Fall Harvest Moon
It keeps coming back to me. Watching Bill’s farmer hands stroke Regina’s hair line and her hair. He was gentle, loving. So present to her and this only hours before she died.
Monthly Archives: September 2012
Regina Has Died
Fall Harvest Moon
Regina Schmidt, life partner of William Schmidt, my friend and fellow Woolly, died at 4:00 pm. It was peaceful.
Her death follows a stroke last Wednesday which followed smaller strokes in the week or two prior. As I said below, she had cancer and it was after her chemotherapy ended that she developed the blood clotting problem that would eventually lead to her death.
How Regina’s death will affect Bill in the long term is very hard to say. Right now though the important thing for all of us who love him is to love him without overwhelming him.
Love Regina
Fall Harvest Moon
The Woolly Mammoths, together now over 25 years, have entered the third and last phase of life, the autumn/winter years in which the final harvest begins to bend toward the grave. We have, so far, been able to remark on this reality from the outside, fortunate in our health and in our spouse’s health. That is no longer so.
Regina got her diagnosis of stage 4 cancer while Bill was in a Woolly meeting. We knew it from the beginning. She’s done well and poorly, shown up at events since then and been asked about at others. Bill has, from the beginning, embraced the process, sometimes trembling, buttressed by a chiropractor’s suggestion that before all else, “He love Regina.” Thus, whatever happens at this point, as Regina lies in the ICU of Hennepin General, he has leaned into loving Regina, a comfort.
Her illness is no surprise, hers in particular, yes, but a potentially terminal illness that’s part of the body’s journey in this last phase of our lives, no. This is not a test. This is not a test of the Woolly Mammoth emergency hearfelt system. A potentially life-threatening situation has been spotted. It will not be the last.
In Recovery
Fall Harvest Moon
Kate said I recovered from the hernia surgery like a kid. Day two and I’m moving around pretty well. Still painful in certain instances, but not too bad. The pain meds, which I’ve cut back on, still fuzzy up the head and make sorting things through a problem.
Last night was a full moon. I’m not a big fan of the full moon drives folks crazy argument, though it does pull the tides in the Bay of Fundy (where Paul and Sarah are) up 80 feet at high tide, but I’ve never seen the real connection between lunar gravitation and human life.
It’s a different matter, though, when it comes to dogs. The moon casts more light on the woods, animals run around more and squeal more and our dogs go nuts more. In general we try not to reinforce them in behaviors we don’t want, so if they bark and bark and bark and bark and bark (and so on), we don’t get up to let them out. But, after three hours of barking, not kidding, we gave in. Now we have tonight to get through. We’ll see.
Still wuzzy from the vicodin. Maybe clearer tomorrow.
Medicine
Fall Harvest Moon
Medicine, for all its grandeur and power, still presides at those moments when things go bad. When a clot breaks loose and heads toward the brain. When a portion of an inner wall opens, allowing things to move beyond their proper place. When a child has cancer or a brother, too.
No matter how strong and how grand, medicine is not our bulwark against death. No, it’s a bulwark against death’s timing. So far though, and the Taoists of the Qin and Han dynasties in China tried mightily, there is no immortality. We all end our journey, our ancientrail.
Medicine can delay death’s arrival at our door, sometimes delay it for a long time, but it can not ban death’s presence.
Especially when we seek the shelter of hospitals, most especially when we end up in hospital ICUs, medicine’s work can be tender, to the mark and in vain. We know this in my family as my mother went into the ICU at Riley Hospital and never came out.
But, too, these are where the modern miracles occur. I’m hoping for one for Regina.
Surgery, I had, they tell me
Fall Harvest Moon
Drove into the city yesterday to Abbott-Northwestern Hospital. Checked in and had to add, along with my name and date, the time to several spots on various pieces of paper.
After a brief wait, I went to the area for ritual preparation of the sacrifice, removed all my real world clothes and exchanged them for a purple garment made of paper. Many people asked my name several times, my surgeon, Dawn Johnson, came and autographed my groin. A nurse anesthetist found a big vein, asked if she could use it and I said sure.
The IV went in there. Then, the first of the Versid. It could better be named Lethe after the river of forgetfullness that flows through Hades for that’s its function. I saw the operating theater. Felt them lay my arms out in a cruciform manner. “Just like an execution,” I said. “Oh, no. I don’t think so,” a nurse said. It was, though.
There was a large tray with many sharp instruments, a number of tables and screens and such that looked as if they stayed there between operations, waiting for some future use. Above me were two lights with mica like scales, I assume to give even, penetrating light.
There were scratch marks on the giant arms that held the lights.
Then, I woke up as my gurney careened (to me) down the hall passing light after light, door after door, the sacrifice already given and I missed the whole thing. Forgot it.
In the recovery room my nurse’s name was Helen, whose face launched a thousand ships. My consciousness danced in and out, opening the screen, then closing it. Kate came back and I was very glad to see her.
By 2:30 pm we were in the Rav4 and headed back to Andover. We drove in, something happened of which I have no memory, only wounds and we returned to our house.
Where, since then, I have been in the care of nurse, nurse anesthetist, pediatrician and after hours physician, Kate. It’s been good to be in her ward.
Now, with the aid of Vicodin, I ride through the adaptations my body must make to this insult. But, an insult with a purpose. The hernia repaired and a mesh installed. Or, so they tell me.
Fall Harvest Moon
Ancientrails will be dark as long as I am. Not long I imagine. Surgery at 2:00 pm. Home for recovery. Probably back at it sometime Friday, maybe Saturday. See you then.
50 Objects
Fall Harvest Moon
Right now, I’m not going to order them, just trying to think of objects that might show who I’ve been, what I’m becoming. This is the first pass. May need more, more specificity. Some of these may come off and others added. But, it’s a start.
When I do this fully, like the British Museum did, I’ll provide label copy for each object.
Daisy: a green Velveteen Rabbited toy of Dagwood and Blondie’s dog. With eyes resewed and body stitched.
The Red Celica
The doorknob above the third shelf of our first apartment on Lincon Street in Alexandria
The coal augur in the same apartment building
The cave friends and I dug in the backyard of 311 Monroe Street
A stack of comic books
A plastic lunch tray from elementary school
A mat at Miss May’s kindergarten
Mortar boards with tassels moved
A draft card
The Greenwich Hotel in NYC
Angkor Wat
St. Winifred’s Holy Well
Castle Conwy
A dismantled alarm clock
Sodium in water
A beer bottle
A pack of Pall Malls
A deck of cards
A book, let’s say a specific book, The Glass Bead Game
Goya’s Dr. Arrieta
The Henry Moore sculpture honoring Enrique Fermi at the University of Chicago
A bible, the RSV
A contract for deed
3122 153rd ave. NW
A table at D’amico’s Cucina
An auditorium in Toronto
A study carrel in the corner on the third floor at United Theological Seminary
A wicker basket
A blue uniform
A pair of skis
An iron lung
A 1950 Chevy Panel Truck
A Dayton-Hudson Corporation Foundation board room late at night
A bassinet in an office
Stamps from the Vatican Post Office
A jar of Artemis Honey
A bill for an act: M.E.E.D.
An apartment building on the West Bank
A dog collar
A loaded trailer
A cemetery
A cut off pony tail
A desk
A computer
Make-up
An All-Saint’s day processional in Colombia, outside Bogota
Aha
Fall Harvest Moon
Enlightenment. Chop wood, carry water. I got it. Today. Suddenly. While the air was cool, the sky clear.
(Isra Box)
Here’s how. Gertie knocked the back door off its track a couple of nights ago. Not bad for a 45 pound dog. But. Had to get it back on. I’m not a handy guy. Never have been and never aspired to be. That means I greet these kinds of tasks with a dread reinforced by all those damned nights I had to help my dad bail out the basement of our house, bucket by bucket. He refused to buy a sump pump. Not to mention the days mowing our yard with the old, clunky push mower. He wouldn’t buy a power mower. But, hey. That’s then.
The perverse privilege of screwing ourselves up with things that happened long, long ago is part of what makes us human, I know. And I wouldn’t want to make myself less human.
Then. I had the strip of rubber coated aluminum off. It holds the door in place. I remembered that I usually get frustrated, want to move onto something I prefer to do. Remembered, too, that that feeling was not necessary. That I could stay with the door until I finished. There was no hurry. No next thing. There was only this thing.
That was it. Satori. Not exactly be here now, although that is a result. But, not the cause. The aha was nothing. It fitted me into the task and nothing else. I finished the door in an unhurried manner, but efficiently. Also. It worked. Hey.
When chopping wood, chop wood. When carrying water, carry water. When fixing the door, fix the door. When revising the novel, revise the novel. When being with your love, be with your love.
Fall Harvest Moon
Ah, the life of the carefree retiree. Teeth on Monday, luncheon with the other clients of our financial planner on Tuesday, then hernia surgery on Thursday. Perfect.