Dueling Obits

You know, doing what I do, I traffic in obituaries.  Between Find A Grave and handling the "who died" archive for my high school, I find myself looking at a lot of death notices and memorials each day.  Today, I came across a curious and distasteful phenomenon.  Something I've come across before.

Dueling obituaries.

It's more common that you'd think (hope), and I find it awful.  What are dueling obits?

Oh, that's when one part of the family hates the other part, and so they excise them from the obituary. The excises part of the family publishes their own obituary, often (but not always) excising the other family members.

For example, today A.B.'s family (likely his children) posted a long obituary for their deceased loved one.  A lot of information about his dead wife, his loving children, his amazing grandkids.  All by name.  What they left out was "the love of his life," his long-term, live-in significant other, who, apparently, they dislike enough to omit all mention of her many happy years with him.

And A.B.'s significant other?  Well, she published her own obit for A.B., one that mentions her, her daughter, and all of his grandchildren by name.  And his kids?  Mentioned, but not by name.

Of these two, clearly the children are the worse offenders, as they completely cut her out of his life.  But hers was a bit petty, too, only mentioning "sons and daughters" instead of by name.  Who started it? Probably the kids, but that's not my point.  My point is, what a crappy tribute to someone you loved.  Clearly, you caused him astounding grief with your childish behavior before he died, must you carry it over to his obituary so it's now glaringly obvious to the world?

This isn't the first--or even the 30th--time I've seen this.  Sometimes it's been family vs friends, often it's new wife vs kids from first marriage.  I know one woman (known her since I was a child) who, when her husband died, listed herself (she was the second wife), his siblings, her family, their PETS, and then, as a last, tag-on scrap, "he was also survived by children from a previous marriage."

BAM!  WHOA!  And worse?  She didn't even call those kids to let them know their father had died. I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "What a trashy, low-rent creature."  Actually, she's a wealthy woman, a prominent attorney.  And she carried a grudge over into her husband's obituary, leaving his children with that last, final jab as a lifetime reminder that she never could manage to get along with her step-children.

Do yourself a favor.  Do your family a favor.  Do your dead loved one's memory/legacy a favor and check your bickering and grudges at the door when it comes to writing up that obituary.  Unless your deceased family member was Josef Mengele in a housecoat (if that's the case, absolutely be honest if that's what works for you), the obit is the place for memorializing, not carrying on family feuds.  You may think you're getting in that final, grand smack, but what you're really doing is making yourself look like a creep of the first order.  And if you're doing it because you know THEY'RE going to do it?

Don't.  Be the better person.  What better revenge than coming across looking like the good guy?


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Rock God Revisited

I want to tell you a story about someone.  Someone I was once very close to.

Sean was a friend once.  Hell, he was more than that.  We met on campus in 1992.  He approached me to tell me that my pro-choice button on my lapel sucked . . . but that he admired the guts it took to wear in Mormonville.  It wasn't long before Sean was giving my then-husband guitar lessons in return for tutoring in algebra.  My husband never did master the guitar, though Sean did teach  me the following fancy Allegro (no, that's not Sean playing):



My ex did manage to drag Sean through Algebra--a good thing, as Sean had already failed it twice and had no hope of finishing his degree without it.

When my husband and I separated in 1993, Sean and I embarked on what we affectionately called our "three month stand."  So called because there was no way we could have ever maintained a long-term relationship, so we went into it knowing it was only for a while.  Our politics, our world-views, and especially our relationship with intoxicating substances--none were compatible.  But Sean was fun, smart, impossibly tall, and had long, bleached-blond hair halfway to his ass.  Hey, it was the very early 90s.  Hair was still in.

Before you get any ideas about me, Sean was my THIRD partner.  The other two had been HUSBANDS.  He was my first AND last "fling."

For three months, Sean and I were together almost every moment.  I often blame my car accident, which really did do a number on my "impulse control" and ability to make rational decisions.  No doubt, that was part of it.  Sean had an ex-girlfriend, a toddler, and was only paying 25 bucks a month in child support while his ex (later his wife, even later his ex-wife) was living with (and being supported by) her hyper-disapproving Mormon parents.  We tangled often about that--about his being able to afford smokes and beer but not child support.

I remember one day, the ex showed up at Sean's (he was in a roommate situation with four other college students at a condo owned by the father of one of the students).  She was always nice to me, but always looked utterly wounded by my existence.  She considered me gravely, then said wistfully, "I wish I could be you--then he'd love me forever."

That poor girl.  Sean really did put off a shine that drew you, a warmth that made you feel you needed to be close.  I doubt it ended that way, but for a long time I think she was helpless to resist the draw.

For a few months, I hung out with the band Sean played with, learned how to run their sound board.  I don't say "Sean's Band" because it wasn't--they'd lost their guitarist and he was a hired gun.  They were called "Genghis Khan," and holy cow, they were derivative.  They practiced at an old farmhouse in the country.  Place was crawling with hundreds of ferel cats and kittens.  The vocalist was a Tom Keifer wannabe (vocally--looks-wise he was more a Sam Kinison clone), the other guitarist was so wasted most of the time it was impossible to get much out of him, the bassist . . . wasn't (they had no bass player), and the drummer . . . was sober and so much better than the rest of them. He and Sean should have started a band, left those losers behind.

Instead, he slogged along and fell deeper and deeper into the booze and drugs.

One day, Sean said he was really wishing he was back together with his ex, the mother of his lovely little boy.  I said he should go for it.  And he did.  Sadly, Sean had some serious impulse control issues.  He went back to his ex, I hooked up with my now-husband, yet Sean kept trying to get back with me.  Not for a long-term thing, but a "friends with benefits" arrangement.  He really just never could stop himself.  Something that haunted him all his life.

Finally, his advances became so enraging that I cut off all contact for years.

When we reconnected, it was via Facebook.  He'd gone through years of addiction, had flipped hot and cold hard-core religious (you know how the addiction thing can do that), but his politics had taken a hard swing left.  He admitted to barely remembering me--turns out, he'd been utterly addicted even then.  Most of that time was a blur for him.  We palled around on Facebook for a couple of years, but then he and his latest wife (not sure how many there were, at least two) fell apart.  It started with him taking responsibility, admitting it was his temper, his sarcasm, his drug use, but, as he always said, one of his greatest talents was turning things around on folks, and it went from being his fault to her being a faithless whore in record time.  It was all played out very publicly on his wall, and it was horrible to see.  Like a train wreck of meanness and deceit.

And then, because (he later admitted) this is what he did when things got rough, he turned on me.  And, to be fair, his other friends, too.  There was nothing special about me.  Because addiction circles so often fall into the "higher power" trap, Sean, seemingly out of the blue, went nutty on me over my atheism.  It was insulting, immature, unreasonable, and really quite shocking.  Like I said, "out of the blue."  My response?

I smacked him down so hard my hand is still stinging.

His reaction?

Shock.  He was stunned that I had come back on him.  Said that people usually just took it from him because that's how he was.  That was, in fact, the backbone of his apology:  this is how I am when things aren't going right in my life, and I am helpless to stop myself.  No promise to never do it again, just a wow, sorry I did that, I was out of line, but this is how I am.  Get used to it, because it's sure to happen again.

No.  No, I refused to "get used to it."  And I told him so.  Told him that I was sorry, but that, at my age, I didn't have a place in my world for someone prone to spontaneously erupting on me like that.  I didn't have what it took to tolerate abusiveness or drama.  I didn't NEED to tolerate it.  If he couldn't assure me that this was never, ever, EVER going to happen again, I was going to have to walk away.

He couldn't, and I did.

That was a couple of years ago.  Today, I opened the paper to come across Sean's obituary.

I gasped when I saw it.

Says he died of a perforated ulcer, and I'm sure that's true.  But what he really died of was a life of alcohol and drug abuse and an inability to get his act together in any meaningful way for any real length of time.  Apparently he'd just gotten a new job, was very happy, very optimistic.  But that was Sean--the same scenario played out again and again.  Like he was trapped, doomed to repeat that pattern until . . .

Until now.

Poor Sean.

And my son?  Well, he still plays that old white Ibanez (gone cream-colored with the years) I bought from Sean all those years ago.  Sean had two of them--he kept one, and the other wound up being my son's.  Is there some meaning there?

Probably not.

An update here:  the landlord is booting us, has given us 60 days notice to vacate.  This isn't an eviction--he says we're the best tenants he's ever had, has offered a glowing reference.  But he's selling, and he needs us out so he can do that.  Which leaves us utterly screwed and possibly facing homelessness.  Truly.  So please.

September 11th

I don't think I've ever done a September 11th entry.  Funny, that date meant nothing before 2001. Well, not to most folks, anyway.  To us?

It's our nephew's birthday.  He was 11 years old.  Good age to have a colossal act of violence forever associated with your birthday.  Good age to burn that in.

So happy birthday, Buddy.  Love you.

My memories of 9/11 are the same as many folks'.  Woke up and dashed to the TV not even knowing why--something I'd heard on the radio while sleeping, I'm sure.  I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit.

And then the wave.

You know, that wave of unreality that washed over?  That "I'm watching a Michael Bay movie" sensation?

And then I threw myself at the computer.  I had a lot of online pals who were part of the Project Greenlight gig.  A lot of pals in NYC.  Immediately, I went for the PG chat room.  Where was Serena?  Where was Doug?  Had anyone heard from Stephen?

It was a long while before we learned that one of our own had been on Flight 11.  Tom Pecorelli,

Tom was a great guy--funny, sharp, talented.  He was a lot of things, including cameraman for Fox Sports and E! Entertainment Television.  He was married to his love, and they were expecting their first child in April.  Tom had been in the Boston area for a friend's wedding and to visit his Dad.

He walked around carrying his boy-to-be's ultrasound picture.  That boy is now a handsome young man who never  had the joy of resting in his father's arms.

Three or four days after the towers fell, our boy, who was three, found a potato bug (you may know them as pill bugs or "rolly-pollies").  It seemed a harmless thing--we were doing yard work, so we admonished him to be careful with the potato bug and then went back to our task.  We lived right in the flight path of an International Airport, so the silence was something palpable,  made us edgy, uneasy.  After a few minutes of working under that pall of nothingness, our little boy approached.  He held out his hand, in which the now-dead potato bug rested, and said, "Fix it, Daddy."

Fix it.

Hubby and I crouched down, and I said, "Oh, honey, I'm sorry.  It can't be fixed."

Our boy was insistent, so earnest and sad.  "Please, Daddy--please fix it, I broke it."

Voice cracking, my husband explained that, once something is dead, it can't be fixed.  It's forever broken.  Our boy's eyes filled with tears and he said he was so, so sorry.  Poor Mr. Potato Bug.

And then the grownups lost all cohesion.  We wrapped ourselves around our boy and cried and cried.  Over a potato bug?

Of course not.  Well, maybe a little.  But mostly we cried because of all those people.  And all those other people who'd lost those people.  We cried because we realized how foolish it was to ever think that making war internationally wouldn't eventually splash back here.  We cried because the world our little boy is going to live in isn't the world of my childhood.  It's the logical consequence, I recognize that now, but the carefree assumption that terror and war only happen in other lands?

Gone.  And I grieved.  I mourned that almost as much as I mourned the amazing, varied, priceless human beings we lost on 9/11.

And before I go (and I am going--there is no room here for funny pictures or complaints about awful baby names), I want to say thank you.

To Canada.

Because in the days after 9/11, when our skies were bereft of planes and our American citizens were stranded in the air, unable to come home, Canada took them in.  Canadians opened their airports, their arms, their hearts, and their homes, provided shelter and food and care.  Because they are our friends.

So thank you, Friends.  I hope we never, ever have to return the favor.  

Gone, but Not Forgotten

As I may have mentioned before, I help manage a Facebook group dedicated to high school classmates who've died.  Today, I put out a plea for three obituaries--Allyson Brown's, John Woodard's, and John Russell's.  All three from my class.

Allyson and I hadn't gotten along since Mrs. Jordan's second grade, when, while giving a book report, she sneezed and wound up with an amazing bungee-booger that flew from her face, then snapped back and splattered her cheek.  Being SEVEN YEARS OLD, I laughed.  We had been friends.  We were no longer.  In fact, she went on a scorched earth campaign that wound up with me nearly suspended from school (thank goodness my Dad was away and never learned of this!) for cheating on my homework assignments.  What can I say?  At seven, I didn't know much about self-consciousness or being embarrassed before an audience.  Had I been nine when it happened, I'd never have laughed, and I'd have helped her stare down anyone who did.  It was just plain ol' bad timing, and it ruined what might have been a long and wonderful friendship.  Allyson went on to pursue an education, had settled in Pennsylvania, and had met a man she loved.  Strangely, she settled just miles from where my family almost wound up when we moved east, and was poised to marry a man who is almost certainly related to my Mom's family.  Allyson was only 40.

John Woodard?  John and his then-friend Dwayne paid me five bucks to beat up a boy named Brent Butler.  That I did grab Brent by the coat and swing him around at their behest?  Not my proudest moment.  By then we were in fifth grade, and I was the target of relentless ridicule for my weight, my name, my religion, and pretty much anything else.  I was foolish enough to believe that these popular boys would count me among their friends if I did their bidding.  Hey, I was ten.  John later came quite close to killing the daughter of a doctor my Mom worked with in a car accident.  I remember John's obit a few years later.  No, I can't remember how he died--another car accident?  I'm not sure.  As a kid he was handsome, talented, funny, and just a bit smug.  Who and how he was as an adult, I don't know.  He was a smart guy, I know that much.  Try as I might, I can't pin down when I saw John Woodard's obituary.  Late 80s?  Early 90s?  Later than that?

And John Russell?

Wow.

I'd known John, like the others, from first grade on.  He was always nice, always kind, which was funny because he looked--well, he looked a bit snotty.  I remember a friend saying, "How can you like him, he's such a snob!"  I said, "A snob?  John?  No he's not!"  She said, "Look at that look he always has on his face!"  I said, "That's not HIM, that's just his face."

Thank you, Ringo Starr.

It was a nice face, but he did have a bit of a "down his nose" look.  It wasn't at all reflective of his heart.  He was a kind, friendly, truly nice kid.

John and I weren't close until the very end of our shared school career.  What happened between us and the deep connection it created will never be sprayed on a blog page or a Facebook group or anything else like that.  In fact, I have never shared it with ANYONE we went to school with, ANYONE who knew him.  My husband knows.  Another person who was there when it happened knows.

Immediately after the end of 12th grade, I married and moved 50 miles away.  John moved a few hundred miles away for college (John was a terrifically good student).  I had no access to our old local newspaper, I had no TELEPHONE, in fact.  I was in the throes of a gawdawful marriage to a gawdawful guy, and my life was incredibly lousy.  I'd been isolated from my friends, my family, and had to walk three blocks just to use a payphone.  So there I was, standing in the entryway at Harmon's grocery store, calling my Mom collect.  We got to our goodbyes, and she said, rather testily (we'd been arguing), "Oh, yeah--that John Russell boy you know?  The one who used to come over?  He's dead."

I dissolved.  Literally.  It was the first time in my post-toddler existence I had ever just utterly lost cohesion.  Sitting on the floor beside the phone, sobbing.  A very nice woman drove me home, but I don't really remember anything about her.  John's funeral had already come and gone, so even if I had been able to swing (or hitch) a ride, it was too late.

I found a Genweb-type text version of Allyson's obituary today, and an old classmate who was, in some way that escapes me, related to Allyson (sister-in-law to Allyson's brother-in-law?), is kindly looking for a picture to go with it.  No one has said anything about John Woodard's obituary.

And John Russell's?

A former teacher from our high school posted it today, in response to my request.  And I cried.  Can you believe that?  It's been . . . 29 years?  Is that right?  He died in 1983, so yeah.  Thirty years this fall.  And I cried, reading his obituary which, while lovely, did not begin to communicate all he was or a fraction of what I know he would have become.

I'm reminded of another friend who died young--Tammy Linford.  She died when we were fifteen in a car accident.  She was my very best friend in early elementary school, and the sweetest, funniest girl.  I think about them both, John Russell and Tammy.  They never had PCs.  Apples were something you ate.  Cell phones?  Star Trek communicators were the closest they came.  No Challenger disaster, no 9/11, no growing into the amazing adults they were going to be.  I imagine Tammy, perhaps in Utah, perhaps in some sunny place like California or New Mexico, surrounded by grandkids, a heart big enough for a whole village of babies, grandbabies, nieces, nephews.  I always picture her with an amazing garden, an explosion of color and fragrance.  I see John in the Pacific Northwest, politically aware and joyfully himself, adored by and adoring kids and pets, hiking, sailing, swimming in the ocean, and perhaps trying his hand at painting or photography.  Why painting?   I don't know, it just pleases me to imagine him with a paintbrush in his hand.  Painting crashing waves and dazzling sunsets.

Not much more to say.  I thought of posting John's obit.  Tammy's, too.  Because . . . because part of me wants YOU to know them, too.  I want you to see them, miss them, mourn them, even.

I want you to remember them.  Because they're gone.  They're gone, and if they aren't remembered, they end.

I don't want them to end.

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

Slummin' with Meg

So I promised a description of what it was like to move in with Margaret.  I won't say it defies description, but I will say this:

Make sure you're not eating while you read this.

When I was just shy of 19 years old, I left my first husband.  It was . . . acrimonious?  After a few months of skipping from place to place, I wound up living with my mother.  My mother, who had already taken in my sister and her then-husband.  My sister wasn't happy about me moving back in, and it didn't take long for some really awful accusations to be made.  Accusations my mother and sister both knew to be false.  But they played it that way because I was inconvenient.

Those were the bad ol' days.  Thankfully, things are better these days.

I wound up homeless, really.  My best friend couldn't give me a place to stay (she had her own stuff going on), and so I wound up appealing to Margaret.  And, to her credit, she opened her door.

Her crusty, awful, filthy door.

Meg rented from an elderly Catholic couple, neither of whom were in good health.  The attic.  It was stifling up there, so incredibly hot in the summer. No air conditioning, just a single fan stuck in the open window.

My first day there, Margaret just let me in on her way out--she had class, and then work.  I crept up the cluttered stairs, increasingly horrified.  I'd lived in some pretty messy places.  None compared to this.

Meg had a dog, you see.  A half jack-russell, half chihuahua, if I had to put  a name to it.  She called him "Lil' Guy."  And Lil' Guy?

Lil' Guy was the animal that taught me I don't love all animals.  In fact, sometimes I hate the living daylights out of them.

Lil' Guy, horrifyingly, wasn't house broken.  In fact, there were piles of Lil' Guy crap all through the house.  In the horrid shag carpet.  Instead of cleaning them up, Margaret had tossed newspapers or scraps of whatever (sometimes clothing) on top of the piles.  Where they had dried.  Solid.  Like cement.  Most of Lil' Guy's "business" was being done in a large walk-in closet.  All over the floor. Where Meg had also been tossing garbage when it suited her.  This was to be MY room, as there was no other room for me.

My first day there was spent cleaning.  I walked to the nearby Osco and picked up carpet sprinkles, Ajax, Windex, Pine Sol, and cheap fragrances to put into my Rainbow vacuum to freshen up the air.  I got sponges, Brillo Pads, a mop, a broom, a toilet scrub brush, a huge box of garbage bags.  In other words, I blew every stinking penny I had on cleaning supplies.  And I cleaned.  I scrubbed, scraped, shampooed.  The sink?  Had algae growing in it.  Seriously.  And mold.  Everywhere.  The fridge was alive with furry, fuzzy, green, white, black, and blue creatures spreading over who-knows-what those used to be.

In addition to the dog crap, algae, mold, and general filth, there were special surprises.  Like the completely soured milk glass Meg had been using as an ASHTRAY.  Heck, the whole place was awash in cigarette butts and ashes.  Her method of ashtray dumping appears to be "accidentally" knocking it to the floor, then picking up the ashtray but leaving the butts on the floor.  But the worst of it?

The "sanitary pads" laying scattered about.  I told you, don't eat while reading this!

This was an all-day project.  I never stopped.  The dog-crap closet that was to be my bedroom?  Oh, man.  I scraped and scrubbed, souped out, mopped up, souped out again.  Nearly killed myself with Pine Sol fumes in that enclosed space.  The task was made all the harder by the lack of a light in the room.

And when Margaret came home?

She took her shoes and socks off at the bottom of the stairs, left them there.  Peeled off her back pack half way up the stairs and just dropped it.  Open.  Books and papers and dreck sliding down the newly vacuumed stairs.  She got into the living room, which had been alive with dog crap and other horrors, and said, "Oh, you cleaned."  She then pulled off shirt and bra and dumped them on the floor.

By bed time, Meg had left dirty dishes on the counter, spilled milk on the floor (and then managed to dump an ashtray into it), had let her dog crap twice in my new bedroom (there was no DOOR, but I quickly learned to tug my dresser in front of the doorway), and had read the day's newspaper in the bathroom, leaving it scattered all around the toilet.  Within two days, the place was a disaster again.  Not as bad as it had been, obviously--that takes time.  But it became clear that I was going to have to follow her around and play housekeeper.  Which I did willingly, until I started working 6 pm to 3 am at a local hotel bar.  Meg worked in the restaurant.  My first night at work?

I came home wiped out, feet aching.  I didn't even notice that the dresser wasn't pulled to block the doorway (meaning Meg had been in my room).  I just staggered in and fell into my bed.

My dog crap covered bed.  I hadn't seen the piles in the dark.  I spent the next two hours bathing, then washing nightclothes and sheets.  Sadly, there was nothing I could do for the mattress, other than sprinkle it with carpet freshener and put new sheets on.

This was life with Margaret.  At one point, she decided to move to Southern Utah to live with our old guidance counselor from high school who had moved down there to be with her lesbian lover (or so Meg said).  Meg was only there a few months before she  managed to get pregnant and found herself without a home (guidance counselor's staunch Mormonism could allow for being a secret lesbian, but not for an unwed pregnancy, I guess).  So Meg was shipped back up north, and wound up moving in with me.  She treated my home just as badly as she treated her own (her room became a garbage dumpster, no other way to describe it), and when she announced, three months into it, that she was going back to Southern Utah to get that DOG and bring him back, I said, "Never."

Never.

Her and her snot rags and food leftovers and dirty laundry and other assorted horrors were all I could deal with.  I refused to throw dog feces into the mix.

I feel I need to stress that I'm not exaggerating.  If anything, I'm sparing you the gory details.  I am not one of those hyper-clean, perfectionist housekeepers.  Far from it.  There's lettuce on my floor from salad-making last night, and it's STILL there because I just don't feel like it right now.  There are four empty water bottles in the living room.  Last night's dinner dishes are still in the sink.  I'll take care of it all later.  When I feel like it.

With most things, I find myself thinking "Wow, how could that have been so long ago?  It seems like yesterday!"  But not this.  Not Meg.  She seems like forever ago, like another life.  It was almost 30 years ago, and it feels like it.  I wonder what that means?

I wonder if it's a function of aging, that deaths don't loom as large in the memory anymore?  When I was younger, if someone I knew and cared about died, I'd never find myself forgetting they were dead.  Not so anymore, and especially with Margaret.  I find myself recalling experiences with her, and the, "Oh, wow--she's dead" takes a little while to flare.  Maybe my hellish life with her is so deeply ingrained that even her death can't make a dent?

I dunno.

Requiescat in Pace, Mr. Hagman

So, Larry Hagman died yesterday--81 years old.  Guy was an ex-smoker, struggled a lifetime with alcohol, and even underwent a liver transplant almost twenty years ago, and still made it to 81.  That's pretty impressive.

Now we won't get into the "should hard-drinking folks get liver transplants when there are plenty of people out there in need of organs who didn't booze themselves into cirrhosis?" argument.  Maybe another day.  I'm here to talk about why I absolutely hated Larry Hagman for years (I mean HATED),  and why it's so strange to find myself mourning him now.

I started smoking at the age of 11.  Not really smoking, mind you--I didn't inhale.  That came when I was 14 years old--a boy I liked offered me ten bucks to actually inhale.  I both needed the cash AND wanted to impress the boy (who went on to break into my best friend's car and steal her stereo . . . dang), so I did it.  After that?

It was all over the  but the weepin' and the wailin'.

I smoked for another 26 years.  No pussyfooting around, no quailing, self-hating smoker bull.  No, I smoked 2 1/2-3 packs a day, loud and proud.  I never was one to half-ass anything.  Not even self-murder.

When I was in college (where, at times, I came dangerously close to FOUR packs a day during mad cramming sessions at Village Inn), I first learned of "The Great American Smoke-out" and Larry Hagman's enthusiastic involvement, I was pissed.  I was angry almost beyond words. 

How dare they?  Where do they get off targeting me and mine?  Get off my back, my smoking's not hurting anyone, and besides, your research is flawed, this study didn't control for this, that study didn't control for that, and besides, my Grandpa lived to be 89 and smoked from the age of 10, blah, blah, blah! 

Blah!

Oh, I was a bitter, bitter woman.  In the finest tradition of cutting off my own nose to spite my face, I made a special effort to smoke as much as humanly possible on "Smoke-out" days.  Yeah!  I sure showed them, didn't I?

Durf.

Anyway, you get the point--I was an idiot, and I was very angry at Larry Hagman for wanting to help me not die prematurely.  I pointed fingers at his own past as a smoker (Oh, he got HIS, but now he wants to complain about MINE), his alcoholism (Yeah, Mr. Hagman--you can be a lush, but you're going to hassle me about being a smoker--at least my smoking doesn't cause car accidents, huh?), and anything else I could find in hopes that impeaching the spokesman would neutralize the message.

What a dolt I was, huh?

The funny thing?  I quit smoking 7 years ago next month.  Never been gladder of anything except the birth of my son.  Yet my anti-Hagman feelings never went away.  That grudge held, even though I completely understand now why he spoke up, and the good he was trying to accomplish.  I still found myself edgy and disdainful when I'd see his face on my TV or his name in print.  It wasn't until last night, after I read he'd died, that I went out on the web and dug up Mr. Hagman's biography.  Guess what?

He was kind of a cool guy.  His politics?  I'd always imagined him politically conservative because--well, because that's what we do, right?  If we don't like someone, we ascribe feelings and positions to them that better pigeonhole them in the "I don't like him" category.  But it turns out he wasn't a "winger."  In fact, he spoke quite strongly against G.W. Bush.  He was a huge proponent of alternative energy and conservation.  He was married to the same woman for almost 60 years.  In Hollywood!

He dropped acid and smoked weed.

Holy cow!  I didn't know anything about him, did I?  He didn't like smoking, he tried to inspire folks to quit, and from that, from my angry, fear-biter/addict perspective, that was enough to make him a monster.  An awful guy who wasn't in any way anything like me or anything I might admire. 

I'm not proud.  No, in fact, I'm embarrassed.  I know, it's human nature, it's what we do, but that doesn't make me happy.  Not only was Mr. Hagman right about smoking, but the rest of it had no bearing.  I'm constantly telling my son that someone else's bad behavior doesn't excuse or mitigate your own.  So Mr. Hagman drank too much--doesn't change the fact that MY smoking was horrid.  So Mr. Hagman had smoked himself--wasn't I the one always complaining when people refuse to benefit from my experience, choosing instead to disregard me and rush out there to screw up on their own? 

I think I've learned something here.  I really do.  In fact, I think I've learned a whole bucket of lessons here.  I feel bad.  I feel like I missed out on liking a pretty cool guy.  I'm wondering how many other people and things I've shuffled off into the "no, you suck" pile when they actually have a lot to offer?

I'm sorry, Mr. Hagman.  Larry.  I was wrong, you were right, and, while you weren't perfect, who is?  If we all sit around waiting for the perfect messenger, we'll be waiting forever.

And then they're gone

I think a lot about death. I think it may be because I don’t believe in an afterlife. Lacking that belief does seem to make the whole DEAD thing seem a lot more immediate.

When my beloved Frank died, I missed the funeral. I missed it because I didn’t take the paper at the time, and no one called me to tell me he had died. On a whim, I went online and pulled up the free obits for a glance, and there was Frank. It was the day of his funeral, and it was already over. Yes, I cried a whole big bunch over that one.

A few months later, someone came to my door. My mother answered, and, not recognizing the 6 foot tall, cowboy hat-wearing, exceedingly intoxicated man on the porch, lied about where I lived. She was scared. He seemed scary to her. I can understand why. She told me when I got home that some scary drunken person had asked for me, stammered something about Frank, and then wandered off. I knew immediately.

I took a deep breath, girded myself, and went next door, my brave and wonderful husband in tow. See, I knew it was Shawn. Shawn, Frank’s grandson and my one-time best childhood friend. And I knew he would be impossibly inebriated. Why? Because Shawn had been impossibly inebriated for most of his days since his early teens. Shawn’s childhood didn’t give him much of a chance at being anything but that.

Shawn and I hadn’t really spoken to each other in over twenty years. But he knew me instantly, and I knew him. He grabbed onto me like a man drowning and hugged me, sobbing. He was so wasted, had that scary, thrumming mixture of booze and meth going on. He just wanted to touch, to talk, to rail against the unfairness of Frank’s death. He paced, punched the air, staggered, sometimes doubled over with the pain of his loss and his terrible addictions. He bawled openly while telling me that he had been too inebriated to make Frank’s funeral, and how terrible he felt about that. Even sadder? I found out later that he HAD made it to Frank’s funeral, but had been so intoxicated that he didn’t remember being there. Isn’t that awful?

A neighbor came over after an hour or so, lied and said that Shawn’s Aunt (Frank’s daughter) had demanded we leave immediately or she was going to call the police. Yeah, I know you lied. I asked Frank’s daughter later on down the road, told her what you'd said and done in her name. You heartless creep. I started to argue with this neighbor, asked him for Frank’s daughter’s number so I could call her, explain things, but Shawn cut me off. He mumbled that it was all perfectly okay, and started to get into his car. I argued that he was too messed up to drive, while yon neighbor pushed for him to do it, arguing that it wasn’t very far (30 blocks), and it would be fine. I offered to drive Shawn, but he refused. He took out his keys, placed them in my hand, hugged me again, then ran off into the night. Heartless neighbor was joined by the father of the registered sex offender who lives across the street (with his sex offender son); they both began pushing me HARD to get the car out of Frank’s driveway before Shawn came back. Had it not been Shawn, had Shawn not been Frank’s grandson, I’d have told them to do their own damned dirty work.

Yes, both these men think they’re good guys. But that wasn't compassion going on, it wasn't goodness--it was a big, fat case of NIMBY . . . like the father of a sex offender has any right to whine about what goes on in ANYONE else's back yard.

I drove Shawn’s car (used to be Frank’s) back to the house where Shawn and I had played so many years before. The car still smelled of Frank--of hay, leather, mud, and clean, happy dog.  The house had been his mother’s when she had been married to the mean bastard Shawn called a step-dad through most of his childhood. His mother had married “up” and left the place to Shawn while she kept herself in much nicer digs. I parked the car in the driveway, locked the doors (it’s not a great neighborhood), and hung the keys on the inside handle of the screen door. My husband had followed in our car, and he drove me home.

I never saw Shawn again. He came by my house a couple more times (once at 10 pm, once at midnight, both times completely intoxicated), but I was on vacation when he came, and, to be brutally honest, I was glad. I have a husband, our son was seven years old then, and I just didn’t have a place in my world for a wildly unstable drug addicted alcoholic who shows up at all hours of the day and night needing to be rescued. I couldn’t be someone to answer his cries for help, I couldn’t be the person who would drop everything, family and home included, to be his savior. And the guilt has gnawed at me all this time. Because I wanted to be the person who could “save” Shawn. I wanted to be that hero, that wonderful, selfless saint. But I wasn’t, and I’m not. I am selfish, I put my husband, my child, and myself before the Shawns.

Shawn died just ten days shy of Christmas this year. The obituary said he died of head injuries sustained in a fall. That he died in the loving arms of his mother and sister. The obituary didn't say what all of us who loved Shawn knew. It didn't have to.

Could I have saved Shawn? I don’t think so. I mean, we all want to think we’re somehow magical, that we can reach people who’ve been far beyond the reach of others. But realistically? No, I don’t think I could have made a difference. Many others tried, including a number of professionals. No one could save Shawn, and Shawn couldn’t save himself. He was unarmed and ill-prepared for this life. And so he ended.

I don’t believe in an afterlife. But if I did, I’d put Shawn, clear eyed and peaceful, riding horses along a stream up over Monte with his Grandpa Frank. Maybe riding SiSi and Zen. Cindy trotting alongside, fetching sticks and chasing squirrels. Saddle bags loaded with Vienna sausages, Snack-Pack puddings, and a few cans of Fanta Red Cream Soda. A blanket, a beaver dam, and a forever full of laughter and love.

I’m so sorry, Shawn. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. I’m sorry you couldn’t help yourself. If there is something else, something beyond this, I hope you’re finally happy.