A Memoriam

Recently, two people I cared about deeply have died. One is an old lover. The other is a fellow blogger. I'll write soon about the old lover, and today the blogger.

Back around 2006, I started this blog. Over the next year, a little blogging family started. It was remarkably diverse. Over time, as social media became a thing, there was less blogging and more Facebooking. One guy who never stopped blogging was Erik Donald France, who continued his wonderful blog Erik's Choice.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that both his Facebook posts and blog had stopped being updated. With a little fear, I ran a search, and my fears were confirmed: Eric had died of cancer in December, 2018.

He was a fascinating guy. I had always assumed that when I was done with having kids in college, and was more free to travel and spend money, that I would meet him in real life. We had emailed back and forth a few times over the years. He was a college professor, and had a seemingly limitless capacity to be interested in things-- literature, history, art, cinema, the military, geography, science. There seemed to be nothing he did not find interesting. He could be writing about the American Civil War and he would tie it to something unlikely. He was as fascinated by 19th century events as he was French New Wave cinema. He wrote about events that had nothing to do with him, and he wrote about events that touched him personally, like the murder of a Chapel Hill bookstore owner, Bob Sheldon, in 1991. His last blog posts and social media posts were just a couple of weeks before his death.

I feel a deep sense of loss and sadness. The world was a more interesting and beautiful place with Eric Donald France in it. He shall be missed. 

There's No Cheating Time

Back in 2007, right before I started taking the prerequisites for the nursing program that I would attend a couple of years later, I got myself some new glasses and contacts.

The optometrist told me something I'd suspected already: that I would need bifocals. I was 46, so I was not very surprised. My parents had gotten them in their forties as well.

Besides the glasses (lines-free progressives-- I paid thirty bucks extra for my vanity), I got contact lenses, which I had worn on and off most of my adult life. The optometrist and I discussed options. One was bifocal contact lenses-- basically, one contact was for long distances, the other for reading. Sounded like a guaranteed headache. The other, she said, was to get regular contact lenses, and buy some over-the-counter reading glasses-- "cheaters." She told me to get the very lowest power that I could read with.

After buying a few different pairs, I ended up with a set of three from Costco that were the second-lowest power they made. These served me well for a long time-- it's been nearly nine years since I purchased them. Over time, one broke and another disappeared. The ones in the foreground of the picture are the survivors of the set.

Over time, I've come to wear my contacts only in social situations. My job has the risk of flying bodily fluids-- specifically, blood-- and so I wanted the eye protection that glasses gave me. And it was not very practical to be taking my cheaters on and off all day. During one of those social situations a few weeks ago-- dinner out with my wife-- I realized that I was really struggling see the menu. It was time to get stronger cheaters.

This morning, I popped my contact lenses in for a distinctly non-social situation-- running my errands on the only day off I have this week. I went to Costco again, and again bought a set of three. My first set had been +1.50. The ones that worked this time were +2.50.

After Twenty Years

I had a horrible time at the beginning of high school. My family had moved from the city to the suburbs and I could not get used to life there. In the city, I'd had friends from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. I'd had friends, period-- I just couldn't seem to mesh with people who seemed obsessed with possessions and status, had known one another since birth-- and were 100% white.

My sophomore year, I decided to make some changes. I lost weight, started running and lifting weights, and I finally started making friends. One of the ones I'm most fond of looking back was Pete V.

Pete and I met in English class. I think he sat in front of me. He was a gregarious and kind Italian-American guy who participated in all kinds of music-related activities. I looked forward to my English class when I could chat with Pete. After a few years of real hell, I was happy to have a guy who I could talk and laugh with.

Over the course of my sophomore year, I started making other friends. But Pete and I made a promise. We had read the O Henry short story "After Twenty Years" in class. The story was about two friends who make a pact to meet 20 years from that day in a spot in a city. We made a deal that we'd do that; I even had the date written down and kept in a safe place, which I continued to do for years.

http://americanliterature.com/author/o-henry/short-story/after-twenty-years

In the next couple of years, he and I made other friends and saw less of one another, since we never had another class together again. We always said hello in the halls whenever we saw one another in our high school of 5,000 students.

We graduated and moved on in life. I went to a small school for a year, left college and worked for a year, then went to a state school. In the late nineties, I went back to school and got a teaching certification. And in 1999, I went to my 20th high school reunion. He was there. I stopped and chatted with him, and wondered if he remembered our pact. It wasn't the exact date, but I'd hoped to run into him there, and was very happy I did. He seemed to be doing well.

A couple of years ago, another high school friend "friended" me on a very popular social media site. Pete must have seen me through that and friended me. Within a couple of days, though, I saw that he had a lot of very conservative political stuff on there. It's no secret that my politics are pretty liberal. I quietly unfriended him; I didn't wish to start anything up with him.

A few weeks ago, through the same friend we'd originally reacquainted ourselves with, he and I started chatting on the social media site. He remembered that he had connected with me, and I explained why. He assured me that even though our politics were very different, he would always respect me and my views. And then he told me some things that stunned me.

His father had been a horrible, raging alcoholic. His household had always been in tumult. School, the activities-- and our friendship-- had been what had carried him through that time. I had no idea; he had needed me as much as I had needed him.

I refriended Pete, and will never again be out of touch with him. Like the characters in "After Twenty Years," our lives took very different paths. In the end, we met up again, not in front of a shuttered store, like the characters in the story, but on the internet. And happily, neither of us were career criminals...

Little Miracles

Recently, my son started his junior year of college. In March, he'll turn 21. My days these days are filled with working overtime in order to pay for that college. A few weeks ago, though, I took a day off to rummage through my attic storage space to thin out stuff that didn't get thinned out during our move to a bigger apartment a few years ago. I came across a reminder of another time and place.

In 1998, I had just finished two things: my elementary education teaching certificate and an ugly custody fight with an ex-girlfriend over my son. Neither were cheap.

My ex and I had fought to a bitter standstill. We shared custody, but as is the custom in the state I live in, I ended up paying child support.

Those days, in early 1998, were some lean times, to put it mildly. I remember having to take a jar full of coins I had from emptying my pockets of change from one of my past jobs, as a server. I took it to one of those coin counters in my grocery store in order to buy groceries for he and I one week. It was all the money I had.

As I searched for a teacher job, I scraped by working as a substitute teacher in the meantime. I also heard from an old friend whom I'd worked in the past. He needed a solid server at his restaurant, which I'd worked at before. Business was booming-- would I be interested?

Hell yeah. I was getting evicted from the apartment my son and I lived in. It wasn't necessarily the worst thing. I'd picked the apartment in a hurry after the woman I was married to asked for a divorce at the worst possible time-- as I was fighting another woman over my kid and getting ready for to  student teach, the final step in my journey to become a teacher.

He and I had toughed it out there. Because of all the one-way streets in the neighborhood, in order to get to our home we had to drive by an open drug market, with gang members out in front of the building hawking their wares. I was glad he was 4 and too young to realize what was going on. At night, there was gunfire. I kept music or the television on so that he wouldn't hear it.

We made the best of our poverty. At the time, you could ride the CTA, Chicago's mass transit system, for $1.50. For twenty five cents more, you could get a transfer, which was good for 3 hours and could also be used for a round-trip. Kids rode free. On some Saturdays, we would board the el at the station about a block from our home, and ride it to the end of the line, O'Hare Airport,  and hang out for an hour or so. This was pre-9/11, so we could go right into the terminal where the planes were. There was a playground in it, which he loved. He also enjoyed going up to the windows and waving to the pilots who were waiting for passengers to embark or disembark. They would unfailingly wave cheerfully back to him. It's funny now because he cites this as one of the funnest things he did as a child. I did it because I knew he loved airplanes and no matter how broke I was, I could always scrounge up $1.75, even if it was by rummaging through my apartment.

One day, right before I started my second job, as a server, we were in the grocery store near our apartment and he suddenly got very excited; "Dad! It's Tommy! Can I get Tommy?"

I knew that it was a character from a children's show-- "Rugrats." It was in a close-out bin for maybe 4 bucks. I had just enough to buy us 8 or 10 dollars worth of groceries, which I could stretch out for a week, and not enough for this inexpensive toy.  He rarely asked for specific toys. Trying to hide my embarrassment, I told him that we couldn't get it. When he asked why, I could not figure out a way to explain it to him. He was upset. I told him that maybe we could get it later. I knew this was unlikely; it was the only one in the bin, in a very busy grocery store. It would undoubtedly be gone by the end of the day. I hoped he would just forget about it.

A day or two later, I started working again for my old friend. I'd worked for years at the restaurant before I went back to school. Old regulars and I were delighted to see one another. People knew that I'd just finished teacher school, and some knew about my custody fight. They were generous with their tips.

I worked as a sub the next day, and after work went to buy groceries. It was a huge relief to have, for the first time in months, money to buy plenty of groceries, and even a couple of little treats for my son and I.

As I walked into the grocery store, I happened to walk by the sale bin. I was in disbelief. There was Tommy. I quickly grabbed him and threw him in my basket, thankful for this unlikely turn of events.

My son was, of course, later surprised and delighted to see Tommy.

As my son got older, he started asking questions about that time and our circumstances. He ultimately began to understand what had happened, and how my poverty was the price I paid in order to keep him in my life. For his part, he remembers this as one of the happiest parts of his childhood. He still remembers those trips to the airport with delight.

Over time, Tommy, toy cars and Lincoln Logs gave way to baseball, Monopoly and video games, but he always had Tommy on a shelf in his room, even after other things of his childhood had gone to younger neighbors or Goodwill. I think that it was a reminder of that time that was improbably happy for him. With our move right after I finished with one more career change,  nursing school, and right before he started college, Tommy finally went into storage.

These days, I'm happy with decisions I made. One was the decision, over 20 years ago, to stay in my son's life, no matter the cost. The other was the decision a few years ago to go to nursing school . I chuckle sometimes thinking that as a consequence, I'm able to spend more annually on his education than I made in a couple of those harsh years.

Pretty soon, Tommy will be going into the Goodwill bin, where he will eventually hopefully help some other young, struggling parent make their kid happy for a couple of bucks. But before that, I had to stop one more time and remember those times, and be thankful for timely little miracles. 

A Boy's Dream

"Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once - the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains."-- "Crash" Davis, "Bull Durham"

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, around 1968-1969, the baseball bug bit me. My family lived in Albany Park, a very ethnically mixed neighborhood on Chicago's north side. My friends in the neighborhood were a grab bag of ethnicities, nationalities and religions. Until just a few years before, Albany Park was populated mostly by Jewish people, mostly of Russian heritage. As they began the move to the suburbs-- a pattern that has remained to this day in this neighborhood no matter the ethnic groups-- new groups were moving in: baptists from Appalachia, Maronites from Lebanon, Irish, Hungarians, Polish and the first few Hispanic people. You name it, we had it

The one thing we all had in common was baseball. Our own little form of baseball. We played in the alley with a deflated playground ball-- it was the great leveler. The difference between the greatest hitter and the worst was pretty narrow. And speaking of narrow, we played in an alley. Our bases were utility poles, cracks in the concrete and by-the-way, watch out for the dogshit!

By 1971, my family had followed the Great American pattern that was emerging, and had moved to the suburbs for a split-level ranch and better schools. But I still loved baseball. In September of 1971-- specifically, September 11, 1971, I finally went to my first baseball game. It was my beloved Cubs versus the St. Louis Cardinals. 

I remember, to this day, nearly 43 years later, so much about the game. Juan Pizzaro pitched for the Cubs. Joe Torre, who was usually a catcher, was playing third base. Lou Brock, whom the Cubs had traded in 1964 to the Cardinal for pitcher Ernie Broglio, in what is considered to one of the worst and most lopsided trades in baseball history, was playing for the Cardinals. In all, I saw four future Hall of Famers play that day-- Billy Williams and Ron Santo for the Cubs, and Lou Brock and Joe Torre for the Cards. To my lasting regret, another future Hall of Famer, "Mr. Cub," Ernie Banks, was not playing that day; he retired about two weeks later. 

But my most memorable moment came with a player who I greatly admired-- a guy who was never going to make it into the Hall of Fame: Paul Popovich. 

Popovich had been one of the few bright spots in the infamous and heartbreaking end of the 1969 Cubs season. He was nicknamed "Supersub" for his ability to fill in ably at any infield position. He was only a lifetime .233 hitter, but he seemed to have a knack for getting the "clutch" hits-- hits right when they were badly needed. 

Popovich hit 14 home runs over his entire career (mostly with the Cubs) from 1964 to 1975. One of those home runs was that day, in the course of the Cubs' 7-0 victory: it was the one and only grand slam that Popovich hit in his career.

I never got to play little league ball, though I dreamed, as a little boy, of playing in the Bigs and hitting a grand slam. Instead, I grew up, went to college, moved back into the city and became a teacher, and then a nurse, and raised a son who is a baseball fan. We saw many games at Wrigley and he played six years of little league, something I hadn't gotten to do. He even pitched in his league championship his last year. He's 20 now, and in college. He told me a couple of days ago that he considers that pitching in the little league championship when he was in eighth grade to be the greatest memory of his childhood. 

A couple of weeks ago, the great pitcher Greg Maddux was inaugurated into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I saw him pitch many times, and during Maddux' second stint with the Cubs, my son saw him pitch. But for every Greg Maddux, there are hundreds of Paul Popoviches-- journeyman players who are talented and hard-working enough to make it to the major leagues, but who will never make it to the Hall. And for every Paul Popovich, there are 1000 little boys who can only dream of making it to "the show." To me, to see Paul Popovich living his dream-- and mine-- that afternoon in 1971, that will always be my favorite moment I ever witnessed in baseball. Except, of course, seeing my boy pitch in a little league championship.

Lean In

This weekend, my wife, my son and I went up to a reunion that my wife's family has every three years. At some point during the drive back, my son asked me about this blog, pointing out I hadn't written in it in a while.

Truth is that I had been planning for the last couple of weeks to resume posting. I missed it.

One of the big reasons I had slowed to a near stop in the writing was exhaustion. A career change, a move, getting a kid off to college, and then a couple of years of working as much overtime as I could stand-- I was fried most days, and still am. Still, I miss blogging more than I miss the rest.

So, anybody who reads this blog regularly knows, I changed careers. After getting laid off a teaching job that I just loved, I decided to go where the work was-- the healthcare profession. After flirting with the idea of becoming a pharmacist, a friend who was studying to be a nurse (and whom I took prereq classes with) pointed out that even if I went through with the plans to go to pharmacy school-- an unlikely event as it turned out, since there's only one in Chicago-- I'd be done with it around the time my younger child was done with college. The whole point was to be in a position to pay for the lion's share of my kids' college.

I was fortunate to get into the RN program of one of the Chicago City Colleges. Not only did it have a great reputation, it was relatively cheap.

Even so, the Recession started not long after I began the process. And then my wife was laid off her job the month I started nursing school.

She and I had a long discussion over a few glasses of wine one night about what we were going to do. We decided to tough it out and for me to stay in the program.

She worked a series of jobs, after a stint on unemployment, and I continued to work full time at a waitering job. I had to buck up, lean in, and know that I could sleep when I was done with nursing school.

I finished nursing school on my 50th birthday. My wife and kids threw a marvelous party. Most of my closest friends were there, including a surprise guest-- my old friend Viktor Zeitgeist, who flew in from Seattle on a redeye to be there. My mother came in for it as well.

I was fortunate to get a job ridiculously quickly. It was with the biggest dialysis company in the world. I knew next to nothing about dialysis; we'd talked about it probably all of ten minutes of nursing school.

I started training in early August of 2011. I bonded quickly with two guys in the class, Neal and Brent, who, like me, were middle-aged guys who were changing careers.

Brent had a kid in college, and I had one who was going to be there soon. I had a bunch of debts to take care of-- in order for me to finish nursing school, we'd done a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I had to take care of that.

In August of 2012, Brent, Neal and I sent one another texts caustically congratulating one another on our one-year anniversary with the company. We'd already grown a little weary of the job. It was a company in chaos. Still, the chaos resulted in a lot of overtime for Brent and I, so we dealt with it.

The next day I got a text from a co-worker about Brent; he was in the hospital. He'd collapsed-- a possible heart attack. I was a little incredulous. He was only 42.

I got ahold of his girlfriend's number. She told me he had collapsed at home. As it turned out, he'd had a brain aneurysm. At her request, Neal and I drove to the hospital to see Brent. We checked him for pupillary response-- we shone a light in his eyes to see if the pupils responded. None. He was intubated, breathing artificially, and his heart was beating, but he was dead.

We went to his funeral a couple of days later. His girlfriend and I have become close friends since then. Shared grief has a way of doing that. Neal eventually took a job at a hospital, but we've stayed in touch as well.

Nearly two years later, I'm still with that company. I've grown wearier of the job. Four managers in 3 years. Still lots of chaos, but still lots of overtime.

So now my son is half way done with college. My daughter will be a senior in high school this year. There will be a year where we have two kids in college. My daughter's birth father will apparently help some, but it's still going to be a strain.

But we've dealt with a lot tougher situations. As I look back at going to nursing school, and how it's worked out, I'm satisfied; the plan worked.

I look forward to the day I can move on to my next nursing job. Most of the people I treat should really not be alive. I'd like to be working with people who are going to recover. But for now, this is what's best for my family. I'll continue to lean in, and finish what I started. 

The Absence

The last few years, my posting in this blog has been sporadic. I plead fatigue.

Back in June of 2006, I had what was the worst week of my life. I had known that I was going to be laid off my job as a sixth grade teacher. It was my dream job; sixth grade in a mostly-Latino blue collar suburb of Chicago. The kids, their parents, my co-workers-- they were awesome. The Principal-- not so much. She took an Ahab-like hatred toward me that was inexplicable. Co-workers mused that I perhaps reminded her of an old boyfriend. As the final day of that job approached, I worried about the future. I knew that it was unlikely that I'd find a teaching job that I loved that much.

Then, it grew worse. I got a call from my parents. My father's doctor was pretty certain that my father had cancer. He was to undergo an operation that would determine this and if he had it (he did, as it turned out), do what could be done to take it out.

As I waited out the end of the job I loved, and my father going under the knife, I received news that was unbelievable. My friend Mark, a guy I've met when I was 22 years old, in college, had been found shot to death in front of his home.

To paraphrase Ken Kesey, who was speaking of the accidental death of his son in an auto accident, I felt like my cells were exploding.

A few days later, my father underwent surgery-- successful, as it turned out-- to remove the tumor in his gut. A few weeks later, an old teaching colleague, from when I was teaching on Chicago's tough West Side, called and asked if I'd teach at the school she was working at-- a program to get young adults who had dropped out of high school back into school and get them a diploma, allowing them to move on with life. I accepted.

This job, while tough, was incredibly therapeutic. It allowed me to work with young adults who were headed toward a bad end to get off that path.

While I worked this job, I considered my long-term future. As much as I loved teaching, I was finding the opportunities becoming more and more limited-- even before the 2008 economic cataclysm. I made the decision to go toward a field where jobs were increasing (even before the ACA)-- the health field. 

Artifacts

This summer, I've been trying to winnow down some of my stuff. As hard as I try to reduce my belongings, they seem to breed when I'm not looking. 

Loose Ends

A couple of days ago, someone on my Facebook feed posted that it had been 35 years since Devo made their first appearance on Saturday Night Live, playing a great cover of the Rolling Stones song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." I smiled, remembering that I had seen that performance; I was watching it with my high school best friend Cindy. We were floored by it, and were inspired. With the help of her mother, we made approximations of the Devo anti-radiation suits in time for Halloween a couple of weeks later.



This was made even happier that Cindy and I had reconnected after ten years. It turned out that she and her partner had moved. My friend has a fairly common name, so my efforts to track her down were hampered by that. It occurred to me to pair the search with the name of her life partner, which gave me success, though I didn't realize it. I had left them a message, then missed when they called me, thanks to my insane work schedule. A couple of months ago, she finally reached me. Happily, it turns out that she's moving back to the area where we grew up in (I never left) with her partner and their baby daughter. We all got together, going to the zoo. I was amused that she is so much the same; she still overschedules, still overplans and is still a delight as a person.

I am, obviously, a person who doesn't like loose ends. I am one who keeps friendships up over years, decades. My three closest friends are people I met over 30 years ago. I used to write a lot of letters. Now Facebook and cheap long distance helps make up for the fact that I don't have as much time and energy to write letters.

My unease with loose ends does have its downside. Namely, loose ends.

In my mid-twenties, I roomed with a guy I worked with who with whom I had become good friends with. Chris and I could probably not have been more opposite. I'm straight, he was gay. He grew up in the same neighborhood on the south side that the President lived in when he was still here in Chicago; I grew up on the north side. He was racially mixed-- his dad was black, mom white (I'm white). Yet, after that stuff, we were still close friends. We loved to talk politics. We both loved to get out and party (until he stopped drinking). We kept in touch for a long time, and got together often, even after we weren't rooming together. When my son was born, it became harder for me to keep in touch. I was busy raising a kid and working, and eventually school, when I went back to school to become a teacher.

Over the last 7 or 8 years, I've tried to contact him. His sister is married to a pretty well-known political writer, and I've messaged both him and his sister trying to get in touch with him. My fear is that the news is bad; he was treated for depression at times-- he'd been the victim of a gay-bashing when he was in college that was horrific. He was pistol-whipped; the gun went off and grazed the back of his head. He was almost certainly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I fear for the worst, but keep hoping that like my searches for my friend Cindy, I'll get good news.

Another guy is Yomi Martin. I met him in the early nineties when he was dating a co-worker. He and her split up, but he was the one I stayed friends with. He was one of the most intelligent and interesting people I've had the pleasure to meet. He was only 21 or 22 when we met, but he and a couple of friends had already published an issue of a comic book. I always enjoyed talking to him about art, life, women, comic books, science fiction, and whatever else concerned us.

Searching for him is complicated by the fact that he shares a name with a popular clothing designer. I still search a few times a year, crossing his name with comic books and graphic novels, assuming that he's maintained an interest in that field. Still, I have fears with him too; Chicago is a dangerous place for a young African-American male. I choose to think that he just ended up in another geographic location and that I just haven't cracked the code for finding him.

I haven't given up on Chris and Yomi. At times, I considered giving up on Cindy, and another friend, Jamie, but finally connected with both of them. Because, you see, not only am I a person that doesn't like loose ends: I'm a person who values the people I've shared this life with and someone who's stubborn as hell.

Loose Ends

In high school, I became close friends with a young woman who ended up moving west after we graduated. She and I maintained a close friendship, but distance and time started fading that friendship. A few weeks ago, I got a call from her; she and her partner and their young daughter were moving back to the Chicago area. We spent a day 

The Snows of Kilamanjaro

When I was a freshman in college, in 1979, I had to read Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilamanjaro" for an English class. To be honest, the book made no impact with me. The random flow of the narrator's memories as he dies didn't register with me.

A few months ago, I was revisiting the story in my head, and realized that I now get, at the age of 52, what I didn't get when I was 18.

Twenty years ago this summer, I got the news that I was going to become a parent. It was not expected-- I had broken off a relationship with the woman a few weeks before-- nor particularly desired. I felt like I would be a shitty parent, and I had other plans. In fact, I had planned to spent that summer, the summer of 1993, working only one job (I usually worked 2) and try to figure out the next couple of steps in my life.

Back in my younger days, I used to hang out at the Gingerman Tavern here in Chicago with a guy named Michael. He was one of the nicest and most interesting people I've met in my life. He used to have a tagline on his email, one that's been attributed to a number of people, "Do you want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans." Truer words were never spoken. The following spring, in 1994, my son was born. I took to parenthood like a fish to water. I just fell in love with parenting, and in particular, this little pip of a guy who was now my responsibility for at least 18 years.

I ended up splitting with his mother, but shared custody of him. I was married and divorced twice, and finally tried marriage a third time, this time with a woman who already had a child. My stepdaughter and I hit it off pretty quickly, partly because her birth father doesn't seem to quite get the hang of parenting.


My son is home for his summer break from college for a few more days. My daughter is on a college tour today with my wife. It really hit me this morning-- our journey raising children is nearly done.

I had the realization recently that I now get Hemingway's book. There are a million little memories from a lifetime that come flooding back with a moment's reflection.

The picture to the right, of my kids riding bicycles together is one of them. I've done a lot of things in my life, good and bad. I've gotten four college degrees, loved some wonderful women, made some great friendships-- but one of the most important things I think I've ever done is taught two kids how to ride a bicycle.

I'll never forget seeing my son take his first steps. It was at a party we had for his first birthday. I was still living with his mother; both families were at the party. For a couple of weeks, he'd been walking holding onto furniture. He was sitting in the middle of the living room, when he suddenly stood up and walked over to one of his grandmothers (I cannot, for the life of me, remember if it was her mother or mine).

I got my stepdaughter when she was 8, so I missed the first words, first steps, etc. Our first moment, when we realized that we were going to get on just fine, was, ironically, when I was dropping her off for a visit with her birth father. I had my Ipod plugged into the car stereo, and the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" came on. She waited a minute before she went into her father's house in order to sing the song along with me; it was one of her favorites, and mine. Another time, when I was picking her up from school, Jim Carroll's song "People Who Died" came up on the shuffle. We sang along to it then, and always do when it comes up on either of our Ipods or on satellite radio. We're just sentimental that way...

Other moments from a couple of childhoods that are stored in my memory: my son walking around with an enormous stuffed "Jimmy Neutron."  My daughter asking about the possibility bats flying out of a lighting fixture in her bedroom. My son spending the better part of an afternoon looking for secret passageways in our home. Taking both of them to see Ursula Bielski, who writes about Chicago ghost stories. My son's Little League games. Every play I've seen my daughter perform in. Dozens of Monopoly and Settlers of Catan games.

But beyond the big stuff, there are a thousand little memories with each of them. As I've watched them grow into intelligent, capable and interesting adults, I've come to realize that they'll remember bits and pieces of their childhoods, but a lot of it will be locked up solely in the recesses of my memory. And when I take my leave, those memories will go away with me. Like with Hemingway's adventurer in the book, those memories will pass like ghosts before me until they and I fade. Such is the ephemeral, sad and beautiful truth of our existence. 

The Snows of Kilamanjaro

The Picky Ones At the Buffet

Back in April, my wife and I had a chance to take a weekend trip. Even after selling back a bunch of PTO time, I still had a lot of vacation time left (we accumulate it very quickly in my job). Since starting my nursing job, I have regularly worked 50, 60, even 70 hour weeks. The overtime has been great, helping us retire debts left over from when I was in school, and my wife was unexpectedly unemployed. It has allowed me to pay for my son's college, and to do some nice things for my family. But my wife realized that four years of school while maintaining a full time job, then two years of crazy hours at work had left our relationship fraying at the edges. We needed some time together.

My daughter went off to New York that weekend to spend some time with her birth father, who normally doesn't spend much time with her, and my son was away at college. My wife had been looking at our options. We both love wine (specifically red wine) and thought of a weekend at one of a number of B and B's in the midwest that are in vineyards. After considering a number of options, she came up with a very cool one: the South Pier Inn, in Duluth, Minnesota. It's a hotel that's right on the canal that leads from Lake Superior to the Duluth harbor.



The canal is traversed by a bridge that is one of only a few "lift" bridges still operating in the country; when one of the thousand-foot ore carriers or other ships enters the harbor, the bridges entire span goes up. It was all amazing-- a huge iron bridge going up in the air as a huge ship passed almost silently by our room-- close enough that I could have thrown a baseball to someone on the ship. I was surprised at how quiet the ships were.




We spent some time in the hotel room drinking wine, chatting and getting to know one another again. We got out, too. We walked over to the little maritime museum nearby, where we saw, among other things, an exhibit on the Edmund Fitzgerald, of the Gordon Lightfoot song fame; it was a frequently docked in the Duluth harbor. We went downtown and visited the Electric Fetus record store, and went to the Minnesota Wine Exchange (yes, even Minnesota has some wonderful wines!)

Later, I thought about how funny it was that we'd have such a good time in a hotel room watching ships and a bridge. I thought about our marriage, relationships in general and remembered an experience I had a couple of lifetimes ago.

Back in the late nineties, I was working at a restaurant owned by Larry T., a longtime friend whom I've worked for a few times over the years. He's a big black bear of a guy-- he grew up on the south side of Chicago, and has been involved in the restaurant business about 40 years. I've worked at three of the places he's owned or co-owned over a period of about 25 years. In this case, I was working at a barbecue place he owned. He had asked me to manage a catering gig. It was an event sponsored by the "Matches" section of the Chicago Reader-- the section for people to meet people. For a set amount, the participants got a "Match" ad, got to ride in a bike ride, then there was a buffet, our part of it, at the end, where folks could meet and greet.

I took Larry's van, with the food and a couple of other employees, out to a lakefront park, where we set up and awaited the riders. Soon, they arrived, and I watched a really interesting thing unfold.

The people dismounted their bicycles, then walked up to the buffet. They began to look over the buffet we were serving. Larry, a brilliant chef, had whipped up a nice assortment of food, mindful to his target crowd; he'd even taken care to make sure there were vegan options.

I'll never forget the fussy looks on the faces of the people as they picked at the food in the chafing dishes. A couple even said "Is this all you have?" I was dumbstruck.

Then, most of them, having found something they could stomach, walked over and sat alone. They made no attempt to talk to any other person at the event. They ate their meal, and wheeled off... alone.

Nearly a decade and a half later, I still think of that day.

Around that time, I married Cynthia, my second wife. We split a few years later over children issues; she wanted kids. I, being seven years older than she, didn't want any more (I had a son from a former girlfriend). I loved her, and sometimes miss her-- we were friends before we dated and married. She was a lovely and unique person. Our circumstances just weren't going to work.

I married again, my current marriage, a few years after that. Ironically, I met her through the Matches in the Chicago Reader. While we had enough things in common to meet-- we're both extroverts, our politics are liberal, we both love red wine, music, etc.-- in the end, we also have some serious differences.  For example, she's somebody who sweats the small stuff. I don't. She frets constantly about what other people think. I don't.

In the relationships I had when I was single, I there was no "type" I dated. The women I was involved with were all over the place-- ethnicity, career, personality. And they all fascinated me. In the end, I realized that there is no "perfect person" or "type" for you; it's all about learning to appreciate the uniqueness of the person you're with and working on the day to day details of making a marriage or relationship work.

Thinking back to the delightful time I had with my wife in Duluth, and looking forward to more good times with her, I also think about those people at that buffet so long ago. They had all that wonderful food, prepared by a genius chef, laid out for them, and it still wasn't good enough. They were surrounded by other people who were expressly looking for a relationship, yet nobody was good enough. I wonder how many of them are still out there, wondering when their custom-made lover is going to magically appear, when there are so many lovely and interesting people all around them.

Johnny Yen's One-Hit Wonders: "Master Jack," By Four Jacks and a Jill

Four Jacks and a Jill were a South African folk group who had had a hit in their native land. They hit the US Top Forty with their song "Master Jack" in 1968, reaching #18 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 3 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It was an international 

smash, hitting the charts in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and hit #1 in South Africa.

Their next song, "Mr. Nico," cracked the US Top 100, but they never charted in the U.S. They have continued to have hits in South Africa and have produced a number of educational and charity records there. 

A Brief Breather

Tonight is a funny night. I'm on call at work, but haven't been called in. Chances are, if I'm not called in by 8 pm, I won't be called in. It's now 9:30 and I'm assuming I won't be. In fact, I'm counting on it-- just poured a glass of red wine.

My wife and my daughter are off at my brother-in-law's birthday party in Minnesota. My son, after having carry-out Chinese food with me for dinner, grabbed his basketball and ran off to hang with his buddies. It's just me and the cats, a glass of red wine and some good tunes.

There are a few anniversaries around this time. One was on July 4th. It was the 20th anniversary of my getting a call from the woman I'd been dating on and off around 1992-1993. She was pregnant. I was mortified. Flash forward, the kid who was on the way that day and scared me to death, hung out with me at my old friend Tim's house on the 4th, with Tim's wife and my and Tim's old friend Larry. It was wonderful. 20 years ago, Tim and Larry were guys who had been my friends for 10 years. My son was just someone I was trying to imagine. And it all worked out better than I could ever have imagined.

It had also been exactly 2 years before that I had finished moving into the place we all live in now. It was a scary time; I had just graduated nursing school, but did not yet have my nursing license (that would be earned 9 days later when I took the nursing boards and passed on the first try). I had my nursing school waitering job, but the place I had worked at for 11 years had just changed ownership and was foundering quickly. I was running out of money fast.

As it turned out, I got my nursing license, and then quickly got a nursing job, just days after I got my nursing license. Not all of my friends in nursing school got a job so quickly. It was a lifesaver. I also managed to get a job in a nursing unit that was, and still is, seriously understaffed. I make a lot of money, thanks to overtime. Which is a good thing when you've got a kid in college.

When the shit hit the financial fan, right after I finished nursing school, a couple of friends, as well as my family, helped me out. One of them was my friend Viktor Zeitgeist, who has helped out many times. I had been promising him, since getting my first nursing job, to come out and visit him in Seattle. I finally got to fulfill that promise last month.

He and his wife live right on Puget Sound-- see picture above. I took the picture while sitting on the futon I slept on, in their living room, while I visited. This is the view I woke to every day. I can't wait to go back.

I had a marvelous time. We had a chance to hang out, have coffee or a few beers and catch up. This was the first time neither of us had to worry much about money (he's an attorney now and I'm a nurse). We talked about a million things. He opened up, for the first time, about the bout of cancer he survived about 25 years ago. We talked about history, politics, economics, family. It was really, really good. And too short.

But it was just enough time to rejuvenate myself. I've got a lot to do in the next 7-8 years. Got two kids to put through college. Got some friends I need to spend more time hanging out with. And maybe a couple of other little projects here and there. And I need to start posting in this blog again more often. Miss that too. "I have promises to keep/And many miles before I sleep..."

The Cost

Today (March 7) I was at a hospital that I work at frequently. There are some things I love about it: the view, for one-- it overlooks Lake Michigan and Lincoln Park. It was also a hospital I had clinicals at and my favorite clinical instructor was at this hospital. And four of my nursing school classmates work there. There are some things I hate about the place: their charting system sucks; it's particularly bad for dialysis people. And there are a few really stupid people that work there, though really every place has some of those. 

Today, though, after I arrived, it occurred to me that 19 years ago, to the day, my son was born just a few blocks down the street at another hospital that is now gone. It was, like today, an unusually cold day in March. 

My life at that point was a train wreck. I felt lost. I felt like this was just the icing on the cake; a child I was totally unprepared for.

I got a call late the night that he was born. I had a son. I was barely speaking to his mother at that point, but she called me to tell me I had a son.

I went the next day to the hospital and laid eyes on him for the first time. I'd never seen a newborn at that point in my life, and had certainly not held one. I was stunned to see how helpless he was. I felt fear rising. I was responsible for this little pip of a guy for the next eighteen years. I overcame my fear and picked him up.

The 19 years since then have been a wonderful journey. His mother and I reconciled, then split eventually. We had a horrible custody fight. I've had to deal with her infantile behavior, and until recently had a good portion of my income taken out for child support. The cost was high. But the rewards were higher. I got to see him grow from a helpless newborn to a young man who is ridiculously independent. I got to see his first steps-- so many firsts. We had so many good times-- movies, baseball, great talks. Seeing him develop his unique personality-- his humor, his intelligence, his kindness. Discovering that other parents on our block loved having him over playing with their kids because he was so intelligent, kind and respectful. Reading to him, then seeing him learn to read. Seeing him thrive in an internship, then seeing him succeed in his first job, persevering when a lot of co-workers quit at the door-to-door sales job after just a few days. And then, at the end of last summer, with my ex, driving him to college in New York. I remembered the drive home from the hospital with him, which I recounted in this post. I chuckled at the symmetry of it all-- that we drove him home together, then drove him away together nearly two decades later.

When his mother discovered she was pregnant, she told me she had decided to go through with the pregnancy, and offered me out. I couldn't stand the idea. I told her I would stick around to raise him. The costs, both materially, and otherwise, of this decision were high. But the rewards have been so much higher. 

Decisions

About four years ago, I was taking an Anatomy-Physiology course and had made a decision that was to have a huge effect on my life.

I had left teaching a couple of years before with the intention of trying to get into pharmacy school. I had tired of the tight job market in my profession at the time, education, and wanted to get into the medical field. The aging of the baby boomers would guarantee me, I knew, of a job.

However, the prospect of getting into pharmacy school was daunting; there is now only one pharmacy school in Chicago, and only about 10% of candidates who apply get into the school. And even if I could get into pharmacy school, it was going to be two more years of prerequisites, and then four years of pharmacy school. I would be 56 when I finished, and my oldest kid would be done with college, and my younger one nearly done. The whole point was to be able to pay for most of their college.

I had been taking classes with my friend Leslie, who I also worked with; she was getting ready to go to nursing school, and the prerequisites for nursing school and pharmacy school were nearly identical, so we took classes together whenever we could. Leslie pointed out that it would make more sense for me to go to nursing school. First, with the Anatomy and Physiology class I was currently enrolled in, I would be finished with all the prerequisites for nursing school. Secondly, I could apply to the Chicago city college that I was already taking the prereqs at; a bonus was that the school was extremely affordable.

I had to make a run to my old high school to get my transcripts, but I got my application in on time. Two months later, I got the notice: I had been accepted.

Later I discovered just how fortunate I'd been. There were approximately five applications for every open slot in the school. Most people have to apply several times before they get accepted.

The month I started nursing school, my wife got laid off her job. The recession that had started the year before caught up with us. She searched for months for a job with no luck. We had a hard decision to make. She was getting unemployment benefits (which were extended thanks to the President's stimulus packages-- thank you President Obama!) but we were still struggling-- I no longer had a teacher's salary; I was working as a waiter. We were living on less than half of what we had been living on, and now I had to pay for school on top of our regular expenses.

We sat down and talked about it. Our kids were going to be in college in a few years. It was going to be a lot easier to pay for colllege on a nurse's salary than a teacher's. We knew it was going to be tough, but we had to have faith we'd work through it.

After six months of job-hunting, my wife finally went back to work, although for less than what she had been making. I had been hoping to drop down to part time at work in order to go to school, but that obviously wasn't going to happen. I continued to go to school full time and work full time. My next two years entailed very little sleep and lots of caffeine.

I graduated nursing school in May of 2011, the day I turned 50. In July of that year, I passed the state nursing exam and a few days later got a job. Since then, I have worked as much overtime as I can handle. When I got my W-2 a couple of weeks ago, my jaw just about hit the ground. I made a lot of money last year. A lot of bills got paid off. And a lot of school costs got paid for my son.

Today, when my wife got home, she told me of a conversation she had with a friend of ours. The couple, whose old home we got married in, is in a lot of trouble. They had been wealthy at one time; both of them come from wealthy families. It turned out that they had been living off of their inheritance and had finally hit the bottom of their well. They lost that home last year, and were evicted from the apartment they had been living in. They're staying in a temporary place, but they are on the verge of being homeless. We are trying to figure out how to help them.

In the meantime, I am glad about the decisions we made. I'm glad that I had an open mind, and listened to my friend about changing my plans. I'm glad that we decided to tough out my wife's unemployment, and for me to stay in school. I'm glad that I decided to jump at the job that was offered so quickly. I'm not thrilled with the job, but it pays well, and has allowed me to work a ton of overtime, which has allowed us to catch up financially. I'm glad that I made the decisions, day to day, to live within our means, and to do the things that assured we would be better off in the longer term. Tonight, my wife and I are going out for an early St. Valentine's Day dinner. Despite having a kid in college, we can afford to go out for a nice dinner (and though she doesn't know it, she's getting a couple of small pieces of jewelry). Thanks to decisions we made, all of it-- the kid in college, the dinner and the baubles-- are within our means. I feel pretty good about that.

The Long Haul

Last night I had the pleasure of getting out with one of my oldest, closest friends. As we had a couple of beers and chatted, I was amused thinking that I had no idea 31 years ago, when we first became friends at the ages of 18 (him) and 20 (me), that we'd be a couple of middle aged guys, 49 and 51 now, talking about our kids, our wives, our careers and our retirement plans.

I thought about the handful of old friendships I have; most, like my friendship with him, are from the state college in central Illinois I got my bachelor's and master's degrees from in the mid eighties. There were times I lost touch for years at a time with some of those people, but eventually we reconnected, and as we head off into middle age and start getting ready for the last couple of acts of our lives, the friendships seem to be really strengthening.

I've told both of my kids that the friends they make in college will end up being the strongest one of their lives. I can tell that my son, in his freshman year of college, is beginning to understand this.

I remember that in my twenties, I dreaded getting older. I really thought that life would really suck as I get older, and that my youth would be the high point of my life. While I did have some great times then, I was totally wrong. I had no idea that I'd hit my fifties with gusto and joy in life. I had no idea that friendships I'd made when I was 22 or 23 would become so rich, or that I'd make a second wave of great friendships thanks to this blog (that's you Skyler's Dad and Bubs!) that would make life even richer. In my youthful naivete and stupidity, I thought that life really would be over after 30. I had no idea that it was only beginning then. In the long haul, my life's been rich and fascinating, and continues to be.

The Next Step

Just before I became a nurse, the unit I work for got a new manager. He is not a nurse-- he's got an MBA.

That was our first warning.

Since it was my first nursing job, I was too busy learning the ropes to pay much attention to what was going on above. But it didn't take long. By the second or third monthly staff meeting, I began to realize that a series of increasingly disjointed, and sometimes nonsensical changes were being attempted-- harebrained schedules, attempts to use smartphones to dispatch us, etc.

When those things didn't work, it was, according to them, our fault-- that we were not trying hard enough to implement his genius ideas.

Over the months, I began to realize that I'd seen this story before: The Peter Principle.

In 1969, Laurence Peter published a book that purported (correctly, I believe) to explain a lot of organizational dysfunction. Basically, it said that people are promoted upward in organizations as long as the master each level. They rise until they hit a level they cannot master-- their "level of incompetence." Over time, position after position becomes filled with someone who cannot do the job. They cannot be promoted upward, and are rarely demoted. Organizations become filled at the top with people who cannot do the job, like a clogged filter.

I quickly realized that our manager had been promoted to his level of incompetence. And now here's the painful part:

His name is Peter.

In August, the Nursing Manger, the woman who hired me, saw the writing on the wall and left. The nursing manager position was taken over by a great guy, a nurse in my unit who did a lot of my training. He has struggled to do his job, but "Peter Principle," as I've nicknamed him, has thwarted him at every turn, taking away resources he needed to do the job. He is currently doing three jobs-- his, a former assistant who also quit, and coordinating day to day, which was formerly done in alternating weeks by two of the nurses in our unit.  The nursing manager, who has two young children, and was working 80-90 hour weeks (on salary), turned in his resignation.

Things are about to become very bad. I've been getting my resume ready, and have been encouraging a co-worker who is just as disgusted with recent events, to do so too.

In the meantime, I'm keeping my eye on our "Lumberg" until I can turn in my resignation as well.

"That'd be greeaaaatttt....."

A Year and a Day

My first real day as a nurse-- the first day I got paid to be a nurse-- was August 7, 2011. I had spent the previous 2 years plowing my way through nursing school, and the two years before that plugging away at the pre-requisites for nursing school, and all four of those years working full time and raising a couple of kids.

I had gotten a job more quickly than I could ever have hoped for-- basically, four hours. I had passed the NCLEX, the test that officially makes you a nurse, in July of 2011. A few days later, my wife and I talked-- she works in employment, so is really good at finding job postings. She found one quickly that, unlike most of the others, did not require previous job experience; they would, in fact, train.

I got online and applied for the job. Four hours later, I got a call, and set up the interview for the following Monday. On Wednesday, the woman who interviewed me called me and told me I had the job.

My first day of the classroom work for my new job, I sat behind a guy who was a few years younger than me. At first, he annoyed me-- he was a real "eager beaver." Over the next week or two, my guard lowered.

Then, one night, he and I were both sent to a hospital that was about 45 miles from Chicago. We were covering the hospital in emergencies, so they wanted us to know all the ins and outs of the place (as it turned out, they had a lot of emergencies-- we were sent there a lot, much to our chagrin).

That night, though, as we were leaving, talking about our day, we walked to the parking lot. I got in my car and saw him get in his. And then out of his car. He popped his hood, and I realized that there was a problem.

I went over and discovered that his car battery was dead. We talked to the hospital guard and discovered they had a jump starter for such an occasion. We tried, but the thing couldn't crank his car. I remembered that I had given my jumper cables to my wife and neglected to get myself new ones.

He lived about 30 miles south of me, and I lived about 45 miles south of the hospital; he was stranded 75 miles from home. His girlfriend, who lived with him, had a car, but it seemed silly to have her drive `150 miles round-trip. I told him to call her-- if she left their place when we left the hospital, we would meet at my home about the same time. He called her and the plan was in action.

On the way to my place, he and I got to talk at length for the first time. We had a lot in common-- both of us went back to school after other careers-- he worked printing presses, I was a teacher. Both of us had kids who were grown or nearly grown. Both of us loved baseball. We both had pretty well misspent youths. We also discovered we were opposites in a lot of ways-- He was a metalhead; I loved punk rock. He grew up in south suburbs of Chicago, I grew up mostly on the north side of Chicago. This led to that other great opposite-- he was a Chicago White Sox fan, I am a Chicago Cubs fan.

By the time we got to my home, and his girlfriend picked him up, we were friends.

My helping him out was not forgotten. We were pretty much inseparable after that-- if not in person, by text. My wife noticed that the number of texts I sent or received went from about 50 a month to about a 1000 a month. As he and I struggled through our job, the first nursing job for both of us, we texted asking questions, or sometimes just joking around. It became my lifeline. Sometimes it was a question about the dialysis machines we used, or about a particular patient. We had been rushed through and out of training, so there was tons more to learn. We came to really depend on one another.

Since I had a kid about to start college, and he had a kid in college, both of us loved to work overtime; we were, in fact, dubbed by our co-workers "The Overtime Kings."We discovered that despite looking very different, and being 9 years apart in age (he was 42, I was 51), people confused us for one another, in part because our names were similar-- starting with the same first two letters-- and they saw us both all the time.

As summer arrived, we began to realize that we were finally getting the hang of a rather difficult job. We started making plans to try to make it to a baseball game.

On August 7, he, Neal, another friend from our training class, and I sent one another vulgar text messages "congratulating" one another on our one year anniversary at the job. We had all become quite annoyed with the job, but kept good humor about it.

Later that night, I got a text from him; turned out he was heading to the hospital I was working at that night to check on some documentation on the dialysis machines in that hospital. After that, he was planning to go home, have some vodka and Red Bull (ick!) and then was going to interview to be head of our unit-- our boss had resigned recently. He texted me a picture of the pint of cheap vodka he had purchased at a convenience mart on the way over, and a while later popped his head into the room of the patient I was doing dialysis on. He came in, checked the documentation on the machine and stopped to chat for about ten minutes. We talked about the usual stuff-- our kids, our mates, baseball, laughing about the job. He was doubtful that they would offer him the manager job, and if they offered it, and he couldn't do it the right way, he wasn't going to take it.


The next day, I was at a hospital getting ready to set up a patient, when I got a text from another nurse in our unit who he and I were friends with. He asked if I'd heard something about my friend having a heart attack. I knew nothing.

I called his phone and left a message, expressing the hope that he was in a doctor's office dealing with some minor health scare. About ten minutes later I got a call from his girlfriend, who had seen his phone go off, and seen my name on the call. She knew he and I were tight. She told me that they thought he'd had a brain aneurysm. They didn't know how severe it was, but he was not conscious. That morning, her teenaged son had heard him fall in the bathroom, and had gone to check on him. He was not breathing. He ran to get their neighbor, who called 911 and then started CPR.

Two days later, he was on a ventilator in an ICU. She asked Neal, who had also been in our training class, and a good friend, and I to come visit him, and to assess him. We drove to the hospital and got to his bedside. He was intubated; he was not breathing on his own. He had not breathed on his own since the aneurysm.

It was weird for Neal and I to be friends and nurses to him at once. We checked for a pupillary response-- none. We talked to his nurse, who explained how they had confirmed that he had no more neural activity. In turn, we explained this to his girlfriend.

It was rough seeing my friend, who was so vibrant, funny and alive, like this.

We discussed what was ahead. Ultimately, his brother was going to make a decision regarding life support. At this point, they were maintaining it so that his organs could be harvested for transplant. There was no chance for a recovery.

A day later, life support was removed. They could not use his heart-- unbeknowest to me, he'd had a heart attack previously-- or his lungs; he was a smoker. But they took his pancreas, his corneas, some other tissue-- and his kidneys. Neal and I were later to remark on the irony, that two people were soon going to get off of dialysis thanks to the kindness of this guy, who made sure that he was an organ donor.

My wife warned me that I had a rough couple of months ahead of me; she knew that he and I were close, and on top of that, my son was about to go off to college. She was right. It was rough. I'd also lost my mother-in-law, whom I adored, and my friend Larry's mother, who was like a second mother to me, a few months before.

It was rough-- I'd come to depend on him at work for advice and just to liven up my day with the in-jokes and such. I'd come to depend on his friendship. I felt like I'd had a huge rug pulled from out under me. But as the weeks wore on, I came to realize that it was a big lesson in enjoying the time you have with people. Despite the fact that we worked like dogs, we still managed to get out and hang together when we could. And I realized that I was lucky to have met him-- it was only a year and a day, but sometimes a year and a day is all we get with someone.