Alley Life - Part Two

A whole other world exists in my son's neighborhood once the sun goes down. I know this because I just visited Denver again, where he and his wife live in an 11-unit downtown apartment building.I was up in the small hours for two reasons. First, they have no air conditioning, so I was sitting on their front balcony drying off and enjoying the cool night air. I also had to catch an early-morning flight, so going back to bed seemed pointless.

I heard what sounded like a party going on somewhere nearby. It seemed close, but I couldn't see anybody. Just voices. From that noise I picked out the sound of two people talking, a man and a woman. He was pouring out his heart to her. Of course I considered going inside and giving them their privacy, but I have to admit I was riveted. He loved her! He couldn't live without her! He'd waited his whole life for her! Silence. She clearly didn't feel the same way. My heart hurt for him. It was as if I was right there in the room with them, that's how clear the sound was. I wanted to give him a hug. Poor guy. And then....the sound of the laugh track. Turns out I was listening to a re-run of Cheers, playing on the TV in the apartment one balcony over.

Bu t wait! At that moment the can man came by. He was having a good night. His grocery cart was stuffed with cans, and so were the bags he had hanging from the sides and underneath. Perhaps that's why he didn't try very hard. He wheeled up the alley, peered into the dumpster, tossed an empty peanut butter jar and a fast food bag out onto the cement, then let the dumpster lid clang down, wiped his hands on the front of his t-shirt, and continued on his way.

That dumpster is the site of a lot of city life. Arguments happen there, along with transactions I've described in previous blogs. On this night, though, all was quiet once the can man left. Even the TV was off next door. For a quarter of an hour it was just me and a tiny bird waking up and singing in the branches of a tree not two feet from my face. At
4 a.m. the garbage trucks arrived with their backing beep and their diesel fumes. But for just a moment, Denver and I were at peace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXyeS-jZSpA

Choose Your Moment

This week I heard from a man who related to me how he had been at the bedside of a dying friend.

"I slept in the living room where she rested on a recliner for two full days," he told me. "She was not responding.  When I gently touched her and said, 'It’s OK to let go,'  she showed a weak version of her beautiful smile.  I left the room for just a minute or two.  When I returned, she had passed."

There's so much about death that we don't understand, and in many cases there isn't a thing we can do about it. I'm thinking of the sudden car crash or a fall off the roof. But in researching my book, Gift of Death, A Message of Comfort and Hope, one thing I heard over and over again was how much say people do have in choosing their actual moment of passing over.

You may ask yourself why anybody would choose to die alone like the man's friend, but if you think about it, death can be a very intimate and private experience. I believe some people are just more comfortable slipping away without an audience. The reasons for this must be as varied as the people experiencing death.

In a recent interview I heard death described as an intrusion, and it certainly is. It interrupts life as we know it and once it's over nothing is ever the same. So that would make it the ultimate transformative experience, whether it's happening to you or to somebody you love. .

 It's what you do with that transformation that makes all the difference. On this Father's Day I am thinking of my own dad who has been gone for two years now. As I describe in my book, his last actions on earth were focused on those he loved rather than himself. I can't know what happened to him in the moments after he died, although I feel certain that he's doing just fine.

But what I do know is his death transformed my life, and sent me in a different direction both spiritually and actually. I think of this every time I face an audience and talk about death as a gift. For me, fear is gone, God is close, and so is my dad.

Coincidence? No Such Thing

I have been speaking about my book, Gift of Death, for months now, and never really saw the title. When I was getting ready to publish I asked everybody I knew what they would call it, then I chose the three most popular suggestions and put them out on Facebook for my friends to vote on.

Gift of Death was not my first choice. I think I wanted something that didn't even have the word "death" in it. I thought it might be off-putting. I wanted something that would make people actually pick up the book because they were so intrigued, and then, hopefully, read it. I didn't want to scare people off. But the response was overwhelmingly in favor of Gift of Death, so that's what I went with.

Yesterday I was taking notes and was abbreviating the title rather than write it over and over again, and here's what that looked like: GOD. How could I have gone that long without noticing? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know this. The book as been nothing but a blessing. Coincidental? I don't think so.

I never really feel my age. Actually, that's not true. When I've spent too long driving and I have to uncurl myself from behind the wheel I do feel it. But most of the time I still feel young and fit. That's why it surprised me to see that John F. Kennedy would have been 100 years old on May 29th.

It surprised me because I remember the young president. Mainly I remember the day he died, because my mother cried on that day, something I rarely saw. I have a very vivid memory, at four years old, of sitting before the television with my brother, watching as the slain president's funeral cortege passed by. It's difficult to know what I truly remember after that because he has been in the news so much.

His death marked the beginning of a sad time in American history, when it seemed as if we lost our tolerance for discourse on political and philosophical differences, as JFK was followed in death by Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Bobby Kennedy. These days it's tough to get close to a sitting president, or any world leader for that matter, as extremists choose to make their statements by pointing a gun, or by bombing innocent people. The world feels like an increasingly dangerous place.

Statistics say that's not actually true, that we are safer today than we've ever been historically speaking. After all, half of the population of Europe was wiped out in a single battle with plague in the Middle Ages and two world wars wreaked their devastation in the modern era. Plus, people have always had the capacity for cruelty.

So, we're safer perhaps. But judging by what one reads on the internet and soundbites on the news, it seems we are becoming angrier day by day, and ruder, and less tolerant of opposing views.

Perhaps if we listened more and talked less. Too simplistic? Likely yes, but don't we have to start somewhere?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBiH5fsKJB8

Big Brothers and Family Weddings

What is it about big brothers? Mine is my only sibling and in some years he felt like my only friend. We were born just eleven months apart, and Larry was my hero growing up. When I was six I wanted to be just like him. I tagged along when he played army with his friends and he (usually) made sure I was included. He tolerated me when they played cops and robbers. If I insisted on Barbies he'd bring out G.I. Joe. We rarely fought, but if we did I always won because he refused to hit me back and I could run faster anyway. One memorable day I talked him into letting me tie him up. I threw a blanket over his head and tied his feet together, then pushed him over. When his head hit the floor I ran like I was on fire, and yet, he didn't tell on me. Another legendary story says that when I was four I socked a neighborhood boy in the nose for being mean to my brother. We built forts together using scrap lumber from the new houses going up in our neighborhood. We collected crawdads from a nearby stream. And we played a lot of Battleship.

Over the weekend I journeyed to Kansas to watch his oldest child, his daughter Laurina, get married. It was great fun spending time with extended family, watching him get all teary-eyed as he gave her away. "I had something to say when I handed her to Josh," he later told me, "but I couldn't get it out." My brother, the brave retired colonel, brought to his knees by the long walk down the aisle with his "princess."

But perhaps the best moment for me was dancing with Larry to The Commodores' "Brick House." Did I mention that I don't dance?. If they play a slow song I might shuffle a two-step, but that's about it, despite the square dancing lessons that my mother made us take as kids. The kind of dancing we did in the 70s involves a lot of unscripted flailing about, and at this stage of the game might also first require a couple shots of tequila. And yet, there we were, alone on a stage with my family looking on and cheering. Fortunately, the video they took is a little too dark to see. But it was a moment I'll never forget. Two things I learned from this trip to Kansas:

One: my brother can dance to anything (perhaps his marriage to a former dance instructor has something to do with it?).

and 

Two: he can sing! One more story. When we were kids I famously told him to stop singing in church because he was embarrassing the family. I know. Not very nice. But this last Sunday I sat right beside him in St. Luke's, and it turns out he has a very nice voice. He can even sing "Brick House" while dancing. 

That First Scratch

 It was bound to happen, and it didn't take long. I got a parking ding on the new car. It was one of those drive-by-hit-the-mirror-before-driving-away accidents that happen routinely downtown. The damage wasn't bad, but still, I felt a pang.

We aren't a real car family. We tend to drive them into the ground, and even when we do buy a new car, it's never really new. My first car, purchased in 1978, was a white Impala that I bought for $100. I spent another $5 on a can of white spray paint from K-Mart which I used to cover the rust on the fenders and doors.

 It wasn't pretty (not as nice as this by a longshot), but my boyfriend could fix anything that went wrong with chewing gum and bailing twine, and it ran. I drove it to college and eventually sold it for $100.

Over the years, depending on the number of kids we were hauling around, the cars got bigger, with vast backseats. We had two Oldsmobile Silhouettes that we bought from my father-in-law which we drove into the ground. They were the type with the vast front windshield. It felt like you were driving an arcade video game. The last one, by the time we finally got rid of it, had a door that literally was tied shut with baling twine. It went on many family road trips and I would venture to guess it plays heavily into my children's summer vacation memories. They would listen to an old mix tape that was labeled, "Driving With Dad." Cliff still has the mix, and in fact, has gifted the children with memorial CD's. They speak with great fondness of the time they were fighting over a big bottle of Coke in the backseat and Cliff, while driving, grabbed it out of their hands and poured it out the window. "I can still see it streaming along the windows at 80 miles an hour," is how my daughter remembers it.  "Not my finest hour," is how Cliff recalls the incident. But they all laugh.

 Then there was the shiny red Sebring convertible. I loved that car, and Cliff bought it for me. It certainly wasn't his first choice. My dad said at the time, "I guess everybody has to make that mistake at sometime in their lives," and shook his head. And he was right. We rarely put the top down because it was either too cold or windy. When I bought it I had three small kids, so dropping them off at school meant one in the front seat, two in the back. "Shotgun!" was our morning rallying cry. I sold it the year we acquired a South Korean exchange student. Three teenagers just didn't fit in the back.

We bought a Jeep instead. I loved that car, too. It could practically move sideways, that's how good the turning radius was, and it also carried us on many family trips. Never mind the fact that it got eight miles to the gallon. We had it for a decade.

So, we bought the shiny red "Every Car." You know the one. It has a modern-day wagon look, with the windows that get smaller in the back, and the hatchback in lieu of a trunk. It goes a lot farther on a tank of gas, it's comfortable, and it boasts a Bluetooth phone and stereo system. But I have trouble finding it in a crowded parking lot.
I never had that problem with the white Impala.

Driving The World Over - Part Two

Yesterday I took a driving safety course, required by the company I work for. It wasn't a bad experience. Good advice. Reminders like swerve to the right rather than the left into on-coming traffic and don't drive if you can't see past the hood of your car. In Guatemala the rule is "butts on the ground," which means when riding in the back of a pick-up truck down the highway at 75 miles per hour, don't stand.

It's dangerous, of course, and that's why it's illegal to do it in the United States. But there's no doubt you can get an excellent view of everything this way.

There are the street views, so different from the way things look in the U.S.

And there's the countryside, which has a beauty all its own.

We seem much more concerned about our personal safety here than they are there. I can only speculate on why this is. Perhaps the view there is more fatalistic. Again, I never saw a Guatemalan wearing a seatbelt, and it was very common to see a family of four on a single motorcycle. I asked my driver whether there were a lot of fatalities on the roads and he said yes, it was a big problem. So why, I wondered, didn't people wear seatbelts? His response was a shoulder shrug and a smile. "Es lo que es," he said. It is what it is.