Death Comes From the Heart

Death… the final frontier. A true Star Trekian would get the reference of what I just said but it really is the final frontier. No matter what you believe, the end of your life on this planet is transcendence beyond anything you’ve ever known.

A week and a half ago I saw death as a walking, cane using, face and emerged changed. Perspective is interesting and is about the only thing we have: we as people I mean. My perspective comes from how I act, view and interact with the world. It’s what I think as I process information from my environment. I tend to be an extreme pessimist. That’s my perspective. I expect the worst from people and sometimes get it. I reason that if I aim low my expectations are easily exceeded.

How does this have anything to do with death you ask? From my perspective, it has everything to do with it. Death must be experienced by every living thing on this planet. No matter how much you’ve prayed or fucked your neighbor’s wife you still gotta die. The Grim Reaper doesn’t shy away from people with billions of dollars more than the skid row wino begging for pennies on the street corner. Death is more pervasive than taxes. If that’s not something to ponder, I don’t know what is.

A week and a half ago I was in a suburb of Vancouver, Canada. I went with my family to see my father-in-law one last time in this life. He has lost a battle, if you can call it that, with cancer. Lymphoma is destroying his lymph system and other systems along the way. His liver throws a daily welcome party for cancer and threatens an inevitable shutdown. His legs are swollen to the point where he no longer walks. A wheelchair and a recliner became his pals and he just bought a large screen plasma television he’s coveted for quite some time to enjoy in his last weeks of life. That’s legacy for ya.

I looked at the man. Veins showed through under the skin on his head. The man I grew to know was no longer there. His voice was different. His spirit was that of a dieing man who suffered the disappointment of realizing that he can’t just party himself to death like he planned to a year ago after he was diagnosed.

Our final evening in the burb included a gourmet lobster dinner with fresh lobster shipped in from Halifax, Canada. It’s on the east coast of the country for all you geographically challenged folks out there. Quick tell me the capital of Ontario. Where is Ontario you ask? Look on a fucking map and while you’re there, make sure you know where Vancouver and Halifax are.

My sister-in-law came with her doctor husband and brought the little red beauties. She plopped them in the boiler and everyone ate up. The children were grumpy. The man of the hour couldn’t really eat much and it was time for us to go.

My wife, in her beauty, went to sit with her father. I looked on as she did that for the last time. I wish I could say that I was touched or moved by the scene but it really goes much beyond those simple terms. It changed me. I don’t feel different. I just am. My sister-in-law went to sit with my wife and they cried together with their father on the couch. I sat there with tears streaming down my cheeks and the man of the hour joined them. For a few minutes people were silent except for the muffled sobs emerging from my sister-in-law. Her doctor husband didn’t cry. He just looked down as if he wanted to act in a manner appropriate for the situation. This bedside manner obviously gained from spending many brutal hours in med school, served him well as he assumed a pose demur. My brother-in-law, my wife’s brother, couldn’t really look at anyone. He looked down and when he did look up he reminded me of a 40 year old little boy.

We soon left and began our drive to Seattle for our flight back. When we got to the border the customs officer asked us the purpose of our trip.

“To see her dieing father,” I said without looking at the man. That was the first time I ever got anything close to respect from a US customs officer. Maybe it was the first time I paid attention, but I noticed. He said he was sorry and then flagged us to go inside to take care of some issue, which was completely legitimate.

A half hour later we stopped in Bellingham at the natural food store and stocked up on sugar for the trip home. I wandered through the place in a daze. I didn’t really care what happened or what people thought. I’m pretty sure I scowled at a lesbian while she checked out the yogurt.

The trip back was sleepless. It sucked but managed to echo our mood. My child realized she would never see grandpa again that day.

I am now different than I was 2 weeks ago. I’m not completely sure how and I’m not sure if it’s important but I am. Some things don’t matter as much as they did. I’ve become more committed to things than I was before. It’s time for me to move on with life and be ready to face death when it comes. I have no wish for how I die other than I hope it’s not from cancer. Cancer is the most humiliating way someone can die. It’s awful. It’s like you are punished by constantly having to watch your wife brutally raped in front of you while you do nothing because you are too weak.

I’m different now. I plan to be ready when my time comes. Make sure you are ready too. It’s important. It’s something we all go through, so deal with it.

As always, thanks for reading to the end. I’ll try to not space my columns off anymore. Talk to you next week.

Greatness Stays

Here we are. It’s a simple statement but it seriously embraces the truth. Here we are. What are we going to do about it? I ponder that frequently. For me, figuring out what I’m going to do seems a lot more difficult than a lot of people I know. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but I do know that it relates directly to the choices I’ve made and the people I’ve decided to give my allegiance.

While I watched TV this week I heard Gene Hackman talk about greatness. He played the part of a football coach and it was one of those inspiring moments that sports movies bring out like only sport movies can. It’s truly inspiring how inspiring a sports movie can be. Anyway, ole Gene said something about greatness and how greatness no matter how small stays with a man. I was inspired.

The truth of what he talked about, or what some writer decided to make him talk about, was the choices people make. I realize this sounds like shite, but it’s true. Everything bases itself on a series of events we as people put ourselves through. Think about it like this. Different opportunities present themselves in different circumstances for different people. This can be as simple as taking a new way home from work. It’s new and offers another set of possibilities from what you are used to. Even if you take the same way home from work every day, each day presents a different scenario where you need to react, make decisions and live with the decisions of other people, animals and natural elements. And ole Gene decided to talk about greatness. Here is where it gets good.

You see greatness is a decision. It’s not something that just happens to you. Think of all the trust fund babies who grow up with a silver spoon in their mouth. Did they have to do anything great to get what they were born into? No, not really. All they had to do was get born, which is a great thing, but it’s not anything that everyone else hasn’t done. Someone else did great things before them and they get to reap the benefits. But they have the choice to do something great or live their lives in mundane comfort and never challenge themselves to anything.

Now greatness, there’s something to sneeze at. Greatness, what does it mean? Personally I think everyone makes their own definition. What’s great to someone is piss to someone else. It’s like that with everything. Greatness does not have to be big, just great. I think sometimes getting the heck out of bed is pretty great. Greatness is also big. Einstein was great. Nelson Mandela was great. This people were great in a big way.

But greatness… think about it. Greatness sticks with a man. Think about that. I do all the time and I know what it means. For me it means the ability to look at things for what they truly are and move beyond the useless things in life and focus on what needs to happen. This is great for me. I’m 35 and I just figured this out. There is so much bullshit in the world but nothing stops me from being great. All I have to do is decide to be great, do something about it then repeat. Pretty soon I’ll do great things all the time, because, as Gene said, greatness sticks with a man.

My daughter is great. She took her first steps at eight months, potty trained, on her own, before she was two and positively affects people wherever she goes, and I’m her daddy. She sticks with me and I take care of her and help keep her safe. My wife, her mom, stays with our daughter too. Our daughter shares her greatness, grace and beauty with us every single day a million times and we love her. That’s great. You see, I already decided to do great things. I’m not sure I knew it. Now I know and I’ll keep on doing them until the day I die simply because it’s my choice.

Greatness, it’s the choice we all have. Do you want to make that choice? It’s not hard. All you have to do is make up your mind and got for it.

Thanks for reading to the end. Talk to you next week.

The Real Married Man.

The Real Married Man Ponders a New Meaning To an Old Tune

Well here I am back again after a couple of weeks and a move. I’m sure all six of my avid readers have had their faces glued to their computers in anticipation. Alas here I am again ready to type this week’s emotional and mental adventure.

On the way to the toilet just a few minutes ago a thought pierced my head like an arrow. How many roads must a man walk down before he becomes an asshole? I realize this is a bit of a bastardization of a perfectly good Bob Dylan tune but life is pretty much a bastardization of a Bob Dylan tune if you really think about it. The funny thing is that I immediately came up with an answer. That answer, in my case anyway, if you take an antihistamine and couple that with and asthma stimulant is pretty fucking quick. I’m talking really quick.

I’m one of those guys who doesn’t do well with caffeine either. I get angry whenever I ingest some. The odd time I’m ok and I can usually handle it if I’m ready and know what I’m doing, but sometimes it gets the better of me. Suddenly I turn into this green eyed monster fatman with a bitch streak a mile wide and hair on its back. That’s how I feel right now. Ad to that the fact that my lungs actually hurt from inflammation; I’m a pretty peachy character. My wife just told me to talk to the hand after one of my bitchy spells. I laughed but she’s right.

This takes me to a realization that I had earlier in the day. Ever since I was eight years old I’ve been on some stimulant or another for asthma. I was only relieved of this in my early twenties when my allergies went largely into remission. It seems they are coming back the last couple of years and I’ve had to take something for them. However, as I child I was always jacked on something. My hands always shook from the medication and I would have huge mood swings but my asthma attacks stopped mostly.

It was a trade off, a catch-22. I lived in a paradox where I had to endure something horrible for something good and the good outweighed the terrible. I grew to resent these feelings that accompanied my drugs. To this day I believe that’s why I get so angry, other than my putting something in my body that doesn’t belong that’s the only thing that makes sense.

The truly sad thing about all this is my role model of a mother smoked like a chimney through all this. She still does. Every Christmas was sitting around the tree in a haze. It was like smoke up Kath while your son slowly dies in the corner. Even now I have a reduced lung capacity. A normal man my size should have a 6 liter capacity, mine’s only 5. Now that really sucks if you ask me. That means that somewhere somehow 1/6 of my lungs and lung tissue has been destroyed. They burned up now just fill the space as scare tissue.

Smoke the fuck up Kath. Why don’t you have another drink while you’re at it? Yes this has degraded into a typical bitch session where I just rag on my mother and her choices and she has no recourse where she can defend herself. In my defense though I told her about what I wrote and she couldn’t handle it and told me that she was tired of hearing about what an awful person she was. I can respect that but it still doesn’t change the situations I was put in without any real control over my environment. I asked her to quit over and over. We got rid of everything else I was allergic to, but not that. And that my friends I think was the real problem all along.

The unfortunate thing is this is true and a lot of parents make decisions at the sacrifice of their children. People just think they will grow up alright, which is mostly true. I think maybe if you give someone the best shot possible maybe they’ll turn out a lot better than alright. They won’t spend their lives dealing; instead they’ll spend their time focusing.

Yes this got preachy, but it’s the truth from my perspective and I can only write what I think.

As always thanks for reading to the end and I’ll talk to you next week. The column will resume its regular course of Tuesday morning publication unless something gets in the way.