Sunday, May 31, 2015

Great Grief


Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The lovely Miss Beverly and I have traveled to the great state of Texas to witness the wedding of our niece to a fine young man. Fine enough that there was no sharp intake of breath when asked if there was any reason, no beat of silence while deciding to hold our forever silence.

I know that writing about taking vacation in a cavalier manner violates all internet blogging protocol. The more literate bad guys might read that last paragraph and covet things that are not theirs; items of great worth, vast treasures. The lovely Miss Beverly’s pie plates, or the electric heater that I warm myself with on cold winter mornings are two items that would be irreplaceable. By the time the bad guy’s lips stop moving reading the first paragraph, I will have gotten home and have quite the surprise waiting for them having had my four day Texas indoctrination. Shoot them all and let God decide is the state motto.

The title of this blog will seem strange given that I have spent a lovely celebratory weekend at a niece’s wedding. No it is not a cynical look at the institution of marriage. Marriage when practiced is fine and glorious institution. It is not an interminable sentence of drudgery and boredom. Marriage when practiced will take care of itself.  No, the grief that I write of has nothing to do with the temporary living of my life for the weekend. It just happens to be the topic that has made it to the top of the list of things that I have to write about.

It is one of the blessings of writing a blog on a regular basis over a period of 4 years. There were times early on when writing was a chore. There were times when I would have to sit down and start typing words and hopefully like throwing so much spaghetti against my mind wall, something would stick and 1000 words of semi-cogent ideas would be stitched together into a blog.

These days there is a list of five to ten ideas kept on my phone’s action memos. Each one marinating there fighting for their moment in the sun. Some are there for a week before they write themselves. Some are never born; worthy only of a paragraph inside of a bigger blog. Others sit there for months, slowly gathering ideas, wanting to be expressed but the ideas are so hard or so personal that they resist being formed.

Writing about grief has been a slow grower and this is its week.

The spring while long and cold was also full of grief. Friends and family lost jobs, lost  loved ones, lost their health or their family’s health. They have stories of great grief, of huge sadness. I am not here to write about the specifics of their grief, the cause or the resolution of that grief. It is not my place. I do not have permission. It would serve no purpose.

Great grief is a horrible name for this blog. It brings to mind a Charlie Brown cartoon with Lucy screaming “Good Grief Charlie Brown.” That may be why she only received five cents for her psychiatry sessions. There is nothing good about grief. It hurts. It scars. Once visited upon you, you will never be the same. You will get better but never the same.

Walking with these friends and acquaintances through their grief has awakened memories of great grief in my own story, a story that I can tell because I have passed through the grief. I am okay, forever changed but okay.

Mrs. Gray, my high school English teacher, taught a class called death and dying. Why is was permitted or needed in high school in the late 70’s is certainly debatable. While everyone will die, I doubt that it would be considered core curriculum. But there you have it. Mrs. Gray offered it and a lot of people took it. The curriculum included reading through Dr. Kubler-Ross’s book “On Death and Dying.” In it she says that there are five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Thankfully, Mrs. Gray drilled it into our heads that there was no order, stages could be addressed in any order or could be skipped altogether.

It was good that she emphasized that the stages were more of a suggestion than a rule. If not, I would have been certified as crazy. It appears that for Sharritts the stages of grief are anger, anger, angression, depranger, and acceptance.

Twenty-five years ago, in August, the new school year was just starting at Purdue. It was move in weekend at the residence hall. Excitement was high with the anticipation of new beginnings. I received a phone call at 4:00 p.m. “Go to your sister’s apartment, get her, and come to Methodist hospital’s emergency room. Your dad was in a farm accident and he is very hurt. Hurry.”

It is bad when you get to the emergency room and when you walk in there are more preachers surrounding your family than there are family members. The news was bad. Terminal. We spent the rest of the weekend unplugging the machinery of extension.

During that time, the curtain of grief and its anger was being drawn. There is a memory of making arrangements, the funeral, 3 days of rain and a solo walk through every field of the farm slogging in ankle deep mud on a hot, muggy, August day.

After that, I remember feeling normal but having the lovely Miss Beverly being concerned about how angry I was. And then I remember nothing until the one year anniversary of dad’s death when I remembered wondering how in the world am I going to survive the next two weeks. Argh!!!!

There were dreams for the next five years where dad would return to the farm after a “walk about” asking why I had not kept milking cows because it was a dairy farm. Finally, the F___ you. You don’t get to leave and then make demands on what happens to the farm.

Those have passed. Passed successfully largely through the practice of marriage for which I am thankful to the lovely Miss Beverly.

He is still missed. There are times when I see his contemporaries and wonder what wisdom I missed with his loss.

To my suffering friends, I am sorry. It is hard. I cannot make it better. I can only listen, note your denial, anger, bargaining, depression or acceptance in whatever, depth or order for whatever duration.

Hang in there.

Roger.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Older than Dirt


Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am pretty good. Isn’t it glorious? This weather. I hope that you are in a part of the world where spring has sprung. I do know based on the demographic information gleaned from your bumps up against my blog (That would make a terrible R rated movie title) that some of you are moving towards the dark days of the year. Your winter is coming. I suppose that the penguins have marched 10 miles in land and are just standing there looking down at their feet waiting for the snow to hit the oscillator so to speak. Good luck and hang in there.

Spring has sprung. I feel like a drunk on a Distillery tour. “So you mean that all of these barrels are full of whiskey and we can have a sample at the end of the tour? I have just one other question. Where’s the straw?” Ahh the newness of late spring to early summer. All of the photosynthesis. The corn is the ground. The beans will be seeded by Friday. Let breath deep and let the oxygen replenishment begin.
I have had a topic weighing on my mind for several weeks. In late March, I read several news articles about the world’s oldest person passing away at 117 years old.  That’s right Misao Okawa, of Japan, lived to be a ripe old 117 years before succumbing to life. As HeeHaw would proclaim, “Salute.” What would you put on her death certificate as reason for death? 117 years? That should be explanation enough.

If you have been a long time reader of this blog, or as I like to call you a long time blog bumper, you will recall my fascination with uber old age. In fact, I believe that someone currently alive will live to be 150 years old. Since that is the case, I see no reason why that won’t be me. No reason other than my being mildly overweight and living a life way too full of stress. But I do imagine what it would be like to live 150 years. The changes that you would see during that time. Take Misao for example. She was 47 years old when two atomic bombs exploded in her country. That is amazing to me. The lovely Miss Beverly and I entered empty nest around that time. Life feels pretty set to me. And yet she had another 70 years to go. I have several relatives that didn’t make it to 70 (we do not have the longest lived genes in the pool) and to be honest we thought that they were older than dirt their final ten years and she had another 70 years to live.
Yes, it would take a great sense of style and grace to do 117 years.

As with the reign of any royalty, there is always someone standing in the wings ready to take up the mantle of the oldest person in the world. With Misao’s passing, that title fell to Gertrude Weaver a lovely 116 year old Arkansas woman, who did not seem to be burdened by the name of Gertrude. Maybe bullying doesn’t have long term affects. That would be a good study. Alas, I used the past tense when I announced Gertrude’s ascension to old age royalty. While she lived 116 days with the name Gertrude, it appears that the celebrity stress was too great for Gertrude and five days later she died from . . . you guessed it being 116 years old. 
Five days is not the shortest reign of the oldest person in the world. That honor fell Emma Tillman in 2007 who held the title for 4 days. Gertrude sure gave her a run for her money.

Speaking of reigning, wouldn’t it be cool if the 89 year old Queen Elizabeth lived another 26 years or so and claimed two titles; the oldest person and the Queen of England? Charles would be pretty mad about it though.
So now Jeralean Talley of Michigan is the oldest person in the world tipping the birthday candles at 115.

The article that I read said that the oldest people in the world usually held the title for about a year. Which makes me wonder why the CDC and world health organization isn’t out there seeking a cure. We need bike-a-thons, walks, and other fund raisers. A cure has to be found for the death sentence that “oldest person in the world” has become. That is a terrible diagnosis.
Doctor: “Congratulations, you’re the oldest person in the world, but I am sorry to say that you will die within the next year.”

Oldest person in the world: “What will I die of doctor?
Doctor: “Being the oldest person in the world.”

Congratulations Jeralean! May your reign last for many years and may those years be filled with grace and joy.
Take Care.

Roger

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Better Living Through Technology


Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The glorious moment that we have all been waiting for has finally arrived. That’s right! Black Raspberry winter is upon us. Last week we had highs in the 80’s lows in the 60’s. Tuesday this week the high will be 65. The lovely Miss Beverly has been using my Black Raspberry winter ravings as an opportunity to question my veracity. I have been defending my honor; exclaiming that it “really is a thing.” It has always been a thing. I have not been lying to you. Thankfully, Wiki has my back.

“Blackberry winter is a colloquial expression used in south and Midwest North America referring to a cold snap that often occurs in late spring when blackberries are in bloom.” True as cold snaps go a high of 65 isn’t much of a cold snap, but compared to 85 of last week, several people will be scurrying to find their light jackets. And as far as proof that I wasn’t just making this crap up, 65 for the high is proof positive that the old sage was correct once again. Another indicator, that reading this blog provides you with the opportunity to connect to a time that was simpler and wiser, is the rest of the Wiki entry.

“Another colloquialism for these spring cold snaps is “Linsey-Woolsey Britches winter”, referring to a type of winter long underwear which could be put away after the last cold snap.” No, you did not just read Lindsey Lohan B*&^%$es winter. Stick with me, slow down and read just a little slower. It will stop much confusion and misunderstanding down the road. Linsey-Woolsey Britches should read flannel sheets. That’s correct. It is time to put away the flannel sheets. The Wild Black Raspberries are blooming. Soon the lovely Miss Beverly will be donning her long sleeve shirt, coating herself with bug spray and wondering out to the raspberry patch to pick several gallons worth of God’s free goodness for cobbler and pie.

I live a paradoxical life. On the one hand, I rely on old sayings from my grandmother to explain why I needed to keep a jacket handy while heading out on a bright spring morning to do some sort of farm chore and on the other hand I am a slave to technology.

I love electrical doodads. I always have. For the younger readers in the audience, I was a young child when calculators made it to the main stream. I had to have one. Never mind that my mathematical requirements barely exceeded the need to add a series of 3 digits numbers with all of that messy carrying the number over to the next column. Besides my teachers were never going to let me use it for my homework. You had to mark out and show the carried number forward. You couldn’t just fake it and randomly make a scribble that could conceivably be that 10 you carried over from the ones column. You had to show that you knew the process. Still the Casio 5 function (yes, it could do square roots) 9 digit calculator in the Hooks (CVS) drugstore was calling my name. Never mind that it cost 40 dollars. I had to have it.

So I saved and I saved and I saved my money. I still remember taking it home and pulling it out of the box in its form cut Styrofoam perfection. I remember plugging the adapter in because we had no batteries at home and flipping the switch and having those green lit 9 digits stream across the screen. How was I to know that I would later be betrayed by the horizontal middle bar on the second digit when it failed to light and I wrote that the answer to 100 + 88 was 108 instead of the correct number, 188.  I should have known. If I had not been using a calculator, there is a chance that I would have known that there was not any ones to carry and it was a pretty simple calculation.

I have a long string of brief love affairs with electronic doodads. The calculator was followed by a portable cassette recorder, followed by a TI30, a calculator mandated by the chemistry teacher and had the added benefit of a biorhythm chart. It was such an eye opening experience to suddenly know that a chemistry test next Friday was out of the question. My intelligence biorhythm was off the charts low that week. This called for a preemptive sick day or three so that my brain would be fully engaged in the problems at hand. My chasing after the latest technology was severely hampered after I left for college.

I suddenly had no more disposable income to pay for my technology cravings. Those were lean years. The microwave, VCR, and CD player had to be postponed until other necessities like food, rent, diapers, and school books could be purchased. I am happy to say that one of the greatest advantages of the empty nest is that the technology chasing hounds are fully funded once again and I am free to pursue my quarry once again.

I have numerous gps biking computers. Thankfully, the folks at Garmin have made improvements every year. I can now take my bike with me to another state. Put the Garmin on my bike, ride for 50 miles and have some assurance that I will get back home. It is very liberating. What isn’t liberating is that, there are times when I can’t proclaim if my bike ride was good or not until the data from said bike ride has been uploaded to the web and compared to the bike rides of millions of other riders.

My quest for gadgets that map out my life; that record the statistics of all things Roger has taken me into the realm of fitness bands and smart watches. This is for a good cause (I tell myself). The health plan at work has an incentive for healthy living activities. Last year, we were able to put our steps in from any old pedometer and if a certain level was reached a discount was offered for your health insurance. As with many things done on the honor system, it was ruined by the dishonorable. So this year in order to stop the cheating (1,000,000 steps in 3 months), participants have to log steps through an unalterable fitness band hooked up to an app on the internet. So I had to buy a fitbit.

Then the apple watch went on sale. (well sort of. You sale leaves a connotation that when you buy it you actually get to take possession of it. Not buy it with the promise of getting it some day at some point in the distant future.) Well I could tell that the apple watch could do so much more that the fitbit. It would take your heart rate, tell how long you had been sitting, and make several general observations about the overall welfare of your life. (Real time biorhythms). However, it cannot tell you how well you sleep. The fitbit can though. I have found out that I spend 8 hours in bed to get 6.5 good hours of sleep. The rest is spent tossing and turning, and getting up to relieve my 52 year old bladder. In fact, I did not know how poorly I was sleeping before I owned my fitbit.

All of this and I have still been thwarted because I do not know how fast my heart is beating (or even if it is beating for that matter.) To make matters worse, it may stop beating before an apple watch would ever be delivered. Thankfully, Microsoft created the Band. It does the heart beat thing. I am glad to know that my heart is beating. In fact my heart beats at a leisurely 42 beats per minute when I am sleeping soundly. Which isn’t very long each night. Remember the tossing, turning and relieving. I must admit that I am relieved that I have documented proof of a beating heart.

All of this chasing around for something that is as plain as the nose on your face is a bit silly. Of course my heart beats, exercise is good for me, if I ride north for a while, east for a while, south for the same while as I road north and back west, I will get back to where I started. If I don’t get enough sleep during the night a quick nap at lunch will set things right.

Still I chase, not trusting that after the cold snap that accompanies the blooming of the black raspberries it is safe to take off the flannels.

Take care

Roger