V.D.

Somebody asked me what I was doing for Valentine's Day. We were in the kitchen at work. People were talking about their weekend plans--especially looking forward to a federally induced 3-day weekend.

"So, you have plans for Valentine's Day?"

I was in the midst of my beeline for the coffee maker. I came to an immediate and full stop. The question halted me, and, before I could check myself, I said that Valentine's Day was a bullshit holiday.

Now everyone in the kitchen froze. The only sound was the very faint whirring of the microwave in the background. Someone was making oatmeal, I think.

I realized what I did. I spoke bad about that (b.s.) holiday of romance among people who were primed for romance. Or pined for romance. Or thought that they were supposed to participate in this external marker for romance.

And here I was, offering grumpy-Sanders, bellicose-Trump pronouncements on hearts, chocolates and flowers. On overpriced dinners for amateurs who only go out once or twice a year.

Truthfully, I like chocolates and flowers and fancy dinners. I often buy them myself. It was part of my training, because my truly loving spouse does not show unending devotion via these symbols. [Except for the dinners. We do that together. They are fun. We like to eat. And drink fancy drinks. And wine, too.] We have our own way of maintaining civility and sparks just shy of an incendiary device as part of our long term Waltz of the Incompatibles.

So my highly attuned senses dismissed the idea that V-day is important to show love in your life. Dismissed it a little too quickly and with a bit too much fervor.

Someone broke the silence and said, "I'd think you'd be like that about Valentine's Day."

I really appreciate that "do what you want" attitude. So, you all do you.

Beds

I can't really remember the beginning of this story. There have been so many versions of the beginning that I can't quite place the proximate cause. And the initial what really isn't important.

Where my memory--and this story--starts is driving up to Henry Ford Macomb Hospital on 19 Mile Road. It was dark, but that doesn't mean too much in mid-December Michigan. If it was dark it could have been 5 pm, but I think it was closer to eight.

I don't know if I checked into the hotel first, but I must have so I wouldn't be distracted by that personal logistical detail of where I would sleep.

Although she'd been at Henry Ford Macomb before, I hadn't. She had been abulanced to the ER the day before. There was confusion about whether she was getting admitted so I flew in to see what was happening.

I walked into the hospital to find her room. She didn't have one. Somehow she was still in the ER and had been for 36 hours. The nice lady at the desk told me to get back in my car and drive around the hospital to the ER entrance. I asked if I could walk and she looked at me like I didn't realize that I was in the Motor City where people do NOT walk when they could drive.

She was in an observation bay at the far end of the ER, a little bitty lump underneath a bunch of blankets that doubled her silhouette. She was asleep so I brushed a kiss on her wisps of white hair. Her skin was gray. I followed the IV to see that she was getting blood. To counteract that gray, I supposed.

There was a bunch of untouched food on the tray next to her and some empty blood bags.

This joint was a disaster. Patients in ER limbo for days. Improper biohazard handling. An impotent patient advocacy process. (Why would an organization create multiple ineffective avenues for remediation? You only need one ineffective procedure.)

She was surprised to see me when she woke up, except she really wasn't. Waking up in a hospital bed is accompanied by a through-the-looking-glass haze, and, while I didn't belong in this scene neither did she.

Her smile was weak, but it was sunny and I was so happy to be there: to advocate for her; to make the nurses really see her; to argue about a room with the moronic patient advocate; to steamroller through to the hospital president; and to get what she needed.

I was there to watch the miracle blood bring back the color in her cheeks and watch her lose her wilt. I sat with her for a few days. I held her hand. I made sure she ordered food and that she ate it. I positioned her poinsettia so she could remark again and again on how beautiful it was. I held her hand again, and rubbed her back. And she melted at the touch. I sat next to her with my computer on my lap so she would wake up and see me. We chit chatted about pretty much nothing.

I did this, I thought, for her. But when she peacefully died in her sleep in her own bed a short few weeks later, I knew that I had done it for me and that it was my hand melting when I touched hers.

How fortunate that the hospital was such a shit-show. I am grateful for a last intimate connection. I am happy that I was present with her and she with me. It was a good-bye that I didn't recognize in that moment. But it was good.

Thinking about you, Mom, especially today, the anniversary of that last time you snuggled up in your bed and went to sleep. Sweet dreams.

---

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What Does the Pope Eat?

I grew up in a Cathlolic church filled with banners of doves and peace signs draping the altar and hanging behind the choir of earnest guitarists singing folk versions of psalms. And, once, even bongo drums.

My favorite priest was Father Mike. The other priests were Father LastNames. Mike had a beard and longish hair. He was Jesus-esque. Jesus was a carnie in a play, and his disciples were nice carnie hippies. 

This was working class Detroit. 

Parishioners were UAW members, many were immigrants from Italy, and most everyone's last name ended in a vowel. Ventimiglia. Bornkowski. Buscemi. Kozlowski. Lucido.

We went to public school and were threatened occasionally with Catholic school if we didn't straighten up. 

To relieve boredom at a time when you didn't bring activities for kids to Mass, I poured through my misselette reading next week's gospel--or The Adventures of Jesus as I thought of them. My favorite stories told of houses built on sand, or the hero saving a woman from a crazed crowd, or the magic feeding of a mountain with a few fish. The ones I that bored me started off, "Beloved..."

I didn't like confession in a dark phone booth, but we did it as a group and that was easy. I received Confirmation--also known as the sacrament of exit. And I, too, mostly left.

I was indoctrinated, though. I knew the secret handshakes. And I knew that Jesus was love.

I got married in Church and, in the sacrament of re-entering, I had kids. We could afford the parish school and the city schools were mostly sketchy.

My son was an alter server. He wanted me to be a lay minister of communion. The choir director would see me singing and asked me to join the music ministry. I served on the school committee to help in technology, but refused Parish Council. Because I'm a really bad Catholic. If I served during Mass I'm sure that the bigger than life size crucifix would crash onto the altar and it'd be my fault.

I am a cafeteria Catholic. I take what I want and maybe need, but when the Church veers from the Jesus-of-my-youth's message of love, tolerance, compassion and forgiveness, I leave my tray at the cash register. Even if that means I leave behind community, spirituality and faith.

I really don't believe in God. Not some old white guy who directs our lives. Really, if you were the Maker of the Universe, would you meddle in the individual heartbreaks of the human-ants? Really?

But we meddle in each other's lives. And we sometimes do it with love, tolerance, compassion and forgiveness. And we make God when we do that.

And that's what I placed on my battered cafeteria tray this week as I rapturously followed Pope Francis storming my city.


And he's right. The Pope that is. God is love. That's it. All the rest is decoration.

So today, and tomorrow and every day, I'm gonna make me some God.

Giving Thanks

I have been quite a laggard in postings. My apologies to my loyal reader. As the turkey roasts, I am thinking about the thanks I am giving.

• I am thankful that the 17-year-old hooked me up with my new favorite band. Great music to prep Thanksgiving Dinner by.
• I am thankful that the Spouse has cooked dinner pretty much every night since September 15. AND has done the dishes, too.
  
• I am thankful that the 14-year-old has introduced me to the FIERCE sport of wrasslin'. Little girls cried during the last meet. Fierce, I tell you.
• I am thankful for working in the Bush administration. Without those guys, I would have never learned new levels of tolerance--and never loved so many Republicans. Yes, they are people, too.
• I am thankful that we have good health insurance, didn't get dumb in the mortgage market, live within our means and have stable jobs. I pray that the new guys--with our help--make changes so that more people can give this set of thanks next year.
• I am thankful for Facebook. Sounds dumb, but it's like living in a far-flung dorm--low pressure way to be in the lives of people you care about. (Sibling, get on the stick!)
• I am thankful that my mother is a fighter. She has been in rehab 3 times over the past year, after a fall, a broken ankle, and then major GI surgery. Each time we worried that she might be too tired to push her 85-year-self through rehab. And each time she proves us wrong.
• I am thankful that I have the best spouse, kids and dog in the whole wide world. Bar none. No one can dispute this. Don't even try.

And I am thankful to you, my loyal reader. I write this mostly for me, but am thankful that you take some of your time to think with me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tub Thumping

"Well Doc, I think this is it."

So said my Loyal Reader, reduced to maybe 80 pounds, her hands looking more like a bird's foot than the hand that held a champagne glass. Her breathing supported by both a tube to her nose and a mask over her mouth wasn't labored, and she apologized for the getup being awkward.

Her blue eyes were ringed indigo and bored straight into mine. "I am glad you came. I wanted to say goodbye."

My Spouse--away in NYC--had called the night before, telling me that she only had a few days left. I felt like I was hit in the stomach. It was dumb to be shocked--she had stage iv colon cancer, prognosis is lousy.

Except she had me totally fooled. She had me convinced that she was going to kick this cancer-thing. Even after she lost the month of August when she was sedated and intubated--she was mad that it took her so long to regain the strength and to relearn to walk. She had been back and forth with chemo and radiation and surgery for two years. She decided that she was going to do whatever she could to get better, and it was working.

I walked in to her postage stamp sized room and saw her kids and husband crowded inside were wearing yellow hospital garb. I retreated as instructed and donned the disposable gown. I clumsily kissed her cheek, then her hand, and then her husband who looked so so so sad. I was thinking about pork roasts at her house and burnt ribs and blue martinis at my house. And my crewe, who earned the reputation of always leaving their house as the last guests, very late.

And then the times when she would tell me to be less cynical (Doc, think!), tell me that the Republicans didn't have it all wrong (she worked for the RNC as a designer--not a believer--long before my foray into a Republican administration), and, most importantly, remind me that when my kids were in trouble that my job was to love them.

She was a good role model. She loved her kids--they had the best birthday parties and halloween costumes. She nurtured their creativity and embraced each of them for who they are. She raised three of the best people I know.

She was my most normal friend--not a D.C. type who was driven in that Washington kind of way. She would sit with me and drink beers at Redskins games while we chattered through 4 quarters of football. What was that score? She would tell me that I did something stupid, or ask me "Why?" when nobody else would.

I am glad that I told her that I love her every time I saw her. I am glad that I told her I love her last week. And I am so glad, and so fortunate, that she loved me.

She asked that we celebrate her life and have a party. I miss her.

Kris, this is for you,

Remember the Good

Disbelief, shock, sadness, horror, grief mix together in thinking about the murders at Virginia Tech. And the 32 victims who family, friends and strangers mourn, 32 innocents.

The people identified by Va Tech to date are Ross Abdallah Alameddine, Christopher James Bishop, Brian Roy Bluhm, Ryan Christopher Clark, Austin Michelle Cloyd, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Kevin P. Granata, Matthew Gregory Gwaltney, Caitlin Millar Hammaren, Jeremy Michael Herbstritt, Emily Jane Hilscher, Jarrett Lee Lane, Matthew Joseph La Porte, Henry J. Lee, Liviu Librescu, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan, Lauren Ashley McCain, Daniel Patrick O'Neil, J. Ortiz-Ortiz, Minal Hiralal Panchal, Daniel Alejandro Perez, Erin Nicole Peterson, Michael Steven Pohle, Jr., Julia Kathleen Pryde, Mary Karen Read, Reema Joseph Samaha, Waleed Mohamed Shaalan, Leslie Geraldine Sherman, Maxine Shelly Turner, and Nicole White.

These are the people that will be remembered by their loved ones. But the rest of us, those who don't know them, will forget their names. They will become, for most of us, "the victims" or the "people who were shot."

I don't know if there is anything that we can do about that. But there is one thing that I have decided to do. I refuse to learn the name of the man who took their lives. I won't let him become part of my memory. I won't let him be like murderers before him--people who ruthlessly killed hundreds in Oklahoma City, boys and young men in Chicago, or our brothers and sisters in New York, D.C., and Shanksville Penn., on September 11, 2003. I don't care if they are "infamous"--they have more of our brain space than they deserve.

I am very angry that NBC--followed rapidly by their disrespectful media siblings--have given the wicked shooter time. I can't stand that they promoted his pathetic tapes, pictures, ravings. I am not going to be an accomplice to his narcissistic desires for people to know who he is.

I don't care about him. I don't care to know about him. I don't want to aggrandize this shooter. We don't have to give him what he wanted. Leave him a place in the history books, but just call him the shooter.

The names, the histories, the hopes of the victims are what we need to remember. Google them. Find their Face Books. Learn about them. Leave the shooter in ignominy.

You can leave your condolences here. My thoughts and prayers to the entire and extended Virginia Tech community.

Straight Flush

I came in the house and cast my glance at the 12-year old. I was struck by how he looked.

Me: Hey, are you in love?

Him: (emphatically) NO!

He turned and looked intently and earnestly into my eyes. And man-oh-man, were his eyes green.

Me: Really. Your eyes are so green.

Him: They always are. (with a curious look.)

Me; It's like, like you are almost like, like glowing. Like not like you played alot of basketball. But you look different.

He tilted his head a bit away from me. And, man-oh-man, he looked like a gazillion bucks. Like he owned the world. But not like he just earned the world. Like it was always his. And that it would always be.

Him: (laughing) Well, I'm not in love.

But, man-oh-man, I am. With him!