Newscoma

I talk about heading into middle-age quite a bit. It’s obviously on my mind.

You know, ’cause it’s happening to me.

With that said,  I’ve been making a bit of peace with it. Now, if I could do anything I wanted to do, I’d be a world-famous media critic, world-famous movie critic, be living in a warehouse apartment in downtown Nashville, Knoxville or Memphis (or NYC), people would just randomly offer me jobs that offer a lot of money because they think I’m groovy, yada, yada, yada … or possibly I could  just win the lottery so I could go on a two-week cruise and then I could head to the South Pole to see a real live penguin.

Yeah, I have simple things I want to do. And I’m shallow. That’s me.

I told you about my friend who isn’t feeling well. Yesterday, Squirrel Queen and I went and hung out with him for a big part of the afternoon. He’s being moved to Memphis on Monday and is looking into a world of unpleasantness with surgery and chemotherapy.

We laughed. He was scared but dealing with things so honestly and bravely that I just wanted to squeeze him. He worked as a stand-up comedian in the past, and he talked about how scared he was the first time he went on stage. He is the GM of a radio station now, and he told funny stories about how he thought that Squirrel Queen, he and I were urbanites living in a rural community and how it was so bizarre that no one really gets that.

As there is a golf-ball sized tumor in his kidney, I teased him that we could really just hurry up the process by taking out his kidney and leaving him a bathtub of ice with a note on top of him that does that old urban legend about organ thieves about leaving the tell-tale note that says “Call 911. We have removed your kidney.”  You know the old tale.

And we laughed.

We talked about when we were in radio together (believe it or not, he did a radio show with Squirrel Queen where she did sports, then about a year later, I was a news director at another station while he was the morning drive guy.)

This was all about 15 years ago.

We all have history. We are all friends. He told us he loved us and we told him we loved him. He asked us if we believed in God. We talked about faith.  He said he was most likely an agnostic but then he wasn’t sure about that.

He said he thought though that God could be the universe and that if God is everywhere, then that all made sense to him.  We talked about the personal relationship we had with the universe. We talked about how organized religion wasn’t really our cup of tea.  We talked about having hope in desperate times.

And, three old friends sat in a hospital room and I left feeling a great deal of love and affection but, as it goes, I also felt powerless and helpless because my friend is sick.

He wanted to go to Vandy for treatment. Insurance won’t allow it. We were there when he got the call saying he would have to go to Memphis.  A very sad moment as he was processing this new information and how to tell his wife.  He was worried she’d be upset. We talked about how insurance was messing with his ability to direct his own health care.

The cancer has metastasized. It’s in his hip and shoulder now. He can’t walk. He’s having trouble with mobility.

He’s got a hard battle in front of him.

So, last night I came home. And I cried although that would piss him off. But I wasn’t crying for him as much as the tears flowed over the loss of innocence and certainty. That there are health battles, and other wars to be fought ahead as we have entered our forties and there is an urgency to get things accomplished more rapidly.

I cried because we have new journeys and they are as difficult as the old ones we had in our teens, our twenties, our thirties.

No one ever said life was easy.

And, I’m selfish. I wanted, for one moment last night, to just pack up and go but you can’t run away from yourself or the people you love.

Because, what I wanted to run away from was getting older.

And after I bawled my eyes out, well then I felt better for all of us.

Because, you know, we have each other.

And that is of the good. It gives me hope that in the end, all you really have is love.

Bwwaaaahhhaaaahhhaaaa.

This is hysterical if you follow college football and are laughing at Michigan.

Again …

Hehehhehhhe.

Squirrel Queen is brilliant. I know this, as you should.

I am spent.

Haaaahh… cough, sputter, bwaahhaa. gag… haf..hah.

Squirrel Queen’s mother, we found out, is having eye surgery on Thursday which means that this weekend, we will be gracing the rolling (wait, it’s flat as a pancake) fields of Harris Station. As you remember, this is where I got scurvy last year because those are some meat-eating folks.

Today is significant. One year ago, in the early morning hours of August 27, SQ’s father passed away.

One year.

It hasn’t seemed that long, but it has been. She has healed as much as you can after a parent dies. You never really get over it. The emotions and feelings evolve into new things, and this has happened for her as well.

There is a void. Make no doubt about it, a void that won’t be refilled.

There is light again in her eyes which I thought might never come back. SQ is a practical person, so she only showed the pain when her body and soul got too full to hold it all in. She is a realist. But death, well, it doesn’t matter how realistic you are about it.

It hurts when you lose a loved one.

Her mother is having cataract surgery on Thursday. The first doctor she went to said he’s never seen such a terrible cataract and sent her to a specialist.

The Specialist said “I haven’t seen a cataract like this since I was on a missionary trip in Honduras.”

He then prayed with her which really freaked SQ’s mother out because she’d never had a doctor praying that he could do a good job before. Talk about it giving someone the wiggums.

Comforting, I’m telling you, although the idea of SQ’s mom having a third-world eyeball like this made all three of us giggle.

Better to laugh than cry, you know.

She hadn’t gone because of the cost. She has been diligently paying off hospital/hospice bills that accompanied the death of her husband. She didn’t want to pay anymore and thought she could live with it.

She couldn’t.

Alas, health doesn’t do things on our schedule.

So, today, we honor Jimmy Dan’s passing, we honor daughters who lose their daddies, we remember small, intimate memories that we hold and cherish because its what we have left and we decide to live each day as well as we can.

And we celebrate SQ’s mother who is the toughest cookie I know.

And we remember that love is hard because it walks hand in hand with the idea of how much we can lose, because that’s the way it is.

And we light a candle and hope for a better day, because this one is all we have guaranteed.

And that is what is on my mind this fine Monday morning.

Squirrel Queen is many things.

But she isn’t Ellen DeGeneres.

But some of her readers apparently think she is and have left her some Ellen fan letters on her blog in the comment section.

I wish I was kidding.

I’m sorry. This is amusing to me. So, ummm, I guess I’ll send her a message:

Dear Ellen,

If you read SQ anytime in the near future. Can you help some of your international fans out? She’s taking care of them. They apparently love you.

And, next time you are in Hooterville, I’ll buy you a beer.

Thanks,

Newscoma

Squirrel Queen had a role in this, I have no doubt.

Squirrel Queen isn’t well. We’ve tried to help her. Alas, it hasn’t worked. Therapy has gone awry. Medication (well, a lot of Miller Lite) hasn’t helped the synapses in her brain.

I will contend that maybe, just maybe, she is queen of all squirrels as she insists she is.

(This message brought to you by Sarcasm and Newscoma.)

Heh. (You realize I’m gonna be kilt, as the kids in Hooterville say.)

Some photos from Monday that amused me:

Toy soldiers in a box, courtesy of Squirrel Queen’s nephews.

The glove that Squirrel Queen used her entire softball career. It feels wonderful, the leather is soft from years of use. When she put it on her hand earlier this week, she smiled a little and I could tell she was remembering things in a rush. Things I didn’t know about. Things that made her happy.

 The Twins. Always in trouble. And secretly, I think that’s just alright. When you are nine years-old,  you need to take life full on.  I love that they are so mischievous.

If you have a few minutes and want to laugh your hiney off, go read Squirrel Queen’s Autobiography.

Hysterical.

Seriously, this is fun.

 Squirrel Queen and her mother at the river. There was laughter yesterday as we spread her father’s ashes at the Obion County River. We honored her father nine months to the day of his passing.

 Squirrel Queen’s family’s farm in Harris Station. This year, the crop is corn. Her parent’s home is in the distance

The river.

The final resting place of her father.

I like the river. It’s green and lush. It moves slowly, deep in some parts, shallow in others. Green lies on the top of the water. You can see life rippling beneath its surface. It’s sort of scary to me, as I’m a town kid. But I think it’s mysterious and beautiful. We laughed yesterday, we raised our glasses to SQ’s father and we cried.  We wished her father well and we said one last goodbye to what he was, what he meant to us and we toasted to him in his journey down the river that was his home for more than six decades. I love it out here. I could honestly become one with this world so different than my own.

I think it’s a fine place. These were her father’s wishes and we honored them.

“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”

Hemingway

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge — myth is more potent than history — dreams are more powerful than facts — hope always triumphs over experience — laughter is the cure for grief — love is stronger than death.

Robert Fulghum

In about two hours, we are going to spread the ashes of Squirrel Queen’s father. This is the reason why I couldn’t make it to Nashville to send Aunt B. to Beantown. Her mother decided rather unexpectedly that this was something she wanted to do. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, SQ’s father died last August from prostate cancer, after battling the deadly disease for twelve years.

Today will be a lovely day. I’m not being naive, I realize it will be hard but we honor him. We will remember smiles and laughter. She will remember, as I will, his easy grin and the small significant stories about his role in our life that forged our relationship with him.

We will remember:

The time he held her when her beloved Bull Terrier Molly died and he wouldn’t let her go until she had cried things out. As her dog walked out into the cornfields behind their home, her father went and got Molly, who was heading on her journey to die so SQ could have a last few minutes with her. He handled it and helped her through her first transition of losing her pet whom she loved and bonded with.

He made it better and although he couldn’t fix it, he made it better for SQ to say her farewells because even then, 20 odd years ago, he knew that saying goodbye was important.

The story of him riding across the country on his beloved Harley was the day I met him, as he drove into the driveway after attending a bike-rally in Daytona covered in black biker leather and the dirt from the road. The sound of the machine was as loud as thunder and my eyes were the size of saucers not knowing that SQ’s father was indeed different than any man I’d ever met. Where he also taught me another lesson of not judging a book by its cover.

One of the last things he said before he passed was to SQ. He told her he loved her.

The fact that when I introduced him to my dog Mabel, he said she was one of the finest dogs he’d ever met and the night he died she got on the bed and laid down in the crook of his knees and I didn’t make her stop. I felt like she would comfort him as he made his journey out of this life and into his new one.

The way he always treated me like a daughter and he never judged me.

One day last year when it was just him and myself sitting outside and he said he didn’t know if he was going to beat the cancer this time. His eyes were not foggy or dreamy as they sometimes were due to the pain medication. He was very direct and if I had not been paying attention, I don’t know if I would have heard the soft words coming out of his mouth. But I did. And I didn’t cry in front of him that day although I knew he was telling me the truth, I just nodded and smiled and frigging hated adulthood for all it was worth at that moment because I didn’t want to lie. He looked at me as almost he thanked me for not lying to him. I still cry when I think of that. It was a moment between us and it was also a non-verbal request as I think about it in retrospect. The air was filled with an unasked question but a question to me nonetheless. “Take care of them, my family, because they don’t know but you and I do. We knew that death was visiting that small farm in Harris Station and death never leaves empty-handed.”

I tried. It was the only thing he ever asked me to do.

It will be a day of permanent goodbyes to his ashes, but not to him because we will remember those little things. We know that this is what he wanted and that we all were in someway a part of making his wishes happen.

He wanted his ashes to be spread on the Obion County river, a place where he felt the most comfort in his life. Where he swam as a boy, owned a farm that backed up to the water. The water, deep in some places, shallow in others, alive behind a thick tree line that very few people know about and have ever seen. We will float his ashes back into the water he loved.

This will not bode well for Squirrel Queen.

Of course she could be responsible

.

Just saying.

(Hat Tip to Mom’s Tin Foil Hat.) 

I’ve written on this blog before that my nieces call me Aunt Tick, or actually just Tick.

It came from when the oldest niece was little she couldn’t say Tracy. I would tickle her unmercifully and she also couldn’t say Tickle. Thus Tick was born. When I go to school events or softball games, kids will run up to me screaming “Hey Tick.”

I know blood sucking insect and all but I digress.

Anyway, I’m also Aunt Tick to Squirrel Queen’s nephews, fraternal twins who are so full of piss and vinegar it would honestly make your head spin. As you know, SQ’s father died last August and then her grandmother died right before Christmas. Sometimes it’s hard to get through times like these, and SQ’s sis and her husband decided they didn’t want to walk down the path of matrimony anymore. Things happened that I won’t go into here, but they decided to get a divorce a couple of months ago. Sometimes relationships don’t survive hard times.

While we were at work yesterday, SQ got a phone call and we found out her soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law had a heart attack. (He’s going to be okay.)

I am not a parent. I’ve said before that the plumbing just didn’t work but I adore children. Probably would have had a slew of them if it hadn’t of been that it wasn’t in the cards (maybe it’s why I have three dogs.) Anyway, the nephews needed some attention.

Right now, they are acting out over the loss of the grandparent. They are living in a new house. Their father sees them every other weekend. This was to be his weekend and the boys were trying hard to grasp that their father was injured.

They are learning about death and mortality which, at eight-years-old, is a crappy lesson to learn. In their world, when someone goes to the hospital, they don’t come back.

Good God that breaks my heart.

They’ve been through so much. SQ played video games with them while I talked to their mom, letting her vent and cry, knowing she was worried but also knowing that her world has changed.

When it was time for bed, the nephews really started acting out. I mean, you would have thought that these two adorable children had turned into fire-breathing komodo dragons. Understandably, they’ve been through a lot. It went on for a few minutes and then it sort of got out of control.

‘coma, who in this environment is Aunt Tick (all the hats we wear), had had enough.

“In bed,” in this low voice I get when I’m truly pissed off. Only squirrels and children who are in trouble can hear this voice. Well, and the Squirrel Queen, of course. This voice is honestly only used about twice a year.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” one of them said.

“Yes I can,” I growled. “And I just did.”

They looked surprised that their Tick could put some venom in her words and went on to bed. I went into their room and sat on the side of the bed.

“Is Daddy going to be okay?” came a quiet voice in the darkness.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry you couldn’t go see him. He’s in what they call CCU. You can see him tomorrow. He’s going to be okay. They fixed his heart. He’ll probably be home by Sunday.”

“Did he get to ride in a helicopter?”

“Yes,” I answered. “He’s going to be okay. But guys, you have to treat people the way you want to be treated, do you know what I’m saying?”

“Dang, I want to ride in a helicopter too. He’s so lucky.” The smallest of the two boys said, not realizing that the last place that their father wanted to be was in an Air Evac helicopter. “Things are weird right now, Tick.”

So I hugged him. Because he’s little and scared and is learning some hard lessons.

“Are you mad at me,” he asked.

“No, I’m not mad,” I said. “Just, you know, if your scared it’s okay. It’s okay to be scared. And, kiddo, you have to treat people the way you want to be treated.”

I know I repeated myself there. I wanted them to hear what I’m saying. Learning the Golden Rule is important.

We talked for awhile and they drifted off to sleep.

I have no idea if I handled this situation well. I do know that being a parent must be the hardest job ever. In an extended family, we all have our roles. Sometimes I don’t know what my role is.

And last night I saw these two precious children realize something my grandfather used to say to me when I was a child. “Mr. Right died a long time ago.”

And that breaks my heart because none of us want them to learn this lesson. But it’s our job to teach them that life isn’t always fair.

I don’t want them to lose their innocence.

It’s hard.