At Mom's funeral

It's been 2 years and 8 months since she passed on, but Covid threw a monkey wrench into having the ceremony.  But now the clan has gathered and she will finally join Dad today.

Blogging has been light since travel is a pain in the keister. 

Happy Birthday, Mom

It's weird that she's no longer here but it's still her birthday. 

Ten years ago

Dad died.  

Brad Paisley - Waitin' On A Woman

 Miguel left a funny comment when I posted about my Mom's death:

Our condolences. She is at peace and just like my mom, probably giving your dad an earful about what he has not done while she was not there.

That's funny, but it's also true.  That made me think: there's a Country Music song for that.  Dad's been waiting for her for 9 years and 5 months.  That's a lot of time for him to tick everything off his Honey Do list.

Waitin' On A Woman (Songwriters: Don Sampson, Wynn Varble)

Sittin' on a bench at West Town Mall
He sat down in his overalls and asked me
You waitin' on a woman
I nodded yeah and said how 'bout you
He said son since nineteen fifty-two I've been
Waitin' on a woman

When I picked her up for our first date
I told her I'd be there at eight
And she came down the stairs at eight-thirty
She said I'm sorry that I took so long
Didn't like a thing that I tried on
But let me tell you son she sure looked pretty
Yeah she'll take her time but I don't mind
Waitin' on a woman

He said the wedding took a year to plan
You talk about an anxious man, I was nervous
Waitin' on a woman
And then he nudged my arm like old men do
And said, I'll say this about the honeymoon, it was worth it
Waitin' on a woman

And I don't guess we've been anywhere
She hasn't made us late I swear
Sometimes she does it just 'cause she can do it
Boy it's just a fact of life
It'll be the same with your young wife
Might as well go on and get used to it
She'll take her time 'cause you don't mind
Waitin' on a woman

I've read somewhere statistics show
The man's always the first to go
And that makes sense 'cause I know she won't be ready
So when it finally comes my time
And I get to the other side
I'll find myself a bench, if they've got any
I hope she takes her time, 'cause I don't mind
Waitin' on a woman

Honey, take your time, cause I don't mind
Waitin' on a woman

Rest in peace, Mom

Mom Borepatch, April 24 1929 - August 23 2020.  Finally reunited with Dad.

This music meant a lot to me when Dad died, and it's even more poignant now.

And she always was a woman of faith.  I can't think of a better send off than this.

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Ten years ago

Dad was already sick with the cancer that would kill him 7 months later.  But he emailed regularly, and we talked all the time, and I went out to visit several times.  All that meant a lot, but this particular post from ten years back was special.

Originally posted August 13, 2010.

Links

The great satisfaction of blogging is the inter-connectedness that grows - links, comments, and people emailing you about posts are much nicer than traffic stats. Early this week, I posted about some color photos from the late 1930s. One of the photos in the exhibit (which I didn't post) was this one:


And then the inter-connectness of the Internet kicked in. I got an email from Dad, who as a history professor knows a thing or two about this subject. Specifically, the subjects in the photo:

The first photo in the batch you emailed me is of Faro and Doris Caudhill. They were the main family photographed by Russell Lee in the Pie Town of 1940. They lived in a combination dug out/log cabin on Hometeaded land. When World War II started, economic opportunities lay in places other than Pie Town. They still do, and Pie Town is truly in the middle of nowhere.

Faro and Doris moved to Albuquerque. Faro, a laborer, became business manager of the laborers union. Doris later said that men like wine, women, and song. She added that Faro didn't drink and he couldn't carry a tune. Guess what was left. Doris divorced him, and remarried. In 1993, she responded to the author of Women of New Mexico Depression Era Images that she had been photographed, too, and had written a memoir. Photographer Joan Myers followed up, interviewed Doris and used her memoir to write Pie Town Woman, the Hard Life and Good Times of a New Mexico Homesteader(University of New Mexico Press, 2001). The book accompanied an exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum, but Doris had died of cancer. I went to the opening, got the author to sign my copy of the book, and acted as a fly on the wall overhearing Doris's Albuquerque friends gossiping about Faro.

And so the Internet, working its magic across the miles.

Richard Strauss - "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde

Dad loved opera and introduced me to a great deal of it, but most notable was this piece.  He and Mom took me to the local symphony 18 months or so before he died, where they played this.  I'm not a big opera fan like they were, but I think that this is the most hauntingly lovely music ever written.

It is more poignant for me because this is Dad's birthday, and Strauss died on this same day.  In my mind, they are linked together.

But this piece is very interesting, musically speaking.  As Beethoven announced the beginning of the romantic era, this was its end - and the start of the modern era.  He wrote what is perhaps the culmination of the operatic tradition.

The story of Tristan and Isolde is very old, one of the Troubadour ballads from the High Middle Ages. Tristan is a knight, sent to bring Isolde as a bride to King Mark. Caught at sea in a storm, they drink a love potion, thinking it was a sea sickness cure, and fall madly in love with each other. The love is doomed, and in Gottfried of Strassburg's twelfth century version of the story, one of the travelers with them says, "Tristan, you have drunk your death."

Their doomed love is brought to life by Wagner in his opera, not least because of how he scored the work, and especially the finale here. Liebestod means "Love's death", and it is the Romeo and Juliet simultaneous death scene. Wagner revolutionized opera by his use of harmonic suspension, a repeated refusal to complete unfinished themes. This refusal builds tension which is only released at the final, lyrical completion. This particular scene is striking in how you hear the suspension from the very beginning of the video, and how it allows a very subdued final chord to be magnificent. It takes a full six minutes to reach the "aha" moment where the theme resolves, which makes the resolution even more sweet.

Mom and Dad took me to hear this (they had season tickets to the Symphony). I'd never heard it before, and it led to a memorable chat with Dad about Gottfried von Strassburg, Schopenhauer, inflection points in music, and how they're all bound up in this music. I sure miss those.

Happy birthday, Dad.  I sure miss you.

Back now

The Queen Of The World and I are back from seeing Mom for her birthday.  Her memory is pretty much gone, as the dementia takes its toll, but the QOTW has a particular way of holding conversations with her that Mom really likes.  A lot of what Mom says doesn't make much sense, but the QOTW keeps the conversation going.  I don't think that anyone else does that, and Mom really likes her for it.

After taking care of Mom's affairs, we took some time to do a little sight seeing.  Albuquerque is a dramatic location, and we hiked out to see the petroglyphs.  Climbing up from Boca Negra we saw this:

We went to Santa Fe to put flowers on Dad's grave.  The VA cemetery there is beautiful, and Dad liked to say that he would have a million dollar view.  He does.

But it was a pretty emotionally draining trip.  I get the sense that my visits to Albuquerque will wind down over the next couple years: Mom is declining, and while still in good health for a 90 year old, the end will be delayed but not forever.  There's still more to show the QOTW, though.  Maybe I can get her out to the Balloon Festival which is a sight to see.

Blogging will get back to a more regular schedule now.

A day off

The lack of posting yesterday was because I took a day off from work and the Queen Of The World and I went into Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms.  It had been maybe 30 years since I had last seen them, and she had never been, and so we went.  The weather was perfect.  As you can imagine, it's spectacular.

As you can imagine, it was also packed.  We also stopped by Arlington to see her Dad.  One of the nice things about being in the DC area is that we can see him.

We'll get down next month for the Rolling Thunder ride, which she hasn't been on before but is looking forward to.

Rest in peace, MSGT Robert Garrett

Veteran of Korea and Vietnam, no nonsense and curmudgenly like many of his generation, salt of the earth.

I liked him, even though I didn't know him very long. I'm very glad that we came up to see him last fall.

Update

They turned the life support off for my Father-In-Law on Saturday.  Now it's waiting.  The Queen Of The World is doing pretty well, considering.

Lots of memories of when Dad passed lurking in this hospital.

There's a meditation here, that life is for the living.  Dance with your wife.  Tell your husband you love him, every night.  Turn up the music.

Father In Law update

The prognosis is poor and the family is gathering.  The Queen Of The World and I are driving to Ohio, and I've packed a suit and tie.  Blogging will be catch as catch can.

She and I would appreciate it if any of you could remember Bob in your prayers, as he prepares for that last voyage that will one day be ours as well.

Five years

Dad died on this day 5 years ago.  Sure would like to have thode chats gain.

Happy birthday, Dad

Today would have been Dad's 87th birthday.

It's strange, but four and a half years after his death, I still think of him every day.  Some days it's a sad remembrance, but mostly it's situational - I will be doing something and I will suddenly hear his voice whispering in the back of my head.  Dad was never short of advice, although it was almost always good.

I'm moving furniture here in Camp Borepatch as I get it ready to sell.  I almost always hear him remind me Skin grows back; varnish doesn't.  Thanks, Dad.

But some memories are deeply embedded.  A long forgotten scent can bring a sudden cascade of them, an unexpected upwelling of that part of our soul that tells us who we are.  Brigid writes of this and her Dad, and the scent of after shave.  My Dad used Mennin, and the one time I smelled it in the last few years all I could think of was him and all the memories of times long ago.

Thanks, Brigid, for all those memories.  And this bit made me laugh out loud:

I think the perfect man natural scent would be some sort of mysterious combination of gun cleaning fluid, coffee, bacon, woodsmoke, and dark beer (with a slight undertone of 20 year old British Motor Car Wheel Bearing Grease.)

Because there is absolutely nothing in this whole wide world that's not improved by bacon ...

Four years ago

Dad died:

One of my two favorite sayings goes The longest journey a man will ever take is the eighteen inches from his head to his heart.  I can attest to the truth of that, and say that St. Christopher doesn't watch over that particular journey.  But my Dad did.

I still think about him every day. James Zachary left a comment that predicted this:

It is a hurt that will not soon end.

Sure is.

Kilted To Kick Cancer - Day 5: Butts in Kilts!

My Sister-From-Another-Mother Brigid was kind enough to put up a post at her place that really drives home what this fundraiser is about.  Being smarter than I, she lead the post with a picture of a lovely butt in a kilt.  Now I may be a slow learner, but you don't have to kick me twice, so without further ado, butts in kilts!

But as with all her posts, there is a story that will tug at your heart.  And so I want to talk about the day that Dad called me and said that he wasn't going to do another round of chemo, but instead was going into hospice.  I wrote obliquely about it at the time.

The Taxotere almost killed him, and he didn't think he could handle another round.  The doctors didn't think that anything less powerful would handle the cancer which had spread aggressively by then.  It was his third round with Prostate Cancer, and each time it came back stronger.

And so he told me that he was settling in to hospice to go in an orderly and dignified manner that would have been well known to the Stoic philosophers of old.

Me, I've never been accused of being a philosopher, or even a stoic.  The pure anger - crystalinely pure - simply consumed me.  This was a good man, a great father, great husband, respected by his peers and adored by his grandchildren.

And he was going to go quietly into that Dark Night.  That is what this fundraiser is all about.  That's why all of us are putting our dignity on the line, so that research can find a cure that will let these good men live.  I'm all in on this - you want dignity on the line?  OK, here you go:

Hawt, eh?  But that's not the point.  Please click through to donate to this cause.  It's fully tax deductible, as a 501(c)3 charity.  The Donate link is here, and please select Team Borepatch.

And if you click through to read Brigid's post you'll see why she is also invested in this - her Dad is fighting that same fight right now.  She is so invested that she's made an enormously generous offer: the first twenty donations of $50 or more via Team Borepatch will receive an autographed copy of her amazing The Book Of Barkley.

Send a screen shot of your Paypal receipt for your donation to borepatch at gmail dot com, along with your snail mail address and we will do the rest.  Remember, while the competition and the goofing are all in good fun, there's a method to our madness, and a reason for this season.

I miss you, Dad.  We'll see what we can do about this.  And I can hear you laughing about my kilted butt.

Kilted to Kick Cancer

It was Prostate Cancer that took Dad, and so after dithing for a couple years I'm going all in on the Kilted To Kick Cancer fundraiser.  On Saturday I went to Atlanta Kilts, where Tony very helpfully got me all decked out:

If you are of a mind to donate to a great charity, hit their donation page (and please make sure that you select Team Borepatch - walking around in a kilt is nothing compared to the loss of dignity if Ambulance Driver that the other guys smoke me on the fund raising challenge).

OK, gentle readers - should I do "Kilted To Kick Cancer"?

It was Prostate cancer that took Dad, and so I have a motivation.  Plus I'm told that I have particularly good legs, and so this would be a public service for my Lady Readers.  But it's a good cause, with a good sense of humor, which I find attractive.

But some things cannot be unseen.  And so, my question to you: should I spring for the kilt and put my dignity on the line, for a good cause?  Discuss in the comments section.

The Undiscovered Country, from whose bourn no traveler returns

Dad died 3 years ago today.

R.I.P., Dad.

The Dance

A song with depth will effortlessly slide into a new meaning. Sometimes we won't recognize that depth until the slide happens. It just happened to me with Garth Brooks' 1990s classic "The Dance".

It's said that the downfall of Rock songs is being whiny, and the downfall of Country songs is being maudlin. Certainly that was my first impression, back in the day. A song lamenting a lost love, best described a some pitiful loser with a bad case of "oneitis".

That changed a couple days ago when I heard this on the radio. The lyrics spoke to me of Mom, dealing with her grief at Dad's loss after 55 years of marriage.

A grief so deep that, like Shakespeare wrote of the Bay Of France, it has no bottom. And suddenly the lyrics were fresh and so, so not maudlin.

And now, I'm glad I didn't know
the way it all would end, the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance;
I could have missed the pain,
but I'd have had to miss the dance.

They had a wonderful life, worthy of a grief that knows no bottom. And suddenly a song that used to have me rolling my eyes has me choked up.

Poetry, it is said, is the art of hearing the word behind the words. Well played, Mr. Brooks. So very well played.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone