice - to be forcefully separated from the world for 2.5 days was an unexpected luxury.  All that was to be done was hike and look at scenery and hike some more.  

On the other hand - and I am conscious enough of the fact - it was also a handy tool to keep my grief at bay.

It did not raise its head again until after I was home from the hike, having showered and made dinner and washed my clothes.  Sitting on the coach, reading, I suddenly found my eyes were filled with tears. 

Why? No idea.  There is nothing particularly mystical about eating pizza.  It is certainly not something I specifically associate with my father.  Yet here I was, in tears on the couch for no discernable reason.

Grief, as more than one person has written (as have wise people in the blog comments), is a process. Not really being a process person and more of a results person, I dislike processes. I just want to be done with things and move on.

Apparently, this is yet another gift my father now offers me - the first of many, I suspect, he will offer me from the grave.