A Letter to Heaven

So, as well as doing a bit of blogging myself, I like to browse others blogsites to see what is going on out there in the world. One of the local blogs which I like to read pointed me to a second blog that was featuring a writing exercise. The young lady at http://mamakatslosinit.blogspot.com/ has posted a poem from her teen years (written to her dad) on the anniversary of his death. A really good poem written from the heart to a most worthy recipient. All a wrtiter needs (an audience, a message and a motivation) is apparent there. This type of exercise falls right (write??) into the theme of my blog, so here it goes.
Dear Dad,
it has been six years since you have passed. Sure miss you alot. I have moved back home to the house I left and am spending a lot of time with mom. She has now been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease too and I can already see the trembling in her hands more than I care to. I sure have a lot of questions for you. I could use some of that fatherly advice that I didn't have the smarts to heed while you were around. I know that we never really saw eye to eye when I was a much younger man, but I am coming around to see a lot of why you felt the way you did.
The kids are fine and we get to do a lot of camping when I have them on the weekends. Miles has really taken an interest in hunting. We haven't got him to bag any big game yet and to be honest, I don't care if he ever gets anything large. It is the love of nature and the wonders of this beatiful garden that I hop he comes to love. We have done some dove hunting and he can breast a bird as well as anyone. He doesn't shy away from any of the hunting chore work at all. We have a trip to the scout ranch planned for later this holiday season. It will be his first time to see where his uncles and I spent many of our summers and my first time back in twenty years. I never could get him to get involved in scouting. That is a real shame, because I think it gives a young man alot of positive life experiences. Of all my regrets, I would finish my eagle scout if I could go back and do it all over. I know that this disappointed you and although you have forgiven me, the guilt of it just won't go away.
Savannah (as well as MIles) is on the swim team this year. She also is in her third year of Spanish. We try to converse as much as we can in spanish just to help her out (Miles was shocked that I know quite a bit of French also). Last year she got to do a film school in Austin. She loved it and in one week, she and her four group partners made a twenty minute film complete with panning film shots and all. It was really good, especially because of the message (positive self-esteem).
Both kids really enjoy Austin. We spend a lot of our weekends together there. We like to take your old photos and writings and visit the places you liked to frequent during college. I don't think that your love of education missed them. They are both in honors classes and are doing quite well.
Next year we are taking the train to Missouri to visit where your dad and his family grew up. We are going for a whole two weeks and I already have a bunch of the gravesites and homesteads located for visitation. I had no idea that the old family hunting lodge was still there and in operation. We will be staying there for a few days. Mom wants to go and I want her along, but her health makes it hard for her to travel.
You missed your two latest grand children. Kurt and Lisa had Emma first, then Ian a few years later. He looks just like Kurt when he was young, and Emma is such a spoiled princess. You would love them as much as any, they are wonderful.
Tell all we love them up there, and we will be coming home in due time.
Love your son,
Stu

Tuesday Caption Contest

Okay. Last week didn't go so well. I had only one reply and it just said "Hello". Bachelor Paul, by all accounts, won the contest, so I will notify him and send him a prize. This week I submit the picture below.....I know, isn't it awesome........for the caption contest. Give me your best one sentence caption, and I'll announce the winner nexr Monday. And remember kids, Tuesday is my favorite day.

Old Rockers and Old Books

Bruce Springsteen rocks!!

He has amassed 15 studio albums, 12 other released live albums and compilations, 18 Grammy Awards, 1 Academy Award, 2 Emmys, and ranks #14 of all times in units sold (63.5 Million units), but most of all, he plays, writes, sings and lives from the heart. Living Proof that he means something to a whole lot of people.

I am cleaning my house for the first time in eight years (I've been gone, not lazy). Some of the things I am finding are out of this world. Case in point, a 1967 copyright edition of The Beauty of Motherhood, a Hallmark poetry collection. It is a nice book of collected works about, you guessed it, the beauty of motherhood. In addition to works by such well known people as Edgar Allen Poe, Victor Hugo, Lord Tennyson, Longfellow, Teddy Roosevelt, John Quincy Adams, Emily Taylor, Walt Whitman, Milly Walton and someone I've never heard of before, Ano N. Ymous; there are some nice illustrations by Frieda D. Senn. On the very first page front, facing the inside of the front cover, is an enscription. It reads:

To Barbara,
to be read in the quiet hours or at times when you especially need inspiration.


It is signed by Thelma Cullins.

Anyway, it is very important to me that this book, which was a gift to my mother, Barbara, makes it to the hands of my daughter for the birth of her first child. I am a huge believer in the family bond, it means everything. I want my children, nieces and nephews to know their grandparents. I want those kids to know their uncles and aunts. I want those kids to know each other and all the family stories that should be passed down from generation to generation. This sense of understanding of who we are as a family and where we came from and how we got to where we are today is important to me to pass along so they will know who they are. This book, eight inches by four and a half inches by a mere one quarter inch thick, with just 68 pages in total must be given to my little girl at the moment she stops being MY little girl, because the date under that enscription. That date, in that book, which I found in my house after being gone eight long years is just three days after I was born into this world. This book was a gift to my mother at the event of my birth. How it made it's way to my house I have no idea. I do not recall ever seeing this book before, but like Bruce Springsteen, it sure means a lot to me.

Some days....

are better than others. After spending long hours in the dead of night by my father's bedside, watching his body slowly erode from under his cognizant mind. I have gotten quite used to the spectrum of quality in an aging person's life. Some days he loved the world and his life because he was still here. Other days....well, not so much so.

My father was afflicted with Parkinson's Disease. Some of you may not know what exactly Parkinson's Disease is, so I will give a brief explanation. You lose nerve impulse control between your brain and your muscles. He was diagnosed back in 1998, and lived with it until his passing in November of 2002. My dad was an intellect. He graduated high school over in lil' ol' Abilene. He then enrolled at Hardin Simmons in Abilene before tranferring to The University of Texas. He got his degree and enlisted in the military. Officer candidate school was just a stepping stone for him to start his long military career. He retired from the reserves a "full bird" and while completing his twenty, he managed a masters in education from Sul Ross. After all this and a second long career in the oil bidness, he still managed to obtain TWENTY-ONE more associate degrees from the local junior college. He was still enrolled and taking classes up to the point when his disease literally kept him from going to class. My father was also a very good athlete. Besides being a golden gloves boxing champ out of Abilene, he also excelled in basketball, handball, volleyball and more.

So when his body started shutting down, the doctors offered him two different types of medication to help with the complications of the disease. The first drug helped with the body's motor skills (walking, getting up and down, using the hands, etc.), while the second drug helped with the speech control. He had to choose between mobility and communication. He chose communication, which meant he had to sacrifice his independence in mobility. Not an easy choice. Now you might understand how I could watch his body erode, while keeping him company so that his razor sharp mind could still get some exercise. It was by his bedside in the dead of night, watching football games and old movies, that we hashed out a lot of our hard feelings over a few rum drinks. Many were our conversations and many were the regrets we each had, but we could both see clearly now that we loved each other very much. There is much I would like to redo in my life, as there was for him.

Fast forward to yesterday. It has been almost six years since my dad has passed. Now, my mother has been diagnosed with.....Parkinson's Disease. For the love of me, I can't remember the names of the drugs my dad took. I do see my mother's physical abilities withering away. Her mind is not quite all there sometimes, too. So, as I do some of the neccesary chores around mom's house, I got really depressed when I saw her with her head in her hands, just slowly scratching at her scalp. I asked what she was doing and she couldn't remember. It was like she was in La-La land. It just crushed me. Such is life, today may well be a better day. I hope for her that it is.

Tuesday Caption Contest (on Wednesday, no less)

Okay, folks. This will be the first of many weekly Caption Contests. Tune in every Tuesday (because Tuesday is my favorite day!!) for the latest installment. Winners will be awarded on Fridays and the "Prize o' da Week" will be sent out after that. All captions used will follow a monthly theme, and the first to guess that theme each month will win the "Prize o' da month". So with no further ado, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeres the caption.

A Daily Dose of the Doldrum

Alarm clock buzzing........huh??...........coffee pot starts brewing.......oh..........another early morning. As I rub my eyes and try to adjust to the darkness of the day, I can hear my older brother moving in the next room. He has to be at work at 5am. It is 4:30am now. I will give him a ride, because he has no valid license. Afterwards, it is back home to get myself ready for the day. Mom will be off to swimming and my other brother will be off to work, also. So, this is the bulk of the day that gets monotonous. I work for nine hours, which isn't bad, I do enjoy the work. My mom comes home and spends most of her day sitting around watching television. My older brother sits around and gets drunk. Same story, five days a week. I know that we all have resposibilities and I can't make those go away anytime soon. What I want to know is how to spice up our lives a little bit. I have my own few tricks up my sleeve, but I need to infuse this family with some different vigor, something to which we can all look forward. Acknowledging to myself, that my older brother is a liability in the homecare department, the bulk of the chores around the house fall to me. No sweat, I can delagate those out to someone else, even if it is hired help. What I want help with is providing my mom with some variety in her life. I want to mentally stimulate her. I want her to lok forward to things like a trip to see her grandkids, or a trip to an outdoor lawn concert, maybe even a tour of the museum. She has a few hobbies that she enjoys and I can help her with those too; but first the chores must be finished. Today, though, is a Friday. That means dinner and a cold beer down at the local watering hole. This is the place where my mom and I go to catch up with her and my late father's older friends. There is some cordial visitation, and talk on all the local gossip. Eventually, we get around to the latest political and economics talk. Thats where they lose me (and I think my mom too). I am interested, just not interested in bitching about it. Talk is cheap, do somomething. That is where the audience participation comes in. In the future, I will hold a suggestion competition for the next week for something to do with my mom (me, not you). This weekend I have a major digging project to try to complete, so I will start brainstorming for next weekends winners prize. I like the photo caption contests also, so I will start running a regular caption contest too. Until then, make a good day!!

The Last Long Walk Home....

....started for me in January of 2000. As I was going through the worst experience of my life (so far), I felt I needed a change of scenery. So, I packed my John Lee Hooker record collection and I went. One of many poor choices. I got to watch my dad wither away, from a city three hundred miles to far to the east. Now my mother is falling on bad health. So, I came home to help her maintain as high a quality of life as possible before she heads home to her Lord. To me, love is sacrificing your own desires to give to someone else. After all my parents did for me, the right thing to do is honor them by helping them back. So mix a drink, grab your smokes, put the leash on the dog and join us for.....the last long walk home. Let's enjoy it.