Author: bdharrellauthor

A retired bellyacher, sometimes writer and guardian of the dog Filbrix.

“… and chocolate will kill you!”

“… and chocolate will kill you!”

Life is a series of punch lines. For me, remembering those punch lines can cause trouble.

            This morning, for instance, a series of thoughts crossed my mind, causing me to laugh almost uncontrollably in front of my wife.

            My train of thought started out with a question posed by a friend of mine who asked something about an organization I referred to on this day ten years ago. I explained to him that the organization was headed by a preacher in Florida named Terry Jones; no relation to the late Terry Jones, a member of the humorous troupe of actors who performed on the BBC television series Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The Reverend Mr. Jones was one of those people who did not want his followers to know anything contrary to his own beliefs. At the time, he had strong-armed several sponsors of a television program about Islam into withdrawing their support. He made it a habit of his to go off the deep end from time to time about such things as other religions, welfare, socialism, race, and sex. In his opinion, not only did he want his followers to toe the “party line,” but he wanted others not belonging to his church to believe as he did, too.             Especially if they were children.

            Which led me to recall a fake book cover presented by Chris Shapan with the title: Danny Kay explains sex to your children.

The absurdity of Danny Kaye explaining sex to your children is what sent me into gales of laughter in front of my wife.

*****

The fake book cover was a punchline. Much of what inhabits the grey matter in my (extra-large) skull are punchlines:

  • “And where does a three-year-old have easy access to water?”
  • “Looks like him, but my brother ain’t that tall!
  • “So the blind can hate him, too!”
  • “To show the armadillo it can be done.”
  • “Maybe I should have said DiMaggio?”
  • “No soap, Radio!”

Punch lines are best when used in context – others are best delivered with a visual cue – still others make no sense at all but are funny because of the context.

            I’ve spent a considerable portion of my life listening to jokes and punch lines. A friend of mine remarked on a trip we took from Texas to Ohio that I had, perhaps the largest repertoire of jokes of anyone he’s ever known.

            I consider that to be a compliment.

            Keep in mind that I was more than half the age I am while I am writing this when he made his statement. Many of the jokes were lost due to content (misogynistic or racially charged), others lost (again) in my size eight head.

            Other punch lines came about because of a situation and not a joke. The line that “Christ quit” came about when a travelling Passion Play disbanded a thousand miles from one of the actors’ homes because the person playing Christ, quit. Now, there were other circumstances involved with Christ quitting a travelling Passion Play which will not be repeated here, but a simple “Christ quit” made for an effective punch line when I was told the story from one of the people involved. The incident hit the National Lampoon not long afterwards.

            One other punch line which grabbed national attention was, “… the bandit glued the customers hands to the counter with superglue.” I knew one of the victims. He told the story to the local newspaper and the story made it to “Paul Harvey News!” (Paul was one who was always on the lookout for news stories with a punch line.)

            The dog Filbrix provides me with a punch line. When someone tells me how pretty she is, my punchline is, “She knows it too, and that makes it difficult to live with her.”

            Punch lines are usually associated with jokes, japes, and jests. Sometimes they can impart a lesson, as in the moral of a story. Sometimes they can be instructive. When people ask me about my years in radio, the punch line I give about what I was paid is, “Minimum wage and all the records I can eat.”

            For the record (pun intended), records appear not to be used in radio any longer, nor are “live” disc jockeys. Everything is voice-tracked.

            Meh.

            Life is always a constant procession of lessons. Sometimes one is the student, other times one is the teacher. I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that everyone is someone else’s object lesson. “Don’t be like Joe Flabeets. He’s a drunk, you know.” Or, “So and so smoked like a chimney, and now he (or she) is about to die of lung cancer.”

            I suppose those examples will be punch lines as well.

            By the way, the headline to this little essay, “… and chocolate will kill you,” is a punch line of a gentler sort. It involves God, the designation of dogs as man’s best friend, and a God telling dog that dog will have two handicaps – dog cannot talk, and chocolate will kill him.”

            That’s about it for the moment.

Be Seeing You

I’ll Never Be As Good As…

I’ll Never Be As Good As…

I was in the process of developing a character on a Tuesday afternoon when the better half came in and enquired about what I was doing. When I described the character, she reminded me of someone who lived across the street from me while I was in high school. From there I went off on a tangent about a classmate who retired in the last year after having a successful career as a professional photographer. I started to whine that “I’ll never be as good as…”, before changing my tune to realize that I can be better than I am at the moment.

The person who lived across the street from us when I was in high school was a product of a broken home. His parents showered him with opportunities in an effort to win his love and/or respect. One of his opportunities was a state of the art camera and a darkroom. I had a pretty good idea on how to work a darkroom. My father showed me the routine when he had me with him on the job where he worked before we moved to southern Ohio. With just a little re-education, I became adept at using the darkroom.

In my junior year in high school, the fellow from across the street took me under his wing, allowing me to become his assistant. We were responsible for taking photos for the school yearbook and the school newspaper, a job which became mine during my senior year.

After high school, I developed different interests, leaving cameras and darkrooms behind me. Part of that had to do with a lack of easily obtainable money to buy the necessary equipment, and part of that had to do with a lack of space in the house where we lived to put in even a rudimentary darkroom. For the better part of forty years, my experience as a photographer hinged on having the funds to purchase film and developing services.

Back to the camera thing in a moment.

Something I wanted to do when I was a teenager was to be on the radio… to be a disc jockey. Dammit if the kid across the street went to the trouble of getting a permit from the FCC and a job playing disc jockey at a daytime radio station on Sundays. I ended up one-upping him by getting a part time job working nights at the other radio station in town – eventually making a short career (20 years off and on) out of playing on the radio.

But there was that old “I’ll never be as good as…” hanging around, haunting me. It wasn’t until I was twenty years past playing on the radio that I discovered that some of the people I thought were better at doing what we did than I were, in fact, not really that much better – and in one case, almost disasterously worse than me at my worst.

There was a pattern in all this. Whatever I resolved to do, I came to a conclusion that I could never be as good as….. and let that fear keep me from performing as well as I could, even though I was much better than I gave myself credit for being.

I have a cello sitting in the other room right now, unplayed, because I could never be as good as….

My resolve is to get back on that cello before Christmas. I was damn good for my age when I played in school. I have the certificates to prove it.

Back to the camera.

A few years back, the better half and I went to Colorado to attend her high school reunion. Naturally, the almost new camera came with us and I shot to my heart’s content. At one stop, I paused, took a photo, and was interrupted by a woman who happened to be a professional photographer. She complimented me on the shot, saying she would be hard pressed to do as well herself.

I guess I am as good or better than I thought I was.

It’s easy to put one’s self down. Most of us have done it to some degree or another at least once in our lives. Truth of the matter is, when we put ourselves down, we tend to keep ourselves from reaching our true potential.

Be Seeing You!

Live while you can

Live while you can

I woke up this morning with the remnant of a dream in my head. I had gone to Canada with the dog Filbrix and wasn’t allowed in because I didn’t have a passport. There was another problem. Without a passport to get into Canada, I was somehow excluded from going back to the United States. Well, that bullet was dodged when a former college roommate came by and allowed me back into the states riding on his coattails.

When I woke up, it was with the realization that the roommate had been gone for the better part of twenty years. From what I could gather, he took his own life. Typical for him. What I’ve wondered in the years since is whether or not someone got a last visit from him as he once told us he would like to make his visit.

He envisioned having an “Enemies List,” one which would be rated and updated constantly until the day he died. He was to stipulate in his will that the person at the top of his enemies list would get that last visit. The executor of his estate would show up at that enemy’s home, spread his ashes in the middle of the living room floor, declare “He would have wanted it that way,” and leave.

I’ve mentioned my former roommate’s wish to others over the past several years, mindful of what chaos the move would make. I’ve briefly considered doing the same myself.

What stuck in my head, and was made clearer a short time later, was the old saw that life is short and not to be wasted. Or, better than that, getting old is a luxury not everyone has.

Scrolling through Twitter later this morning, I encountered a re-post of a woman’s decision to post nude photos of herself on one platform or another. Her rationale was that she had paid her dues and was finally proud of her body now that she was in her mid-fifties. She had a word or two to say beyond that to the extent that because she was in her mid-fifties, she had been scolded for posting her photo because of her age. She was told that after about the age of thirty, no one would be interested in seeing her in her birthday suit. Her position was that one should look beyond calendar years; that no one should have to be faced with a cut-off when it came to appreciating their body.

What she said is another way of saying that getting old is a luxury not everyone has.

In that past year, I have been afforded that luxury while others have had it taken away from them. I was lucky enough to have had a cancer found and exorcised from my body before it could get a toehold and make my life a living hell – presuming that the toehold took and had migrated to another part of my body.

My stepdaughter’s fiancee wasn’t as lucky. He had a tumor which had migrated to his head from his esophagus. In a matter of about two months from the time the tumors were discovered, he was gone. To say the least, my stepdaughter was (and still is) devastated.

Like my roommate, he was robbed of attaining his fiftieth birthday.

Getting old is a luxury not everyone has.

I look in the mirror and I see someone who needs to lose another thirty or forty pounds. I see someone who bears the visible scars of having been under the knife four times, as well as other bumps and bruises accumulated over the years (a fifth scar has been seen only by the doctor who put it there). I’m told that I will likely need cataract surgery sometime within the next five years. I’m not as strong as I used to be, leading to frustration at not being able to do certain jobs around the house.

At the same time, though, I still have the ability to laugh, love, and live. I may not be the richest person in the world, but I certainly appreciate having the luxury of growing old!

Be Seeing You!

Back in the Land of the Living – If you call Facebook Living

A few whiles ago, I said that I would be giving up Facebook for a period of time. While I have refrained from posting, I refrained from posting for only a few days. Part of the reason is that I had taken the opportunity to check in occasionally to see if I had any responses to previous posts.

The first response to my announcement came within half an hour after I made it – one of my loving trolls asked, “How’s your prez doing for you?” OUR President is doing quite well, thank you, despite numerous ill-intentioned attempts to besmirch his image. OUR Previous President did everything in his power to burn bridges and create havoc on his way out the door. Bad form. The actors around him haven’t done him any favors, either. I watched a five-minute clip of some lawyer for the former guy’s campaign spew nothing but useless talking points in response to legitimate questions asked of her. Add the current drama about Bannon, as well as the insistence by the former guy that he’s still relevant, and it becomes obvious that the former guy has no business being elected Dog Catcher, much less being elected President of the United States.

A bit of irony was mixed in with recent postings. For instance, this past week the reading we had for the Education for Ministry class centered on Emperor Constantine and his attempt at making Christianity the only religion in the Roman Empire. Then there was the quote which popped up over the weekend where a former official of the previous administration was saying that the United States should have just one official religion.

The framers of the Constitution must have been spinning in their graves with that one.

What really made me come back, though, was the humanity demonstrated by the vast majority of the people on my friends list. Yeah, there are a few trolls sprinkled in there to help raise my blood pressure a point or two, but for the most part, the people on my friends list are either relatives, former high school, college, or work colleagues and the occasional arts and/or athletic professionals. I find it hard not to respond to certain birthdays, milestones, or medical diagnosis which pop up with regularity on Facebook.

I also found that reading the daily dispatches from Heather Cox Richardson had become a morning habit, as much as my glass of orange juice to wash down my blood pressure pill. Her comments on the day’s events, put into historical perspective serve as invaluable reminders of why we need to be vigilant lest we lose our democracy.

Well, for better or for worse, I’m back on Facebook.

For now.

Be Seeing You!

The Dad Drawer

The Dad Drawer

In preparation of my daughter’s thirty-third birthday, I went into the “Dad Drawer.”

The Dad Drawer, as I understand it, is common among most men of my acquaintance. In it, you will find many of the hidden (and for good reason) dregs and vestiges which define a man. The first Dad Drawer I remember belonged to my own father. It was the top drawer of a chest of drawers in my parents’ bedroom. There was no organization in that drawer, except in my father’s mind. What I recall most was finding several chanter reeds (for the bagpipes he almost never owned) and a pair of cat skulls.

Yes, cat skulls.

As I understand it, back in the day, when it came time to learn disection, cats were used instead of frogs, or even lesser creatures. Somehow, Dad managed to score a pair of cat’s skulls from a disection class. They complemented the plastic human skull kept on top of the chest of drawers for just about ever.

Anyway, one of the people in my EFM class sent me an email stating that she was headed over to Savannah Georgia and wondered if I wanted to send something to her.

Initially, I was going to send her the cans of cat food we had left when our cat (Morticia – High Priestess of the Underworld) decided to slither out the front door and didn’t come back.

Too impractical.

I finally hit upon sending her a commemorative ball cap. No big deal for me as I could never wear those “One size fits all” caps due to an outsized head. There was also a button I wanted to send her commemorating the same event. The button was in my Dad Drawer. In finding that button, I spent an hour doing a semi-serious inventory of the dregs and vestigas I had collected over the course of, well, shall we say, several years.

There were pictures. Lots of pictures, ranging from my high school portrait for the yearbook, through my oil patch days, and continuing through a portion of my first marriage. I found several pictures of my daughter (including the enclosed shot where she has me by my hair) at a very young age, as well as a photo or two of my son. The kids’ pictures include at least one set of each child when they were in elementary school.

I had a small collection of buttons of all sorts, including a button of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau promoting the Return of the Pink Panther; several buttons made as souveniers for a couple of Episcopal Cursillos I attended thirty or so years ago, a button advertising a radio station in Columbus; several buttons from the days I worked for Sears (reminding customers to use their Sears credit cards; and at least one button declaring that I am not understood.

Two funeral notices were included in the mess, as well as a birth announcement of the son of a man I worked with back in the oil field days. The baby would be closing in on his 40th birthday… turned 37 last month. Another envelope contained a letter written to me by my paternal grandfather when he lived here in the DFW Metromess over sixty years ago. I noted that my Dad Drawer was in a chest of drawers my paternal grandfather purchased when he lived here, with stops in Virginia and Ohio before coming back here to Texas to roost.

There was artwork done by both of my children. A pencil box. Several old pairs of glasses. A salesman’s notebook like I used to carry. A photocopy of a magazine article about a car first made up the street from a place I used to live. A golf ball or two. Wires and electrical adaptors for electrical gadgets long gone from my life (hey, they may come in handy someday). And there were more than an ample number of mementoes from a lifetime of accumulation of life’s little treasures.

I found a few things which would properly entertain and amaze my daughter when the hat arrives in Savannah this weekend or early next week. Hopefully she will be amazed at the selection and perhaps decided to start a drawer filled with mementoes of her own.

Happy Birthday, Sarah. Here’s to many more with the memories which go along with them.

Be Seeing You!

Of Pierogies, ‘Possums, and Pussycats…

I’ve always enjoyed Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion,” especially the portion of the show where he intones, “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon…”

It has been relatively quiet here in my little corner of the DFW Metromess. There have been ups and downs, as usual. We celebrate the victories and we mourn our losses, sometimes with a little bit of a laugh thrown in for good measure.

For several months, we have been looking for frozen Pierogies. For those of you not familiar, think of a Pierogie as sort of a mashed potato ravioli. Ever since the onset of the “Great Pandemic,” we have been unable to find frozen Pierogies.

Believe me, I’ve looked. Had to. The better half has been wanting the things since before the “Great Pandemic” came about. The store where we do most of our shopping hasn’t had them, nor have any of the other stores near our house.

A little over a week ago, it was suggested that one of the specialty supermarkets over in McKinney might have the things, so, we trundled out to a place called Market Street in search of the elusive Polish Treat. While we were at it, we ended up picking up a few other things we had been missing from our larder. Lipton Herb and Garlic soup mix, for one. Great for seasoning things, like… Pierogies. I found the increasingly hard to find Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi. And finally, we were about to give up when the better half told me that SHE FOUND THEM!!!

There were seven boxes. They were on sale. We walked out of the store with seven boxes of Pierogies. Well, we did pay for them first. Hopefully, there are more Pierogies somewhere in the mythical “Back” for later trips to the store to get Pierogies.

Tuesday and Wednesday were “Doctor Days” for me. Saw my family doctor for a follow-up to some bloodwork he’d ordered. Everything looked good, so, after getting my flu shot, I was back down the road for lunch (involving Pierogies) and a trip later in the afternoon to have an MRI.

The MRI took a while. What made it extremely uncomfortable was the noise made by the machine. Yes, I had earplugs, but they were ineffective, making the visit an ordeal, of sorts.

Got home at sunset, was assailed by the dog Filbrix, sat down to eat supper, and before I could get in the last bite of supper, the other half noticed that the front door was ajar and that the cat had decided to fly the coop.

We spent the better part of an hour attempting to find the animal to no avail. We looked as best as we could to see where she might have gone with no results. The cat is still MIA as of the time I write this on the following Monday afternoon.

To the best of our knowledge, the cat was seventeen years old, somewhat frail and perhaps going blind. In one sense, I hope that she knew her time was short and found a place to hang out until her demise.

Part of attempting to get our geriatric cat back to the house was to put out her food and water bowl by the front door. The second morning after setting out the bowl, the food was missing. We put out a second helping of cat food. The dog Filbrix and I took our evening walk, coming back to find a ‘Possum happily chowing down on the cat food by the front door. I wasn’t too surprised at our discovery. There’s wildlife lurking nearby in what little “Green” area we have here in the immediate neighborhood. I was thankful for the thief being a ‘Possum and not one of the nearby skunks which make their presence know from time to time.

Seeing the ‘Possum gave me a bit of a smile, thinking about the first time my son encountered one of North America’s famous marsupials. He spotted a ‘Possum winding its way through the outside air conditioning units from my third-floor apartment. I was preparing a dinner when he said (loudly), “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!!”

He’d never seen one before. Wow. I had a good laugh at the time and recall his reaction every once in a while with a certain fondness.

Anyhoo, we lost Morticia Rose, High Priestess of the Underworld. She was a good cat. For a cat.

As I said at the outset, we celebrate our victories, mourn our losses and hope for a good laugh or two at the end of the day. It all makes for a quiet week in my little corner of the DFW Metromess.

Be Seeing You!

Work

Haven’t been here for a couple of weeks, therefore an update is necessary.

Death has been faced.

I got a dispatch from a correspondent which corrected the cause of death of my friend, Rob. He died of colon cancer. Gives me more to be thankful for.

We had a nice send-off for the stepdaughter’s fiance, with a viewing, a funeral and a military burial service. I was present for all three, a fact noted by one of the stepdaughter’s friends.

I had the camera with me for all three events. One photo at the viewing, several at the gathering after the funeral service, and several taken at the DFW National Cemetery during and after the ceremony. I spent part of Saturday cropping and printing the photos I took. I posted a few of the new grandchild taken at the funeral, but decided that most of the other photos I took were not appropriate for sharing on Facebook.

The invention of the digital camera along with some of the simple editing tools on the computer have been a godsend for amateurs like me. No film to waste, meaning that if I muff a shot, a do-over, or several do-overs are easily and inexpensively done. I learned to take photos and develop film back in the day (over 50 years ago). In retrospect, I should have stuck with it, becoming a professional photographer like one of my classmates. Lesson learned a bit too late.

Instead, I worked for a living in a variety of occupations… learning a thing or two about people along the way.

We are living in what is developing to be an interesting time.

Because of the Covid pandemic, much of our economy has been going topsy-turvey, with shortages due to breaks in the supply chain. Part of that chain has been the people making sure that we have the goods we desire available at the right place at the right time. That part of the chain is broken and there are some wondering why.

As I explained to my better half Sunday afternoon, there are people along the supply chain who are fed up with the way they are being treated by management and customers. So, they quit.

Been there, done that, have the T-Shirt.

On at least three different occasions, I walked off of a job without looking back.

The first time was when I worked at a radio station. I had had a couple of lousy nights with one of my listeners being very insistant on my playing one song in particular at least twice an hour. When I didn’t, the listener became verbally abusive to the point that I simply ignored the phone for a while. Later that day, I went into the office to let my boss know where I would be on the week I was going to be out of the office. He decided to lay into me about several things unrelated to the earned vacation in addition to telling me that I was not going to have the vacation (starting the next day) after all.

Adios, muchacho! I simply walked out of the guy’s office. He called later to tell me that I had been replaced… I told him that I hadn’t planned on going back anyway. Six months later, I went to the radio station to recover my FCC license and the same guy begged me to come back. Apparently, his tenure was about to be cut short because he had a hard time retaining employees.

The other two times I was working for nationally known chain stores. Management again.

I can recall having an immense sense of satisfaction on the way out the door in each of those situations. I can imagine that the people walking off the job in record numbers last month felt much the same way as I did then.

While there are those who declare that the quitters are lazy, I see that the quitters are simply fed-up with whatever situation they have to contend with. Low wages. Few benefits. Lousy working conditions. “Entitled” customers. And the list goes on. There are plenty of “Help Wanted” signs out there, and there are plenty of businesses willing to hire… if the people being hired are willing and able to put up with the same crap they have been putting up with all the time.

What started out as a quick review of what has happened in the past fortnight has turned into a rant, of sorts. For that I apologize.

Be Seeing You!

Dealing With Death

Our house is relatively small, so sometimes I get to hear parts of conversations between Carol and whomever she is talking with.

She has been talking quite a bit lately, listening to her eldest daughter. The daughter, Jaclyn, has been living with her boyfriend for the past year, a fine fellow named Peter. Both are recovering from divorce; both have sons of about the same age. She recently changed jobs and now works for the U.S. Postal Service.

A couple of months ago, Peter had a problem which resulted in his hospitalization with a brain tumor. Supposedly the tumor was to be removed – something which didn’t happen. Instead, it was learned that only a biopsy was performed, and the tumor was the result of another cancer in his esophagus… a stage 4 tumor.

Needless to say, Jaclyn was upset. I could hear it in her voice when she called her mother. The only thing Carol could effectively do was to listen, and to be with her daughter on at least one visit to the hospital.

Peter went back into the hospital about a week or so ago. The conversation Carol and Jaclyn had on Sunday revealed that Peter has only two to four months to live.

Jaclyn is crushed.

Between having been through a probation period with the Post Office and having to deal with a reality she is not really equipped to deal with, she is under a considerable amount of stress.

Another circumstance coming into play is that her ex-husband is having his own battle with cancer (found after their divorce). She is, therefore, worried about the effect on her son having both of his “fathers” extremely ill at the same time.

I have relegated myself as a bystander in this situation. I have put myself in that role, knowing that as a man, my tendency is to offer solutions without necessarily paying attention to the full extent of the problem. That’s what men do.

I was reminded of the demise of a couple of friends of mine; one had terminal cancer, the other had early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Rob was a member of my Cursillo small group. He was also, incidentally, my Cursillo sponsor. An engineer at a government facility south of town, he was first diagnosed with esophageal cancer at about the time my son, Stuart was born. He, his wife, and his two sons were on tenterhooks for several months while he underwent treatment. In the middle of his ordeal, he suffered a heart attack. He recovered from both quite nicely and was able to attend Stuart’s first birthday party.

His recovery didn’t last. At the Cursillo Christmas party, he announced that the cancer was back, and with a vengeance. He had been given five months (more or less) to live.

Our small group supported him through the following March. He was able to participate. We prayed for him and with him, hoping that his doctors were wrong.

They weren’t.

He was gone by the end of May, leaving a wife and a pair of school-aged sons.

I was unhappy, wondering why he had been cut down at so young an age. My faith was shaken and to a degree it has never recovered.

Rob’s widow was in the same boat. He made sure that she was taken care of, financially. Within five years, she was nearly broke, having made some bad decisions along the way – decisions she would not have made if Rob had survived.

And then there’s Norm.

Norm and I met while I was between the start and the end of my college career. He was a bit of a vagabond, working radio from “Town to town and up and down the dial.” He met and married his live-in girlfriend, quipping when he first moved in with her that his parents were relieved that he wasn’t gay.

Norm and Karen became fixtures with my ex and me. They were enchanted with our daughter, Sarah, to the point that they described themselves as Sarah’s “Jewish Godparents.” (As a side note, Sarah became enamored of the Shor’s dog Adrick, which she referred to as “The dog Ad-er-ick,” which I transferred to the dog Filbrix.)

A few years after moving to Allen, Karen revealed that Norm had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. They came to visit while Norm was in the early stages of the disease. It was easy to tell that he wasn’t all there, so to speak. Life went on with occasional dispatches from Karen on the progression of the disease.

Life happened here in the Metromess, with my divorce and my re-marriage to Carol. We met up with Karen while camping at Lake Erie nine years ago. I had every intention of continuing up the road to Erie, Pennsylvania to see Norm one last time, but Karen said no… he was already too far gone.

He lasted another year. Should I say, his shell lasted another year? Regardless, I went to Norm’s wake where I was the featured speaker at what was a family gathering.

I was saddened by Norm’s passing, especially saddened by the fact that at the end, it was his shell which finally gave out. Norm was gone.

Let’s bring this around to the situation with my stepdaughter and the man she hoped to spend the rest of her life with. From her description, Peter is in a semi-lucid state. He’s not all there, as if his mind is either going or gone. He’s teetering on the edge of the abyss while his body fights the cancer within him.

Rob’s wife, Barb, described his condition as a semi-lucid state toward the end, as if he was teetering on the edge of the abyss while his body fought the cancer within him.

Same thing with Norm. Karen and I have discussed Norm’s demise on several occasions and the same imagery came from her. Teetering on the edge of the abyss while his body fought to remain alive.

We are all faced with the finality of death. Some sooner, some later. From those facing the challenge of what comes next, we get a sense of acceptance, or even surrender. Those of us who survive are, for the most part, hoping and praying that the person we love will go to “The Good Place.”

That’s where having faith can be comforting.

My study in EFM has been challenging to what little faith I have left after the demise of my friends. Much of what we have studied has shown me a faith based on previous answers to questions developed by mankind about concerning life and death. It is not my intention to rob others of their faith by what I may say or believe. I may think differently at the end of this year of EFM, or at the end of the fourth year of EFM. For now, I am where I am.

Be Seeing You.

Postscript – I wrote this piece late Wednesday night and presented it at our EFM (Education for Ministry) class Thursday morning. Less than forty-eight hours later, I received news that Peter had died. The merciful part about the final days of his journey was that they were short. It does not make the burden any lighter for my stepdaughter or for anyone else in the extended family.

Sultry Summer, Frisky Fall

Sultry Summer, Frisky Fall

Summer officially, officially came to an end on Wednesday, and with the equinox, comes fall, and apparently pumpkin spice in everything from breakfast cereal to suppositories. Fall came with much cooler morning temperatures (thankfully) and an overdue break from the sultry summer heat. People around here are breaking out their winter coats and starting to think about getting their furnaces in good working order for colder days to come.

I’ve had an interesting few days. Last Friday (or Thursday, I forget which), my son called me up asking if I would like to go for a bicycle ride. “Sure, why not,” I told him. “Are you in the area?” Well, of course he wasn’t. Not that he wouldn’t be in the near future.

The near future came Wednesday morning just before I went out the door to some meeting having to do with personal faith inventories. We set up a time after lunch to meet at the Onion Shed just off downtown Farmersville. I showed up with a street bike, he showed up with his brand-new combination trail/street bike. Neither of us thought to bring spare tubes or a tire pump. We rued our decision three quarters of the way through the ten-mile trip.

For an older man who had not been on a bicycle for the better part of a year, I did rather well keeping up with my 41 year younger son. I planned several stops to whittle down the number of geocaches I needed to come to finding a thousand total caches, finding three, making that magic number, eight. The ride and the quest did not come without consequence. The cost of exercise were some sore muscles and going to bed under the influence of ibuprofen.

I suppose I needed another reminder that I was not getting any younger.

Got another one of those reminders Thursday afternoon. Went to what is becoming my yearly visit to the eye surgeon to be checked out for glaucoma. My optometrist had me go because she thought that the pressure on one of my eyeballs was a tad high and because one of my grandmothers had glaucoma toward the end of her life. What I didn’t know was that the eye surgeon was also looking at the possibility of cataracts. I was advised that I would likely have to have cataract surgery in 3-5 years. Oh, joy, since a couple of people in my Education For Ministry group had had cataracts removed in the past year and they were not happy with the adjustment period.

Sigh…

Well, I suppose it would be better than the alternative.

Oh. And the EFM group started Thursday morning. Year three. And about a thousand pages of text to cover between now and next Memorial Day. Our first assignment is to come up with a spiritual biography for next week’s meeting. And here I am on WordPress writing an essay about the end of summer and the first days of autumn.

But here we are. Thursday night. With the Texas State Fair starting tomorrow. The weather is about to heat up again, according to our local weathercasters. There may be a little more hot and sultry left after all.

(Forgive me, but this post is a week late in getting published!)

Be Seeing You!