Some of them don’t matter all that much:
…it’s Friday the 13th and the moon is full
…will the ice keep me from attending day 2 of the Bass Pro Tournament of Champions?
…will the omelet I just made taste as good as it looks?
…will Wayne Coyne, front man of The Flaming Lips, have a happy birthday?
Some things matter more. Lots more.
Today a good friend will be in Omaha to bury his father. Tom’s dad’s death was “expected, yet sudden and sad.” He thought he had said goodbye several years ago when his dad no longer knew who he was, but this is an unexpectedly hard goodbye.
When my Mom died in 2013 I heard a phrase that has stuck with me. It was appropriate for me then, as it is now for Tom and Gloria: saddened, but relieved.
-=-=-=
Some lyrics from a couple of Flaming Lips songs have been rattling around in my head off and on since Gloria sent me the text about the death of a man who won the Bronze Star while serving in the Airborne in Korea.
“Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round…”
And from “Fight Test”:
“I don’t know where the sun beams end and the star lights begin
It’s all a mystery
And I don’t know how a man decides what right for his own life
It’s all a mystery…”
-=-=-=
I have lots and lots of questions. I don’t have many answers. Pretty much everything is a mystery to me.
But I do know this much:
Give lots of hugs.
Tell the people who you love how you feel. Tell them now.
And be.
Just BE.
Fifteen years ago today, on September 9, 2001, Joseph and I were flying back to Tampa from El Paso, connecting thru O’Hare. (You take what you can get using frequent flyer miles, even back then.)
We had flown to El Paso so that we could see the Oregon State-New Mexico State football game. OSU won the game 27-22. (Go Beavers!!)
We had a great trip. Did lots of sight seeing. Ate some real Mexican food. But the most memorable part of the trip has always been the conversation that my 11 year old son and I had at thirty thousand feet after he came back from using the lavatory, somewhere between ELP and ORD.
The first words out of Joseph’s mouth as he sat down in his window seat were these: “Dad, would it be hard to hijack an airplane?”
The question came from out of nowhere, so I tossed it back at him. “Well what do you think Joseph? Do you think it would be hard?”
He boomeranged it back. “You fly all the time Dad. Every week. What do you think?”
I remember saying this: “I don’t think it would be all that hard. When we walked thru the metal detector we could’ve had plexiglass knives, or maybe even a short plexiglass machete, stuffed down our pants.”
He asked me if there were guns made of material that couldn’t be detected by the metal detector. I told him that I wasn’t sure, that there was a law prohibiting undetectable firearms….but that if you wanted to hijack a plane you wouldn’t care about that, or any other law.
Joseph asked, “But even if you snuck a bunch of those knives and machetes on this plane, how could you hijack it?”
“Suppose the door got stuck, that you were trapped inside and couldn’t have gotten out of the lavatory a few minutes ago. Do you think I could’ve broken in to help you?”
Joseph smiled at me and I said “Dad you coulda broken through that no problem. It would have been easy for you.”
“Yes, I could have. When we get off this plan in Chicago, take a look at the door to the cockpit. It’s about the same as the lavatory door. It would be a piece of cake to kick it in.”
Conversation over as quick as it started. He was back playing on his game boy, when he wasn’t looking out the window. I was back to reading my Newsweek. I don’t remember if either of us paid any attention to the cockpit doors as we walked off the plane. I do remember however that our connecting flight in Chicago was delayed a couple of hours.
-=-=-=
I took the 5:30 am Delta flight out of Tampa the morning of September 11th, 2001. At 8:45 I was sitting in Grace Dietrich’s office in Virginia Beach prepping for our standing Tuesday morning 9 am call with the Andersen software development team in Sarasota. Just as the call started she scribbled a note and passed it to me: “A small plane crashed into the World Trade Center.”
A couple of minutes later I was upstairs with Rodney Thompson and his team. They had a TV in their graphics lab. We watched a 767 crash into the south tower. Live. It was NOT a small plane. It was surreal.
Flights were canceled for several days. I drove a rental car from Virginia Beach back to Tampa. Lots of “thinking time.”
Our house on Apple Ridge was in the TPA flight path, about 10 miles due north of the Tampa airport. For the next week the silence and the empty skies were eerie.
I’m pretty sure that I hadn’t had another thought about what Joseph and I had talked about only 48 hours earlier, when Grace passed me that note a few minutes before 9 on the morning of 9/11.
For many years I’ve been telling anyone who would listen: “I wanta die like Leroy Nichols.”
And then I have to explain who he was, and how he died. Leroy died the way that almost everyone wants to go…before they become just a memory. Or worse, a drooling doofus. People wanta die quickly, and with very little pain. That’s no surprise, eh?
I’ve told lots of people about Leroy’s death. I don’t know how many I’ve told…probably over 100 folks. Nobody has a story to tell just like Leroy’s, but lots of people knew someone who died suddenly.
I don’t know how long ago I started talking with others about the way he died. These were typically upbeat, and not in the least bit morbid, conversations. Really.
I’m not even sure how long ago his heart failed him. I’m sure it was at least 10, or maybe even 15, years ago. He did it the right way though.
-=-=-=
The version in mind for me varies a bit from Leroy’s, but first the background.
Who was Leroy? He was the brother of two of my aunts by marriage. He had two sisters, Doris and Charlotte. My Mom had brothers named Sterl and Joe. Sterl married Doris; Joe married Charlotte; i.e. my Mom’s brothers married Leroy’s sisters.
I had other connections to Leroy. He taught high school math at Farmington HS. My brother and sister graduated from there and I student taught in the math department a very long time ago. Unfortunately, for eight weeks I was assigned to a control freak named Mr. Ragland. I’m sure it would have been a much better experience (for me and for the kids in the classes) if Leroy had been my mentor. He was a good teacher, far better than the ragman.
He also attended a church for awhile that my Dad started. I was married in that little Baptist church, but I only lived in that town a short time during its existence. I doubt that Leroy and I were there at the same service a dozen times.
-=-=-=
How did he die? Stopped at the first traffic light in town, waiting for the light to change. The light turned green and Leroy was turning white.
My version varies from his and is driven by wherever I’m living. The primary difference is where I’d like to be when my heart stops, but it is always in a car and at an intersection. A busy intersection.
My current fantasy takes place at the corner of South Campbell and Republic Road. Friday at about 4:30 in the afternoon. I’m the third car back, stopped at the light after watching a couple of cretins go through on red…
The car stereo is cranked up to something a bit raucous. Maybe it’s Kings of Leon singing “Revelry.” (Somehow it seems fitting that I should be listening to some preacher’s kids rocking on when the time comes….)
The traffic light changes. The cars in front and beside me take off. My little Corolla is frozen in place with Caleb Followill belting out “So the time we shared it was precious to me, All the while I was dreaming of revelry, Dreaming of revelry….”
The cars behind me start honking. Springfield is the buckle of the bible belt but that doesn’t keep the Baptists following me from spewing hate and screaming profanities as they miss the light because my foreign car has them blocked.
People are honking and screaming about my rock-and-roll, and about my corolla not rolling. They are pissed off.
Finally someone gets out of their car and comes up to mine. The CD is on to another KOL song: “I just wanted to know if I could go home, Been rambling in day after day, And everyone says I don’t know. So don’t knock it…”
But the angry people at the busy intersection aren’t paying any attention to the music whatsoever. They’re mad as they approach my car. “Why the hell aren’t you moving that piece of crap?!? You hippies and your loud music!!”
As soon as they get to my car their emotions go from anger to guilt. I’m already turning gray. I’m a goner. Slam, bam, dead.
“I was screaming and cussing the poor old fella, and he was dying right there in front of me. Oh, that poor, poor man…”
-=-=-
It’s perfect.
People pissed off, then feeling awful. It makes me laugh to think about it. Literally. (Will I be laughing afterwards? That’s a thought or two for another time…)
A quick, painless death. No lingering illness. No huge outlay for healthcare month after month after month. No family and friends watching me wither and die. And on top of it I get to jerk some people’s chains, play with their emotions…and give them a story of their own. Perfect.
Only one person got cranky when I told him my fatalistic fantasy, which only recently got more specific regarding the music playing. Every-time I’ve told it, including telling it to Leroy’s sisters (my two aunts), it’s always been me in the car, with the sound system cranked up on a Friday afternoon at a busy intersection in the town where I was getting my mail.
This perpetually angry man’s reply to my death dream: “Nobody gets to decide how they’re going to die!!” As usual, facts escape and don’t matter to this guy. Someone commits suicide every 13 minutes in the US. It’s the 10th leading cause of death in the country. Over 40,000 people a year in America decide how they’re going to die; over half of them using a gun.
While I’ve been sharing this fantasy with people for years I honestly have never thought about death all that much. But a recent rare hospital stay because of pulmonary embolisms of unknown origin does make one think a bit.
What I think is this. It came too early for Leroy. And Leroy got lucky.
It was spring of the year 2000. The world had survived the Y2K scare…amazingly using a 2 digit year hadn’t brought the planet to its knees.
We had taken a family vacation to Arizona during the December school break to evaluate AZ as a place to move. There had been some executive level changes at the niche consulting firm where I worked that were going to be tough to live with, i.e. my new boss was not only a roadblock to any career advancement for me. He was also more than a bit forgetful, on top of being a terrible listener, generally clueless and a grade A butt-kisser….not to mention the misguided politics that he regularly spewed.
Paula wasn’t happy with the gray, drizzly winters in Portland. She wanted to live somewhere warmer; we had talked about moving somewhere with more sunshine. I suggested southern Orygun or east of the Cascades, near Bend. She wasn’t interested in staying in OR. After our 10 or 11 days in AZ, checking out Flagstaff, Sedona, Phoenix and Tuscon, we weren’t ready to move there. We weren’t writing the state off either.
Heavy inertia was gonna keep us in Tigard for awhile. How long was unclear. The money and the culture and most of the people at S&A (except doofus) were top notch.
-=-=-=
The original “Who wants to be a Millionaire” with Regis Philben had first aired in mid-August, 1999. It, along with Seinfeld, provided conversation fodder in the office. I have always liked games, and I had made several attempts to get on the show. There were a number of hoops to jump through, some involving luck; others involved skill.
I got close to making the final cut a couple of times. Close, but no stogie. A couple of times a week, Joseph and I would sit together and watch Regis and the contestants. It was great fun. I heard “Dad, you should get on this show!!” a lot. It didn’t happen, but not for my lack of trying…
And more than a couple a times a week, his behavior would have me saying to myself, “I gotta get outta here…this 10 year old is gonna kill me or drive me crazy!!” Joseph was a handful at that age.
-=-=-=
About 6 or 7 months after the show had been on the air, Joseph and I had a conversation in his room one Saturday afternoon. I have always referred to it as “The Epiphany.”
At breakfast Joseph asked if we could shoot some fireworks off in the cul-de-sac later that evening. The weather prediction was for a nice day for a late February. At that time, I always kept a decent sized supply of fireworks on hand.
My neighbor across the way and his 12 year old were like me and Joseph. The four of us liked to blow things up and make noise. I told Joseph, “if you have a good day today, I’ll see if Jim and Ryan want to meet us out front after dark to light up the sky and get loud.”
I never had to track Jim down.
-=-=-=
It was mid Saturday afternoon, and Joseph had been sent upstairs to his room for the third time. Now this piece I’m writing is NOT about him being an oppositional, defiant child. It is not about my parenting skills, or lack thereof. It is not about what Joseph had said or done to warrant another timeout. If I had been keeping a journal back then, I would be able to provide more detail. And probably more accuracy and specificity. But I’m betting that the following dialogue is very close to what transpired when I opened the door to his bedroom, walked in and sat down next to him on the bottom bunk.
Me: At breakfast we talked about shooting off fireworks with Jim and Ryan. What do you think?
Joseph: I don’t think it’s happening.
Me: You’re right. Why do you think it’s not happening?
Joseph: Because you and her keep sending me up here!!
{I repeat: “…this piece I’m writing is NOT about him being an oppositional, defiant child.” So let’s move on to the meat of the pow-wow….}
Me: You want to play a game?
Joseph: Sure. Can we go outside? I’ve been in this room all day…
Me: Let’s play our own version of “Who wants to be a Millionaire”….but we’ll play it right here. How does that sound?
Joseph: Who is gonna ask the questions…you or me?
Me: Me. And just like on the show, the questions will get progressively harder. OK?
Joseph: Sure. Ask me anything.
Me: How many days in a week?
Joseph: (grumbling at my audacity to ask this no brainer!!) Seven…of course. Duh.
Me: Buddy, they’ll get harder…our game is gonna be just like the one that Regis plays. Man-o-man….you gotta lighten up!
Me: How many weeks in a year?
Joseph: (facial contortions at getting another softball…) Well, everybody knows that. Fifty-two.
Me: How many days in a year?
Him: 365, except in a leap year and then it’s 366. (with a smirk…)
Me: How many years do you think you’ll live?
Him: About 75.
Me: Good answer! (I was hoping he’d get close…and I liked that my 10 year-old son did.)
Me: This is the last question. How many days do you think you’ll live?
Him: About a million. (That woulda been the answer if I had scripted it!)
Me: Nope. Do the math.
Him: What do you mean “nope!” And what do you mean “do the math.”
Me: So you told me 365 days in a year. And 75 years is a good answer for how long someone will live. So if you have those two facts, how would you figure out how many days you’re going to live?
Him: I’d multiply them together.
Me: Exactly…do the math. Here’s a pencil and paper.
He banged it out. 27,375 days.
Then I told him the point of the exercise.
“Joseph, that was fun. Think about this: You haven’t lived six-sevenths of your days, so you should have another another 23 or 24 thousand days. I hope most of them are going to be good days. But some of them are going to be bad days….you’ll have plans to do something outside and the weather will be bad; grandma might get sick or die…after all, she’ll be turning 75 at the end of March; maybe you’ll be sick yourself; or it might be a bad day like today. This day hasn’t been much fun for any of us, and one reason is because of the things you did and said. Joseph, you don’t want to be responsible for ruining your own days. I’m going back downstairs now. I’ll come get you when it’s dinner time. Please think about trying to make each day a good one. I wish we were going to be setting off fireworks tonight. Let’s make it happen one day soon.”
Now for MY Epiphany.
The “game” played out like I wanted it to….for Joseph, although it didn’t have the impact on him that I had hoped for. But as I walked downstairs I thought about how the game we had just played applied to me too…and the fact that I’d already lived about 70% of my allotted days. I pushed the numbers around in my head and came to the realization that I only had something like 8,200 days left on the planet.
I didn’t like my boss or my long-term prospects working for him.
My spouse wanted to live somewhere warmer.
I loved Portland (and I still do), but the long winters with the gray and drizzle can be challenging.
I walked into the family room and told Paula: “Joseph and I had a good talk. He’s staying in his room until we have dinner ready. And I’m gonna see what kind of severance package I can negotiate. You need to start looking for a job in a warmer city.”
I had a great relationship with the HR and Finance folks and I knew I could get good, confidential feedback from them before I submitted my resignation. It worked out well for me. She found a job teaching in Tampa.
She and the kids were there when school started in August. I stayed in Tigard to sell the house. After the sale I did a solo cross country drive…without a cell phone. I spent time with some friends that I hadn’t seen in many years. I did my part for the close on the purchase of our house in Tampa (i.e. signed and initialed a stack of papers) while I was staying with a friend in Denver. I took a break during the drive and flew to NJ to interview for a job, which turned out to be the last W-2 position I ever had. There are some stories there…but they’ll have to wait for another day.
-=-=-=
A couple of things hadn’t happened at the time of “The Epiphany.”
1. Warren Zevon’s last appearance on Letterman came a couple of years after we had moved back to Floriduh. I saw that entire show in late October of 2002 while sitting in a hotel room in Virginia Beach. Zevon was the only guest that night and he played several songs. One line from the show has stuck with me. When asked how the cancer diagnosis had affected his work and outlook, Zevon said, “You put more value in every minute. … It’s more valuable now. You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich.”
That last line, along with Alfred E. Neuman’s “What, me worry?” are my mantras these days. The latter since I was barely a teen-ager, and the former since that night over 13 years ago.
2. Kris Allen didn’t release his cover of The Script’s “Live like we’re dying” until late September of 2009.
“Yeah we gotta start lookin’ at the hands of the time we’ve been given here
This all we got then we gotta start thinkin’ it
Every second counts on a clock that’s tickin’
Gotta live like we’re dying oh
We only got 86,400 seconds in a day…”
-=-=-=
What did I learn from Epiphany #1 that day in 2000, from Warren Zevon in 2002, from listening to Kris Allen in 2009, and from subsequent events? I have to keep re-learning it all the time….
Life is precious. Enjoy every minute you have and enjoy every bite of every sandwich. Tell the people who you love that you love them. And be. Be kind. Be nice.
I never expected to live in Missouri, or in an apartment, again. All that changed in 2011. There are lots of things to like about apartment living…i don’t have to mow grass, I just pick up the phone if something is broken or isn’t working, there is coffee and a daily paper in the lobby in the morning, and I don’t get nasty letters from a HOA board because i’m not in compliance with some silly, arcane rule. (HOAs are a story for another time…)
One of the best things about The Abbey, the building where we live, is the layout. Three floors, shaped like an octagon, and a perfect place to walk when it makes sense to avoid walking outside….i.e. it’s too hot, too cold, raining, etc. A lap inside the building is a third of a mile, and there are lots of stairs to climb if i’m so inclined.
Yeah, walking laps inside an apartment building can be monotonous but not nearly as boring as a treadmill. Plus I usually do a walk-and-talk, so i’m killing two birds at once. One of my daily walk-and-talks is always with my 89-year old Dad.
Last Friday, as I was just a minute into my call with Dad I caught a whiff of something. Now I do not have the most sensitive sniffer, but this smell was nasty. It was only noticeable for about 100 feet, in one relatively small part of the 1780 foot long lap. The only way to describe what it smelled like that afternoon: it smelled like ass. Or worse.
I only pass that section once on most of my inside walk-and-talks with Dad, as I take a lap of all three floors and then wrap up the call.
The next time that I walked through that part of the building was when I called him on Saturday. Same smell, although even stronger. I’m thinking “don’t the people who live in this part of the building smell this shit?”
Sunday afternoon I asked Shelly if she’d take a walk down the hall with me to see what she thought. She is more sensitive than me in every regard, but especially from an olfactory perspective.
As soon as we reached that section of the 3rd floor, she stopped quickly and her facial expression was one of disgust. The smell was indeed quite disgusting.
Then she said it. “I hope somebody is not dead!”
-=-==
The first thing this morning I stopped by the office and told Dena about the smell. She said the exact same thing as Shelly.
Ninety minutes later I was back from running a few errands. There was an ambulance in front of the building.
Fifteen minutes later there was a knock on my door. It was Dena. She asked me if I’d come with her and talk to the police and tell them what I had told her earlier. We walked to A-313 and the cop came out, still wearing a mask, and interviewed me for 10 minutes.
If you google “smell of death” there are over 68 million results. I skimmed several of them, with titles like “what does death smell like,” “does death have a smell,” and “researchers isolate ‘the human smell of death’.” They refer to a “singular chemical cocktail,” the “putrefying tissue of dead bodies” and a “five chemical cocktail made up of chemicals that are part of a group of molecules called esters, which are also responsible for the strong, sharp smells emitted by fruits like pineapples and raspberries.”
None of the sites really described the smell. The closest on came was this: “The human smell of death, in other words, is a little bit fruity.”
I wouldn’t call it “fruity,” and not just because I love fruit. I eat lots of it.
The smell of death is disgusting. It smells like ass. Dead ass.
