What makes you feel nostalgic?
When I hear certain songs they help relive my favorite memories.
When I smell certain aromas, they too take me back. Smoke from a grill from family picnics.
Fresh cut grass when my father cut the lawn. The smell of a corn field outside my childhood home.
When I do something with my children, I think back to my time with my dad.
Photos of course have that special magic to.
It’s nice to reflect and remember.
If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?
My Team would be called the Profiteers,
Green and Off White colors (like US dollars)
Mascot would be a $100 dollar bill and/or Benjamin Franklin.
…because that’s all that matters in the field, in the office, on TV…in the bank accounts…
Truth hurts.
The Great Gummy Escape
I’m still trying to accept my neighbor’s impending end in Hospice care.
What’s worse is that his son has taken minimal care of him or his mother
Who now has COVID and is in bed almost 24/7.
I am only a neighbor. The 24/7 Nurses seem to be doing the minimum for them.
Hospice won’t assign a full-time nurse due to his COVID as well.
I feel like I’m the only one losing sleep over them.
I’ve done everything in my power and reach to help them this far.
Now I just wait.
I don’t want to drink anymore for a while. I’m proud of myself for not restocking the
Bourbon. Especially with New Year’s Eve coming up. That’s the last thing I want is to
Enter the new year hungover.
So I took a CBD gummy and drifted off to the Magic Place of I Don’t Care Right Now.
My head was lightheaded, the room slowly felt strange. I interpreted sounds strangely and it was only 8pm.
I got ready for bed and maybe actually slept for more than the usual 4 hours.
My head still has a little fogginess to it, but my liver is happy and I have some energy for a change.
Sometimes I need help in letting go, if only for a few hours.
How have your political views changed over time?
From optimistic, to remorse, to dismay.
(I was both Democrat and Republican)
I don’t know who they are anymore and I lost trust in both.
I have been told this many many times.
It’s all true. Whether it’s work, life, perception of others towards me…whatever.
In everything I create in my workshop. Every word that I write.
I have to matter, make a difference, leave a mark….change someone’s life or perspective.
My neighbor in hospice care is reaching the end.
Tonight his semi-absent son probably ransacked the house. Took his dad’s laptop….the mail now remains untouched, bills that aren’t automatic will now pile up.
The family lawyer will need to step in and hopefully take over.
I may have taken too much ownership over his care…but his son didn’t.
Tonight my neighbor was rambling incoherently as the morphine and other drugs help his stressed brain try to accept that there is nothing left to do.
His 91 year old wife caught his Covid…and she may not be far behind. The son apparently didn’t arrange for his mother to be looked at, or direct the nurses on site to do anything.
He is waiting for them to die.
….and I can’t do anything about it.
So yes…I am taking this personal…and trying to accept that I can do nothing more.
But wait.
We all fall down.
My neighbor is nearing the end of his life. His brain is still in Fight or Flight mode, but his
Body is betraying him more and more each hour, each day.
Now instead of clear, sharp and concise words, he moans and mumbles silently.
He is sure we can hear him and his pleas to get out of bed.
I made so many promises to him this week, to help him get more freedom, to get out of bed, to go
For a spin in his wheelchair. Anything to placate him and give him a brief pause from his “imprisonment”.
Our last conversation didn’t go well, he wanted to sue someone, anyone for malpractice, for keeping him restrained in bed. (He can barely lift
His hands or grasp a napkin).
As I tried my best to take his dictation and type the email (that I wouldn’t send) he would drift off. Then when I get him semi-awake, he got mad at me and denied
He did indeed drift off.
I think as a retired airline pilot, he can’t handle any sense of losing control, of relying on others.
…of being helpless.
My own parents seemed to be the opposite in their final years. Knowing they couldn’t be who they were, five, ten years ago. They silently accepted their
New normal. To be placed in the 24/7 care of a professional institution. I tired to ease my Father’s transition. I moved him closer in a small trailer. I should have moved him in with us.
But we were both working, and had a young child to take care of. I couldn’t expect my wife to drop everything to care for my father.
He seemed happy at the new place, he had a private room , away from the main house. So he still had his space, and could take walks whenever he wanted to.
My mother couldn’t walk anymore, so she got a bed next to the window.
Dad made it for two more years, my mother, maybe another 3-4 years if memory serves me correctly. They all blur together and fade each year.
My in-laws have ignored the signs and the advice of their own children and now it’s too late to find a better alternative. Drastic measures need to happen. Purging so many items, and the large house they should have never, ever built.
Denial is a cruel drug.
I just hope I have some semblance of reality when my time comes. I must accept my new norm as it changes each decade. I just hope I live into my 80’s as my parents did. To see new inventions and wonders.
To see my grandchildren flourish.
I fear growing old, but I know it has to happen, how I face it, how I accept it will determine how I live my life moving forward.
Share what you know about the year you were born.
Awesome Mustangs were on the road…..
I got a reminder this month that Christmas isn’t about yourself.
It’s about sacrifice and caring for others who are in need. It’s not about getting or giving that perfect gift or getting “X” amount of gifts.
Thank you everyone for the prayers and messages about Buck. It really means a lot. I hope it also reminds you about priorities and what’s truly important in this world.
To remind you to make every day count. Because we don’t know when they will run out.
I told a dear friend in response to asking how I’m doing today….
It’s hard to see someone fight so hard for life and to only lose so hard. Everyone should treat each day as a gift.
Maybe we would all be more decent to each other….
Maybe.
I’m so tired and mad at myself that I’m “upset” that this isn’t a “perfect holiday.”
They never are…it’s all perspective.
Tell everyone what a gift they are to you.
That is the perfect present.
Are you a good judge of character?
As I get older, I would say No. I’m not a good judge of Character.
I have hope that people have good in them…but I need a history with them. I need a track record. Consistency.
I’ve been disappointed too many times before.
But the biggest thing is, I can’t even determine what kind of person I am on any given day.
…he who lives in glass houses….
…or he who is without sin, cast the first stone.
Closing Time/Last Call
Do you remember the last thing you said to someone before they died?
Especially if the death was sudden or too early in their lives.
The first and hardest loss was my sister who was 9 years older than me. She was 19 and died in a car accident.
I remember the last time I physically saw her, it was dark and snowing, the moving van just pulled out of our driveway.
I was ten, and it felt like I would never ever come back to Pennsylvania and see everyone ever again. I was being banished to Florida.
I yelled out “I love you” and we exchanged a few letters in the months that followed, I cant even remember if spoke on the phone.
I also remember coming home from playing with my friends and there were so many cars in the driveway. I walked into the crowded living room and my Mother looked absolutely
Devastated. My older cousin pulled me gently outside and sat me down on her lap. She broke the news to me of how my Sister was a passenger and my new sister-in-law (I barely knew) both
Passed away in a car accident the night before.
Next was my Brother. He was actually beating his cancer, but his treatment actually killed him. I got a panicked call from the hospital my sister told me he was having trouble breathing.
I booked the first flight for the next morning as I had to pick my father up that night returning from his vacation up North. But just as I was ready to leave for the airport to get my father,
My sister called from the hospital again a few hours from her first call….she couldn’t even form the words. She handed the phone to her husband and he gently said: “He’s gone.”
My brother and I never called each other, this was before cell phones…and he was a Nomad. You would never know where he was at any given time. But when we saw each other in person we caught up and
Did things together. I can’t remember the last thing we said to each other.
A couple years later, it was my father. He went to the ER one night for pain, and I picked him up. He would need a follow-up visit with the doctor. We were closing on the sale of our house the next day, and the nursing home said he was rushed back to the
Hospital again. The hospital called and said he aspirated some fluid for a MRI and it got into his lungs that were already affected by Black Lung from the Coal Mines. He never came off the respirator. He was unconscious by the time I got his room in the ICU.
I hope I told him I loved him the night before and probably said “See you later”….
Maybe.
Next was my Mother, I saw her at a surprise birthday party for her 90th. I flew up and saw some other family members I haven’t seen for decades. She had a stroke and couldn’t speak afterwards. Again I scheduled the first flight out once she was back at the nursing home.
As I was stepping on the tram to the main gate early in the morning, The nursing home called and said she too was gone. I know I told her I loved her, and probably on the phone at one time or another before the end.
We assume there is always another day, another chance. But not really.
Do we learn from this? No, not really.
The Past Is A Harsh Mistress 