Legacy

My aunt called Thursday night to say John had died peacefully that afternoon.  I’m relieved that it is over.

UJ

Anticipation and Grief

This week has been a rough one for me.  Sunday night I got a call from my aunt in Pennsylvania saying that my uncle was not doing well and will soon pass away.  For four years, I have known that one day I would receive that call, but it was still like getting a bucket of ice water in the face. 

I have been blessed to have multiple father figures join me in the journey of my 31 years of life.  My father is a good man.  He was an excellent teacher and quick to speak words of confidence to his children (and quick to rush them to the hospital when that confidence proved to be a bit pre-mature from time to time).  It is sad to see him age and now struggle to do things that were once taken for granted.

My uncle John, UJ as I’ve called him for years, was a second father to me.  I have no memories that pre-date my memories of him.  He was a just always there.  There is no other way to say it.  I don’t know how to describe how many significant memories I have that include him or, often times, include both UJ and my father in the same memory.  UJ and my father were best friends growing up.  They worked together as teenagers, the raced a stock car together as young men, and they farmed together early on.

UJ was the one who brought me my first pocket knife.  He taught me how to care for the land, how to milk a cow, how to respect people of other cultures, and how to take ownership of the causes I care about.  I would spend weeks and sometimes months on his farm in southeastern Pennsylvania Amish country where words like, “Here’s the rifle and truck keys …be careful,” were not uncommon.  This happened every summer from as early as I can remember until my senior year of high school.

I think I had the best visit I’ve ever had with UJ two years ago.  I sat in a rocking chair next to him, gazing out the plate-glass window at a farm field beside the hospital.  Neither of us said a word as I held his hand in mine.  We just sat and enjoyed each others company.  I knew, in that moment, that I would be at peace with the world if I never saw him again, if he left before I could return.  I am so thankful for that day.

Tonight, this man, this strong man, lies in a hospital bed in the Alzheimer’s wing.  His ability to swallow left him last week.  As a result, he “swallowed” food and fluids into his lung and developed pneumonia.  He will not receive a feeding tube (a decision I affirm because I know he would not want it).  So, the morphine drips into him as the life ebbs away, and there is nothing I can do except wait for the next phone call.

Grateful

Yesterday, my daughter insisted that she and I return to play at a park we had passed earlier in the day.  My wife was at the local children’s hospital visiting with a refugee family we work with, so I said, “Sure, we can go back.”  We finished our errands, rounded up a snack and went back to play.

I was so proud of her as she played with all the other kids on the playground.  She was even sharing her raisins!  Out of the corner of my eye, as I was chatting with some other kids, I saw E take a leap between two huge boulders that sit beside the playground.  This was not a half-hearted attempt, but rather a give-it-all-you’ve-got, make it or break it leap.  Unfortunately, she didn’t make it to the second boulder, but rather fell short, taking a forehead plant into the jagged base of the second rock.

Five minutes later, I was running into the local emergency room with her in my arms, her white sweater now balled up and pressed against her forehead and turning more red than white by the minute.  After several hours, a set of dry heaves, and a CT scan, she was diagnosed with a concussion and sewed up with three stitches.

My Little Trooper

Sitting and waiting for E to receive her stitches, I was looking around the room wondering how many $200 door knobs and trash cans there were in the hospital?  How many cases of the plastic bags that say “soiled linens” on them do they go through in a year, and how many times are those bags re-used before they are deemed trash themselves?  Does every square of gauze that the nurse uses go on someone’s bill?  I know this is a sweeping generalization, but I suspect that a lot of hospitals are built and managed under the pretenses of, “Oh, what the hell, the patient is going to pay for this stuff anyway.”

As we were checking out and providing the hospital with our insurance information, it struck me how thankful I was that the four hours of emergency care that E received was not going to bankrupt us.  So many families in America today are without any health insurance and would have been burdened with years of financial debt if they had been in my shoes last night.

I usually don’t blame shift.  I’m a fan of owning my stuff.  If I screw up or am a part of something that’s screwed up, I’d rather just admit it and take correcting steps.  But, man, it is hard to look at healthcare in America and not get bitter toward the systems we’ve established; toward the multi-billion dollar companies that seem to throw a lot of people under the bus.  I can’t fault these people either for having limited resources and sometimes having to choose between health care and groceries.  I, too, have limited resources and could have been bankrupted by the ER visit if not for my daughter’s insurance (she has private primary insurance and secondary state-funded insurance).

Now, I’ll be honest.  I don’t know what ObamaCare is or what all it covers.  I don’t know if I could accurately describe what a PPO or HMO is or how they differ from other insurance plans.  What I do know is that it seems terribly wrong that a country known as the most advanced in the world is unable to offer affordable healthcare to those who need it.  I don’t understand why my friend has to cut back to part-time hours with his job in order to qualify for state-funded health care, thus keeping him dependent on this debilitating system.  I only know that it sure seems we’ve missed something along the way in the murkiness of greed and selfishness we gloss over with the term “capitalism.”  Why can’t we, as a country, just own that and start taking corrective steps?

All Creatures… Great and Small

I teach science to three home-schoolers.  It’s a blast; never a dull day!  Yesterday we built a compost bin together in my back yard and filled it with kitchen scraps and sycamore leaves.

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Seeing the Forest Through the Trees

Thursday was a really rough day for me.  I tried to work through what otherwise might have been my day off on what otherwise might have been a dreary and cold February day.  Oh, but if it had been, it might have gone better on both accounts.  No, however, it was almost 70 degrees here with beautiful sunshine inviting me to come outside most of the day.  Beyond that, I was perpetually sidetracked in my thoughts, remembering days-gone-by when my work was a little easier and I was confident in my skills.

I had to reflect on the day, though, and come to the realization that good things take time to develop.  I mean, that is what I’m doing now, right? …Development?  Development is hard!  It’s fluid and changing and must be fought for with brutal intentionality.  I had to think back through my day and realize that all those things I’ve done in the past that now bring great pride to look back on took years to develop into something worthy of admiration.  I look at current pictures of the university campus where I toiled and I see incredible projects, completed in ways that reflect my input and the input of those gentle-men who worked under my supervision.  Those things didn’t come to completion overnight.

Likewise, on these days when I wade through the never-ending details of Roots & Shoots, I must keep my eyes on the horizon.  Yes, there is the here and now; The decisions that must be made, the action that must happen on a daily basis.  However, if I only focus on the “tree” before me, I start to forget about the “forest” that spreads for miles ahead of me.  I’m in this to journey through the forest, to look back upon it in a few years and say, “Yeah, that’s beautiful and it really has made an impact.”

As a result of Thursday, I wrote the following poem:

When life shits,

Why act so surprised?

When the bottom drops out for a day,

Why fear all is lost?

Bumps in the road of progress,

Tall roots along the path to tomorrow.

Pull the hatch back & slap the lock on.

When life shits, make compost!

January Rituals

I sense another "year of the eggplant" coming on

 

Alright, so we’ve had two-in-a-row 60 degree sunny days here in Knoxville this past week.  Last night, I couldn’t take it any more!  On the 5th, I had planted a flat full of seeds and placed them under my trusty grow lamp ($1 at Habitat).  However, only the eggplant were responding to my lovin’.

Last night, I sat down at the dining room table with my 3 little metal lunch boxes full of seeds, a toothpick, and a Sharpie pen (all the best gardening tools) to see what was going on.  I suspect I’ve been robbed of the joy of seeing the other seeds leap forth from the soil by a little pesky thing called damping off, because I see no evidence of seedlings below the surface of the soil.  Damping off is a fungus that can sometimes kill a seed before it germinates.  I’m not positive, though, because some of the seeds I planted were quite old and of questionable origin.  I stuck a few varieties of trustworthy peppers in their place and we’ll see what happens.  If they won’t grow, I’ll try a trick I was reading about where you treat the soil with chamomile tea to kill the fungus.

Damping off or no damping off, I love growing vegetables from seed.  There is nothing like the hope of a colorful and abundant garden when the snow is blowing and the ground is rock-hard under your feet in January.

De-sensitized Reality

Last weekend, Ellie and I walked (well, I walked and she rode her bike) downtown to the library.  We were sitting there in the kids’ room coloring together, and I overheard something that really impacted me.  At the table behind us, a woman sat reading a book to her young son.  It was a book about war and military equipment.  Now, I’m sure her son probably picked the book out and just couldn’t get through all the words on his own.  Nevertheless, I sat there dumfounded as this woman very calmly read to her son about bombs and carpet bombs, tanks and bombers, mines and “the enemy.”

At the time, it just made me angry to think about how disconnected people are from the realities of war.  To most people today, war is something that takes place on the TV screen or in the newsprint.  Yet here I am working daily with people who have been affected in horrible and indescribably ways by the terror …the reality of war; people who have been beaten, shot, raped, bombed, witnessed family members executed in front of them, and been driven from their homes and their country.  I just can’t hear certain things in the same way anymore.  I can’t hear this woman describing how this one type of weapon is used to “destroy the enemy” without thinking about a man I know who lives a haunted life now precisely because he destroyed the enemy.  I can’t hear it without thinking about my friend whose face, back, and shoulders bare the reminders of the day his face was put through a glass display case and he was beaten into a coma by his fellow countrymen in the midst of civil war.  All of this and I myself have never been to war (thank God!) and still have no comparable grasp of its horrors.

Then this incident comes to light this past week with the Marines urinating on their dead counterparts, and again I’m taken back to the children’s room at the library.  God, it just sickens me to think that people actually believe that pissing on someone’s dead body is the worst thing that happens in war.  My wife found the following blog post towards the end of the week that I feel is really well written and whose author hit upon this same sentiment I’ve been feeling. It can be found in its original format at:  http://gawker.com/5875468/piss-on-war, and I believe the author to be named Hamilton Nolan.

Piss on War: Death, Desecration, and Afghanistan

A video emerges showing US Marines pissing on three Taliban corpses in Afghanistan. The outrage machine grinds into motion. The media bestirs itself from its slumber. Americans momentarily pay attention to the war in Afghanistan again. Politicians rush to add their names to the chorus of identical statements. All inflamed over the least bad thing that soldiers do in war.

Do you know what is worse than having your dead body urinated upon? Being killed. Being shot. Being bombed. Having your limbs blown off. Having your house incinerated by a drone-fired missile that you don’t see until it explodes. Having your children blown up in their beds. Having your spouse killed. Having your hometown destroyed. Being displaced. Becoming a refugee. Having your entire life destroyed as a consequence of political forces far, far beyond your control.

War is horrible. War is sickening. Wars started for supremely righteous causes are just as horrible and sickening in their consequences as wars started for less than righteous causes. Politicians who sit in office chairs and start wars and wave flags as young men and women go off to kill and die and be psychologically and emotionally damaged for life are the most sickening of all. Politicians start wars and are rewarded with an appearance on weekend talk shows and Very Respectable Discussions with Very Respectable media figures and jokes at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner and appearances on Leno and ghostwritten self-glorifying memoirs and lavishly catered fundraising parties with corporate executives. They should be rewarded with outrage. They should be rewarded with scorn. Starting a war is a monstrous, monstrous crime against humanity, as we know when it begins that no matter how cleanly it is conducted it will result in thousands upon thousands of bullets smashing men’s skulls and arms and legs blown off by shrapnel and mothers and children incinerated by high explosives. And every extra day that a war is perpetuated unnecessarily is a crime anew.

And we as a nation could not be more bored by the unceasing industrial strength violence being carried out in our names in nations where none of us will travel, or vacation, or think about much at all as long as sports and American Idol and Downton Abbey are on TV. We skim past those stories of the latest bombing or drone strike or gunfight or civilian massacre. We joke about the personal foibles or funny accents or minor gaffes of the politicians who hold it in their power to stop war, but won’t. We’re bored and petulant and self-absorbed until that video of some soldier pissing on dead bodies comes along, at which point we can have an outrage contest and feel good about ourselves for being more outraged than the next completely uninvolved person, for a day or two, until the big game comes on.

Here’s what else happened in Afghanistan this week: “The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of four Soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Jan. 6 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their vehicle with an improvised explosive device. Killed were: Staff Sgt. Jonathan M. Metzger, 32, of Indianapolis, Ind.; Spc. Robert J. Tauteris Jr., 44, of Hamlet, Ind.; Spc. Christopher A. Patterson, 20, of Aurora, Ill.; Spc. Brian J. Leonhardt, 21, of Merrillville, Ind.”

“The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Pfc. Michael W. Pyron, 30, of Hopewell, Va., died Jan. 10 in Parwan province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 25th Signal Battalion, 160th Signal Brigade, 335th Signal Command Theater, East Point, Ga.”

“The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Pfc. Dustin P. Napier, 20, of London, Ky., died Jan. 8 in Zabul province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained from enemy small-arms fire. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Wainwright, Alaska.”

“The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of three airmen who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Jan. 5 in Shir ghazi, Helmand province, Afghanistan, when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. Killed were: Senior Airman Bryan R. Bell, 23, of Erie, Pa. He was assigned to the 2nd Civil Engineer Squadron, Barksdale Air Force Base, La.; Tech. Sgt. Matthew S. Schwartz, 34, of Traverse City, Mich. He was assigned to the 90th Civil Engineer Squadron, FE Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.; Airman 1st Class Matthew R. Seidler, 24, of Westminster, Md. He was assigned to the 21st Civil Engineer Squadron, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.”

And all of the dead bodies on the other side. We just don’t have the names.

Piss on that.