Common regrets/questions at the end of life, The Shield of Achilles

I was listening to World One Radio the other morning. Someone was talking about regrets at the end of life and by some miracle I had pen and paper at hand. Below is more or less what the person said – I was struck by the similarities to what I used to teach in hospice training and similar forums. I’ve added to the WorldOne list based primarily on what I taught (and still believe).

What this is about is that we have our life; we have our choices; this is it – no second chances except within the context of this life. In other words, it’s not too late. It’s getting late, but it’s not too late. Common regrets/issues at the end of life include, I wish I had…

Been truer to myself.

Been more loving toward the people who matter the most (what really matters in life is love).

Been a better spouse, parent, child.

Had the courage to express my feelings.

Stayed in touch with friends.

Not worked so hard.

Taken more risks.

Taken better care of myself.

Done more for others.

Let myself be happier and enjoy life more.

(One who sees the way in the morning will gladly die in the evening.)

—————-

The Shield of Achilles

Some years ago I knew a man who had been a doctor in the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. About 1,000,000 people (half combatants, half civilians) were killed in the desert and trenches and artillery and human wave attacks and poison gas and horror. Since that war, the following poem has resonated in me in an awful way.

Now a question arises, will America fight the next war against North Korea or against Iran? Here are some lines from The Shield of Achilles (WH Auden, 1955).

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,

No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,

Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,

Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood

An unintelligible multitude,

A million eyes, a million boots in line,

Without expression, waiting for a sign.

 

Out of the air a voice without a face

Proved by statistics that some cause was just

In tones as dry and level as the place:

No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;

Column by column in a cloud of dust

They marched away enduring a belief

Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

—————-

I feel sick

 

 

Honor Thy Daughter (Review of the book by Marilyn Howell)

Honor Thy Daughter is the story of a mother and daughter’s journey through cancer. The daughter (Mara) has a highly aggressive colon cancer. Her mother (Marilyn) is the primary caregiver and the chronicler – what a time, what a terrible journey they had!

Mara

This was difficult to write. I felt that I should truly honor this book, these people, these truths. I hope that I have, to some extent. In the end, I used Marilyn’s words.

—————

Mara experiences the reality of some cancers: one treatment failure after another and symptoms, especially pain, uncontrolled for the most part. The physical disease is exacerbated by Mara’s difficulties in accepting the realities she is facing – she fights the disease, the dying, the realities of being young and beautiful and dying. Her mother supports her in this and in all Mara’s other responses to the disease. Both mother and daughter hope against hope that the cancer will be cured or at least slowed. To these ends, Mara tries virtually every treatment she is offered or can find – mainstream and alternative. Nothing works. The cancer progresses and the symptoms worsen. It’s a hard road. There are respites, but the direction (toward the end of life) remains the same.

I experienced this as a difficult book. The valley of the shadow of death is a tough place. For me, personally there was an eerie sameness in Mara’s experience and the year and few months I spent taking Phana to chemo and other appointments. Phana and Mara’s tumors (primary colon) were basically the same, as were their ages and the progression of the disease. Hours and hours and hours in the infusion room, waiting rooms, exam rooms, the car… But of course, Phana wasn’t my daughter.

I don’t recall if Marilyn ever says this directly, but it seems to me that what she was doing was practicing a radical acceptance of her daughter’s path through cancer – fully supporting Mara’s every decision. “It wasn’t until I returned home that I realized how much fear and grief I had been holding in check. I stepped into my house, shut the door, and screamed” (p. 52).

150 pages into the book, with the cancer spread to lungs, liver, and elsewhere; with pain uncontrolled; with nausea, vomiting, and other GI problems worsening; with weight loss and weakness increasing, with despair… Mara and her mother connect with a man (“Allan”) who is able to give Mara accurate doses of MDMA. She takes MDMA several times and each time she experiences clarity, relief from pain (the first relief since the cancer began progressing), and the return of appetite. But the symptoms return after the drug wears off. She also uses marijuana and LSD, both of which help, but still, the symptoms return. Finally…

“On Saturday morning, September 10th, it was nearly impossible to awaken her. Finally, at midday, she was alert enough for me to ask her if she wanted to take MDMA. Mara mustered all her strength to say yes before returning to her restless sleep – gasping for breath and moaning… I put a tablet under her tongue.

Her breathing gradually steadied and her body grew peaceful…

David stroked Mara’s hair as I read (from This Timeless Moment by Laura Huxley). Those words, my voice, and her father’s caress told Mara that we accepted her passing, that her death could be noble, and that she was not alone.

All at once she began to move. She took her right hand from beneath the covers, reached across to place it in her father’s palm, lifted her chin, opened her eyes, and turned her head toward him. She was radiant. In that moment, she was beautiful again. With her last breath she conveyed the rapture of her being, life’s final gift to her, and her final gift to us.”

—————-

And we live and we breathe and we have our being (Van Morrison).

—————-

Marilyn Howell, 2011. Honor Thy Daughter. MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). Note that MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and marijuana are being given to people with terminal illness and despair in research studies at Harvard, NYU, USC, and other institutions.

Embrace, the moon

Several weeks ago Jean said, “I embrace you, Charles. And I embrace your anger.” I’ve showed my anger 4-5 times in our year and a half relationship. But I’ve come to realize that there is nothing about me that is more distressing to her than the anger. I thought for about a day about what Jean said and how I could best respond – what embracing, loving commitment could I make? Because, make no mistake, that was a heavy commitment statement she made. I said, “I embrace you, Jean, and I embrace (what is most distressing to me).” It wasn’t a bargain statement, no. It was a commitment. I embrace it all. It seems un-dramatic when I write this, but, wow, it’s a heart game-changer.

—————–

In Tennessee, August 2017. Photo taken by David

In the night, she whispered, “Do you want to see the moon?” “Yes.” I opened my eyes and the moon was shining bright through the open temple doors. It was 3:30. I drifted back to sleep, happy, the moon on the backs of my eyelids. She had asked when we were going to sleep if I wanted her to wake me if the moon was up and full.

—————-

To love – to love – to love – to love the love – to love – the love – to love – to love – the love to love – to love – to love – the love… Get on the train – get on the train – this is the train – get on the train – get on the train.

Psychedelic healing at the end of life

Psychedelic healing at the end of life (workshop at Unify Festival, Colorado, 2013. Disclaimer at end of post)

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;                                                                     

A flash of lightening in a summer cloud;

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

From The Buddha’s Diamond Sutra

Introduction

Thoughts from The Bloom video: If these gatherings really are transformational, then we’ll take values and revelations from here to our community, integrating in our lives… for example, community gardens, art, conscious living, right livelihood, gardening, caring for neighbors, friends, and especially family, and so on.

From Evolver Network: These transformational gatherings, festivals, meetings – these scenes feed one another, “inspiring a spiritual underground that is making the connection between visionary experience and social engagement.”

Something about my experience:

Workshop at festival near Austin

I was 13 months in heavy combat. When I came home from the war I turned on. One night, on LSD, lying on the mattress on the floor, I had a healing vision. I knew I could be healed! I lived a hippie lifestyle for ~5 years, but kept feeling like there was more…

I started nursing school in 1973 and later completed several graduate programs. I retired as a family nurse practitioner a couple of years ago. Worked for much of the past 40 years in hospice, primary care, community health (focus on refugees and immigrants), and in education. I’ve studied and I’ve written on end of life, especially in symptom management and other aspects of dying and death, including spiritual care and cultures. I’ve been with a number of people throughout the process of dying and have worked really hard to be good at what I was doing.

The most important ones to me personally were my wife and my mother. All this to say, I have real-world experience and knowledge of dying and death.

Specific to psychedelics, I’ve sat with a few people who have taken these medicines in the context of the end of life – including my Mom. And of course, my own personal history. So I’m at an intersection of psychedelic and mainstream medicine. And I’m also at an intersection of the straight world and this psychedelic, transformative world.

I’m here as a representative of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and for Atrium Obscurum.

Here we are, at this transformational gathering, all of us somewhere on a continuum of our own transformational journey, our own becoming. I give thanks for this.

We’ll be talking mostly about the end of life with a focus on psychedelic medicine and on the question of what to do when someone you love is dying.

Every person here will have the opportunity or duty to help care for a loved one who is dying. There is a very good chance that someone here, now is involved with caring for someone at the end of life.

End-of-Life

One of the first people to address the way we die in America said that as a culture we don’t know much about dying and death. He talked about a need for guides, for maps as it were, into this uncharted part of life. I wasn’t consciously thinking about what he said when I wrote this a few weeks ago:

In the early days of hospice we knew we were in uncharted waters.

We were doing something new, something beautiful.

It was visionary.

 We were in the valley of the shadow of death.

 Every day, all day.

It was all a vision – something like hospice as we did it doesn’t emerge from ordinary consciousness.

Like I said earlier, we will ALL have an opportunity to go into that valley with a parent or sibling – some of us will go with a spouse or lover – a few, I’m sorry to say, will go with a child. Our psychedelic experiences help prepare us for this.

Let me tell a story about going with another. Taught courses on hospice and palliative care at several universities and elsewhere. One day a student told about when her sister was terminally ill. They slept in the same room, in twin beds. One night her sister said, “I’m scared.” And my student said, “I am too” and got into bed with her sister. They slept in the same bed for the rest of her sister’s short life.

She didn’t say, Oh, don’t be scared or it’s going to be alright or nobody really dies or any of that rot. She said THE TRUTH. Me too. Her question to me was, did she say and do the right thing? She said she’d worried about it for years. I said, Yes, oh yes. It was The Truth. I’m scared too. Being in the truth gave her sister and her the freedom to not pretend, to not lie, to face the fear – TOGETHER – me too.

I’m going to give you some practical information. Many of the presentations at these gatherings are about changing or realizing or growing consciousness. This isn’t really about that, though if you’ll practice what we talk about today, there will be a change and realization and growth in consciousness.

But really, what I have in mind is a answer to the question that goes something like this: I’ve been high, I’ve had visions and experiences of the Oneness of All, of Infinity, of the darkness and light of my own Soul – So, now what?

One thing is a fuller participation in life, including at the edges of life, like at the end. An ancient thing: Caring for the wounded, for the dying

Process of terminal illness: Suspicion, Dx testing/imaging, Dx cancer or degenerative neurological disease, whatever – and suddenly you’re in a different dimension as surely as if you’d dropped acid. There is treatment, which is often very, very difficult; hopefully remission; recurrence, more treatment. Eventually, for some, BUT not all, further curative or even delaying treatment is futile.

Common physical problems: pain (more on that a little later), N/V, SOB, fatigue, and so on. INTERWOVEN with the physical problems, and sometimes actually driving some of those problems are other problems such as:

Ceremony for a person named Feather.

Anxiety

Depression

Spiritual distress

Family discord

and so on.

Don’t think that depression or spiritual distress at the end of life are only about dying or being dead. They are also about dying in relation to life. Was my life fulfilled? Was there love? Did my life have meaning?

Early on noticed that often people with the most to lose in terms of loving relationships, rich spiritual lives, and so on often are the ones who have the easiest dying …

Four Tasks – to help in understanding your Mom or Dad or grandparents – remember I talked about having a map, a guide? Well here is a bit of a map – a map to understanding more of what the person is living with – to give us clues about what is going on and what we might do in that confusing matrix of terminal illness.

God is alive! Magic is afoot!

1. Deal with physical problems. We live in a culture that sees it like this (quoting now): “From what I’ve seen, the final days are not marked by clarity, but endured in a haze of morphine that ineffectively stabs at unbearable, gut-wrenching pain. Sorry if that sounds brutal. My beloved brother is in his final weeks, being eaten alive from the inside out by cancer…” Hear me, please. Mainstream medicine can do very well in pain management, especially at the end of life. Sometimes the patient needs an advocate to remind staff that pain is to be treated preemptively – meds taken on schedule and in sufficient amounts so that pain doesn’t keep coming back – pain is thus prevented.

2. Prepare for separation (life, body, loved ones, hopes, fears, illusions, future…) – it’s so sad, imagine, losing this… dreams unrealized… loves…

3. Manage the prospect of transition to an unknown state (people of faith have answers, but even then we sometimes wonder, what next? What if there’s just nothing)?

4. Look at how life was lived in relation to what might have been – MORE DISCUSS – if you had your life to live over again – if …

Here is a nice tool for the process. Nearly everyone has these three questions in the process of life-threatening illness:

What is it?

What does it mean (suffering, pain, etc.)?

Can I do this?

And we answer the third question with our loving presence, Yes. And I’ll be with you.

Hazy day sunset over Bolinas (with Jean, Kristina, and Roe)

The first psychedelic model we had was Aldous Huxley, whose wife gave him several injections of LSD in the last hours of his life. Fine. But the real process started years before, in his journeys on mescaline, psilocybin, and LSD; the process started with a conscious decision to live consciously, changing consciousness, the ongoing work in becoming – just like the people sitting all around us right now.

Aside: Laura Huxley was a pioneer in consciousness in her own right, including related to dying. Did some interesting experiential exercises, some of which remain in use today. Further aside: Since the 1970s Ram Dass was heavily involved in this effort to bring compassion and consciousness into the way we die. In fact, he was still a hospice volunteer, the last I heard two years ago.

The current (medical) model is active in studies at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and elsewhere. In general, patients who are dying and having significant anxiety and/or depression are given low-moderate doses of LSD or psilocybin. Psilocybin is a mainstay because it combines righteous psychedelic experience with a fairly short duration of action.

Therapy similar to treatment with MDMA, except there is less pre and post work, and the patients all die.

Set & setting important – often in a hospital room with photos of loved ones, holy or inspirational books, wall hangings added, non-sick-room flowers, music, no TV, etc. ALTHOUGH, there are patients in early stages of the disease, which, of course, is a wonderful idea, so these patients would have out-patient session.

Dosing low to moderate doses

Male and female therapists

The Hope of a Condemned Man. Painting by Joan Miro, completed on the day of the execution.

Patient lying down, eyeshades, music

Non-directive. Everyone knows why we’re here. Let the patient set the pace.

Touching – less than what you might think. Cultural taboo is psychiatry

Body work, such as resistance for patient to push against (Zeff); breathwork (like holotropic)

8-10 hours

Integration afterward

Recall the tasks I noted earlier: deal with physical symptoms, prepare for separation (think in terms of grief and loss), prepare for transition to an unknown state (anticipation or fear; no more me!!!), and integrate how life was lived in relation to what might have been.

Talk about putting catheter in woman and she’s talking about mastectomy 40 years ago.

Sir Galahad dying in his King’s arms: “It’s the old wounds, Arthur.”

Van Morrison sang, “Oh John, the great sadness.” The sadness is so great that we wall it off, put up defenses, act it out… These medicines slash through that. We see our sadness and grief, our ugliness, our dishonesty, our trivialities, all of that stuff – and, MY GOD, our beauty, our trueness, our potential.

Outcomes with psilocybin or LSD are generally about what you and I would expect: decreased anxiety, decreased depression, increased hope and positive outlook, decreased pain, improvement in relations with others, and of course improvement in relations with SELF.

Opening into life, dying as awakening

Many people die as they lived (angry person, trivial person, manipulative, open, loving, and so on)

Some awaken. A few say, I never really lived until I started to die.

What this can be is transforming. That’s what we’re talking about.

With my Mom, all was forgiven, embraced, there was a decrease in pain and an increase in everything good.

Models

It’s never too soon, and seldom too late to start living consciously. So the process would start with living a little more consciously – little kinder to self and others, little less TV, little bit better food, dance, love, and so on.

Rather than start when there is clearly a problem, start in the period around diagnosis (remember that huge change in consciousness) with, FOR THE PATIENT AND LIFE PARTNER, an MDMA session because we do this stuff, living and dying, in relation to others. Imagine, instead of lost in fear and uncertainty, opening into one another, opening into life, facing the grief and fear together, together like never before.

Purpose of life

Reconciliation with God, with others, with self. Born to be healed

Future Directions

Feels like a psychedelic renaissance to me. Who knows what all is happening out there with the medicines we’ve discussed, not to mention medical marijuana, ayahuasca, ibogaine…

We can look for more research and certainly more grass roots or underground efforts. There is an amazing array of research chems out there and the shackles around marijuana use are loosening. Hopefully we’ll see a continuing shift in perception of these substances, and also availability. The Guild of Guides is closer to reality.

So I think individuals will make individual efforts, giving parents and others the opportunity for growth and awakening.

And if parents and others are unwilling, well then, we have ourselves, our insights, our visions and revelations to fall back on.

One reason I got back into psychedelics was that I’m really pretty close to death. And I was thinking I’d better have some psychedelics around for my time of dying. Health event 50-50 chance of living or of dying. And I realized, I’m okay. I don’t have faith; I have experience. What a Revelation!

For Jessica, after her father died.

———————

There are formal programs of study available, such as:

Sofia University, Palo Alto

California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

Heffter Research Institute, Santa Fe

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)

———————

Read

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

 

O Divine Master, O Mother of All, O Great Spirit

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

AIDS Memorial Grove.

Amen. (From St. Francis of Assisi, with modifications)

 

 

Disclaimers: I am not suggesting that anyone do anything illegal and I’m not promoting any particular religion.

A bunch of names (Vietnam Veterans Memorial)

My friend, George Schools (who fought on Grenada), sent me this from his blog, My Name is Schools. Deeply touched barely touches my internal response. Thank you, George. (I added captions to George’s photos).

A BUNCH OF NAMES

Dear Charles,

The war is over

I hesitated to send you this, but you’ve written about your experiences in Vietnam, and talked specifically about Dwight Laws (KIA 10/30/66), Lurch Donohue (KIA 03/01/67), and Jerry Georges (KIA 03/23/67) in your blog https://ckjournal.com/first-post-vietnam. I’ve read these posts uncounted times, and I probably will continue to until I die.  Everybody should.  Still, they are your memories, and that is your life, and I didn’t want to overstep the bounds.

I just returned from a family vacation to Washington, DC.  You know my family, and you know me pretty well, I think, so you know that means that when we’d seen all the sights their patience could contain, I went off on my own.  I didn’t know if you’d ever been to DC and the Vietnam Memorial, or if that was something that even interested you.  In fact, I wondered if perhaps that was something you had decided you did not want to do.  So here’s the part where I tell you to just delete all this right now, and tell me to erase it all from my hard drive if you want.  I’m totally ok with that.  They are your memories, and that is your life.

So from this point on, here’s what happened:  I knew I wanted to visit the Wall.  I knew I wanted to find the names of Dwight Laws, Lurch Donohue, and Jerry Georges and send them to you.  And I knew I needed to be there alone, even though I never knew them, the war was over two years before I graduated high school, and they were just names to me.  Three names among 58,307 names of dead Americans.  But I was thinking I could find the names of these people who are very real to you, and you are very real and alive to me, and that would help me understand what I was looking at.

Dwight Laws (whose wife’s name was Barbara Laws)

Like my own Greek chorus, as I’m scanning panel 11E130 for Dwight’s name, a family passes by and a kid says “it’s just a bunch of names!” There’s a Vietnam vet volunteer there explaining the war and the wall and the names to people, and I hear him say loudly enough for me to hear a couple of times “just ask if you need any help,” but I didn’t want any help.  And I finally figured out how to find Dwight’s name, and here it is:

After that, it was pretty easy to find Lurch’s name (which was actually Francis, so now we know why your friend went by “Lurch”), and finally Jerry Georges .

And as I’m looking at all these

Lurch Donohue

names, and trying very hard to think about Dwight, and Lurch, and Jerry, I still wasn’t making the connection I’d hoped.  It was still just a bunch of names:  fifty-eight thousand, three hundred and seven names of dead Americans.  And then it occurred to me that your name was not on that wall.  There was no Charles Kemp.  It could have been, probably should have been, but it wasn’t there.  And I knew you, very real and alive to me, and Dwight, Lurch, and Jerry were not.

Jerry Georges (from Santa Barbara, California)

Charles Kemp, father to David, husband and companion, neighbor, citizen. Very real.  Thank you for making the Wall so real to me by being alive.

_________

To George’s post, I added:

And now the war is over.

The main Vietnam War posts.

 

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Spiritual care at the end of life and across religions and cultures

Here is what two of my community health students wrote re connecting across religions (Christianity and Islam) and cultures (Western and East African) with a young woman dying from breast cancer. This is from about 10 years ago – all names changed. The students worked in two-person teams. The below words are one of the high points of my career.

Big Sur sunset

Margaret: “I think we were able to form/recognize a spiritual connection this week.  Lucy was sitting on something that looked like a blanket, and I asked Nabila what it was – she told me they were their prayer mats.  So, we started talking about prayer – how we pray, things we pray for – and then, there was a warm pause – not an awkward, uncomfortable silence, but one that communicated something.  I smiled and was comforted that Maryam and Nabila have this source of power and encouragement.  I like to think that we pray to the same God.  Even though we may sometimes pray and practice in different ways, we are still able to share our burdens and find peace in a spiritual being – what a comfort to know that Maryam and Nabila can experience this.

They have changed my life…really…this is one of the first times that I have really formed a relationship with a hurting person, who is not in my usual circle…  This habit, this choice (to choose to love people in this way) can be a part of my daily life – a reality that I want so badly.  And, I have been blessed.  I think about them all the time, and hope that I will not just think but do.”

Lucy: “This week with Maryam was very emotional and deep.  On Wednesday we were able to really talk to her about how discovering she had cancer made her feel.  She actually almost started to cry and it took all I had to hold back the tears.  It’s amazing how much she is opening up to us as we spend more time with her.  I am so glad that we got an opportunity to talk about important issues like what she expects out of life these next few weeks…  I didn’t feel it was the right time to attempt to explain the path of her cancer and that it will lead to death.  I think everyone has the right to embrace illness and death at their own pace and I think Maryam will come to that in time.  So Wednesday was a very emotional day for me because we talked about the “valley of the shadow of death” and that is never easy.  Thursday was a much easier day and we talked about some fun things.  I am amazed at how universal conversations are for women and how much fun it is sitting with Maryam, Nabila, and Margaret laughing and sharing our lives together.”

Near La Honda – looking down on the fog

 

Morning fog, Denver Airport, Bolinas, waking, sunset

When it’s not too cold, we leave both bedroom doors open – “two door nights.” There are no screens, and it’s a very nice way to sleep, with San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge sparkling 10 miles away.

Golden Gate from the deck (January sunset)

Daytime view from the bed

Last night was another two door night with the outside coming in to the bedroom, into the temple, through the doors, into the room and the bed and the outside and in the morning, thick fog between the trees and just past the deck railing, and the filtered light somehow so pure on the railing I had to rub my eyes – am I really seeing this – and the fog drifting three-dimensionally across the deck and the curtains stirring and the fog is in the room and we’re naked in the warm bed together.

——

At Bolinas Museum with one of Jean’s pieces

You flew to Denver from San Francisco and I flew to Denver from Dallas. I got on the shuttle bus at the Denver Airport and… there you were! It’s going to be a good trip – and it was!

———

Last week we drove from Berkeley to Bolinas for an opening at the Bolinas Museum – Art We Wear: Culture and Expression 1960s to Now. More northern California magic… windy roads through redwood forests, the Pacific rolling endlessly along. The opening was good, Jean’s work was presented well, and there were friends and colleagues from the Bay Area, as well as many other people.

David Kemp, Jean Cacicedo, and a photo of Charles Kemp (at restaurant in Castro)

———

We were sleeping, with our faces inches apart. We awoke and opened our eyes at the same moment. Oh!

———

Candy texted Jean to urge us to go out to the deck for a great sunset.

 

Chocolate chip cookies – more secrets revealed!

Here is another update in the never-ending quest for great chocolate chip cookies.

Basic concepts:

  • Use more chocolate chunks (I like Scharffen Berger) than most recipes call for, e.g., the original Toll House recipe calls for 12 oz chocolate; I use 16-18 oz semi-sweet chocolate (other types of chocolate make for chocolatey fingers – though a piece of 70% on top of each cookie is a nice detail).
  • Toast the pecans before adding them to the dough (let pecans cool before adding).
  • Cookies should be formed, including flattening them and laid out on Saran wrap and frozen in units of 10-12. At least you should refrigerate for 2 or more hours. This recipe makes 22-24 cookies.
  • Preheat oven AND cookie sheet. A cast iron cookie sheet or a baking stone is probably better. The main point is the cooking surface is hot through and through when cookies hit the surface so that some degree of glaze occurs on the bottom surface of the cookies.
  • The latest truly hot tip: At 5 minutes of baking, take out the tray and bang it down firmly twice on the stovetop). This flattens the cookies somewhat. Do it again at 10 minutes. Total bake time is about 16 minutes. The end result of this and other steps is a cookie that’s crisp at the edges and chewy in the center and with a bit of glaze on the bottom. OH YEAH!

(Baking times are close to exact, but there is variation among ovens.)

2 C all-purpose flour minus about 2 T of flour

½ tsp baking soda

½ t salt

¼ C dried finely shredded coconut

¾ C unsalted butter melted and cooled (European style butter gives an even better taste)

1 C brown sugar packed (I use slightly less)

½ C white sugar (I use slightly less)

1 large egg+ 1 egg yolk at room temp

1 T vanilla

16+ oz semisweet chocolate chunks.

1.5 C lightly toasted pecan pieces or halves

—————-

Preheat and baking surface to 325

Whisk 1st 4 dry ingredients and set aside

Beat butter (in a large bowl) and sugars until light and fluffy

Add eggs and vanilla, beat smooth

Mix in dry ingredients

Mix in chocolate and nuts

Form cookies and freeze – you should have 22-24 cookies

—————-

Place frozen cookies (quickly) on hot baking surface. Bake 14-15 minutes for soft and chewy or 17-18 for crisp. This recipe does not produce very brown cookies in my oven.

First post: Vietnam

At the DMZ – with 1/9, “The Walking Dead”

This post (a repost of part of my first web page, 2007) marks the transition from blogspot to my own web address (ckjournal.com). Thanks David!

American Dream…

To Dwight Laws, KIA 10/30/66 inside the company perimeter near Hill 55
To Lurch Donohue, KIA 3/1/67 in a deserted ville near Route 4
To Jerry Georges, KIA 3/23/67 at the Hill 55 bridge

They were good men. We were young. They could have lived a long time.

Photo: me, Mike Noumov, Jeff Wiseman at the rear on Hill 55 on my return (bearing gifts) from R&R. Over and over again we were playing the Byrds album with Turn! Turn! Turn! on it – “a time to be born, a time to die; a time to kill, a time to heal; a time to laugh, a time to weep; a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.” Do you think that wasn’t blowing our minds? (4 of the first 5 photos are mine; the rest by someone else; all are taken at places/battles I was in.)

Here is the whole story of how Donohue was killed. For the first 10 or so years after I came home, there was never a day that I didn’t run this through my mind at least once – like some kind of video. I gave my compulsive rumination a name: How Donohue Got It. Then in 1978 I spent a week in a retreat with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Stephen Levine, and others. That was the first time I told this aloud. The second time was with my brother, Jeff (who identified Donohue’s body back at battalion). I seldom think of this now.

We were on patrol north of the bend in Route 4, the dirt road that went by C Company’s

My gun at the DMZ. Ready to rock.

position. There were no civilians left in this area (where 1/9 got its name, The Walking Dead) – a ghostly overgrown area of deserted villes, fields, and woods. Donohue was my A-gunner. We were digging in the first night of the patrol and he wasn’t doing his part of the digging. I asked him what was going on and he had trouble answering, but finally said he wasn’t going to make it. He was really sad. I said something like, “Bullshit, man – we’ve been here too long to not make it.” I dug us in and gave him a smoke (though I don’t remember that he smoked – I’m not sure about this – maybe I just wish I’d given him a cigarette). But he was inconsolable. He knew.

Operation Prairie. Real shit, man.

Charles Kemp during Operation Deckhouse. Later that day we had several tanks blown away.

The next day we saddled up and I gave him my machine-gun. Not too much greater love than to give up your gun for another man – because my gun was my hope, my friend, my ticket home. I loved that gun; and I was pretty good with it. Please allow me to introduce myself … We moved out, into a deserted ville. I was walking left flank point and came to a hedgerow of bamboo with a closed gate the only way through. Going through that gate was death – no question about it, there was a mine somewhere with the gate. I was crouched down, trying to figure out a way to stay on line and not be killed when there was a powerful explosion off to my right and someone started yelling, “Corpsman up! Corpsman up!” In a heartbeat I knew Donohue was the explosion.

I took off up the trail to the right and there was a man standing frozen in the trail still shouting for a corpsman and my recollection is that I ran literally up and over him (though how could that be?) and there was Donohue. He was on the ground with both legs blown off. I was beside him and saw that one stump was left with shattered bone sticking out and his guts were spilled out of where the other one had been. He was still alive! He was moaning and moving around a little. I was on my knees beside him and we were receiving fire by then. I was struggling with whether to go ahead and finish him off, because he was definitely going to die and even if he didn’t die, what was the use of going on like that. Then life went out of him. I’m grateful I didn’t kill him. I joined in on the firefight and then

At the Hill Fights (“the first battle of Khe Sanh”)

it was quiet; and then I had to find my gun as it wasn’t by the body. I remember walking through the bushes and trees looking for the gun and there were little pink/grey gobbets of Donohue everywhere and on my face and hands too. The smell. I found one of his feet before I found my gun. The foot was heavy and the gun was out of commission. For some reason this whole deal was the last straw – just too much. I mean, what for?

OR in bunker at Khe Sanh

I pretty much lost hope after that. We had been in the field for about eight months: out on patrol 3-4 days, back to company for a day, out for a night ambush, another day in, and back out on patrol 3-4 days – week after week, month after month and every day, at least one casualty. I realized there were hardly any of the original men left. By then it was a company of mostly fucking new guys and there was nobody I wanted to even talk to.

I was also having weird thoughts. Like maybe I could just walk out of the perimeter a couple of klicks to a ville we’d been through a few times where a one-legged girl lived (lotta one-legged people in them parts) and I could take her an adjustable crutch so she wouldn’t have to walk in the bent and twisted way she walked with her too-short stick of a crutch. A time to heal. Or maybe I could slip out and maybe run across a VC or two and instead of killing each other we could sit down in a clearing somewhere and drink a bottle of whiskey together and have some smokes and talk about our girlfriends. You know, have a good time. Be normal. A time to laugh. These sounded like really good ideas to me and I was thinking about them a lot – all the time. Now I realize that I’ve spent much of the past 40 years taking a crutch to that girl – and I have miles to go before I sleep.

Dinner time

A few weeks after Donohue was killed we were out on a night ambush and ran into another patrol from our company. The word had not been passed that we were going to meet. I was on point and when I saw the first man in the dark – like about 10 feet away, man – I started shooting. I shot the point man of the other patrol in the leg, hip, and chest (lucky for him I was carrying an M-14 instead of the 60); and the man behind me shot him in the chest with a grenade launcher. I remember watching one of my rounds (tracer) hit him and fly off at an angle – which was pretty far out. We were so close that the M-79 round didn’t spin enough to arm, hence didn’t explode and ended up lodged in his neck. Incredibly, he lived. There was an article in Stars and Stripes about the surgery to remove the M-79 round. I don’t remember the name of the man I shot, except that we called him the Red-Headed Mexican and he was a good guy. I remember (before I shot him) him going crazy in Dodge City (Thuy Bo) and charging a VC position right after Zamora was killed. Three helicopters shot down right there that day. 13 KIA and 66 WIA that operation. Keep on rockin in the free world. And now I know his name because a few weeks ago I read a copy of the article about the incident! Raymond Escalera. The article said I shot him only once. There was an investigation and not long after I was transferred out of 1/26.

Sometimes, in a dream
You appear

Thank you Jeff. To everything, Turn! Turn! Turn! there is a season, Turn! Turn! Turn! And a time to every purpose under heaven, Turn! Turn! Turn!

A gunner (like me) at Khe Sanh. Cleaning his weapon. Goddam, good gun, good smokes.

I started at MCRD San Diego, then Infantry Training Regiment & Machine Gun School; Camp Pendleton & las Pulgas for Special Landing Force training. On to Subic Bay & Olongapo (oh, how we partied, like doomed youth) in the Philippines; first landing southern South Vietnam (1st casualties); second landing Deckhouse & Prairie for serious battles (photo from Operation Prairie – yeah, man, it’s real); Hill 55 & Dodge City (snipers, mines, occasional firefights & some battles – see above); Dong Ha & Hill Fights (168 KIA, but it took awhile); also at Con Thien, Gio Linh, and Khe Sanh, though not for long in these last three. If there was a sound track to this section it would be Sympathy for the Devil, maybe Gimme Shelter. We won every battle and beat back very attack, but America lost its will and lost the war. Nice work, so-called “greatest generation.” All told, 13 months

A beautiful sight

in combat (well, you know, not every day) in the two provinces (Quang Nam & Quang Tri) accounting for 25% of the US KIA (I think there are 20 or more provinces in VN); Danang, The World. God. I’m alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Endless summer, Wyoming, Colorado, grief, love, camping, road trip

Our “endless summer” started in May 2016, though we didn’t name it until May 2017. 
A small section of a very big sky!

…into Wyoming, highway up and down and around in rolling high arid steppe – lots of sage, scattered livestock, a few herds of antelope, into a fertile river valley with green fields, herds of livestock, the majestic mountains in the near distance, the Snowy Range coming into view, coming closer to Centennial, where Jean came deeper into herself. 

Jean’s work, 1970s
What does it mean to be with a woman like you – who opens me to my tears – who opens me to deep awe and joy. Driving across the Wyoming high country, across the BIG SKY country feeling as if we’d taken something psychedelic – so high and so good. “It’s good to have been high before, because now we know what’s happening now.” 
The dream is reality.

Willows!

In the Snowy Range
You told me I help open places in you – as you help open places in me.
That song you sang – “Wy-Wy-WY-oming.”
We stayed with Helen in Golden and with Kenny and Diane in Silverthorne. Good shopping trip with Kenny. Wonderful hospitality from nice people. Colorado and into Wyoming after a stop at Cataract Lake.

Centennial, Wyoming. Population 270. Jean called the woman who bought her house 40 years ago to see if we could come by and walk past the house to the river. The woman told Jean that she was out of town, but the back door was unlocked, so we could just come on in. And we did. And we walked the 30-40 feet from the back door to the river running fast (we heard a big fish break water). Standing there in the cold rain in this place of tremendous growth for Jean.

In the Snowy Range
We spent the night at the Old Corral Hotel, Peet’s coffee and fruit and yogurt for breakfast in our room. 

The highway (opened yesterday) up out of Centennial into the Snowy Mountains. I first saw these beautiful mountains about 1963 off in the distance on the way to somewhere in Wyoming with my friend, Renn Fenton***. I’ve seen them in the distance 5 or 6 times since; and now, driving into the mountains through pine trees dusted with snow and a little snow on the ground, now more, stopping the car down a smaller side road and getting out to be in the snow surrounded by trees with the snow too deep to walk in. Driving up and up with deep drifts on the side of the road and the snow coming down and at the top of the pass the snow is coming down sideways, stinging our faces – Yes!

The Bighorns

The endless arching of this endless summer from Berkeley to Mendocino to Dallas to Santa Cruz to San Francisco to Vancouver to the golden afternoon of Big Sur to Marcia’s house to Indian Rock to The Temple to Flagging to the Edge of the World, to Yosemite (walking with faeries in the forest) to the beach the seashore the waterfront to La Honda to Esalen(!) to massage class to New York to Spain to our beautiful life in Berkeley to Colorado into Wyoming into the place where Jean became so much and arching across the beautiful Snowy Range! This isthe train. Here is a moment on a Mendocino beach that captures when the endless summer started.

At the beginning of the Endless
Summer – Mendocino beach
Driving out of the Snowy Range it was a short drive to Saratoga, to visit the hot springs there. The Saratoga Hot Springs hotel was overpriced and the restaurant mediocre, but we had a great time along the river and in the room. (More later on the municipal hot springs – a much better option than the “resort.”)

From Saratoga, we drove north – first to Medicine Bow for breakfast with bikers (and not 50 year old divorced guy “bikers” with do-rags) – and onward to the Sheridan area to visit Jean’s friends, Katie and Hal for a few days. We hung out on their ranch, then drove up into the hills, parked, and walked along a dirt road lined with lupines. Hal forged ahead with the dogs (Dan and Marty) and Katie and Jean walked through the lupines and I wandered along in my own world. Lunch was at a café in Bighorn. After lunch we went to a “roping” – a cowboy Memorial Day get-together and a birthday party and so there we were, standing along the corral fence with the “headers” and “heelers” roping the steers and the other people sitting on their horses and a few along the fence.

Sheridan roping
And THEN, it was time for the “boil” – a huge pot of boiling seasoned water, with potatoes, sausage, corn, and shrimp – plus bread and slaw and macaroni salad and watermelon and rhubarb (harvested yesterday) pie and coconut cream pie and a humongous tub of ice cream and nice people – though most are probably farther to the right than I am to the left.
A great Memorial Day.
At the “boil” after roping
Memorial Day 2017
From Sheridan we headed south to Thermopolis for a short time in their municipal hot springs, then on to Lander (home of the National Outdoor Leadership School – NOLS). Good times and good food in this pretty Wyoming town.
We drove the few miles from Lander to Sinks Canyon where we camped in a state park. This was Jean’s first night in a tent in 40 years. Very windy and rained for awhile – a great night.
(“Grief is the final act of love, and recovery from it is the necessary betrayal on which the future depends. There is only this one life, and we are the ones who are here to live it.” From NYT review of Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant.)

We talk of our spouses and the terrible grief. Driving up the highway across the Wyoming steppe and through the mountains, singing Grateful Dead and Beatles songs together – Here Comes the Sun! Such an emotional trip. Tears just beneath the surface… Attics of My Life – not about a person as much as self… attics = past – I laughed with delight.
In the tent

Onward back across this magnificent big sky country to Saratoga, where we stayed in Hacienda motel on the edge of this small town and drove five minutes to the municipal hot springs – free, sandy bottom, convivial scene. Back at the cowboy motel we rested then went to the Wolf Hotel for a prime rib dinner.

Vedauwoo campsite

Continuing south we again camped, this time in the Vedauwoo area – we had a great campsite among the hoodoos. Our nearest neighbors were a hippie family on their way to the Rainbow Gathering in a great bus. The man and I were talking about an Incredible String Band song quote on the side of bus (“We love you, but Jesus loves you the best”) and he and I sang a few lines together. Later I recalled that I sang that song to Keo as she was dying last January.

Camping with Jean was great. We were comfortable in our warm sleeping bag and tent, enjoyed our camping food, and had good times hiking around and watching sunsets.
From the Vedauwoos we drove to Fort Collins to spend the night, but it was too cityish, so we drove into the mountains and rented a cabin along the Fall River in Estes Park. This was a great move – clean mountain air, rushing river, and… a bear walked by less than 20 yards from Jean!!! This happened a day after we talked about our spirit animals (mountain lion for me; bear for Jean)!
Sunset Vedauwoo

In the morning we took off up Trail Ridge Road across the Rockies. It’s been more than 50 years since I was there and Jean had never made it across that pass at 12,183 feet. Wow! Surrounded by tundra and snowy peaks and the thin air and clear skies. Now over the pass toward Winter Park and then Golden to spend the night at Helen’s (and her dogs, Louie and Stella).

Jean and Helen were talking about a car we saw with a bumper sticker – Women for Trump. Jean said, “Don’t they realize their bodies are sacred.”
Denver airport and flying from one paradise (Wyoming/Colorado) to another (Berkeley/Bay Area).
Bear outside our cabin. Photo by Karen

*** Renn Fenton and I lived together in a cabin in Estes Park and climbed in Estes and the Needles in South Dakota. While Jean and I were traveling in Wyoming and Colorado, I told her a little about Renn. When we got home I googled him. I discovered that he died in 2007. Here is something from an internet forum: “I am a travel nurse who has taken care of Renn while he was in the hospital. I wanted all of you to know that I have felt privileged to be one who got to spend time caring for Renn during his last days. It was clear to me the first time I laid eyes on Renn that he was quite a character – when I googled him, I found this site and saw a comment that made me want to respond. I was actually able to “break through” with Renn and get him to talk back to me and say my name. I will forever remember his vivid blue eyes and “cat that got the canary” smile. I just wanted all of his friends to know that there are several of his nurses who have appreciated Renn for being the kind of person who makes this world interesting and feel honored to have cared for your friend.” 

Renn’s country – Jean’s country – my country