tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33835302992137323972024-03-12T18:12:21.047-05:00Swimming UnderwaterWriting and books. My salvation and downfall.Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-36313147088813875882017-01-26T14:08:00.000-06:002017-01-26T14:08:34.496-06:00The View From 72<div class="MsoNormal">
My mother lived to be over 100, my father dead of a heart
attack at 58. I am balanced somewhere between the two, 14 years older than my
father (which brought strange feelings when I went zooming by his last
benchmark), and I am more than twice that many in years from my mother right
now. She was three decades older than her youngest son when she died a couple
of years ago on Christmas Night.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can use facts and now something new called “alternative
facts” to list why the three of us made it to the ages we did. My father drank
too much and smoked all his life, having one of his Kent cigarettes to calm his
nerves while walking into the emergency room where he would die a couple of
hours later. By the same mixology of real facts, until a couple of years ago, I
was following my father’s footsteps and drinking too much and smoking a pack a
day. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My mother had an amazing life free from major illnesses. Oh,
there was the time at the family camp on the Amite River when my father was
rebuilding the rotten back steps, warning her they would be gone, and she
stepped out the back door anyway and broke her arm after crashing to the
ground. The flu, colds, her teeth pulled early in life. Older, during Jen’s
illness, my mother had arrhythmia and a pacemaker was installed after shocking
her old tumbling heart back into normal rhythm. Late in life she took a handful
of pills morning and evening: one for her heart, one for blood pressure, others
for memory and blood-thinning and to keep her bathroom visits regular while
clumping down the hall and grunt-sighing. But all those pills and infirmities,
spread out over the course of her long years, a century of them, revealed a
graph heavier at the end, sure, but plenty of white space for all the good health
during the years of putting up with my father and raising three sons.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite all my drugs and drink and nicotine and unprotected
sex (in the early days), knock on wood, I have followed more at this point
along my mother’s trail that I must have blundered along while ignoring any
signposts. A tonsillectomy and a few broken bones early on, I have battled the
more serious RA and diverticulosis since I was 33 years old, the latter finally
catching up with me in a big way. So cruising along, ignoring the healthier
route usually, I had my first scary detour two years ago. Mild discomfort for a
day and a half and I drove myself to the hospital (not recommended by the
experts) and in thirty minutes I was being wheeled down the corridor to the
cath lab. The hands of nurses pulling at my shirt, I emerged sometime later
with three stents in an artery that had a 99% blockage. Waking after an
emergency or suddenly being free of long aggravating pain is like being a goose
in the morning in a new world, everything fresh and the clear absence of what
came before. I was glad I had more time. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seven months ago a backdoor check of the plumbing revealed a
6” stricture in my colon, a crisis,
scary, the abdomen pain and discomfort during the previous decades blooming
into emergency surgery and again emerging, glad to be alive, thanking young Dr.
Cook for saving my life. Now all vanity forever gone, hanging for only moments
from a colostomy bag, the first abhorrent thoughts of carrying a bag of shit
around at times. It was a worse nightmare coming true. But eventually I traded
the dropping away of the horror for being able to watch my granddaughters
continuing to discover their world. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Five months in and looking forward to reversal surgery and
the pain was back, scary again, enough so even after dealing with severe daily
arthritic pain for 40 years, I had to walk the floor during the night. Blockage
in the colon again? The pain radiating from stomach to bowels perhaps
diverticulitis, or the pain now higher in the chest perhaps the old
once-blackened heart sending broken signals from a life made hard? A week in
the hospital having chest x-rays and CT scans and blood work and sonograms and
urine-checking and eating what passed for a liquid diet: bad Jello, watery
grape juice, rancid coffee. Another test, a MCRP (Magnetic Resonance
Cholangiopancreatography), and I had a “nasty, diseased gall bladder.” Unsure
until the surgery began, it was touchy but the surgeon was able to operate
laparoscopically. So only a few more puncture scars joined the foot long scar
from the colostomy that insures a t-shirt on the beach to avoid stares at a
never ever very firm six-pack.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So here I am, recovering still, from both operations, my
daily walk now limited to the end of the driveway, the reversal surgery for the
colostomy delayed for now, but the idea (like my mother) that my more severe
health tumbles are coming on this far end, and I am still here to enjoy family
and friends. And after a long year of nothing, just reading, reading, reading,
whether only okay or otherwise, these finger taps left on cyber paper are the
first impressions left outside of myself in too long a time, with more to come,
I hope, the spark of being driven to open a hardening vein over the keyboard never
quite dimming out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
No profound lessons here, folks, you are free to move along
to the next post. These musings at age 72 are the same as experienced by
millions: old age is a tough journey with a payoff kick in the ass like no
other. But one of the good things is that most of the useless shit continues
dropping away and you are left with more appreciation for the good times, the
times the granddaughters do “sleepovers” here like my two daughters did at my
mother’s house when growing up. Old age and you do learn the old circle <i>is</i> unbroken, and you learn the circle
certainly does grow ever smaller every day. <o:p></o:p></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-81163110823851395412016-06-22T11:49:00.000-05:002016-06-22T11:49:22.378-05:00A Saga of the Golden Years<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
After some dental
surgery and catching shingles and the pain of that—truly as all say the horrible
pain like nothing else—and with her history of atrial fibrillation, Dee got so
weak yesterday and her pulse was so thready that we decided to call 9-1-1 and
have the paramedics take her to the hospital. I was impressed with the fast
response. First the shorter firetruck came screaming down Lobdell and turned on
to Sevenoaks, followed by the paramedics in their van, followed a bit later by
a supervisor (or two, women) in their SUV. All the emergency personnel around
the bed, Dee’s 145 heartbeats and then 80 and then 135 and then 150 was cause
for real concern. Did an EKG and started an IV and finally lifted her from the
bed to the gurney bottom bedsheet and all. She was scared, naturally, and not
even necessary to say that. While I was changing shirts and getting my wallet
and such so I could go in my car so I would have a ride home, I didn't realize
they worked in the driveway in the paramedic van for a half hour to stabilize
her heart before they ever started for the hospital. The paramedics and the
supervisors in the SUV and me in Pearl Honda all left at the same time. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
From one in the
afternoon and for the next eight hours, and since BR General is now a teaching
hospital, we saw a total of nine doctors in various stages of being a doctor,
from a whip-smart Chinese woman (Lin Wang) studying at Tulane to a supervising
doctor of several other doctors. Throughout the day we began to realize how
smart our dumbasses finally were since each told us how dangerous things were
for a while with her heart. They even had a second IV in her arm in case , as
one said, "things went south." Blood work, saline drip for hydration,
potassium chloride drip, and finally after all the doctors had listened to the
chain of events, dental surgery, shingles, heart I-got-ya-irregular-rhythm, one
said with low sodium (strange) and extremely and dangerously low potassium it
seemed to be the perfect storm of events. They couldn’t get her heart back in
rhythm even after a dosage of her regular heart meds until they gave her a shot
of something else that finally did the trick. I mean in five minutes her heart went from the
100's to 60 and the mid-50's, end of the marathon, you can stop running.
Naturally with the slower pulse and the drips her color really improved quickly.
We had great service until the late afternoon before the evening shift change.
Heard they were three nurses short and it took until 9 p.m. for her to be taken
to her room. Even as improved as she was she was still hurting from her bad
back and the shingles pain and everything else, so when the ice pack leaked and
wet her sheets and blankets, we tried not to complain too much since we were in
the ER and surely some people were as troubled as Dee had been earlier and
maybe some others also fighting to live.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
For once we did
the smart thing and didn't worry about calling the paramedics. Dee couldn't
even get to the bathroom a few steps away without her heart racing and coming
close to passing out. Both of us felt like we dodged a very large bullet. They
kept her overnight for observation. Since she was stable and I had not eaten
and the cats had been out all day and I had not had my heart meds yet, I came
on home, exhausted from the emotion of it all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
Even though I
have thousands of adventure stories that turned out badly and could advise what
to avoid in life, I have limited my advice to three things: better save for
your children’s education, better save as much as you can for retirement, and
as imperfect as the people and procedures in health care may still be, don’t
hesitate to seek care from someone who knows more than you do. My father died
of a heart attack at age 58. At age 69, just some discomfort, I merrily drove
myself to the hospital when I was having one. I was lucky. Despite hesitating
for a few days with all the potentially deadly signs so visible, Dee was also lucky
yesterday. And by loving extension, me also.<o:p></o:p></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-55750858061301528462016-04-05T17:03:00.000-05:002016-04-05T17:03:38.526-05:00The Language of Colonoscopy<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s talk colonoscopy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a language most people don’t
speak, especially men.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Three reasons according to me:
the self-consciousness of being naked in front of strangers; the perceptions of
possible pain; and the paralyzing fear of what the look-see will reveal, the
doctor coming in and saying, “Well, Mr. Cothern, you won’t have to buy any
Christmas presents this year.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again, speaking for myself, I
feel extremely vulnerable when in the room with two nurses who really could
care less what my flabby body looks like and with my doctor standing near and
putting on gardening gloves. My penis usually shrinks to the size of a two-chamber
unshelled peanut.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No pain. Something akin to
Michael Jackson’s doctor sending me to Never-never Land but with no terminal
results, whatever they gave me floated me away so quickly I didn’t have time to
even think of any lyric to Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”—much less count backwards.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Having two brothers who had
prostate cancer, one eventually succumbing to Cancer of the Everything for (perhaps)
not learning the language of regular checkups, having had glaucoma and going
totally blind in my left eye, having had RA for four decades and diverticulosis
to go along with that as a steady and painful companion—not until old age
avoiding seeds and such and great spicy foods and cigarettes and alcohol and
wild women (I wished as a much younger man)—I did fear what the doctor would
find. I feared not being strong enough while losing everything. I had put off
getting answers for years. Ignoring my pain and stomach problems meant I didn’t
have anything serious. My gastroenterologist did find and removed four
pre-cancerous polyps, which was good news, but he also found some scar tissue
from the diverticulosis that is blocking some of the lower reaches of The River
Bowel and no doubt had been causing a lot of my pain over the years. Still, not
really horrible news, and after dealing with the blockade, Christmas shopping
(online) is still on my schedule.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So why this public service post?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe to get one friend to have any
kind of checkup?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perhaps. But I know how difficult it is to begin language acquisition so late in life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But these few paragraphs also just serve to illustrate that as humans we build up expectations so high that nothing can meet our good wishes. Everything we fear has us dead by morning. Like most things encountered in the boat being rowed upstream, the truth of it all lies somewhere in between.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-82472106871672365672016-01-29T16:44:00.000-06:002016-01-29T16:44:30.801-06:00Birth Day<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
Everything else
on the 27th day of January in 1945 paled (as it should) next to the Russian
troops throwing open the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau while radio stations in
this country were playing “Don’t Fence Me In” by Bing Crosby and the Andrews
Sisters. While the troops were finding 468 dead inmates, folks in New York were
catching Martha Graham and Dance Company at Jordon Hall performing “Appalachian
Spring” at the Saturday matinee. While the troops were liberating 2800 people
abandoned by the SS without any provisions to survive, William “Willie” J.
Glunk was being born in Astoria, New York, about the time Noah Berry, Jr. was
preparing for an opening and run of 504 performances in <i>Up In Central Park</i> at
the Century Theatre with book and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. While Lois Ada
Comfort was being born in Doniphan, Maryland, Raymond Cothern in Baton Rouge,
David Hermes in Baraboo, Wisconsin, while these and countless others were being
born, hopefully with joyous cries at new life, the Soviets were inventorying
the storage buildings and finding 836,255 women’s coats and dresses, over
368,000 men’s suits, and human hair totaling seven tons. While Oscar Schindler
was saving 85 Jews from a train in Brunnlitz that had been locked for a week,
in Bound Brook, New Jersey, William Hennessy was being born and would live 67
years to the day, the 27th of January, both his birth and death date.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
In Baton Rouge
and other places in Louisiana that day, there were no ironic newspaper
headlines, only straight-forward reporting during war-weary times and the
seemingly necessary one-sided reporting of race. Harold Joseph, Negro, died
that Friday in New Orleans Charity Hospital of an abdominal gunshot wound
received while resisting arrest during a jewelry store robbery Thursday night.
His partner, Robert Guidry, Negro, was also shot while escaping with the goods
and was in serious condition. No doubt Patrolmen Jay Sedgebeer and Paul
Oestricker were busy filling out reports about Joseph and Guidry refusing to
halt while fleeing and how many shots were fired and by whom. Also in New
Orleans, Rock P. Scallan was sentenced to 60 days in jail by Judge George Platt
for driving a truck while drunk earlier on December 23rd. In Baton Rouge,
despite objections from the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals, the sale would go forward of 22 horses and mules no longer fit for
duty at Angola, the state penitentiary. The Society cited a law prohibiting the
sale of “debilitated, diseased and lame horses and mules in cities of 10,000 or
more.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
On that winter
day in January, while Robert Guidry, Negro, struggled to survive his gunshot
wound and the family of his partner prepared for a funeral, while Patton’s
Third Army was crossing the Our River and capturing Oberhausen and while the
6th Ranger Battalion and the 6th Army Special Reconnaissance Unit began a
rescue behind enemy lines of 500 American, British, and Dutch prisoners-of-war
in the Philippines, Onetia Mae Wilson Cothern was 31 years old and giving birth
shortly before noon at the Baton Rouge General Hospital, right across Florida
Boulevard and two short blocks west of Bernardo Street. Willie Talmadge Cothern
was 33 years old and waiting with other expectant fathers for the birth of his
child. Willie Von and Wayne Harolyn at ages 12 and 6 were in school, perhaps
with vague inklings that the attention they had been receiving was being
splintered into unequal time, that the balance of power was shifting under them
much like the uneasy alliance among all armies, all families.<o:p></o:p></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-73316319389436082642015-05-16T16:37:00.000-05:002015-05-16T16:37:04.532-05:00Tumbling<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
It only seems like slow motion when
tumbling to the ground because I’m aware of every step. The first step on
Colorado River rocks behind the koi pond’s waterfall, another step on uneven
rocks for balance, and the feet are leaden, refusing to lift high enough or
quickly for more balancing steps as the momentum of my body pushes forward,
aware the tipping point has slipped behind me, the right shoulder crashing into
a spiny asparagus fern spreading over
more large rocks on the mounded perimeter of the pond. No banging of the head
like two friends who died from falling, sudden leaks in the brain. There is
slight pain from the thorns of the fern and the middle finger on the right hand
throbs from cushioning the impact. Add blood-thinning meds since a heart attack
more than a year ago and skinny white legs sticking out of cargo shorts look
like someone has been playing mumbly-peg with a sharp knife. Small cuts bleed
as if they are more dangerous ones and they do so on through the night.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
What’s disconcerting is the tumble happened to a formerly agile guy, one
who climbed ladders daily hanging lights in a theatre. It was the inevitability
of hitting the ground once the fall started, knowing no instinctive maneuver
would be quick enough to avoid the accident. It is like the sudden looseness in
the steering or the brake pedal going all the way to the floorboard, the sudden
acceptance of a crash into rocks covered by a pondside fern.<o:p></o:p></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-18451830004718285992015-03-13T11:05:00.000-05:002015-03-13T11:05:12.649-05:00Heart Attack Friday <br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">One year ago today . . .<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">After my father
died of a heart attack at the age of 58, I had experienced sympathetic chest
pains for months after the funeral. Despite being profoundly scared standing
next to my father’s bed, knowing from that experience the symptoms of a failing
heart, when my turn came over forty years later, I was not surprised I waited
almost a full day before driving myself to the hospital, something the experts
say you should never do. Famous last words in many cases, I guess, but the pain
was hardly severe, not at all like the pain radiating across my father’s back
that had made him sick to his stomach. What I thought while driving to the
hospital—stopping at every red light—was getting a cure for the annoying
discomfort before the weekend. I had books to read and writing to be done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">It began Thursday
evening with discomfort behind the sternum, from stress I thought from
financial concerns in retirement and because my wife was ill. Took aspirin and
meds for my arthritis and went to bed. Awoke at 4:30 Friday morning—long before
daylight—with the same discomfort and knew that was unusual but went back to
sleep for a while, always the best way to escape concerns, or the best way to
die for that matter, as several people I knew had done, <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">to sleep, perchance to dream before sudden painless nothingness.</span>
Inclined as most men are when it comes to doctors and hospital, I put off doing
anything, always aware of the discomfort and now some pain on the back of my
left bicep—something felt plenty of times from arthritic pain in that shoulder.
For short periods of time, the discomfort and bicep pain were joined by slight
pain along the jawline and all were with me until early afternoon Friday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Getting admitted
to the emergency room was rapid, dizzying. It became the beginning of the story
of how to avoid paperwork and waiting in a room full of sick people. I told the
ladies through the round hole in the glass, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I
know this may sound dramatic, but I need to see if I’m having a heart attack.</i>
From the moment of uttering those words until I was on the gurney in an
operating room, naked except for a gown, shivering because it was so cold in
the room until one of the men put a warmed blanket on me, in that span of an
early quick EKG and an emergency room doctor asking if I knew I was in atrial
fibrillation and had high blood pressure (no to the first, never ever had the
second), from the moment of being on a gurney and racing down a hall while
talking on a cell phone to Dee who was too sick to come to the hospital and
telling her I was headed to the cath lab, from being amid a gathering heart
team and after the cardiologist introducing himself and me sort of echoing my
father by asking if the doctor was any good, from that first utterance about
checking to see if I was having a heart attack to having a line installed from
groin to heart along mysterious pathways and three stents installed in an
artery with 99% blockage, in that time, thank you, thank you, thank you, far
less than one hour had raced by.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">I was never in a
great deal of pain, feeling only flushed warmth during the procedure. There was
some pain from two IVs, some slight pain from the shaved pubic start of the
pathway to the heart. The endless blood gathering always hurt and bruised, but
the most pain came from countless sticky contact pads for always awkward and
tangled lifelines connected to them. Despite shaving various hairy areas, the
worst pain was the removal of two hand-sized sticky pads stuck to chest and all
the hairs upon it in case my heart needed some shock therapy. After just one
firmly fixed pad was yanked off I was ready to confess all the bad things I had
ever done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">There is always a
value to serious illness. After my daughter’s battle with encephalitis, it was
learning not to sweat the countless and ultimately meaningless small stuff that
makes up so much of life. Her illness also brought an appreciation of living in
the moment. True of all serious illness, I guess. But I learned something
entirely different from having a heart attack.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Dreading it
despite knowing it is mostly an infinitesimal part of living, I have always
been afraid of the actual act of dying since I was old enough to understand the
process. Somehow, lying there on the table before snaking a line up to my heart
and installing three stents to save my life, despite knowing I could go into a
full-blown attack and die, I felt no great fear, and part of that may have been
the speed of the process from when I first spoke to the lady at the ER window.
It was a feeling that one of the shoes had dropped, that finally the end
process had become visible. Not that I wanted it or welcomed it, but it was a
dance with the actual end game that binds all humans most strongly to each
other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">I am not sure
what the lack of fear during that dance with mortality meant ultimately. Maybe
I became a slightly better person. Wife and children would have welcomed that
early on. Maybe I appreciated even more the time I had left, a grand gift,
enjoying family and watching granddaughters grow into beautifully brilliant
young women. But other nagging fears crept in, no doubt to balance my earlier
lack of fear when I was having the heart attack, small daily concerns: the
blood thinner that immediately created problems; being told not to miss taking
another drug because I now had foreign bodies in my artery and the body loves
to clot around anything not its own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Lovely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A half-century
after my father died from his heart attack, two decades after Jennifer’s
illness, I was just glad there was another lesson learned from my illness: sometimes
you do have to sweat some of the small stuff because some of it can kill you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-84898796046473794862015-01-13T19:08:00.000-06:002015-01-13T19:08:50.443-06:00Holiday Labors<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In the old days,
fathers were not allowed in the delivery rooms. Admittance for them beyond a
series of swinging doors even in the early stages of a wife’s labor was
strictly forbidden.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Go, sit in the waiting room, watch the
television high up on the wall, we’ll keep you informed of the ritual secret
birth and call you when your life has changed in unimaginable ways, when you
and your wife are forever marked as blessed by a tiny life you’ll come to love
above all else. So go on, pace the halls and lobby of The Woman’s Hospital if
you must but never ever go through those swinging doors because you are germ-filled
and are only the father.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Dee woke me early
Thanksgiving in the still-dark morning and told me she was in labor. No old
Dick Van Dyke routine with a cap on the top of the headboard, ready to sit up
in bed and put it on in one quick motion, no fumbling for a suitcase that
springs open and dumps all the womanly clothing and items needed after becoming
a mother. It was simply excitement and a call to the doctor who said he would
meet us at the hospital. So eyes puffy from lack of sleep, excited heartbeats felt
in our throats, we met the doctor and he said Dee was barely dilated, to go on
home and enjoy Thanksgiving. So we mentally put my baseball cap back on the
headboard and had breakfast and waited for the Thanksgiving meal at Dee’s
mother’s apartment. Miriam had baked the requisite turkey and her usual
delicious fare of dressing and squash and butterbeans and cranberries cooked
fresh that morning, a late afternoon feast with Dee’s brothers, David and
Ricky, rounding out the family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Once seated and
no prayer, my first forkful of food heading toward my mouth, I swear, the first
forkful heading up on an arc toward waiting teeth and tongue, and Dee said
quietly, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My water just broke</i>. My fork
clattered down on the plate and catapulted a piece of turkey to the other side
of the white linen tablecloth like some invading eat-or-die mongrel hoard
launching the only ammunition they had left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A quick trip home
to retrieve the suitcase and we were back at the hospital, me handling the
check-in paperwork, Dee in a wheelchair facing the corridor of swinging doors
leading to the Labor Room and, ultimately, the Secret Birth Room and special
reclining chairs with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">here’s-one-for-the-boys-in-the-balcony</i>
leg stirrups in a wishbone Y. Hurried kisses and reassuring hugs, finally
losing sight of Dee through a small window before being exiled in the waiting
room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Dee attempted
Natural Child Birth but it was a long hard labor, stretching on into the night
and all the next day, so long, in fact, that when they did finally wheel an exhausted
Dee into the hallway and finally allowing me back by her side, she put her hand
on my face and told me we had a daughter and wondered if worry made a man’s
beard grow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">When she went
into labor with Jennifer two years later, two weeks after Christmas in January
of 1972, Dee remembered the two long days trying to deliver Laurie. She started
holding out her arm for a shot as soon as we hit the hospital parking lot—or at
least as soon as we cleared the first doors of the hospital. But Jen’s birth
came much easier, not nearly the physical ordeal of Laurie’s first appearance
on the Cothern stage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">I posted a sign
on the door of The Rainy Day Bookstore that we owned, saying the store would be
closed for a day or so and giving proud father details on Jennifer’s birth and
weight. A reporter for a newspaper from one of the smaller towns around Baton
Rouge took a photograph of the birth notice and we were told it had been
published, one of those feel good items smaller newspapers seemed particularly
fond of trumpeting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">During the time
both daughters were born, their historical holiday birthstones included the
still raging Vietnam War and the sometimes violent push for racial equality.
While the Beatles’ “Come Together” / “Something” was climbing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Billboard’s</i> Hot 100 as a two-sided
single (and would peak at Number One on Laurie’s birthday of November 29,
1969), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Plain Dealer</i> published
shocking photographs of the massacre of Vietnam villagers at My Lai, and in a
more subtle approach John Lennon returned his MBE medal to protest his
government’s support of the war in Vietnam. Two days after Laurie was born (and
something that concerned her father), the first Draft lottery was held in this
country since World War II. Three days before Jennifer’s birth on the 13<sup>th</sup>
of January, 1972, a local reporter and anchorman, Bob Johnson, and his
cameraman, Henry Baptiste, were covering a rally for a group claiming to be
Muslims from outside the state who parked cars in the middle of North Boulevard
to protest racial discrimination. The crowd grew, 200 or more strong, deputies
arrived, and bottles and bricks flew. Two by three they died, two deputies,
three Muslims, and the enraged crowd attacked Johnson and Baptiste as they
fled, and it was Baptiste, a black man, who dragged from the scene his
co-worker and friend, Johnson, a now comatose white man, who would remain in a
coma for almost four decades.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">So in all the
years down the road, there were celebrations of birthdays while historical
events swirled amid the holidays, always making reflections of the season a
little deeper, more poignant. The girls grew up so quickly, and in the rush and
hassle of living day to day we sometimes blinded ourselves to the simple
sentimental facts that no matter the season of discord in the world, loving and
sharing and protecting and giving to one another were the best gifts we had to
offer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-45564375229498838072015-01-12T17:00:00.000-06:002015-01-12T17:00:49.070-06:00Foreshadowing<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">It occurred to me
only later that there was a hospital episode when Jennifer was a senior in high
school that was a sampling of what was to come for her and us. When she
contracted encephalitis and battled for months to stay alive while in a coma
and battled for years rebuilding her life from the ground up, the earlier botched
tonsillectomy was a foreshadowing of the dark days to come as parents,
helpless, worrying about a sick child, worrying that earlier time about the
outcome of a second surgery needed to correct the weakness of catgut or silk in
the back of the throat, the placement or tightness of the sutures, all done in
the operating theatre by a masked man performing badly. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The initial surgery
went well, we thought, all according to form, we thought: a sedative to relax
Jen, an intravenous line in the arm for fluids and antibiotics and whatever,
general anesthesia before the procedure started, a breathing tube through the
nose and down the throat, the mouth propped open, and the tongue no doubt
pulled to the side like a thirsty hound on a summer day, snip, clip, suture
ligation, the recovery room until the anesthesia wore off, and finally the
white-sheeted bed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">But all during the
day, after Jen was awake and aware, she said she could taste blood and
assurances constantly came from us and the nurses about that being normal. She
threw up once, twice, three or more times, each episode filling one of those
kidney-shaped yellow plastic bedside pans. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aahhh,
that will make you feel better, to get all that blood out of your stomach.</i>
And it went on and on until early evening. Finally, finally, the man was called
back, unmasked now, Dr. Breaux, so obviously put-out by being called and having
to come back, doubting until he probed the back of Jen’s throat with long
crooked surgical tweezers and mumbled something about the sutures,
straightening and telling the nurse to call a surgical team back to the
hospital.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Now more
assurances to Jen from us that everything would be fine, a stitch needed
repair, that was all, and the pan again filling up with blood, her teeth and
lips smeared with bright blood. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You’ll be
okay, here’s the gurney, slide over, that’s it, we’re going with you as far as we
can, everything will be fine.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A nurse
maneuvered the gurney out of the room, bumping the door facing a couple of
times, pushing Jen by the nurses’ station, some of them registering slight
surprise, and Jen sat up suddenly, hemorrhaging, gagging, leaning over, and the
blood coming out, a projected wide stream like dark rusty water thrown across a
yard out of a full bucket, covering half the gurney, Jennifer’s lap and legs,
and splashing down to the floor, some of it rolling down the framework of the
gurney as if the chrome tubes were being magically transformed to a bright
Christmas red.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The speed of the
gurney picked up and Dee and I were racing down the hall to keep up, drops and
plops of blood marking our trail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Dee and I waited
in an empty pre-op room, the stillness and evening quiet unsettling, the worry
now manifest in furrowed brows and tight lips and eyes moist with concern,
pacing, arms across our chests, hands squeezing biceps in rhythm with our
thoughts, Dee suddenly giving out a quick sob, telling me to please come hug
her, asking me why I didn’t know she needed that, me wondering for a moment
what was pushing me to stand at a distance in the empty room, apart from her,
some solitary grieving ritual denying us both comfort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-31541840964728036462014-09-01T12:19:00.003-05:002020-08-26T19:53:55.635-05:00Reposting Gustav<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: #d0e0e3; color: black;"><span face=""></span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span face=""><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span face=""><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">Hurricane season in south Louisiana is always a time
of nagging worry that weather patterns will align and a path will open up
through the Gulf of Mexico, sending a storm of destruction that changes
people’s lives. Hurricane Gustav in 2008 was one such storm, six years ago
today.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></span></div>
<span face=""><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">
<span face="">
</span><br />
<span face="">
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span face=""><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">All day the
Sunday of that last storm, in that longtime home in Baton Rouge, the wind and
rain bands moved inland and in the dark of early Monday the wind began to gust
at alarming speeds. He lost electricity mid-morning and still the winds were
building to velocities that were downright scary. Thinking the brick fireplace
down into the house was a strong point and because it was close the to
walk-in kitchen pantry with walls all around, he sat on the raised edge of the
hearth for long moments, hearing and feeling the distinctive crack and
ground-shaking thuds of falling trees, each time backing into the pantry doorway,
waiting for a time before venturing back out into the house proper.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: black;">
<span face="">
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span face=""><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">Peering out of
rain-streaked window panes in the bedroom, the huge oak at the end of the
driveway came crashing down along Seven Oaks, taking all the poles and
previously-dead power lines with it. Amazing how fast it came
down, earth-quaking up his 8" thick driveway into slabs
as big as kitchen tables. Venturing to the large picture window in the
kitchen, not standing too close because of the possibility of the glass
exploding inward, he watched the large oak across the driveway, on the other
side of his fence, crashing toward the house, the treetop splitting the
tall Bradford pear tree next to the koi pond, crushing plants and tied down
patio furniture and smaller trees and shattering lantern-like patio lights
on supposedly immovable iron posts, the top branches finally crashing into
the roof. Still, all around, the crack and ground-compressing whoomp of
falling trees felt in the chest. Like standing next to a speaker at a rock
concert when he was young, the vibrations like a cello bow being
drawn across his ribs. It went on for hours and hours, the feeling of
helplessness building endlessly with each minute, what it felt like when he was
in the middle of a battle. Two more trees from across the driveway came
crashing down, one of them hitting the corner of the house, enough so it was
being helpless in battle again because his first thought was, I got hit that
time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: black;">
<span face="">
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span face=""><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">And it went on
and on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: black;">
<span face="">
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span face=""><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">When the
worse of it passed, but still the gusts scary enough to walk with his back
flattened against the outside walls of the house, it was emerging into a
battlefield. Nothing was left untouched. It was like wartime views in Vietnam
he saw from bombers dropping so many close-patterned bombs, carpet bombing, and
then the view up close, at ground level. Even after going through actual war
and now seeing a small portion of the storm through rain-streaked windows, it
was still difficult to wrap his mind around what had happened.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: black;">
<span face="">
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span face=""><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">Later, reports
stated it was the worse storm ever for Baton Rouge—with gusts of 90 mph with
sustained hurricane force winds for nearly 5 hours, the result
of Gustav's eye coming close to the city, putting it on the northeast
quadrant, the strongest area of destruction. In every neighborhood it was the
same: 20% of the trees in Baton Rouge down, every third or fourth house with a
tree on it or in it, streets blocked by huge oaks, trunks as big around as
cars, street signs found miles away from the actual streets.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: black;">
<span face="">
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span face=""><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">There was a long
week of no power. He moved everything from refrigerator into the freezer,
eating sandwiches, Shredded Wheat before the milk went bad. Trees across the
driveway blocked his automobile, but there were no stores open even if he
could have gotten to them. No streetlights or traffic signals were working in the
entire city. At night it was like being at the cabin in the country: no ambient
light from any source. There was the sound of a few generators running,
powering someone's refrigerator, a fan, radio, a lamp. It was eerily
similar to the end-of-the-world movies. For the first two days the wind
continued to blow, bands of rain falling, the weather cool enough to get
some exhausted sleep. It was Wednesday before an out of town crew was
hired to cut a path through the trees across the driveway, those crews like
Carpetbaggers after the Civil War, from North Carolina, Alabama, Ocean Springs,
all seeking work in the devastation. Thursday the sun came out, the humidity
rising and the nights miserable; he would sit in the dark with as few clothes
on as possible, candles in every room, hurricane lamps aglow, reading (because
there was nothing else to do) by booklight and flashlight, finishing three
books in as many days. Every day, he started by burying two or three koi he and
his wife had raised, ten-pounders and bigger, each floating in the water pitch
black from the undissolved oxygen, beautiful fish, raised from thumb-sized
specimens. It was like burying pets each day.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: black;">
<span face="">
</span><br />
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span face=""><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;">When the
lightless nights were becoming the norm, when it was second nature to light
candles and lamps at dusk to keep from entering totally dark rooms, the
lights came on a week later at Sunday dusk, the light over the kitchen
sink suddenly lighting a small area on the patio, the sound of the pond pump
with its first surge of water through the hose into the waterfall basin.
Finally back to teaching classes after that week off, he would come home into
air conditioning, watching off-air TV because the cable was still out, and feeling
for weeks to come somehow still disconnected, disgruntled, discovering it was
the aftermath shock of driving home along a street no longer the same, a
stranger street, not the same neighborhood of so many years before.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">
<span face="">
</span></span></span></span><br />Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-72660079172639490062014-05-05T14:27:00.001-05:002014-05-06T00:13:33.132-05:00Warren Eyster / Writer & Teacher<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
My writing resume usually starts with
the fact that I studied writing at LSU with Walker Percy and Vance Bourjaily,
both known to interested folks as two great writers. I list them for just that reason,
to have someone think, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wow, two fine writers
and this unknown studied with them so let’s pay attention to his work because
he must have some talent.</i> If that has ever been the case it is surely talent
by association. But as well-known as those two writers are, there was another
writer and teacher at LSU who influenced me more than Percy and Bourjaily.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Merely scratching the surface, here
are a few facts about Warren Eyster, my old undergraduate creative writing
teacher.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
He was born in Steelton,
Pennsylvania, in 1925, and after high school, Eyster became a hydraulic repairman
in the Army Air Corps and, in 1942, joined the Navy. His experience in the navy
was to be the basis for his novel <i>Far from the Customary Skies</i>, set on a
navy destroyer operating in the Far East during World War II.<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> </span> While in graduate
school at the University of Virginia, he wrote half of that first novel as
short stories, and after leaving Charlottesville he devoted himself entirely to
writing. Audrey Wood, primarily a theatrical agent, with clients like Tennessee
Williams and William Inge, nearly succeeded in persuading Little Brown to publish
his first novel. Instead, David McDowell at Random House became his editor and
with support from Bob Haas and Bennett Cerf, Eyster became acquainted with a
number of writers, including James Agee, Robert Penn Warren, Mario Puzo,
William Carlos Williams, Budd Schulberg, and William F. Buckley.<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> </span>In 1954 he was awarded
a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to work with aspiring Mexican writers at El
Centro Mexicano de Escritores in Mexico City.<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">
</span>Finishing a second novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No
Country For Old Men</i>, Eyster started to write a novel about a Mexican
revolution. He also translated the first three chapters of a Carlos
Fuentes novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where the Air Is Clear</i>,
and was instrumental in getting it published. The movie, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Old Gringo</i>, was based on
conversations Eyster had with Carlos about Ambrose Bierce and his determination
to bring about his own death by becoming a spy for Pancho Villa.<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
In 1970 Warren Eyster came to
Louisiana State University and became coordinator of the undergraduate writing
program, teaching courses in writing short stories, novels and plays. Since it
bolstered decreasing enrollment in English—even future journalists and law students
particularly interested in creative writing courses—the writing program became
more acceptable to the English department, allowing students like John Ed Bradley,
James Colburn, and Valerie Martin to take more than 20 hours of undergraduate
writing classes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
In the early ‘70’s, he reminded me of
Columbo, the television detective played brilliantly by Peter Falk. Short, a
little stocky, clothes always giving the wrinkled-at-the-end-of-the-day
appearance, even first thing in the morning, like Columbo he seemed forgetful,
his desk always piled high with stacks of short stories and plays and novel
excerpts, all in danger of sliding off of his desk at any moment and some doing
so occasionally. Always open to talking to any student who came to his office—official
office hours or not—he often discussed books and films and then suddenly
realized he was late for class, grabbing one stack from his desk and hurrying
off and muttering a line from literature, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m
late, I’m late</i>. The thing was, often hurrying behind him to the same class,
I was always amazed he had read every story and had jotted down succinct notes
that always pointed to improvement in the narrative. Like Columbo, his
appearance was deceiving, like the character’s seemingly faltering style, the
sudden remembered question to ask, Eyster’s comments on each student’s work
were never less than concrete clues that led to the solution of a story. Like
Columbo as played by Peter Falk, at the end of each episode, there is a
realization of being fooled by appearance. Warren Eyster was never less than a
brilliant teacher in disguise, kind and caring of his student’s success, and always
willing to impart everything he knew about the craft of writing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Thank you, Mr. Eyster.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Any writing achievement is from the
association with you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
In recognition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</i> accomplishments, your name will
always be mentioned.</div>
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<![endif]-->Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-60344200985469985232014-04-30T09:55:00.000-05:002014-04-30T09:55:57.960-05:00The Value of Illness: Love Again<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> I wish I could say my
daughter’s almost deadly battle with encephalitis brought quick changes, an
appreciation of living in the moment, magically the nearness of death
immediately forging Dee and me back together as loving husband and wife. But,
in fact, Jennifer’s long rehabilitation brought more paranoia—Jen asking in the
early months if she was dead—all of us expecting the next foundation brick to
loosen and slip out, bringing another crisis of health for Jen, for any of us.
The months rolling along were just chaos with familiar faces: Jen’s continuing
recovery, how far she could come back, and the fallout from all the expenses
the insurance didn’t cover. The simplest decisions took effort, the movement
forward weighted down with the feeling that little mattered, that daily
concerns were just battles contested with slight gain and little reward.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> It was much later that Dee and I realized our daughter’s illness did reveal
within us strengths and weaknesses and concern and care and love that both of
us had forgotten in the other.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> We dated in junior
high, high school, the usual breakups, one so bad we went our separate ways to
college, and Dee got married, eventually divorcing, and we came back together a
few years later, her pregnancy happily bonding us for life.</span></span></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> The marriage dynamic
started like most marriages do: loving, caring, the sense of great adventures
to come, and eventually the gift of children, Laurie and Jennifer, and a love
for them that brought a welcomed understanding that they were the most
important people in the world, suddenly shifting self-interest to a lower
rung—at least for a long period of time, until those wizard-hiding curtains began
falling for us, revealing a Raymond and Dee neither one of us really knew.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">We
separated, tried again, separated, me staying away from Dee and the girls for
weeks at a time. A year or two of this until Dee finally announced she was tired of ping
pong and had rented an apartment. I was an angry man, knowing I hadn’t given
her my best but feeling like I had, telling her, fine, go on, get the hell out
if that’s what you want.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">She
went.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">The
girls stayed.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">In
her usual quick decision way, oldest daughter Laurie said she was not moving
out of the house since her friends were all nearby. Still following our old
edict of treating them like an equal member of the family early on, Dee reluctantly
swallowed the hurt and allowed Laurie’s decision to become law. Oh, yes, I
should have been the one to move out of the house but my anger was hard resolve
not to make it any easier for my wife. Jen told Dee privately that <i>she</i> couldn’t move out of the house because someone had to look
after me. Nothing said could convince Jen that taking care of her father was
not her job. So the positions were fixed.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Dee</span><span style="line-height: 150%;">
became the self-imposed outcast, and I saw the pain she attempted to hide every
time she came by the house to pick the girls up for shopping or eating out, the
pain of simply not being with her daughters on a daily basis. I smothered my
pain with anger and alcohol and my sense that everything put together <i>does</i> eventually fall apart.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Routine
did settle in, the anger veiled by common courtesy and consideration for the
girls, the years rolling along in this city on the river, a time when Laurie
viewed me with suspicion, knowing something else might change again and
interrupt the delicate balance of her life. Jen was more concerned with
everyday issues, school, getting together with friends, even shopping with me
at the grocery store and quickly planting herself in front of the cooler with
ten pound packs of legs and thighs, throwing her arms wide open and saying, <i>No, Dad, no more chicken, please, no more
chicken for a while.</i> Without anything being said about it, Dee and I always
attended any function the girls asked us to, showing up as a united front as
their parents. Repeated over the next several years, our continuing association
and long history together did smooth over those initial reactions when we first
separated, the anger that was sometimes directed at each other by deficiencies
within ourselves, our lives as a broken family now accommodated somehow.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> So we went through
Jennifer’s illness united in battle. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Starting with fever and
terrible headaches, the trip to the emergency room, negative drug test, Jennifer was more and more out of touch, not knowing what was real. The
Behavioral Unit, walking around barefooted, talking incoherently to imaginary
people, pulling her hair out, coming back suddenly for a moment of clarity.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Two weeks, no control,
and finally a spinal tap. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><em><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Encephalitis.</span></em></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><em><span style="line-height: 150%;"> An inflammation of the brain due to an infection, a virus.</span></em><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> After being transferred
to the critical care wing, I walked into the room, expecting a calmer
Jen, sedated perhaps, but seeing her attempting to sit up, eyes closed,
straining violently against the cloth restraints, instinctively fighting what was
happening to her, my soul plunged along with my daughter during that long
night, Jen descending into a coma, Dee constantly yanking her up to sitting
positions, yelling at her, <em>Breath, Jennifer!</em></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Even those days became
routine: carrying on and dealing with the constant monitoring of machines and
infections and bodily functions (or lack of them), Dee and I making an effort
at small talk, at being interested in matters outside of the hospital, most
times the effort of reading a newspaper or book or watching the TV high up on
the wall too much to overcome, walking the halls when the need to escape the
room was high, peering into other sick rooms when doing so, making eye contact
with other vigilant people, the heaviness of waiting etched always in expectant
looks, wondering at other stories of illnesses, nodding at the thin young man
in his robe wasting away from AIDS, wondering at his thoughts as he stood at
the end of the corridor looking out the window, knowing (unlike Jen) just how
ill he was, knowing the prognosis was dim, dealing with it the only way any of
us could, one moment at a time, one after the other, then again and again,
moments rushing together so quickly but strung out so endlessly that the fabric
of time finally stretches and slows down.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> After a year of
rehabilitation in Texas,
the lowest moment of the entire ordeal came a couple of days after Christmas</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> It was also the moment,
looking into Dee’s
eyes, I realized how much I still loved her.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> When
Jennifer was between her junior and senior years in high school, she was one of
19 girls chosen to attend the Women in Science Program at Harvard University.
Math, science, it all came easily for her, rarely cracking books in high school
where she ended up as Salutatorian, the girl as a fearless child with a fistful
of earthworms approaching the house and dumping them on the steps for study. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Jen was home from rehab
in Texas
until after the first of the New Year. Dee and I were standing in the kitchen
when Jen came back from checking the mail. She opened a questionnaire from the
Summer Science Program at Harvard, flipping to the information about the girls
she was there with in 1989. Her eyes rounded slightly as she read about their
accomplishments, those doing scientific research, those working as doctors in
major hospitals, and Jen broke down, crying, trying to talk while sobbing.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><i>I am
never going to be a doctor.</i></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Dee and I encircled her
in our arms, the three of us standing there, hugging and trying to comfort each
other.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Jen wailed and said, <i>It is so hard when dreams die.</i></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> My heart literally
changed at that moment, the ache unlike anything I have ever felt in that one
moment I had dreaded for all of the last year, watching her confronting the
realization that her life had spun out of her control, hearing her admit that
her dreams were no longer valid, seeing the pain of the last year made visible
on her face, looking into Dee’s eyes and seeing her pain also, all driving home
the random injustice of serious illness, the dark chaos always circling that
will someday claim us all, realizing in that moment we have but one weapon.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Months
later, coming up out of sleep because of the rolling thunder and the constant
lightning, alone since Jennifer was spending the night at a friend’s house, I was
in the dining area off the kitchen, looking out of the rain-smeared bank of
floor-to-ceiling windows when a huge tree came crashing down across the roof,
almost slicing the house in half, exploding into the book-lined den with limbs
as big around as my waist and legs, and it felt like a tank at full speed had
run into the house, the impact of it surely like the first huge shock of a
California earthquake, the floor shifting suddenly once, equilibrium suddenly
suspect. Waterfalls with leaves and twigs and pieces of wooden roof and tar
paper and bits of insulation and black shingles poured down to the parquet
floors, splashing walls and running into other rooms torqued out of plumb.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> I called
Dee and plugged the coffee pot in, knowing the electricity would be turned off
for safety reasons when the firemen arrived. Surprisingly, a miracle to me, the
books in the den, some ruined, yes, but I found the tightly shelved ones with
only wet spines on the dust jackets. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">A
reluctant but accommodating Dee welcomed me, providing the last puzzle piece, reshaping
our relational landscape.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Refusing
to leave the neighborhood after the destruction, her illness now dictating the
notion that she had to be close to the destroyed house, to her actual possessions,
Jen stayed for weeks with a good friend across the street, and from the front
yard Jen watched the tree being removed, so large it had to be cut in
desk-sized segments in order to be lifted by the crane, watching and wondering
in her post traumatic stress phase what use the tree could now serve,
knowing—with the help of her therapist—and laughing softly after she realized
the tree was a symbol of herself: a once strong entity felled, the usefulness
of it changed in a moment in another direction, lasting forever.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> Slowly, that morning
storm brought Dee and me together again, me lacking resources to rent another
place, back to living under one roof, an effort of
graciousness on her part, me the grateful guest. Discovering the comfort of
company while sitting across the table from each other, good food on the table
between us, conversation was a forgotten joy revealed again in the talk of
everyday news and the shared history of raising children, seeing one through a
terrible illness along the way. Never mind that certain subjects were skirted
and some events were off the radar for now, never mind the wariness flashing
for a moment in the eyes, in the bodily shift on the kitchen chair, never mind
all that. For the talk was a courtship again, the <i>good parts</i> history between us a starting point to begin again, to
see if eventual openness came and the <i>bad
parts</i> version could be discussed and accommodations made to lay it all to
rest.</span></span></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-38530239028971925602014-03-18T10:00:00.000-05:002014-03-18T13:21:48.744-05:00Heart Attack Friday<strong></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> According to one of the
cardiologists, I had a “big” heart attack on Friday. It actually began Thursday
evening with discomfort behind the sternum, from stress I thought from
financial concerns in retirement and because my wife was ill. Took aspirin and meds
for my arthritis and went to bed. Awoke at 4:30 Friday morning with the same
discomfort and knew that was unusual but went back to sleep for a while, always
the best way to escape. Inclined as most are when it comes to doctors and
hospital, I put off doing anything, aware of the discomfort and now some pain
on the back of my left bicep—something felt plenty of times from arthritic pain
in that shoulder. For short periods of time, the discomfort and bicep pain were
joined by slight pain along the jawline and all three were with me until early
afternoon Friday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> My father died over forty years ago
of a heart attack at the age of 58, and I had experienced sympathetic chest
pains for months after the funeral. Despite being profoundly scared and knowing
from that experience the symptoms of a failing heart, I was still surprised I
so willingly drove myself to the hospital. The pain was hardly severe, not at
all like the pain radiating across my father’s back that had made him sick to
his stomach. What I was thinking in going to the hospital was not being in
annoying discomfort for the weekend. I had books to read and writing to be
done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> If you ever want to immediately get
admitted to the emergency room, do as I did. Tell them, “I know this may sound
dramatic, but I need to see if I’m having a heart attack.” From the moment of
uttering those words until I was on the gurney in an operating room, naked
except for a gown until one of the men put a warmed blanket on me, in that span
of an early quick EKG and a doctor asking if I knew I was in atrial
fibrillation and had high blood pressure (no to the first, never ever had the
second), from the moment of being on a gurney amid a gathering heart team and
racing down a hall, from that first utterance about checking to see if I was
having a heart attack to having a line installed from groin to heart along mysterious
pathways and three stents installed in an artery with 99% blockage, in that
time, maybe, maybe, maybe far less than one hour had raced by.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> I was never in a great deal of
pain, feeling only flushed warmth during the procedure. There was some pain
from two IVs, some slight pain from the shaved pubic start of the pathway to
the heart. The endless blood gathering always hurt and bruised, but the most
pain came from countless sticky contact pads for always awkward and tangled
lifelines connected to them. Despite shaving various hairy areas, the worst
pain was the removal of two hand-sized sticky pads stuck to chest and all the
hairs upon it in case I needed some shock therapy other than to the head. After
just one was yanked off I was ready to confess all the bad things I had ever
done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> I believe there is always a value
to serious illness. After my daughter’s almost deadly battle with encephalitis,
it was learning not to sweat the countless and ultimately meaningless small
stuff that makes up so much of life. Her illness also brought an appreciation
of living in the moment. True of all serious illness, I guess. But I learned
something entirely different from having a heart attack.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> Dreading it despite knowing it is
mostly an infinitesimal part of living, I have always been afraid of the actual
act of dying since I was old enough to understand the process. Somehow, lying
there on the table before snaking a line up to my heart and installing three
stents to save my life, despite knowing I could go into a full-flown attack and
die, I felt no great fear, and part of that may have been the speed of the
process from when I first spoke to the lady at the ER window. It was a feeling
that one of the shoes had dropped, that finally the end process had become
visible. Not that I wanted it or welcomed it, but it was a dance with the
actual end game that binds all humans most strongly to each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> I am not sure what the lack of fear
during that dance with mortality means ultimately. Maybe I’ll be a better
person. Wife and children would have welcomed that early on. If it means I’ll
appreciate even more the time I have left, that will be grand. I will enjoy my family
and watching my granddaughters grow into beautifully brilliant young women. So
far though other fears are creeping in, no doubt to balance my earlier lack of
fear when I was having the heart attack, small daily concerns now: the blood
thinner that has created problems already; no leafy greens in the diet because
they cancel out another medicine; and being told not to miss taking another
drug because I now have foreign bodies in my artery and the body loves to clot
around anything not its own. Perhaps another lesson for me from my illness: sometimes
you do have to sweat the small stuff.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> Lovely.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> I’m just glad I’m still in the
classroom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-37537001277725962972014-02-10T13:06:00.001-06:002014-02-10T13:06:51.733-06:00Reelin' in the Years<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> After
my husband passed away, oh, several days later, a nice man took me in.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> My mother has
compressed time, my father dead of a heart attack 43 years ago, and the man is my older brother, Willie, who a year earlier brought her to live with him and his wife.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> I am the youngest son standing, bringing my mother for weekend visits where she </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">perseverates
like a sad Abbott and Costello routine, the same litany over and over, wondering
when her family is going to pick her up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Oh,
I don’t know what to do.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> What
do you have to do, Mama?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> I
thought somebody would come for me.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> You’re
living with Willie now, your oldest son. You're visiting me, Raymond, your youngest son.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Her mouth rounds in momentary understanding.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Pause, rewind, repeat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> My
Mama will spank my butt ‘cause I didn’t come home.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Her memories are a
collapsing star, my grandmother gone almost six decades.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Sometimes she can be
diverted briefly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> After a supper of fried
chicken, I lean over and say she must have eaten a lot of fried chicken growing
up on the farm in Mississippi.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> You
raised chickens, right?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Oh,
Lord, yes.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> So
you must have eaten plenty of them.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Oh,
yes. And eggs. </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> And
your Daddy had a smokehouse, didn’t he?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> He
did.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> She nods once, the
memory sharp for a moment of the smokehouse some distance away from the farmhouse.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Meat
was cured there, right, Mama?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Another nod.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Probably
butchered hogs and calves, maybe some venison.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Yes.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> There
was a garden also.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Oh,
yes.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> A nod, chores growing
up: picking butter beans and string beans and peas, potatoes and okra.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> You
ate good things on the farm.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> A nod, less decisive,
looking down at her hands, rubbing them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Your
hands hurt, Mama?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Old
and wrinkled</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">, she says softly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> That’s
okay. All of our hands are getting old and wrinkled.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> My
Mama is gonna whip my butt.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-24168954888599389072013-06-28T09:24:00.000-05:002013-06-28T09:24:26.930-05:00Daughter<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>My answer to the good and bad shocks of life has always been to write about them, maybe years down the road as an experience shaded to fit some character I am writing about. Recently my daughter Jennifer, who battled encephalitis and coma for her very life, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an insidious and incurable systemic disease I have battled for 35 years, more than half my life. Occasionally poetical with words, not at all a poet, this is what emerged about passing things on.</em></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Daughter<o:p></o:p></span></b></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">She comes to visit limping across the yard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">along uneven areas of grass and gravel,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">favoring her stiff knees, twisting left hip<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">to swing her leg out to avoid bending it,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">every ginger step at the corners of her eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">as wrinkles appearing and smoothing quickly,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">stamped like the beating of her heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Smiling, raising wrapped hand, greeting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">her mother near the small plum tree snowy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">in first bloom, hugging, bound hand on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">her mother’s back, another hard-earned smile <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">and allowing her face to be touched, studied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Turning body with stiff neck, flashing eyes,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">quickly a gritty smile, nodding to her father<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">on the deck, he lifting a beer, remembering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The porch steps, the onset, tears in big eyes,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">pain-rendered with questions, greeting <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">dying in his throat, his own swollen hands <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">little help, useless joints, fingertip sparks <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">transmitting traits and quirks and bumps,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">eye and hair color and skin tone to kin,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">the family body made manifest, her spirit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">fired at times mixing spirits, locked cells<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">behind brave new faces, love and fear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">constant companions, the gravity of living.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-31119960845625962102013-06-06T15:37:00.000-05:002013-06-06T15:37:36.524-05:00Self Salute<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
In the arena of accomplishments, in the sort of having something accepted for publication vein, tonight and tomorrow and Saturday my words will again be projected from a stage in NYC. If someone had told me years ago (or whenever), “<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Oh, yeah, you will have a couple of short plays done in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> but you won’t see either of them,” </span>my mouth would have dropped from disappointment and disbelief. But I’m old enough to know things never turn out exactly how you envision them—whether getting published or having something on the boards. But like with any small success, I do take pride in the accomplishment, in the ability to toss off the small potatoes of being able to say, “<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Oh, yes, I’ve had a couple of plays done in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>.”</span> Never mind that they were short plays and in festivals or however flawed the productions may have been. Let anyone who asks about my playwriting fill in those blanks with ideas of a huge production with dancing chorus boys and girls and the like. Other than some stories published early on, real accomplishments in the writing arena came late for me, late bloomer that I am. Tonight I will have a drink in an unabashed salute to myself. I plan also to tilt the glass toward NYC in a salute to those actors saying my words and the audiences hearing them. Pardon me, but here’s to me, a boy who grew up loving film and music and all things written and who turned out to be a writer.<o:p></o:p></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-84688111387216374362013-04-25T10:35:00.000-05:002013-04-25T10:35:05.824-05:00The Pallbearer's Social<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><em>The first chapter of an adaptation of the play</em> The Pallbearer’s Social<em>.<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Well<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Lacey left instructions to have the pallbearers for her funeral gather in the Well of Mercy Bar, just across the street from the Absent Friends Funeral Home. The bar was a converted grocery store (next door to Harold’s Pool Hall & Jeep Shop) with two old Standard Oil gasoline pumps bleeding rust from all sides, both still standing on the side of the sagging building and serving as hitching posts for folks who needed fresh air after drinking too much. Old metal signs from the bar’s heyday were still nailed to the outside walls, fossilized scales advertising Grape Nehi and Coca Cola and Royal Crown Cola, 7up and its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">First Against Thirst</i> slogan, Viceroy and L&M Filters, Sir Walter Raleigh that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Packs Tight Smokes Sweet, </i>Hav-A-Tampa Cigar, Bayer Aspirin, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">First Choice for Fast Pain Relief,</i> Ken-L-Ration dog food, and Bordens Ice Cream and the smiling cow head with flowers for a necklace. There was a handmade sign among the metal ones and one sign on the front door, both declaring in a scrawl, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Private Party! Closed Until 7 PM!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> There was still an outside bathroom used by the bar regulars who at some point in the evening stood around in the parking lot, some leaning against the old gasoline pumps to steady their swaying as they slurred words with friends who were standing off the concrete island and scratching with the toe of their boots a smoother place to plant themselves among the dirt and crushed shells.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> The Well of Mercy bar was pure south <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Louisiana</st1:state></st1:place>, football helmets and jerseys of different teams hanging from the ceiling and twisting in the stale air, the gear of LSU, Tulane, the New Orleans Saints, the local high school team, all sporting name tags hanging from lengths of fishing line. The jersey from LSU, purple and gold, had the number 20 on it, the number 17 on the green jersey from Tulane, and the Saints jersey with the name <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Taylor</i></st1:city></st1:place> on the back, all dusty and fading from years on display. Behind the bar a handwritten menu with curling corners was tacked to the wall listing what po’boy sandwiches were available: roast beef, ham and swiss, catfish, shrimp, oyster, crawfish. An old upright piano sat in the corner of the bar alongside a snare drum, both near the juke box and an old style South Central Bell public telephone; tables and chairs were scattered about, both showing plenty of wear: the cloth-backed vinyl tablecloths stained and torn, the padded chair seats split and the material inside clearly visible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Alone in the bar and l<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>ounging in one of the chairs while looking around, it occurred to the guy dressed in a dark suit at one of the tables that the Well was still the hub of civilization here in Travellers Rest, some folks spending more of the evening in this watering hole than they did at home, and it was sad and funny to Adam Macauley to know living here hadn’t changed much, the after work idleness still the same: drinking and forgetting the everydayness of drinking and forgetting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Adam glanced at a journal he had been reading. It was all there, the important parts anyway, the transcriptions of Lacey’s sessions, many of the pages copied from her own journals she kept all of her life, meticulously copied by Adam with one of his favorite ink pens he collected, dog-eared entries of his own musings, and even recollections of conversations that all pertained to Lacey, no matter when they took place in those long ago days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Putting the journal on the table, Adam got up and slowly toured the bar, checking his memory against the way things were now, smiling when he came across his carved initials on the top of the piano, letting his hand fall to the keys and playing a chord. He dusted his hand off and glanced up at the ceiling, remembering rifles and two black pajama uniforms of the Viet Cong once hanging among the football jerseys. Back at the table—sitting and extending his legs out in front of him, closing his eyes and letting flashes of Lacey play out in his head—he had no need to open the journal for any prompting, from thousands of readings over the years he knew the placement of every comma and period, every single word written there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-18664983218551255242013-04-11T15:44:00.000-05:002013-04-11T15:44:45.105-05:00Atomic Shadows<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
There were two big old boys in the neighborhood living a street over from us on Lafaso, Mert and Dick Tugwell, older, maybe my brother <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Wayne</st1:city></st1:place>’s age or maybe even older than that. They are nice guys, fun-loving, always horsing around with the younger kids, and I am one of those one day, doing whatever, maybe trying to tackle one of them by wrapping arms and legs around one of their stout legs. One of the Tugwell brothers reaches down and pries me off, grabbing my legs with one hand and the other hand on the back of my neck, lifting me up and making gorilla noises like he is going to slam me to the ground. When he does release me on my feet, I am aware of slight pain under my ears, his thumb and middle finger pressing under my ears while suspending me above his head, like some native in a Tarzan movie holding up a sacrificial child. It is not long before there are rounded lumps under each ear the size of a tennis ball. What is lost is whether I go to the doctor then or the next day or go quickly to the emergency room. The next distinct shadow is being in one of the hospital rooms, one bed only, windows always presenting a view of home.</div>
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Whatever my illness is—ruptured lymph nodes or salivary glands?—it keeps me in the hospital as a pampered patient for weeks, doctors coming and going and hushed whispers to my mother, nurses coming and going and a daily series of injections in my buttocks, first one cheek and turn the other, please. There are two other particular shadows imprinted during that time.</div>
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After several days, my backside looks like a human dartboard, a chaotic pattern of blue on both cheeks like bruised fruit. And the injections sting and the hurt lingers. Finally one of the nurses starts giving me a sharp slap on whatever cheek is up for duty right before the injection. It works, her sharp swat masking what quickly follows. Bless you, nurse-angel, whoever you are.</div>
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The other ghost image is books—probably many of them comic books—scattered always over the bed, on the nightstand, stacked on the window ledge. There is no television in the room, I don’t think, I would remember that, so the days are spent in adventures far beyond the hospital room, with Batman and Robin and Superman in thrilling deeds of capturing criminals and rescuing always grateful ladies in distress. There is the absolute joy also of my mother reading to me, being able to lie back on the pillows and watch the changing sky while those escapades play in my head, the imagined stories fulfilling some need in me I didn’t know I had, allowing me to leave behind any pain in my neck and backside, presenting an escape route from the hard truths of growing up in the neighborhood nearby.</div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-70117490833296301882012-12-06T15:20:00.000-06:002012-12-06T15:20:00.323-06:00School Days<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.2in;">
Baton Rouge High School opened fifteen years after the Civil War and finally relocated for the last time on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Government Street</st1:address></st1:street> in the late 1920’s. By mid-century, it is easy to imagine James Dean coming down the front steps of the Late Gothic Revival main building dressed in jeans and white t-shirt with a cigarette behind one ear. Turning to his left, he would saunter along the sidewalk through the shade of huge oaks, heading toward his ride parked behind the school. Of course, really, earlier in the day—during first period—he would have been sent to the principal’s office and maybe expelled for the day—or at the very least—told to go home and change from jeans to appropriate pants and to change his t-shirt for good measure. He would have been asked to put the cigarette in his pocket and told he could smoke it during lunch recess in the Bullpen, which was actually under the bleachers facing the oval track and the grassy area in the middle where the football team practiced every hot afternoon. Cool Mr. Dean, the future icon of disillusioned youth everywhere, would have passed an exit door from the one-balcony auditorium with a wood floor stage where Elvis and Faron Young played in May, 1955, a mere five months before the Porsche Spyder sports car Dean would be heading toward crashes and kills him near Cholame, California. </div>
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Eight years after Mr. Dean takes his imaginary stroll, the school campus looks pretty much the same—maybe the oaks grown some in height and girth, the same bleachers and another bunch of boys in the Bullpen under them to escape the direct heat, the pattern on the ground around them like sun through enormous blinds, many of the cars in the parking lot probably now the same model year as the famous Porsche. For all the studens (still no jeans to be seen), sitting in classrooms with tall windows during long days of study, they want to be hip like dead Mr. Dean and pretty like Natalie Wood and sensitive like Sal Mineo, but they also want to be cool, literally, for they are always hot since air conditioning won’t be installed until 13 years after they graduate. No Negroes in desks beside them, some students slightly more aware and the others only vaguely from parental whisperings that there was a bus boycott ten years earlier that gave Martin Luther King the blueprint for the Montgomery bus boycott. While marches for Civil Rights are taking place in the city around them—primarily by Southern University students—it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a time of innocence for most, uninvolved and not knowing, more important the day to day tests and romantic maneuverings and the scandal of Mrs. Dugas’ 10<sup>th</sup> grade daughter dropping out of school because she is pregnant. </div>
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-47592519776606210722012-08-30T12:41:00.001-05:002012-08-30T12:41:34.103-05:00Living in Louisiana<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And here we are
again, four years after Gustav took down 25% of the canopy in Baton Rouge and
seven years after Katrina flooded New Orleans and killed almost 2,000 people, here
we are again with that helpless feeling again of hearing sirens in the distance
of fire trucks racing down streets nearby and watching wind and rain out of
windows and sliding patio doors, the trees bending unnaturally and limbs flying
off and the thump of them hitting the ground and leaves swirling and littering
the streets and yards like it is winter and time to rake into piles not brown
but green with recent life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Unlike other
recent hurricanes and with winds not quite as high, Isaac is so slow moving
that the destruction may be worse in some areas, the winds and flooding water
grinding south Louisiana down by its stationary persistence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In this age of
instant communication (before many lose power) there are Facebook posts on
supplies gathered, the inevitable lists of alcohol purchased to last for the
duration of closed stores, discussions of the impact of cancelled football games
(for many hurricanes seem to hit the last week of August), posts from people
who once lived here and now expressing concerns from states far away, and one
post from a woman in New Jersey who once lived in and still calls New Orleans
home, her post letting everyone know that her friend was tired of the woman’s
post about her concerns for family and could not understand why people still
lived in this part of the country, that friend showing her ignorance by not
stopping to think that all parts of the country experience disasters, natural
and man-made. Why would anyone want to live in Manhattan, someone responded,
when planes sometimes crash into tall buildings?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The woman in New
Jersey vented in a long post exactly why south Louisiana—New Orleans in particular—is
so special, and, finally, halfway down in her Facebook rant about her friend’s
utter lack of understanding and compassion, she hit upon exactly why people
stay and endure whatever comes in this part of the country: it is home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> No matter if there
are hurricanes spinning off deadly tornados or straight-line summer
thunderstorms that knock trees down quickly, no matter what forces align and
threaten the house occupied, there are pets buried in the backyard and
relatives in the cemetery down the road. It is football on the weekends and
tailgate parties with good friends that take place near the stadium or in the
back yard. It is also a heritage of place given voice by Louisiana writers
imparting a sense of family and history—whether that history is ground
blood-soaked or merely littered with storm debris. It is simply home, the place of growing up
and learning the hard truths of living anywhere. </span><br />
Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-89271664859535815072012-08-05T14:45:00.000-05:002012-08-05T20:41:30.306-05:00Amanda<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Amanda
knew at an early age that she would kill herself. It wasn’t a thought that
particularly concerned her but one of quiet recognition that the day would
come. She lived her life with that quiet knowledge, growing up loved enough and
bright enough for good grades in school and getting a college degree with easy
grace she knew she would never use because of how it would all end, the year
and manner to be determined. What did surprise her though as she lay on the bed
with the gun beside her and naked with makeup on and hair brushed and shiny was
not that she was only a good and competent dancer (she had long ago realized
that), that she couldn’t have a career doing it, not the months and two years
of traveling the West waiting tables and dancing in burlesque and strip clubs
to make ends meet, the surprise now that the end was near at age 24 was not any
of that but one of <i>location</i>. Not so
much Albuquerque, the city for the first few years humming with possibility
since there were so many dance clubs with fun people learning the steps or perfecting
routines of blues dancing, the swing, Latin jazz, always parties at the clubs
or rented spaces, the dancers in costumes and body paint with wild abandon like
Mardi Gras in New Orleans, strings of white Christmas lights in loops along the
walls, draped over the piano, the lights sweeping the dance floor and the
thumping music as partners also, the surprise now for Amanda not so much the
city straddling the Rio Grande b</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ut the end coming in her small Komfort Travel Trailer parked to the side of
Billy’s driveway, an extension cord from her friend’s house snaking through
tall trash-strewn grass and weeds. </span><br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-2161949031387899282012-07-25T18:24:00.000-05:002012-07-25T18:24:59.527-05:00Death Dealing<br />
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Nights after my
father has been in the woods on his day off, he knocks his muddy boots against
the back steps and the wooden sound, quick and dull, always precedes his
entrance into the house. My father pulls the squirrels out of the back of his
hunting vest one at a time and tosses them on the newspaper spread out on the
kitchen floor by my mother as soon as she heard his car in the driveway, saying
as she layers the paper, <i>Talmadge and his
mess,</i> my father tossing the squirrels on the paper, dealing dead and stiff
and cold creatures instead of cards. There is no sign on most of them of having
been shot down from the tops of oak trees, the hair on their tails when he
arranges them in a row the only thing still lifelike about them. A beer and sharp
hunting knife at hand, he settles down on a low stool and picks one up, his
hand and the dead squirrel moving up and down to gauge the weight of it before
he pinches up the skin and fur on the stomach and makes an incision large
enough for two fingers.</div>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-65552902445985572132012-07-02T21:43:00.000-05:002012-07-02T21:43:14.310-05:00Christmas Collage<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .2in;">
The
first Christmas after my father dies is rough. Dead not even a month, all the
usual trappings of the season have a hollowness in them. All the good will
among relatives is sincere but tinged with loss and a sense of defeat, a sense
that a door has been violently flung open and something allowed in that is
unspeakable—for there is not talk of <i>remember
when</i>, no <i>he was a good man and did
the best he could for all of us</i>, no spoken love expressed or the ache of
absence, and certainly no <i>fifty-eight was
too Goddamn young to die</i>. And when eyes do meet, the acknowledgment of
feelings and knowing all things have changed comes with a slight lifting of
eyebrows, a slight tightening of lips in something less than a smile.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .2in;">
But
we carry on and avoid the obvious and eat good food and talk of inconsequential
things and do what we can for my mother, the bravest one in the room. It is
when the keys to the old Volkswagen my father used for work—trips to and from
the docks of the Exxon plant—it is when those keys are given to Dennis, the
oldest grandson, that emotions begin surfacing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .2in;">
The
gifts I give my mother and brothers and their wives are 25 photographs of my
father, three framed collages of his life: as the only child before his
brothers are born held in the arms of Papa Cothern and him next to my
grandmother and all three standing in the dirt yard in front of their
farmhouse; photographs of my father as a schoolboy, a freckled Mississippi Huck
Finn; of him older and lanky in a basketball uniform with a ball held high over
his head; one of him and my mother posed in the side yard against the Bernardo
Street house; a photo in a pith helmet in the wooden bateau he built, the 10 HP
purple Mercury engine on the transom pushing him up the Amite River toward his
catfish lines; one of him the previous Christmas in his recliner, his jaw
cocked to one side as he opens a present.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .2in;">
When
the Christmas paper is torn on the framed collages by all at the same time,
when the rips are large enough to reveal some of the photographs, the emotions
come with words from choked voices and there are no dry eyes around the
Christmas tree and the white tissues suddenly appearing in the hands of my
mother and sister-in-laws are flags of surrender.</div>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-24287603228097221212012-05-04T14:55:00.000-05:002012-05-04T14:55:32.417-05:00Laurie<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.25in;">
When Jennifer is seizuring in the hospital while in a coma, when her body is bucking and then going rigid, repeating that awful pattern again and again, I do not remember in that moment of Laurie doing the same in the 4<sup>th</sup> grade, age 9, the jolt like an electric shock when Dee screams from the girl’s bedroom. Laurie has fallen between the twin beds and <place w:st="on">Dee</place> is trying to lift her up without success and screaming <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what is happening to my daughter God help me what is happening? </i>I grab Laurie and carry her in a scramble to the car, Dee driving wildly, me in cutoff overalls without even a shirt on, some vision for the hospital nurses of a redneck disturbed out of a nap on a sunny afternoon, barreling down Essen Lane to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, talking all the time to Laurie, who keeps trying to open her eyes but only her eyelids fluttering, thinking if I can get her to wake up that everything will be okay.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.25in;">
So it does not occur to me that Jen’s seizure is like Laurie’s, life repeating itself and making no sense in the chaos of the moment. For Laurie, after a CAT scan, it is a subtle abnormality in one squiggly brain wave, some slight difference in the pattern signifying a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">convulsive disorder</i> and no longer called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">epilepsy</i>. The pediatrician for both girls, Dr. Ben Thompson, puts Laurie on a daily dose of Phenobarbital and it evidently works (never another seizure) until Laurie finally stops taking it after high school, deciding herself that it is no longer needed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.25in;">
The seizuring experience is so much the same for both daughters, Laurie’s less severe and life-threatening and of shorter duration, and it surprises me Jen’s episode doesn’t recall the other until now because they are the same in one respect. The worry of the unknown and waiting for tests, each time whether pushing through the doors to see Laurie in the Children’s Ward with colorful walls and painted children at play, whether opening the door to Jennifer’s room each time, both are moments to wonder and feel overwhelmed because sickness and disease and the death of a child is the absolute worse of human experience for helpless parents.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<br /></div>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-69611955411727796332012-04-10T13:09:00.000-05:002012-04-10T13:09:22.474-05:00An Inheritance of Images<div align="justify"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">An inheritance of images piled haphazardly</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">in the suitcase with worn corners, </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">roaches chewing their way</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">into the hoard of negatives and photographs,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">nesting next to those images of grays </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">and stark whites and blacks like smudges of charcoal.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">All those photographs whose tones have faded</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">like a pile of slippery fish losing their color,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">still stored in that suitcase like random statements,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">no doubt curling from the heat, </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">needing to be flattened and then straightened</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">in order of exposure like facts in a story.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The last time at the old house in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Walker</place></city></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I pull the suitcase from under the bed,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">being brave enough to open it, finding</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">myself sometime later, elbows on knees,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">each hand holding an irregular stack, </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">becoming aware in the fading light</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">that no one alive can date all these statements,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">can over the paralyzing randomness,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">the piercing stillness of these lively images.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Opening the old brown suitcase</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">is acknowledging long ago everydayness,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">flinging open long closed doors and windows,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">seeing broken fingernails along sealed cracks, </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">the feeling of someone approaching,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">bringing years tough and septia-washed,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">the creak of imagined footfalls in the hallway</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">like a jolt from bad wiring on a Christmas tree.</div><div align="justify"></div>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383530299213732397.post-67667111736967385932012-04-04T11:49:00.000-05:002012-04-04T11:49:58.548-05:00Christmas Eve, 1993<div align="justify"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Baton Rouge General</i></placename><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <placetype w:st="on">Hospital</placetype></i></place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Christmas Eve, 1993</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jen is restless, back under the surface, finally quieting before dawn. An early morning trip home, a shower, thinking about the two hours yesterday that Jen surfaced and treaded water, looking around at all of us in the room, anxiety attacking constantly. I don’t crawl into bed like I want after showering but drop by Ronnie McCallum’s for a quick visit then on out to Laurie’s. While waiting for her before going to my mother’s, I crawl under a blanket on the couch and doze. Have to laugh when I am startled awake by the sound of an IV machine on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Days of Our Lives.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trip out to <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Walker</place></city> to eat gumbo and visit family while watching the kids tear open presents doesn’t last long. Not like previous all day affairs when all of us get together and spend the entire evening laughing and reminiscing only about the good times, my father feeding the dressing to the dogs, Dee and I in the yard putting a trampoline together in ten degree weather, our fingers sticking to the circular metal, trying to stretch cold springs that give only slightly; and on Christmas Eve longer ago, sometimes my father and I fish, or he, Wayne, Willie perhaps, maybe his son, Dennis, will squirrel hunt early in the morning, the mist rolling close to the ground, the anticipation of presents to come the true Christmas gift.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Visitors all day long. Jen is much <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shallower</i>, as Dr. Rogers once said, aware of all noises, movements in the room, greetings and touches from family and friends. For a few moments she emerges again, but her disoriented look which should be heartening is only heartbreaking. </div><div align="justify"><br />
</div>Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16539188502749432340noreply@blogger.com1