even when the doctors confirmed it was terminal
even when chemotherapy ravaged his body far worse than the disease
he didn’t stop being him

he was in pain, certainly, and there were a million and one tiny
details
that now had to be attended to just to keep his condition from becoming
unmanageable on a daily level
but that’s just what they were
details

the core of his being did not change
he still attended church

(as if church attendance in and of itself
amounts to anything; most regular church
goers would get the same benefit going to
the movies every sunday morning)

he voiced a faith that sounded in line with his fellow parishoners
but words are deceptive
the same words from one masks a simplistic garbled misunderstanding
while from another masks a profoundly nuanced wisdom of the spirit

so he talked the talk
but he walked the walk
not always
not perfectly
there were times one wanted to say
now can you possibly say / do / support that
and still call yourself a believer?

but it’s not our call to make
not our place to judge

he lived a conventional good life
worked hard
supported a family
had much to feel satisfied with
now that he reached the end

this is what makes him remarkable:
he is not in denial
he knows he is dying
he knows his daily routine reflects this
but nonetheless
he continues
living

no bucket list
no grandiose gestures
no regrets
no fears

was it his faith that gave him this strength?
then i realized strength had nothing to do with it
strength couldn’t possibly withstand the forces
unleashed against him

no, it was something different
something better:

balance

he stands — for as long as he is able –
a man who is alive
a man who feels no need to prove anything
because he knows himself
and that is sufficient

this is not bravery
bravery is admirable
courage in the face of adversity
intestinal fortitude, as it were
nothing wrong with that
but bravery starts with a negative
there must be fear before valour
what he shows is a far different thing

he stands there not because he is strong
but because he is fully alive
knowing who he is (past & present)
and because of that
not intimidated by what is to come
he has loved
he knows love
he has been a part of the lives of others
and has allowed others to be a part of him

his chipper attitude is no facade
that’s who he is
who he has been
and by the grace of God
who he will continue to be

he lives
and each breath he draws
is as precious
and as valid
and as full of promise
as the first one he drew
coming from the womb

until he dies
he lives
he loves
not afraid
not brave

fearless

and that just may be
the point of this story
that the way he lived
proved a blessing to himself
by giving him an attitude
that he couldn’t help but share
through the simple act
of being alive
and that attitude
made it easier for those who loved him
to minister to him
and care for him in his last days
thus making it easier to keep
the very attitude that blessed them in the first place
and in turn made their blessings possible

no grace is ever wasted
no charity is ever in vain

(c) Buzz Dixon

On April 10, 1963 the USS Thresher (SSN-593)
was lost at sea with all hands, including civilian
workers assigned to observe her sea trials.

they must have known

those last few moments
those last few heartbeats
those last few breaths

they must have known it was the end

did they count them?
did they count each one?
wondering how many before –

the boat tilted sharply, bow up

mocking them

a desperate lunge for the surface

but science failed them

nature failed them

(failed them?  not hardly
they were the ones who
spat in the face of reality
expecting physics to
magically bend to
accommodate their
petty wants and desires)

later,  much much later,
men sitting safe and warm and
dry and miles away from the cold Atlantic

would harrumph and theorize and
decide there had been moisture in the emergency valves

and that freezing cold water and super compressed air allied

to form a perfect ice blockage that kept the crew from blowing the tanks

and resolutely dragged the doomed sub backwards backwards backwards

the crew must have known
they couldn’t have not known

this is one big goddamn clusterfuck
we are all going to die goddamnit

(don’t cuss, don’t cry, pray)

did their minds race ashore?

to family, to wives, to children?

did they ask what the fuck am I doing here?

oh, yeah, it’s good money, making subs for the navy

but did I have to take this job?

the car needs an oil job

shoulda told the wife

we were going to go shopping next week

we –

metal groans, creaks

it’s coming

now thoughts are less organized, less focused

the captain and crew tried everything they could to restart the reactor

power the engines
blow the tanks
drive the boat
back to the surface

there’s nothing left now

but impotence

one of them laughs hysterically

thinks:  “When it’s inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.”

no one asks why he laughs

why would they?

how could he explain it if they did?

the metal groans more loudly
rising in pitch until it becomes
a shriek

and the sub telescopes in on itself

as if God Himself had cupped
bow and stern in His mighty hands

and clapped

the bulkheads collapse on themselves

two high speed freight trains colliding head on

their actual end is mercifully swift

a wall of ice cold water hits them

as gently as a sleet slick sidewalk

after stepping off a skyscraper

in-rushing ocean pulverizes soft, frail flesh

like a spider caught between a concrete floor

and a ball peen hammer

not even time for a blink

and they’re dead

just food for the sea

 (c) Buzz Dixon

Thursday was Soon-ok’s last day on the job at UCLA.

She’s retired after 32 years’ service (and that’s not counting breaks in employment as she had a child and worked outside the UC system for a while).

She’s happy, I’m happy, I’m especially happy for her.

She has earned her right to a restful retirement (tho it’s taken all I can do to keep her from immediately digging up the patio area to get started with her gardening).

We have some board strokes for our future planned out, but we’re going to stay flexible.  We’re looking forward to being grandparents, we’re hoping for the opportunity to travel, but mostly we’re looking forward to having more time together.

Even if we aren’t doing something together, just being under the same roof with one another is a warm, fulfilling feeling.

I love you, honey!

Soon-ok taking a well deserved nap
during a recent visit to Descanso Gardens.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

…and I am looking forward to our life together

but I also know the reality

we will grow old, our health will decline

and while there will be much joy and much love,
there will be no escaping pain and sorrow

I have lost my father, my mother, my grandmother

I have no fear of death, I feel safe in the hands of God

but there will be agony and loss and no way to avoid it

when I was a child, I couldn’t imagine my parents dying

as a teen and a young adult,
I could intellectually accept the idea,
but the emotional part never really sank in

in my middle age I came to accept the fact that my parents would eventually slip away

I am glad in both cases thew went peacefully, without much physical agony

but we knew they were going, we knew they were dying

32+ years ago neither Soon-ok nor I could really envision her retirement

and yet…here it is

sooner or later all things some to pass

and that grim, grim moment we all dread will eventually arrive,
that moment when one of us must stay and watch the other be lowered into the grave

I will not live in fear, I will not live in anxiety

that day will come, and we will prepare for it as best we can

but until it arrives I will live and I will love the most precious person I have on this planet

in the end the grave will claim us, but love will never let us go

“…Lanza’s shooting spree lasted less than five minutes and that he fired 152 bullets while making his way through two classrooms in the elementary school. Lanza had hundreds more rounds of ammunition either on him or in the car that he drove to the school…Lanza used a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to shoot his victims and a pistol to kill himself.”

Previous posts on why there is no rational reason for any civilian to possess military grade weapons or ammunition.

The way my mother met my father is the stuff of family legend.

It was during the war (World War Two, for you precisionists).  Mom worked in a city government office in Naples even though she was just a teenager and had been taken out of school before graduating by her father (not an uncommon experience for Italian girls of that era, whose parents often saw education as wholly superfluous in females).

The Germans had taken great pains to blow up all the bridges in Naples to make American use of the port more difficult.  The Americans spanned the river with a narrow military bridge that consisted basically of two gutters in which a driver could line up his wheels; the only bridge open to civilians was several miles upstream.

Neopolitans being who they are, they used the military bridge as a short cut whenever there wasn’t U.S. Army traffic on it.

One foggy morning my mom decided to risk it.  Not seeing any headlights, she tried scurrying across as quickly as she could, walking along one of the steel rail gutters like a high wire artist in a circus.

She almost made it.

She was about three-fourths of the way across when she met an American truck traveling in the opposite direction, its headlights shielded to prevent being spotted by German aircraft.  The driver stopped abruptly, hurling several choice Anglo-Saxonisms at her, honking his air horn, and encouraging her retreat by nudging her with his bumper (to her dying day Mom remembered how the grease on his bumper ruined her best skirt).

Mom retreated and hurried upstream to the bridge approved for civilian use.  Shaken by the incident, she didn’t tell her parents about it.

A few days later the family was shocked when a jeep carrying the truck driver and an Italian civilian interpreter pulled up outside their house.  Mom — to use a phrase that became popular two decades later — freaked out, certain she was going to be arrested.

Her father answered the door.  The interpreter explained what had happened a few days earlier, that the American soldier driving the truck felt sorry for yelling at her, and since he knew she lived in the neighborhood because he had seen her while driving to and from the port, had come to apologize.

The carton of Camel cigarettes brought as a gift did much to convince my Italian grandfather of my American father’s honorable intentions.

So began a circumspect courtship that lasted until my father was shipped out of Italy before the end of the war to be part of the final push into Germany (my father, being in the transportation corps, never came closer to combat than the occasional air raid.  That sounds so nonchalant.  What I mean by air raid is the Luftwaffe dropping hundreds of pounds of high explosives on the base where my father was stationed with the intent of killing as many Americans and destroying as much equipment as possible.  Puts kind of a different spin on it when you think of it in those terms).

My father’s plan was to go to college, get an education, get a job, come back and marry mom, and live happily ever after.

Fate deemed otherwise.

Dad never completed college, at least not on that go-’round.  They carried on a long courtship by mail.  They dreamed of a day when they could marry.

In 1950 dad learned the Army was recruiting vets to fill the ranks of the post-war military:  Re-enlist and they’d make you a sergeant and guarantee assignment to a post of your choosing.

Dad re-enlisted and got an assignment to Italy.

Two weeks later the Korean War broke out.

Dad never made it to Italy but luckily he avoided Korea (fate had another Dixon tapped for that assignment).  This time he saved his money and, when discharged in 1953, bought a ticket for Italy.

They married in February, mom came to America in November, and I was born in December.

I am American by birth, but Neopolitan by conception.

They enjoyed a long and happy life, one blessed by three sons.  We moved a lot when growing up; dad as a times study engineer in the textile industry would frequently work himself out of a job by getting a factory to run at peak efficiency, meaning the only superfluous person was him (wuzza times study engineer?  Next time the musical Pajama Game plays on TCM, look for the guy in the factory scenes who has a big clock on his belt:  That’s the times study engineer and his job was to figure out the fastest way of making a particular garment & budget accordingly).

I learned a lot about marriage from mom and dad, a lot of what it means to be truly committed, truly loving to one person all your life.  I trust I’ve put those lessons to good use in my own marriage.

Mom had a cancer scare when we were living in Tennessee.  The night before her operation she told my father that if anything should happen to her, he should remarry.

Mom came through the surgery just fine, but a day or so after coming home one of the internal stitches broke.  Not a big deal as we later learned, but at the moment it sent a sharp, piercing pain through her chest.

This time mom really thought she was dying.  Even though she’d been a professing Southern Baptist since coming to the US of A, she began calling on Mary and all the saints she knew or even had a casual acquaintance with.  She called us boys in and begged our forgiveness for any wrong she had ever done to us.

Then in a weak voice she called my father over, grabbed him by the throat, and said:

“Don’t you dare remarry!”

You can take the girl out of Naples…

Mom finished her education in America, got a college degree while her sons were in high school in Tennessee, was offered a chance to be a teacher but once again dad’s erratic career put us on the move, this time back to North Carolina.  By the time her sons were grown, age worked against her and dreams of a career of her own were put aside.

Mom and dad finally settled down in Asheville (i.e., technology in the form of computerization overtook dad and he wasn’t able to keep up with a new generation of tech savvy management).  They bought a house and lived together quietly and comfortably for their declining years.

Dad died from Alzheimer’s 3 years ago.  Mom had been waiting patiently for her chance to be with him again.

That chance has arrived.  God bless you and go in peace, mom.

Beardo by Dan Dougherty

Two of the best, most professional working relationships I have experienced were with a major league pornographer and a guy who produced wheezy-sleazy-cheesy B-movies.  Both gents paid what they promised to pay when they promised to pay it.

By contrast, two of the worse working relationships I’ve experienced have been with Christian publishers.

…I stood in line behind a customer carrying on a long and highly detailed conversation with the checker.  Topic: Walking around barefoot in a house where the dogs had diarrhea.

The checker and customer were quite graphic and extremely explicit in comparing notes on the matter.

When it was my turn to pay for my purchase, the bagger yawned.  The checker glared at him and said:

“Stop yawning!  You make me feel like yawning.”
(to me)
“Every time my dogs yawn, I feel like yawning, too.”

Me:
“I’d hate to be in your house
when they crap on the carpet.”