CK's Journal

Shotgun house. He lived with a prostitute in the front room of a shotgun house off Woodall-Rogers Freeway near downtown. (A shotgun house is a narrow one-story shack that could theoretically be cleared with one shotgun blast through the front door.) In the course of being treated for cancer he suffered a radiation injury that caused triplegia, paralysis of both legs and one arm. The other arm wasn’t much good. When he came home from the hospital the woman put him on a bedpan and left him there for a day or two. When I got there the skin over his coccyx was intact, but was kind of purplish. Within a few days the skin began to change color and underlying tissue began to break down and soon there was a large (~10 inches in diameter) and growing decubitus ulcer (down to the bone). I would clean the ulcer and we would talk. He was bitter about what had happened with the cancer treatment as I recall, but he had been a hard life before the illness and injury and he was mostly accepting or resigned, or so it seemed to me.

From time to time when I was there, the woman would bring a trick through his room on the way to her room. She was a heavy drinker and often smelled of liquor. She was sweet-natured and pretty in her own way, and I liked her. Teaching her to care for him was a real challenge.

The ulcer got bigger and bigger and after a few months he died. A couple of years later I saw the woman on a corner in another part of town and stopped to talk with her. She was drunk and smelled pretty strong. She asked me if I wanted to have sex with her, but I said no thank you and gave her some money. That was the last time I saw her.

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Eggnog. He lived alone in the Cedar Springs projects. He had head and neck cancer (squamous cell carcinoma) with many tumors in the nodes of his neck and down into his chest. He had a mattress on his living room floor and he got around by crawling from one room to another. He had difficulty swallowing and was unable to take any solid food. He liked eggnog, which was fine around Christmas, but problematic after the holidays. I went to quite a few stores to find the last of the eggnog. After that he had to make do with protein drinks, which at the time were not as readily available as they are now.

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Burned. There had been a gas shortage and two brothers decided to hoard cans of gas to sell at a big profit. He lit a cigarette and the gas exploded, burning him over most of his body. After months in the Parkland burn unit he was finally discharged. He didn’t do his exercises and ended up with his arms frozen in a flexed position. He had no fingers, no nose, no ears – every part of his body that protruded had been burned off. He was pretty much all scar tissue.

He lived alone the same Cedar Springs projects as the man with head and neck cancer. His wife would come over sometimes and would throw his meals-on-wheels food on the floor. When he walked he would stagger; when he went out the children in the projects would throw things at him and call him names.

I don’t know what happened to him.

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A prayer. The promotora de salud (lay health promoter) and I went to see a woman with far-advanced cancer. She was in a coma and had gangrene. She lived in one of those barren outlying Oak Cliff pink brick apartment buildings where gangs pretty much ruled. The main thing we were there for was for the promotora to pray for the patient. We were there at her bedside – the patient and her daughter, the promotora, and me, all holding hands. Everything was in Spanish, except when the promotora leaned over to me and whispered, “I think her toe just fell off.” It had.

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Dressing change. There was a homeless man who hung around on Bryan Street. One of his legs had an old injury that was chronically infected. The lower part of the leg was markedly enlarged and hard and suppurating. He refused to go to Parkland, the county hospital.

At the time, my students and I were operating out of the “police storefront” at the corner of Bryan and Annex. The police had banned the homeless man from coming inside after he had used their toilet to have a huge and hugely malodorous bowel movement.

He would come to the storefront every week and one of the students or I would change the dressing on that leg. It was literally a weekly dressing change that involved cutting away the old exudate and blood-soaked dressing and putting on a new dressing. He would sit on the bench of the picnic table or a retaining wall outside the storefront for someone to change the dressing. I thought the maggots might be what was keeping him alive. I was surprised at how fast maggots can move.

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Staying home. Ms. Brown lived in a sparse one-bedroom apartment with Mr. Escalera. She had rheumatoid arthritis, was home-bound, and in fact, mostly bed-bound. I recall that the first time the students and I turned her over a multitude of cockroaches scattered out from under her back. She had several health problems, especially the pain from RA. She was a nice woman with a good spirit and was very strong mentally. While the students were in the bedroom with Ms. Brown, Mr. Escalera and I would sit at their little kitchen table, talking and him smoking. I marveled at how he was able to keep her at home – get her to the bathroom, take care of food, clean the apartment, everything. After a few years there were changes made in where and how the students and I were operating, and we quit seeing Ms. Brown. Ultimately, she developed cancer. She never told anyone and she just wasted away in her bed. I saw her a few times during the course of the illness, but she refused any assistance other than the home visits. My friend, Alison, the missionary also became involved. We all did exactly what Ms. Brown wanted, which was to help her never leave her home in her little apartment.

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The students. When I refer to “the students” I mean the Baylor students who were in my community health clinical groups. Each semester I had two groups of eight students. Very few of them had ever been exposed to the levels of poverty and unmet health needs they were immersed in through  this work in refugee communities. They worked with me as partners in learning about community health through providing community health services. The students operated in two-person teams in designated neighborhoods. They learned about community health through finding people with problems and alongside the patients, solving the problems – and never just referring people to somewhere else.

As much as possible, they went through “the healthcare system” with patients; students learning, for example what the Parkland OB clinics are like: a waiting room with 50-100 plastic chairs; waiting room floor sticky with spilled soft drinks and baby formula, Cheetos, whatever; maybe 16 exam rooms around the waiting room (my memory is clouded re some details); someone shouting/mispronouncing patient names (you better not miss hearing your name called); and once in the exam room, being seen by a different person on every appointment (expect another vaginal exam); being sent out from exam not having any idea what next.

Eventually, as we developed the Agape Clinic (a-ga-pe) as a community resource, the students spent more and more time in the clinic, though we never abandoned the home visits and community outreach. In the clinic students had responsibilities that rotated week to week – triage, manager, exam rooms (5), pharmacy. As was the case with the outreach/home visits/district health model, students had significant responsibility and autonomy. Oh, what a job they did!

Here is a description of the work, in the streets http://ckjournal.com/in-the-streets and more on the Agape Clinic http://ckjournal.com/agape-clinic-recollections

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On San Jacinto. In one of the apartment buildings in the 4000 block of San Jacinto there was a Vietnamese woman who had some unspecified mental health problems that were manifested in part by her yelling and sometimes fighting with neighbors. She had a dream one night that her apartment was filled with Buddhist and Catholic religious statues. She began putting religious statues in her apartment according to the dream and as the apartment was filled, she quit the yelling and fighting. She became something like a fortune-teller. Although she didn’t have any outstanding health needs, I would stop in at her apartment when I could. She would fix coffee for the two of us and we would sit at her kitchen table and talk.

In the same building there was an old Vietnamese couple living with a teenage girl named Thuy who was deaf and mute. The man had a stroke. He survived but was completely incapacitated. By some miracle he ended up in a nursing home just a mile or so from the apartment. His wife would walk to the facility every day to bathe and feed him. When he died the funeral service was held in a South Dallas funeral home. I remember his wife and Thuy ended up on their knees on the floor in front of the coffin, wailing and falling out. After school Thuy went to work at Fiesta groceries and did well, as far as I could tell.

In the same building there was a Cambodian woman who was married to a White man who was somehow involved in drugs. One day Leslie called me and said I should come to her office right away. When I got there the Cambodian woman was sitting under the conference table in Leslie’s office. She had appalling stitched lacerations on her body. Two men had come into the apartment and stabbed her husband to death, raped her, and slashed her. She had been taken to the ER and when they were done with her, a missionary named Chuck brought her to Leslie’s office. I went to her apartment to let the police know where she was. I remember how polite the homicide detective was when he questioned me (everyone is a suspect in their world). I remember that there was an amazing amount of blood on the bed, floor, walls, and even the ceiling.

In the same building there was a Lao family – three generations in a small apartment. They had pigeon cages covering several windows with the pigeons free to come and go to the outside world and a sliding door on the inside. At night whenever someone wanted they could open the sliding door and reach into the cage – pigeon for dinner. Eggs, too. The same family had a big aquarium filled with popcorn and big grubs eating the popcorn – grubs for dinner.

Across the street a widow with two sons lived in an upstairs apartment. One day the brothers were arguing over a bowl of rice. One of them stabbed the other, who fell out the window and died.

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Get-away. The students ran across a 16 year-old girl who was living with a man in his mother’s second-story apartment on Virginia Street. The girl wanted to leave, but the boyfriend and his mother wouldn’t let her. The students talked with the police, but they had already been in contact with the girl and she was uncooperative. Now, she said, she had to get out. The police wouldn’t help, so the students and I came up with a plan for the students to make a home visit and distract the mother. While that was happening in the living room, the girl was throwing her possessions (in three black plastic trash sacks) out the window to me waiting down below in my blue Toyota pick-up in the driveway between two apartment buildings. The girl then walked out of the room she shared with her boyfriend and followed by the students, walked out of the apartment to the alley where I was waiting. Away we all went to the police office. One of the police officers bought the girl a bus ticket to LA where she had family in Compton. She was back with the boyfriend in about a month.

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A man with a gun. In one of the apartments on Annex Street a Chinese woman from Vietnam ran a little store out of her apartment. People could buy soft drinks, snacks, and the like. One of her daughters had a large nevus (mole) on her face. The mother told her daughter the reason she had it was because in a previous life she had wasted her husband’s money. A dermatologist at Children’s Medical Center Girl decided it was appropriate to remove it surgically.

On the day of surgery I went to the apartment to drive the girl and her mother to CMC. The girl got in the truck first and said, “My mother says there’s a man with a gun in our building.” I said, “Tell her to get in the truck now.” The girl said, “There’s the man.” Sure enough a man was walking towards us and he had a pistol (like a .357) stuck in his jeans. I reached across the girl and pulled her mother into the truck and was backing up across chunks of concrete and curbs and whatever. Meanwhile, a man in a white car picked up the man with the gun. I drove around the block to the police storefront and told them about the man and several of them took off toward the apartment. We went on to CMC, where preoperatively they gave the girl a fentanyl sucker which pretty quickly got her all smiley and goofy. The surgery went well. The guy with the gun got away but an hour or so later got into a gunfight with the police on Central Expressway.

I found the first explication of what I was trying to trying to do for most of my life. It is in a memorandum written in 1978 to Elsie Griffith, the executive director of the Dallas Visiting Nurse Association. At the time, I was working on planning and implementing the VNA Terminal Care Program, which was foundational for the first hospice in Texas. In hospice we focused intensively on managing physical symptoms at the end-of-life, such as pain, nausea, shortness of breath, etc.; and on supporting families. The subject here is the spiritual and ethical structuring of this work. It’s hard to believe I sent this and that Elsie accepted it and believed in the vision. Here it is, exactly as I sent it:

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June 9, 1978

To: Elsie Griffith

From: Charles Kemp

I feel a strong need to express something that is difficult to express— namely, the spirit which I think should be part of our terminal care program.

I hope we all recognize that the way we die in America is generally poor. To illustrate this let me tell you about a situation I am presently experiencing: Several weeks ago someone called me to say that a friend of theirs was dying of cancer of the breast metastatic to brain, ribs, spine, abdomen, etc. and would I see what I could do to help. The person in question is a 41-year-old woman (Jan) whose 2 teenage daughters live with her husband in another residence. Jan’s mother has been taking care of her for about 7 months and is physically and emotionally exhausted. If relief is not forth coming, Jan will have to go to a nursing home. We have been helping with home health aides and nursing but it’s not enough.

I went to see Jan on a Friday night before I left for a week in California. I found her to be in excruciating pain and to have paraplegia. There were only a few hours left before I had to leave town and although I tried, I could not find any relief. When I returned from California I called and discovered that Jan was on the way to a nursing home.

After visiting her once and seeing what the situation was I committed myself to stay with her 2 nights a week. I can’t say exactly why — I’ve never done this before — sometimes something happens when people meet or when situations present — maybe I ‘m seeing me or my wife — or maybe I have the need to stay grounded (as much as is possible) in the reality of dying as I plan for helping people die as humans.

Staying in a nursing home at night is a strange, sad, and sometimes bizarre experience:

Me: “She needs something for pain”
Nurse: “I don’t work that hall.”
Me: “Where is the other nurse?”
Nurse: “He’s gone.”
Me: “When will he be back?”
Nurse: “15 minutes.”
Me: “She’s really in a lot of pain.”
Nurse: “I don’t work that hall.”
Me: “Are you saying you won’t do anything?”
Nurse: “I don’t work that hall.”

At midnight an aide walks in, turns the light on and off and starts to walk out. I ask her what she’s doing. “Checking the light.” — and out she goes.

Ice pitchers are filled at 5:30 A.M.

And much more. It’s a kind of dumb, passive brutality.

I know you’ve heard and seen a thousand variations on thig sorry tale. You know about the terrible loneliness and dehumanization of dying. You have in your possession some scientifically-oriented things I’ve written about this. So probably I’m trying to touch you with something that is touching me very deeply: The spirit of the terminal care program:

To be touched and to be able to touch people who are lonely and afraid. To be not afraid to feel. To work from the mind and the heart. To experience the personal loneliness and fear that lies within (us all). To care enough not to need to be the hero. To work through the family. This is difficult for me to express. I’ m not looking just for increased services; I’m looking for something that will touch people at every level.

When these things are happening, the people (nurses, aides, social workers, doctors, volunteers, etc.) who are experiencing them need to have to have an incredibly strong support system.

I tell you, I am committed to planning and operationalizing a program which will give what is needed. And I’m firm in my knowledge and belief that this spirit I have so inadequately expressed above is vital to meeting the needs of people who are dying.

Thank you,

—————–

Jan went home a few days later and she died peacefully at home a few months later. She was a brave woman.

The night in the “dumb, passive brutality” of that nursing home was inspirational to me. I’m not saying that over time my colleagues and I ended the ugliness, but at least for people with end-stage cancer, ALS, and other afflictions there are now much kinder, more supportive, and more clinically effective options all across America – and that’s exactly what we were aiming for.

2013 was a great year, 2014 was a hard year, 2015 was impossible

Two friends were here for dinner yesterday evening. At some point we began talking about what we were doing 10 years ago. Not surprisingly, there had been changes and losses for all of us. Here is a partial account of what I didn’t say.

10 years ago on New Years Eve of 2014 I was at a gathering with other members of the Atrium Obscurum crew, the people I worked with to put on forest psytrance events. It was an all-night psychedelic party, with most people tripping and others rolling. At some point we gathered around a firepit behind the house and had one of those ceremonies where everyone writes on a piece of paper something they want to let go of from the past year and then one by one, say a few words, and toss that burden into the fire. When it was my turn I said that 2013 was one of the best years of my life and I had nothing to unburden myself of. I said I hoped 2014 would be as good.

A few months into 2014 Leslie began to decline and 2014 got harder and harder and harder until in March of 2015 she passed away. Then the grief. Late 2014 and into 2015 was one of the two hardest times of my life, the other being my 13 months in Vietnam. Below is brief description of a couple of days in Vietnam.

2024 is unfolding as a good year.

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At the “The Hill Fights: The First Battle of Khe Sanh”

I came in with another man on a helicopter to link up with B/1/9 (B Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment) on an operation at the DMZ. When the helicopter came in to where B Co was in those dry hills, the LZ was getting hit with mortars. I didn’t know what was happening and it was a complete surprise when the chopper was about 10 feet off the ground and the crew chief put his boot in my back and pushed me out, followed by a rain of ammo, C-rations, etc. they were tossing off the chopper. There were a lot of mortars coming in, too and I made it to a little hole full of Marines. When I dove in on top of them some lieutenant was telling me to get the hell out and I was just burrowing into the pile, not going anywhere.

The next thing I remember was described in the book, “The Hill Fights” by Edward Murphy. Murphy is writing about someone named Montgomery:

“Corporal Montgomery struggled with the heavy load his team carried as they sought cover. They had almost made it when a brace of mortar shells crashed behind them. The twin blasts threw Montgomery into the brush. When he came to a few minutes later, blood flowed from shrapnel wounds in his right thigh, right hand, left arm, left buttocks, and the right side of his neck.

He says, ‘I looked around. No one else was there.’ Mortar shells were still exploding along the ridgeline… I was afraid I’d been out for a while and had been overlooked in a withdrawal, so I crawled on all fours to a nearby bomb crater. I hurt too bad to go any further, so I started calling for help.’

Two marines hiding in another crater answered. As soon as I told them that I was wounded they crawled over and patched me up. ‘Where is everybody?’ Montgomery asked. ‘Where did they go? Are they all right?’ The two marines told him what they knew which was not much, then Montgomery asked them for a favor. Montgomery pulled a camera from his pack and handed it to one of the men, and with mortar shells crashing behind them the man took Montgomery’s picture. ‘What a souvenir that’ll make,’ he thought. As soon as the mortars stopped Montgomery’s two new friends helped him back to the main body.

(I was the man who took Montgomery’s photo. He was sitting in the dirt in the crater, very bloody, smiling, shooting me the finger.)

Minutes later without a word everyone began to move out. The few remaining able-bodied Marines grabbed the wounded and dead and started humping. The men moved with a single-minded goal: get out of the killing zone. The NVA was not going to let that happen.

About ten men made it safely over the ridgeline before the mortars came again. In rapid succession more than a dozen high explosive shells wracked the column. Marines dove left and right seeking cover on the barren hillside. Still, chunks of hot metal found flesh. Up and down the column men were crying out in pain. Some were wounded for the second time that day. More than half a dozen were also freshly wounded and desperate cries of, ‘Corpsman!’ ‘Corpsman up!’ echoed across the hillside. This attack pushed B/1/9 to its limit. They were burdened with more casualties than they could carry, without food for two days, with little water, low on ammo, and without any prospect of evading the enemy. Some in the unit saw no sense in continuing this way. The ambulatory and uninjured might make it to Khe Sanh if the dead and the badly wounded were left behind. Captain Sayers never considered this. Bravo company would succeed or fail as a unit. That was the way it was. There were no other options. The survivors would sell their lives for a high price, taking as many enemy with them as they could.” END QUOTE

Somewhere on the barren hillside, not far up the trail, we got the wounded man to safety. There was a depression in the trail and there were people tending to a another wounded Marine there. He was dying and they were trying to save him, but when they turned him over some of his insides fell out of his back and he died.

In thinking about this I’ve never been able to remember where the trail finally went. Now I know. Farther up the trail a few helicopters came to take out the last casualties and by the time they got to the dead men, there was extra room on the last chopper. So I got out safely and B/1/9 was linked with K/3/9 (K Co., 3^rd Bn, 9^th Marine Regiment).  

In November 2009 I wrote about what happened with me next:

(11/2009) I was flying out of an operation, in a chopper with a lot of weapons and several bodies. We were flying low, coming up on any enemy too fast for them to hit us except they did, bullets banging into the chopper and it started spinning except the pilot flared it some and though we slammed hard into the ground. It wasn’t a disaster – except for the fact that we had just been shot down by people with bad intent who were undoubtedly headed our way from not very far away. We set up some guns and in just a few minutes we began to take a little fire and then another chopper got there and we dragged the bodies to the other chopper and got out of there (calling in artillery fire on the downed chopper).

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Writing this has been a comfort to me. It doesn’t really bother me much anymore. It’s crazy to think that these things and more happened. The comfort I take is related to the war in Ukraine. I’ve been worrying about the Ukrainian soldiers who are going through heavier combat than I ever did. How can they process it later in life? As I reread the above, I think that if I’m OK, maybe some of them can be, too.

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I read all this to Jean. I am thankful to her for hearing it.

It was a misty, drizzly day, a little cool for the tropics, for once. There were about 10 of us on patrol near some deserted villages. We came upon a small, ruined temple with some walls still standing and a little bit of roof. We stopped there, put a few men on watch, and 6 or 7 of us leaned back against those walls “inside,” smoking cigarettes, talking, dozing, being dry. It was one of the best places I’ve ever been in.

This getting old is getting old. It really feels sometimes almost like combat – it’s dangerous and the casualty rate is certainly high. In combat and in aging, tired much of the time, sleep difficult, too much discomfort. Many of us are taking some strong drugs, too: blood thinners, heart rate regulators, and so on. And the ever-present land mines of falling and accidents. Sooner or later we’re all going to get it. But at least we aren’t all sweaty and smelly now. We don’t have to sleep on the ground, we aren’t eating C-rations, we don’t have to walk around in the rain, our clothes aren’t filthy, nobody is actually trying to kill us, we’re not carrying 40 pounds of guns and ammo along with other gear, the list goes on and on.

Grateful to be.

With all that in mind, here are the rules of the road:

Keep your weapon ready.
Keep your cigarettes dry.
Eat your fruit cocktail first.

Which is to say, keep your shit together (take your medicine, watch your step, drive carefully) and enjoy that fruit cocktail (the best thing in C-rations), because it may be your last.

I was listening to the Van Morrison song, And the Healing Has Begun. The song resonates powerfully with Jean and me, in part because it was in our life together that the healing from our spouses’ deaths really began – and of course, thanks to David and John and Jeff and Janet and Susan and Sherry and others for keeping us pretty well until Jean and I met. Among the lines in that song that resonate most powerfully are:

We’re gonna stay out all night long
We’re gonna dance to the rock & roll
And then we’re gonna go out and roam across the field

The last time we stayed out all night long (other than at a hospital, LOL) was in 2018 when Jean and I were at a psytrance event thrown by the collective (Atrium Obscurum) that I’d been part of previously. It was a three-day, two-night party, but we were only there from Friday afternoon – Saturday morning. We worked the gate Friday evening (my last work with Atrium Obscurum) and hung with friends and then Ro’s Rage Against the Machine cover band played and then the opening ceremony and then the dancing began. We were awake through the night in our forest campsite, sharing words of love, kissing, making love while the music pulsed and people laughed and danced in the forest and over on the earth dance floor under the trees all through the night. In the morning we went to the dance floor, then to a yoga meeting with Kristina, and then we went swimming at the nearby spring-fed Lake Daingerfield. It was all magical…

We’re gonna stay out all night long
We’re gonna dance to the rock & roll
And then we’re gonna go out and roam across the field
The music was psytrance instead of rock and roll and we swam in the cold spring waters instead of running across the field, but it’s all the same.

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Searching through my blog for something related to Van singing And the Healing Has Begun I came across one loving post after another. Really a lot. Oh, the magic of our life together – where the healing really did begin! I’m awed by our reality then and now. I am so grateful to you, Jean. These days we sit naked in the warm waters of our hot tub with the moon shining, an owl hooting off to the north, and The City all lit up in the distance. What a time we’re having.

I found posts from 2017 and 2020 with the same title, Another Week in Berkeley. So here comes yet another week in Berkeley from now:

Tuesday, 2/13

We’re still chugging water to start the day, snack, meds, then our very own “Today Show” – what we see from our cosy, warm bed looking through the bedroom doors across San Francisco Bay, the Marin Headlands, Golden Gate Bridge, sky, clouds… talking, coffee, massage, ♥.

We’re still having fruit salad most days for breakfast: today it was pear, strawberries, blueberries, a little apple for the crunch, yogurt, maple syrup, toast, almond butter. After breakfast we had a soak in the hot tub (more on that in a moment).

Jean went to the dentist and I went to a Pilates session with Sandra. A few months ago Peter N-R gave me a session with her (Thanks, Peter!) and I’ve been going back weekly since then, except when I had covid.

We exchanged Valentine’s Day cards (more words of love). Jean and I fixed dinner: scallops in a simple, deep sauce with pasta and brocolinni.

Wednesday 2/14

Another day in Paradise, starting in the bed with meds, snack, mate, and the Today Show. First thing in the morning, hummingbirds fly straight up high in the air before they zip off to somewhere. There is a willow-related tree growing below our house and the top of the tree is eye-level for us. Hummingbirds like to perch on the very tip of the tip-top branches like little kings of their demesne.

Breakfast this morning was a “giant cookie”: oatmeal with strawberries and blueberries, Jean’s with butter and mine with almond butter, maple syrup, milk. As always, we ate together in the living room.

Afterward I drove to Solano Avenue, parked, and walked way down the street, then back up the other side, then to Peet’s, and then Andronico’s for strawberries, milk, and King Arthur flour.

After lunch we took a nap, then Jean went to Freida’s for haircut touch-up.

Exercise

I walked up to the Kensington market for ground beef and Jean fixed meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and broccolini for dinner, accompanied by Levain from Acme Bakery.

Since the pandemic began we’ve been watching television for an hour every night. Tonight we watched Sol Life on YouTube (the day-to-day solitary life of a woman in Japan) and part of a romantic comedy.

Thursday 2/15

Snack, water/electrolytes, meds, Peet’s for me and herbal tea for Jean, Today Show.

Hot tub, breakfast (kiwi from tree at Lisa’s studio, Asian pear, pear, strawberries, blueberries, banana, yogurt, toast and almond butter, granola).

I drove to the Berkeley Kaiser Permanente pharmacy to pick up Rx, then to nearby Berkeley Bowl for groceries. Home.

Lunch

Nap

Jean was in her studio in the late afternoon. I did Pilates exercise, went for a walk.

Jean fixed dinner – minestrone and I helped with prep and cleaned up.

Read

Friday 2/16

In the Today Show, huge fog banks covered most of the mountains/headlands so that it looked like big mountains in Colorado. We talked of the challenges we all face at this age, some of us more than others of us, some physical, some psychological/emotional, but all of us dealing with something significant.

We took a short hot tub.

Breakfast was (for Jean) smoked salmon on toast + fruit salad (Asian pear, pear, strawberries, blueberries, orange) and for me the same fruit salad with yogurt + toast and almond butter.

Jean went to the middle school pool for water walking with Janet and then a quick stop at Trader Joe’s. I walked up the street to the “top of the hill” and back down (~2,000 steps), then Pilates exercise.

Lunch was meat loaf, mashed potatoes, cheese, salsa sandwich for me and salad for Jean.

Nap, talking under the covers.

I made granola and Jean fixed a salad to go with the minestrone when Janet and Larry come over later.

Enjoyed judgment against Trump. I’m enjoying it very much!

Had a nice Shabbat dinner (minestrone, salad, cheese with tangerines and chocolate for dessert) and fellowship with Jean’s oldest friend and her new partner, Larry. He says it’s a miracle to have this connection with Janet at this age. I concur – we’re all living a miracle!

Easy clean-up since most of the cooking done yesterday.

A TV show that once again showed that it’s a vast wasteland out there.

Sleep.

Saturday 2/17

Coffee, snack, meds, talk, Today Show, watching the sky transition from grey to pink to cloudy to clear, ♥. Hot tub.

Fruit salad, granola, yogurt.

Jean watching a podcast on Egyptian textiles and I’m writing this and reading more about Trump judgment. Got a text from Linda B: I’m going to sit for a portrait with her art group soon.

I’m problem solving re portable speaker and Jean is in her yoga room, then studio.

Lunch: another meat loaf sandwich for Mr. Adventures!

Nap together, lying in bed (again) talking.

I spent the rest of the afternoon writing, reading news feeds.

Jean was in the studio late afternoon, then came upstairs and fixed broiled salmon, salad, Acme levain.

Watched part of a French movie, L’Envol (Scarlet) – pretty good.

Slept.

Sunday 2/18

Coffee, snack, meds, talk, ♥. Hot tub.

Dishwasher not working, so we unloaded a full load and started washing dishes.

I fixed omelet with goat gouda cheese, mushrooms, green onions, levain, ½ sweet Italian sausage each for breakfast.

Washed dishes.

Talked with someone on the phone regarding how to prioritize and coordinate medical care with a spouse. Wrote f/u text.

Hi ——–,

In summary, the main problems that should be addressed quickly are:

Nausea and vomiting AND subsequent dehydration. There is an effective nausea medication (ondansetron) and he should have some at home as well as when in ER. There’s a good chance he’s dehydrated and in need of IV fluids now.

Pain – probably needing more than Tylenol or ibuprofen. Note that ibuprofen should be given with food to avoid stomach upset.

The past problem with ER should not influence you to avoid seeking care. They’ve already tried to make it right and may have to try more, but you should still go. You can also go to a different hospital. You should stick with him at ER to head off conflict.

The prostate and back are probably not priorities right now.

Wishing you and ——- well.

Charles

Went to MLK middle school track and we (or mostly Jean) walked with Susan. I’m using my iPhone to keep track of my steps these days. Most days I exceed my target.

Trader Joe for several things, including TJ salads for lunch

Lunch

Finish washing dishes

Nap, talking about life, including Jean’s friends M and V who recently died in their 90s, died within a few hours of one another, and lived independently and well in their house in the Berkeley Hills until death. There are many sad and even desperate stories happening among older people, including people we know. It’s well to remember M and V whose story is a triumph. And Jean’s friend, K, in her 90s, still in her home (with a fair amount of assistance). H and J, late 70s and early 80s, living in wooded hills near Point Reyes, growing quality cannabis. C and J, in their mid – late 70s, dealing with significant physical issues and living a beautiful life… We joined Ashby Village last year. Ashby Village is part of the village movement happening here and elsewhere. Through members and volunteers members work to remain in their homes as they age.

Talked with David.

Pilates exercise.

Writing this…

Reading news feeds. I read a lot of news. I think things are pretty horrible for many people around the world. I worry about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The news in the US, especially political news, is weird and unsettling. I’m unsettled.

Jean in studio.

Dinner was salmon in Indian curry paste (Sukhi’s brand) in coconut milk, cauliflower, slaw

Reading in living room, then taking a soak in the hot tub.

Watched movie, Scarlet) for an hour. Goodnight…

Monday 2/19

I woke up early and got up to write something re a neighborhood issue (whether the neighborhood forum is an appropriate place to discuss a petition to recall our county DA). Here’s what I wrote:

Reflecting on the question of politics entering this neighborhood discussion group, I see with greater clarity how much public safety and health are enmeshed in politics.

For me, personally, as I age and my physical abilities decline, a completely non-responsive Berkeley/Alameda forces me to live with a cracked, uneven sidewalk in front of my house (only one fall, so far) and a shameful lack of bus benches for impaired AC Transit riders like me. Because of so much urine on downtown sidewalks, I had to spread newspapers on the sidewalk to sit when I was unable to stand while waiting for a bus. Like crime, these are public health/safety issues and any solution to them will include politics.

I appreciate the opportunity to step out of my kitchen door to sign a petition to recall. I felt no pressure to sign. And I don’t feel there is a risk to neighborhood cohesion or relationships related to this discussion!

Fixed coffee, snack, meds, lay in bed talking, ♥.

Oh! There’s a rainbow over The Bay!

Hot tub

Fruit for breakfast: Asian pear, pear, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, apple

Worked on medications

Installed color toner cartridges in color laser printer. I am smrt! I am smrt!

Lunch: granola for me, smoked salmon and goat cheese for Jean.

Nap

I did a lot of nothing from 3-5:30, then to Sol’s for dinner. Sabich sandwich for me, mesquite smoked trout for Jean. Best trout since I lived in Colorado. Jean agreed.

Hot tub.

I chose the evening’s entertainment: Seinfeld and Young Sheldon.

It rained during the night.

That’s another week in Berkeley.

About the hot tub: I gave Jean a hot tub (or spa) for Christmas and she paid for retrofitting the deck so we could have the tub on the same level as bedroom and living room. It’s exactly 20 steps from the tub to the shower. Nice! Thank you, Sweet Thing!

I used this in hospice training in the late 1970s. It is the profound universal message of our common human need for witness to our lives and to our deaths. It is the same message that Jesus gave when shortly before he was tortured to death, he said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even unto death; remain here, and watch with me.”

SHE CALLED JUST TO SAY GOODBYE

By Lynna Williams

Star-Telegram Writer

In a long and good life, she married the man she loved and together they loved two sons. Now she is dying and who will hear her goodbyes?

Not her husband or her sons. The oldest son died in the France of World War Il two days after his last letter arrived safely home. The youngest was buried next to his father in a Fort Worth cemetery.

Not other family. She came to her marriage from life as the adored only child in a West Texas home. Mama and Daddy died within a year of each other 48 years ago.

Not friends. Those who meant something to her are dead, their obituaries neatly clipped and filed in a front room desk.

But, although she is alone, she wanted to say goodbye. She wanted even more for someone to hear. The voice that called the Star-Telegram newsroom Tuesday was somewhat hesitant but firm about the purpose for the call: She had something to say. Could someone listen?

Assured that someone could, she began to talk. Her name wasn’t important, she said. Her need for a witness to her life — even a stranger — was.

She was born in Abilene 81 years ago. Nothing has ever come between her and memories of the house where she grew up, not distance and certainly not time. She can remember it now as clearly as if she stood on the freshly painted porch. She can see the oak tree where she played and where folks gathered on Sundays for prayer meeting.

Her husband-to-be was a boy of 16 when they met at a girlfriend’s house. She remembers betting with the friend — a daring act for a gently brought up girl — that he would marry her.

He was over 6 feet tall and when she looked at him, something caught in her heart. She remembers that feeling, too, so clearly that retelling it makes her sound, for a moment, almost young again.

They married and moved to Fort Worth. She hated the town on sight — her husband laughed at her for missing the West Texas “scenery” of Abilene — but she wrote her parents every day and she survived.

Two years after she became a wife, she became a mother. First, Bill, who “never met a stranger.” Then, Hal, a boy who became his beloved older brother’s shadow.

The voice on the phone stops. Is the taking up too much time? She almost laughs at that and makes a joke about being short of time. The voice is stronger, as if memories give her strength.

They were a family. Her boys had their own front porch to grow on. There were picnics and conferences at school with their teachers. Bill was the class cut-up. Hal was too shy but was the best of boys.

Hard times came. Her husband’s first small business failed. But the family was together and they survived. Where did the time go? She wonders that now, but cannot remember if she noticed the days slipping away then.

Bill was dead. Thirty years have passed but she remembers that day as if it were filed with the other obituaries in the front room. She cried. Her husband cried. Hal shut himself in the boys’ bedroom. When he came out, he was changed in a way that made her heart ache. He never spoke of his brother again.

She got through the days when Hal was overseas by praying he would come home again.

When he did, their life went on. He stayed at home after his return and helped his father with the family business.

Hal was at his father’s side when he died in 1967. She had left the hospital room for a minute and the way she felt seeing her only child bent over her husband is a memory, too.

Her son died four years ago. He was never anything but her best boy. When she thinks of her husband, she sees his face. With Hal, it is his smile. Bill has become the picture on the mantle, the eyes under the Army visor.

She has lived her life since then alone in the house with the front porch where no one plays now.

She became more and more alone as the years went by. Fewer faces at church were familiar. She was an old woman and who would take the time to get to know her?

Her heath, always good, began failing last year. She sold the family home in January and moved into a nursing home.

Last month, she was hospitalized for a list of ailments she is sure will mean her death.

She has thought about it — about dying — many times. She believes she will see her family again and will not be sorry when her life as it is now is over.

But — and her voice became firmer still — she did want someone to know she was alive and soon would not be.

She just wanted someone to know.

FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

(UPS 206-260)

Some Sunday mornings David and I would drive in my blue Toyota long-bed P/U truck to the Santa Fe train yard near downtown. We’d sit in the truck and watch the yard-men couple and uncouple the cars, the mighty engines moving back and forth, tracks being switched, and all the other things that happen in a train yard. A few times security would tell us to leave, but mostly we just sat there having a good time, listening and singing along to a Hank Williams tape. We especially liked Honky-Tonk man, which David changed slightly – “Hey, hey, mommy, can your daddy come home” and then we’d always shout, “Yes!” And of course, Lonesome Whistle. We’d butcher those lyrics, too. David was two or three years old at the time.

When he was even younger, we’d be at home and hear that train whistle blow from the tracks near home, and Leslie or I would grab David, jump in the truck or car and drive to the tracks so he could wave at the engineer.

Other days we would walk along the tracks. When David was little, I’d carry him on my shoulders. Some of the engineers would wave at David and at least once, one of them threw us a little bottle of water. “Hey, little boy!” the man said as he threw it. “Hey little bow!” was how David reported it to Leslie.

When he was older, like 4 or 5, he liked to force his way through the underbrush along the sides of the higher track elevation or berms. (The tracks are long since torn out and replaced by the Santa Fe Trail.)

The Lakewood Country Club golf course lay along part of the tracks, so we usually found some golf balls along the way. We also brought home several hundred old rusty railroad spikes – some of which I have to this day. On the side of the track opposite the country club was a drainage ditch that usually had water running. When David was 6 or 7 we would build dams across the water and since it was running, there would just be more and more water, so the dams got bigger and bigger, but the water always prevailed. Sean from down the street and David’s lifelong friend, Chris would work on the dams when they were around. Still the water ended up flowing over or around the dam no matter who was working on it. In summers in the still backwaters along the ditch there were polliwogs!

Sometimeswe would walk as far as East Grand Avenue and get a treat at Doug’s convenience store. The man who ran the store would always give David a little something extra. We’d sit outside and have the treats, then walk back home. Sometimes Leslie would drive to Doug’s and bring us back home. David and I would relate our adventures to Leslie and my Mom. I look at those days akin to “Those Happy Golden Days.”

A mile or so past Doug’s was what we called the “big black bridge” – a black metal bridge about 50 feet over/above White Rock Creek. I’m guessing the bridge was around 200 feet long. Several times we climbed up the utility ladder on one of the concrete supports to the bridge tracks. I would go first and belay David on up, then we got quickly off the bridge. It always made me nervous to cross the bridge as trains ran regularly on the tracks.

There was a dirt road (long since closed) from Grand Avenue to the bridge. A few times we drove to the bridge to fish in the creek. Once two men approached us while we were sitting in the truck under the bridge. I didn’t like their demeanor and I cleared my .357. Even though the men couldn’t see the weapon, they could somehow tell they should give up on whatever they had in mind and they left.

It’s hard to remember exactly how old David was – maybe 3 or 4 – that time when we were deep in a bottom-land forest not far from the bridge. We were sitting on a log and I was telling him about the quest for the Holy Grail and suddenly it was as if he locked in completely on what I was saying in a way I had never seen before. It was a moment of wonder.

Well, I’m a honky-tonk man
And I can’t seem to stop
I love to give the girls a whirl
To the music of an old jukebox
But when my money’s all gone,
I’m on the telephone singing
Hey hey mama can your daddy come home

YES!

Paintings are by children at Khao-I-Dang refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Sometime in 1981 I got a call from a friend, Kevin who taught courses in infectious diseases at Southwestern Medical School. He asked if I wanted “to put in some PPDs” (tests for tuberculosis). “Sure,” I said. Leslie wanted to go and we met my friend at a two-story house on Sycamore Street near the corner of Carroll and Live Oak Streets. The house was called the “Welcome House” and there were several newly arrived families from Cambodia. Refugees. They were all thin and traumatized from war, torture, concentration camps, refugee camps (which, by the way, are not nice places), and travel to this foreign land called Dallas.

Kevin and I put in the PPDs via needle just under the skin. I was struck by how quiet everyone was, including the children, even when I slipped the needle in. Meanwhile Leslie was having a good time holding a baby. I remember Leslie was wearing a pink tank-top and afterward she was captivated by the baby scent that clung to the fabric.

A day or two later the refugee agency caseworker called me sometime in the early morning. “Kao Ly, he already died” (name changed). I didn’t know what else to do so I drove to Sycamore Street. “Kao Ly” was a middle-aged man with four or five sons and a daughter. He was, in fact, lying dead in a bed he shared with several of his sons.

An ambulance took his body to the medical examiner’s (ME) office where he was held for several days for autopsy. During that time, another Cambodian family took care of the children and the caseworker arranged for them to go to another state to live with their mother. The ME was holding the father’s body I guess because they were waiting on toxicology. We wanted to have a ceremony before the children left.

Someone knew a Korean monk who was willing to hold the ceremony and that’s how we ended up on the loading dock at the ME’s facility, a several story building adjacent to the county hospital. At the time Dallas County had a population of about 1.5 million people which meant a lot of corpses processed through that building. The building smelled of death. There were Christmas lights on the dispatcher’s glass-fronted cubicle and some Pepsi cases stacked along the wall. Someone wheeled the body out, covered in a sheet up to just under the chin.

There was the body on the gurney, and beside it four desolate children and the monk wearing an orange robe. Over to the side was the refugee caseworker and me. The monk lit incense sticking up from a can with sand in it, he lit a candle, he extended a string from the body to the children with each child holding on to it, he chanted in Pali for awhile, and then he reached into his robe and pulled out a pair of scissors and he cut the string between the body and the children. It was a powerful moment in the midst of all this death and suffering.

The children went to live with their mother. I’m still in contact with several people who passed through the Welcome House when they were children, though I’ve lost touch with the family of the man who died. I know that at least several of the children from that family have done well in life.

We went to an anniversary party for two of Jean’s long-time friends. It was a celebration of love – the need for love, the beauty of love, the healing power of love, the joys of love, the enduringness of love…

Dinner was with about 30 people at a long table poolside in a garden on a hill sloping down to a vineyard and the weather was perfect. I didn’t take any photographs, alas, but this photo taken a few years ago captures the vibe.

Among the six people I knew sitting with us were three cancer survivors, three widows or widowers, one person whose spouse has succumbed to dementia, at least one facing significant chronic illness, and all of us in love. Buoyed by love, all of us face to face with ultimate questions and all engaged with the final life stage of integrity vs. despair. All have lost so many, many friends and loves. I imagine just about everyone at the party is in more or less the same circumstances.

Years ago, when I was working mostly with older people I came to realize that I had much to learn from them about love. Love in the time of cancer. Love in the time of dementia. Love in the time of stroke. Love in the time of dying and death. And love in the time of romance. This is it. This is what we are given. This is as good as it gets. This life. This love. This hope. I’m glad to be one of those older people now.

Our friend Peter told me that every morning he and his partner set a timer for 5 minutes and spend those 5 minutes reflecting silently on gratitude. Now we do that.

“And now these three remain (endure): faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”