Father's Day

"My dad taught me everything I know.  Unfortunately he didn't teach me everything he knows."  ~ Al Unser.

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”  ~ Unknown but often attributed to Mark Twain

He pulled on the oars on a chilly (well, frigid) early morning and the little rowboat, not so much glided as  moved in fits and starts to a little spot tucked into some reeds at the lake’s edge.  I would stare sleepily, trancelike at the water that swirled around the paddles.  Once at our spot he would tie the boat off on a half-submerged tree and then he’d make sure I’d baited my hood correctly and then would guide me through the cast.  The reel zinged and then the little split shot plopped into the water and then we waited.  That was Lake Merced, in the southwest corner of San Francisco.  The lake is just inland from the ocean and is often blanketed by fog that’s pushed in by a chill ocean breeze.  In the middle of that lake on a little rowboat it seemed like you were in the coldest damn place on Earth. 

Classic Dad; book, pipe, easy chair and a little Cognac

Tall Tales of Trimming Trees

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.”

~ Larry Wilde

“I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects.”   ~ Charles Dickens

“You know,” I said to Cora, “I've been thinking more and more about getting an artificial tree.” 

“Yeah, we aren't getting any younger and a real tree is a lot of work.”

“Wanna stop by Home Depot and just look?” 

This was our conversation as we pulled out of our street headed for the local Christmas tree lot. 

When I was a kid my parents held artificial trees in contempt.  Easy enough to do back then, when artificial trees were strange looking aluminum structures in ghastly, garish colors; pink, silver and blue.  Christmas tree shopping is one of the few things that's not seen much change since I was a kid.  We took the half hour or so drive to one of the lots on El Camino Real near downtown San Mateo.  A fellow with a 10 foot ruler followed a few steps behind us as we tiptoed through the mud created by the rain that we always got then and never seem to get now.  We followed the ritual that every family has followed since the 1840s when the tannebaum became a saleable commodity.  Dad would grab a likely candidate by the trunk and tilt it and turn it as we inspected it for any flaws that might disqualify it from adorning our living room.  The tree had to be full and without any conspicuous gaps in the branches and it had to stand straight.  Size didn't really matter.  Six foot was just fine because in the 60s cathedral ceilings were something that only the folks in nearby, ritzy Hillsborough had.  Our plebian ceiling topped out at 8 feet.  Once we found a likely candidate the fellow with the ruler stepped up and measured the tree, my mom watching carefully to make sure he didn't add phantom inches.  He wrote the tree's height and price on a slip of paper for my parents to take to the cashier.  Once the tree was ours dad stuffed it in the back of our big, clunky Mercury station wagon. 

The American Adventure - The Open Road

It's July, 2013 and my wife Cora and I are taking a driving trip through Northern California and into Oregon. 

The wife and I have embarked on that great American summer adventure; that annual migration of the dog days; that paean to the interstate, the motorcar and fuel consumption; the modern day version of the pioneers’ tale – the road trip.  We've headed north from the San Francisco Bay to a distant, uncharted and exotic land – Oregon.  Okay, it’s not distant; it’s only 300 miles or so.  And it’s hardly uncharted.  After all I went out recently and bought a GPS so Oregon, the rest of this land and all of hell’s half acre are all pretty well charted.

High On Weed

It's July, 2013 and my wife Cora and I are taking a driving trip through Northern California and into Oregon.  Weed, California was our stopover on the way to Oregon. 

We pulled into Weed, California a little after 10 at night.  It was a five hour drive from the Bay Area in scorching heat and we’d decided that getting to our destination held more appeal than food.  Motel 6 never looked so good.  I was perfectly happy to shower and call it a night but Cora wanted dinner.  The desk clerk told us that the choices were the fast food joints a couple exits down the interstate or a place a few blocks down the road called the Hi Lo Café.

A Recollection of Fishing

I got up that Sunday morning a little after 5 o'clock.  During these long summer days it’s more or less my usual time.  Has to be early.  It’s the only time I can take my dog Rainey for a run.  Rainey is day blind; can’t see the paw in front of her nose once the sun starts to peek out so we have to hit it while it’s still dark.  And so when I staggered out of bed Rainey jumped out of her's, did her happy laps around the bedroom while I shushed her lest she wake the little woman and then she rumbled down the stairs. 

“Sorry Rainey, I’ll let you out to do your business but then it’s back to bed."  She wasn't getting it yet.  While she was outside I crawled into my clothes and threw the camp chairs into the truck.  Rainey came back inside, wagging her hind quarters expecting me to grab the leash until I sent her up the stairs.  “Back to bed girl,” as she sulked up the stairs

The Oak Desk

I recently made the decision that it’s past time to get rid of the roll top desk that sits under the window in our bedroom.  A roll top was something I’d always wanted.  I suppose I pictured myself sitting at that desk like some latter day Mark Twain; sipping expensive bourbon from a heavy crystal rocks glass, dipping pen in inkwell and writing the next great American novel.

America; Heal Thyself III

 Third Part in a Series

"Just go to an emergency room"

“People have access to health care in America.  After all just go to an emergency room.”  George W. Bush

Mitt Romney recently echoed Mr. Bush in a 60 Minutes interview. If you have a heart attack “you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital.”

“Just go to the emergency room” is a great plan if you have a heart attack, break a limb, have a stroke or get shot. That’s what every rational person does because the emergency room is there for critical conditions that require immediate attention. 

America; Heal Thy Self I

 First Part in a Series
The Rhetoric

“We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have national health insurance. We are the richest in wealth and the poorest in health of all the industrial nations.”  ~ Studs Terkel

“If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”  ~ Ebenezer Scrooge speaking of the poor. 

Countries with universal healthcare: Norway, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom, Kuwait, Sweden, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Netherlands, Austria, UAE, Finland, Slovenia, Denmark, Luxembourg, France, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Greece, Spain, South Korea, Iceland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Israel. 

 

Richie Batra’s comment was chilling, “if u want insurance buy it, if not pay Cash..if not, go Die..im not worried about anyone but myself and nobody should worry about me either(sic)."  Mr. Batra’s remark was a comment in a thread responding to an article last December in Think Progress covering then presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s Q & A with a group of high school students.

Why We Ride: John

It was hard to hold a conversation.  He would speak a few words and then be interrupted by a cough; a wet, relentless cough, releasing a malicious fluid that gurgled up from deep within his failing lungs; a cough that convulsed his entire, now frail, body for what seemed minutes at a time.  The coughing seizures seemed to last for minutes and left him spent beyond the exhaustion brought on by the illness itself.  I was visiting John at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland.  John was dying.  I knew it, his friends knew it, his family knew it and John knew it.  By this point John was philosophical about it all.  John was dying of lung cancer.

Life's Awful Curve

My last post, Dad;Reconnecting inspired some responses that merit not just a reply but an entire post.

In my original, I touched on my dad’s final years and his – our, mine and my wife and childrens’ – battle with dementia and my regrets over how badly I handled it.  In conversation with a couple of acquaintances I found that they also felt regrets over the way in which they dealt with parents suffering dementia.  A high school friend of mine, Susan, left a touching, heartfelt comment and our mutual high school friend, Craig left a kind and comforting response of his own. 

Susan wrote:  “My mom, like your dad, began suffering from dementia a very short time after my dad died. She was such a strong person that she lived too many years with it before finally succumbing. I, too, am filled with regret for the way I handled her illness. I, too, am not proud of the way I handled her situation. I don't have a lot of regrets in my life, but I wish I could have a do-over on that one.”

Craig’s response: “Never regret how you dealt with a parent's dementia. I deal with dementia on a daily basis. Some days I will see each stage of dementia - early silly confusion, one's undeniable fear and trepidation as they realize the harpoon is set, the early failings, the argumentative phase, the wandering phase, the incontinence phase, the placement phase. I no longer see the zombie/coma phase, as I do not do nursing homes any longer. There is no instruction booklet for the process. I see families struggling to 'do the right thing' neither knowing what that is or how to do it. That's because there are no rights and wrongs, strong players and inadequate players - we are all just regular folk shlepping though life who get thrown an awful curve-ball. You take your best swing! That's it. Neither of you did a bad job - there is no such thing. Remember too, that as you felt your inadequacies mount, as the disease progressed, the shell that personified your loved-one lack the insight and memory to either know or recall that they were treated badly. In fact they were not. When your fathers hug you at The Pearly Gates, neither will even mention it. If you apologize, "Poppa I'm sorry I let you down there at the end", your going to make him frown and then smile and wink at you and confess, "You did a great job - a hell-of-a-lot better than I did with my old man. So give us another hug." I will brook no more regret over this ugly, diabolical illness which is impossible to 'handle' well. 'Nuf said!”

In her response to Craig, Susan summed up my feelings, again better than I could express:  “Craig, you brought a tear to my eye with your kind comments! When we're young and in a different place in our lives, we make choices we wouldn't necessarily make later on. (I had a similar conversation with my daughter just a few weeks ago on choices made and possible regrets later.) I don't know how much I would have done differently if my parent was facing dementia today. I know there would be some things done differently, but you're right. We do the best we can at the time, with the knowledge and abilities we have at that time. I can't say I won't continue to have some regrets, but it helps to know I'm not alone when it comes to simply being human and making good decisions and not-so-good ones. Thanks Craig, and Paul, for helping me better understand that I'm not alone.”

As I read their comments again in writing this post the emotions welled up again.  I don’t always respond to comments, though I should, but theirs particularly warrant a response and this post is in part my response.  I’d already planned on writing a post on this topic and I even had some version of, “there’s no instruction book that covers this,” all ready to go but Craig beat me to it and said it all so much better than I could.  While he didn’t say as much, I’m certain that Craig’s daily encounters with dementia come through his work as a physician. 

I’m 58, about the age my dad was when he was starting to forget things and become flustered.  I’ve reached that point at which I ask myself, how will I age?  It’s a question that we baby boomers have to face.  And that question comes with its own myriad subset of questions.  Will we be self-sufficient?  Will we be physically able to take care of ourselves?  What will become of our mental faculties?  Will we be financially able?  One of the acquaintances that I spoke with told me that her husband has a real and tangible fear of the same dementia that plagued the aunt he had to care for.  In a comment to my post, Scott wrote; “I find myself getting a little lump in the throat whenever I do something that is a mental slip, thinking about how it must have been for him and wondering if it is something I'll be dealing with in the not so distant future.” 

And then there is the question that haunts those of us with children, making their way with families of their own; will we be a burden on our children?  After having difficulties with my maternal grandmother, my parents suggested to me that they would never be a burden.  Which of course begs its own question; how can you make that suggestion?  There’s the strong potential that the option will not be one that we can control; which is just the reason that I’ve not made that suggestion to my own children.  I do what I can to avoid that circumstance by keeping both physically and mentally active.  And while my future independence isn’t the motivation it is a hopeful byproduct that I keep in the back of my still able mind.

I have two wonderful children who’ve expressed that they would of course take care of my wife and me when we’re doddering.  They make that statement with the same certainty that they would have in saying the sun will rise in the morning and while I don’t doubt their sincerity and have every faith in their love for us I have to wonder if they realize the full import of the baggage that comes with a dependent parent.  Every generation, every young family potentially has to face the quandaries.  Dealing with everything from deciding whether or not to take the old boy out to dinner with the family, to is he going to be okay at home, to is he going to wander out of the house, to how in the hell do we take our family vacation which all boil down to the question of “how do we just have a normal family life?”   

With the large boomer generation transitioning into late middle and old age this shouldn’t be just a question within the domestic circle.  A big segment of this nation is going to be losing its collective marbles and we, those of us that are aging and our families, should be wondering how this nation is going to deal with it.  From the Alzheimer’s Association website are just a few of the many sobering facts:

·         5.4 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease.

·         One in eight older Americans has Alzheimer's disease.

·         Alzheimer's disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States and the only cause of death among the top 10 in the United States that cannot be prevented, cured or even slowed.

·         More than 15 million Americans provide unpaid care valued at $210 billion for persons with Alzheimer's and other dementias. 

·         Payments for care are estimated to be $200 billion in the United States in 2012.

•        Today, 5.4 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease – 5.2 million aged 65 and over, and 200,000 under the age of 65. By 2050, up to 16 million will have the disease.

•     Of Americans aged 65 and over, 1 in 8 has Alzheimer’s, and nearly half of people aged 85 and             

       older have the disease.

•     Another American develops Alzheimer’s disease every 68 seconds. In 2050, an American will develop the disease every 33 seconds.

This country has faced up to major crises in the past with large measures of success and some of these have included finding many cures.  On the other hand, as I’m reminded every time I fill up the tank, we’ve had a history of kicking the can down the road.  I suppose that I could transition this into a commentary about the debate over nationalized health care and the rising costs of health care.  I’ll leave that for another time and just keep hoping that one of the cans that we kick down the national road won’t be full of those lost marbles. 

Just this past week a co-worker’s mother had a heart attack that put her in hospice care.  The mother has been suffering from dementia for ten years now.  In conversation another co-worker commented that he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a loved one “not know who I am.”  I told him that I went through that for nearly 10 years myself and he sadly shook his head and allowed that he was sorry.  The woman whose mother is now in hospice said to me that there will be no heroic efforts from here on out; “It’s been 10 years now; its time.”  Of course I felt the same way when my father passed; hell it was past time.  And he would have agreed.  Had he been able to have a half day of lucidity and figured out a way to end it himself he would have.  I know I would; sit in front of the TV, watch the Three Stooges with a nice sedative or ten and a bottle of Maker’s Mark.  Yeah I know it would horrify some of the family and friends and the local Catholic prelate; “my son how can you disrespect God’s gift?”  Look I got an electric pizza cooker as a wedding gift but at a certain point it gave up the ghost and the pizzas came out half-baked and it was about time to toss it.  When my thought processes start coming out half-baked it’s time to realize that the gift is about wore out.  I don’t want to deal with 5 years of putting the can of shaving cream in the oven and a quart of milk in the toolbox; or worse.  

And so thank you to Susan and to Scott and those who I spoke with over the last week or so.  It was somewhat reassuring to know that there are others who went through the same experience of trying to do right and in the end feeling like the job got badly botched at times.  And thank you to Craig who reminded us with some of the most eloquent words that I’ve ever read that “…we are all just regular folk shlepping though life who get thrown an awful curve-ball. You take your best swing! That's it.”

And a final note:  Susan, Scott and Craig are three of my oldest friends.  I went to high school and junior college with Susan and Craig and we were best of friends who went our separate ways.  We reconnected through Facebook but have not yet reunited.  I’d say it’s time.  I met Scott after graduating college.  We spent some years sharing living quarters and some great memories, many that are lost in a fog of varied substances.  He was the best man at my wedding and we still get together at times, although not often enough.  They are three of the finest people that I’m proud to know. 

Comments are greatly appreciated and encouraged and may be left in the comments section below.  While I don’t always respond to them (and I admit to it being bad manners) I do read them.  Unrepentant spam will be deleted and sent to spam hell.