Christmas Shadows and Winter Showers

Shortly before dinner last Christmas, my Grandmother made her final trip to the ER. She fell into a coma and died a little over a month later. My family, which was never very large or especially close, became even smaller and more divided. After her death, my father no longer had any reason to quit drinking , so he went back to a life of depressed, drunken isolation of his own choosing. My Uncle has almost vanished, he, like my father, didn't return my pre- Thanksgiving calls. My Twin brother and I stay in pretty close contact, though.

A rift has opened between myself and my older relatives. It's been in place for decades, but it widened significantly when I chose to quit drinking. I get the feeling that my dad and uncle are uncomfortable and resentful of me for not drinking; my sobriety pisses them off because it makes them look bad in comparison. I have tried to convince them just how painful, horrible and utterly pathetic a drunkard's death is, but they don't listen.

An aside: One of the women at work asked me if I was related a certain man who shares my last name. Yes, I answered, he is my uncle. She told me that she used to work with him 25 years ago. Then she asked if he still had a drinking problem. I got the impression that she didn't like him much. It was awkward and a bit embarrassing.

My dad finally called the other day. He suggested that we cancel Christmas this year. With Grandmother dead, he said, there's no real reason to gather at the old house-which is probably a burned-out wreck after a year of my father's drunken stewardship, after all.

My Grandma was the glue that held our tiny family together, Thanksgiving and Christmas were her days. My father, to his credit, would manage to stay sober during the holidays, although his younger brother tended to pick up the slack. This year, they will both be drunk and I have no desire to spend any time at all with my besotted relatives. I used to love preparing the big holiday dinners that my Grandma enjoyed so much, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna waste my time and energy cooking for a pair of mean, drunk old men.
Fuck that.

My brother will be visiting soon. It'll be good to see him. We only have one surviving relative on our mother's side, her younger brother, but we'll probably spend Christmas Day with him and his wife. I like them. If the weather allows, we might go ATV'ing. We'll find something to do. We might skip Christmas per se but we certainly won't cancel it. If Dad sobers up, I'd be glad to see him. If not, I don't care. He can cancel his own damn Christmas.

********************************************
I was in rush-hour traffic this morning, moving slowly through a heavy rain, when my driver's side windshield wiper stopped.

I was blind in less than a second, all I could see was the blur of the lights in front of me- I turned on my blinkers and slowed down to a crawl. I had to stick my head out of the window just to change lanes and my glasses got covered in water, I was driving on luck and adrenaline..I was terrified, I could barely tell the difference between a tractor-trailer and an off-ramp but somehow I managed to get off the main road and park safely. The windshield wiper turned out to a simple fix- a loose screw, basically- but by the time I fixed it, I was soaking wet, miserable and totally rattled by my roadway crisis. I think I was in a state of mild shock.

Things sort of went downhill from there.

But I'm not gonna let it cancel Christmas.

Ifs

This is my grandmother's backyard on a sunny afternoon.

It seems unlikely that my 87-year old grandmother will ever see her home again, she has been in a medically induced coma since last week; after having surgery she suffered a heart attack and now has a severe case of pneumonia as well as renal failure- at the moment her lungs and kidneys are operating with machine assistance, if the pneumonia clears and her renal functions resume, the doctors might try to wake her up. She would be in terrible pain were she to awaken now, so it's best that she sleeps until the machines aren't needed any longer. If.
No one knows if her brain was damaged- there are signs of stroke but it's impossible to know for sure until -if- she wakes up. If.

I'm back at my apartment now, have been for a couple days- there isn't anything I can do at hospital except sit in the ICU and wait.
There's a person on a bed there and the tag has my grannie's name on it, but I barely recognize the tiny withered creature on the bed- it's hard to determine where all the tubes and machines end and the grandmother begins.
It's not how I want to remember her.

Back home, I'm trying to get my life back in motion but it's really hard to do- the phone rings a lot and I have to tell the same frustrating endless story over-and-over again, there isn't any "upside", it's a matter of really bad/dead...I appreciate their concerns but it's getting very hard to find comforting or optimistic things to say- the truth is that she will either die soon or she will die later- recovery of any sort is almost impossible at this point and her living will precludes (thankfully) being maintained in a vegetative state.

Many of my recent phone conversations have been marked by long, awkward silences.

I had a job interview this week with the old Bank- I can't believe they would have me again but stranger things have happened- it's for a short-term tax-season gig but the pay is at my 2000 level (almost double my 2007 rate) so I could save up a nice bit in the two months they will have me- if they hire me.
One more phone call that I'm waiting for...sigh. If.

Yesterday I made and enjoyed a fantastic meal: A juicy sirloin steak; baked potato; spinach salad and glazed carrots- the steak was provided by a friend I met through blog; eating it reminded me of something that I often forget- that most people are good and we often do what we can to help each other out- for instance, I haven't had any problem finding substitutes for my sorely-missed radio shows, despite my odd time-slot.
Likewise, I've had more than a few people offer financial help- luckily, I've been scraping by
(Magic cards are sold) but that doesn't lessen the gesture or make me less appreciative.
I know that some of you have been on one or more ends of the "give/receive" deal and I hope that you agree that it's a 'win/win' situation, free of shame or indebtedness.

In the past I've been somewhat reluctant to accept what one might call "charity", but that view has changed quite a bit as I have aged- the old adage "it's better to give than to receive" doesn't quite reflect the reality- what's "better" depends on circumstance- if times are bad, it's "better" to receive; if times are good, it's "better" to give, but it's really part of the same feeling- that warm fuzzy glow one gets when one realizes that we are all (or should be) on the same side. It's what makes humans...human.


Soon I'll return to politics, current events and cynicism, but for now I just want to say 'hello', 'thank you' and that I look forward to returning to life-and to blog- soon.
If.

Pause

My grandmother had a heart attack Friday following her surgery. She's in an induced coma and may never wake up. All we can do is pace the floor and wait. I will be going home soon.

I might not be around blog much in the near future so I wanted to say thanks for all the wonderful
gifts, wishes, candles and prayers that have been sent this way; this long ordeal has left me feeling rather isolated in real life ( I hate inflicting my woes on people who can't escape with a click) but I find comfort and reassurance in knowing that there are people all over the world who care.
That's amazing.

See you soon,
Allan

Free Lunch

It's day 3 of the lockbox festival and I'm already bored and annoyed. All I have to do is walk people through a very simple test of their electronic key, this is done to verify that their PIN number is correct.

1) Press 'on'

2) Press 'Enter'

3) Enter PIN

4) Press 'Enter' again

5) Point key at lockbox

That's it. In print it seems quite simple, but in practice it's really just a series of five mistakes waiting to be made.
Five endless mistakes.

The agents are forced to watch a six-minute instructional video before they are sent to me for PIN verification- in it, each button is highlighted and explained-the key is a very, very simple device and around half of the people just walked up, beep-beep, opened the lock and were done...the rest required various degrees of assistance.

One older woman handed me her key and said it was broken. The light wasn't on so she thought it was defective. I directed her attention to the 'On' button and she said couldn't press it, her peeling red fingernails were too long; she had to place her finger nearly parallel to the keypad and struggle arthritically to press the proper key. It was painful and futile. One needs a fingernail not exceeding 3.5" in length in order to operate the E-key, I felt like saying...ugh.
I tested the unit for her (worked) but I couldn't see any way around her nail problem.

The lady, however, was obviously thinking outside the box.

Feeling sudden inspiration, she picked up a ball point pen and drove the tip of it through the rubber surface of the 'On' button and into the guts of the device.

That'll void your warranty.

*******************************
At noon the Boss Lady came around and sent me to lunch. I went to grab my jacket and it was gone. There was a coat that looked like mine, but wasn't. My jacket is replaceable but my car and house keys were in it- without my keys I was stuck at the hotel indefinitely.
I asked Boss Lady if there was a lost and found... nope.

I was scouring the area behind the exhibition tables when one of my colleagues said they'd just seen another employee leave wearing my jacket. Aha! His look-alike jacket was the one hanging where I thought mine was.

Surely he'll come directly back when he realizes his mistake, I thought.

After ten minutes Boss Lady asked me why I hadn't gone to lunch yet. I explained the mix-up to her; she laughed, shook her head and told me I could buy lunch at the hotel restaurant and charge it to her room #. I decided that I liked Boss Lady.

The hotel restaurant was a Don Shula Steakhouse. Cool. As I sat down I thought about the freezer full of meat at home and Liz's prediction that my well- stocked freezer would certainly attract prosperity- that "like would attract like".

In this case, the pork chops at home attracted a chicken sandwich at work. Liz was right!

When I returned, Jacket Boy was back from his lunch.

"Dude, why didn't you bring my keys back?"

"I only had a half-hour."

"What?" You dumb fucking redneck, I added silently. "All of us only get a half-hour. I needed my keys and you had them. I had to buy a fifteen-dollar chicken sandwich at the steakhouse because I couldn't drive anywhere. You owe me fifteen bucks."

"I only have ten."

"Deal."

*********************

Last night I had some encouraging news regarding my grandmother, it looked like she might be able to leave the hospital in a few days- but today the word is not so good. She has more 'blockage' than anyone thought and surgery is the only option. Her heart is weak and her chances of surviving the operation are fifty-fifty at best - her chances of surviving without it are zero. There's no alternative.

My grandmother has been having life-saving surgeries as long as I can remember-in 1990 my granpa was admitted for a heart bypass and the doctors said they thought he would be fine, but they were concerned about my grandma. Granpa died shortly after, but my grandma lives on- she has diabetes, emphysema, glaucoma, a half-dozen stints in her heart, six feet of bowel removed because of cancer etc etc,...still going. She has a good track record of recovery.

I'm really worried about tomorrow though.

Plans

I had planned on visiting my grandmother yesterday but my dad called early to tell me that she was being moved to a better facility in a nearby town. He didn't know when.

After lunch I phoned the hospital. They told me that she had been moved, so I called the new place. They didn't have her on the roll...probably in transit... a couple of hours passed without word, so I called my dad. His cell was off. Probably in a hospital.
Where? Which one?
I left a message and Dad called me back. He was with his mom- still in the same hospital, just moved to a different room.
They moved her today and we are waiting on tests. Waiting. On. Tests.

tic toc tic toc tic toc

Still nothing. I'll have to drive up there tomorrow. I can't glean any useful information via the telephone.

The last time she went to the 'big' hospital she didn't get out for two months but she did get out. I'm not terribly sanguine about this time. I hope I am wrong. I've been wrong before.

The worst thing I can do is what I have been doing, which is placing my own long-term goals on hold while her medical saga plays out. I had been so preoccupied with waiting that I lost sight of doing.
Screw that.
I have time. I should be doing stuff.

So I went to meet this guy who had placed a 'guitarist wanted' ad on craigslist. I mean, who knew that you could use the internet to meet people? I tend to use it to avoid others...anyway, we met at a Starbuck's near my house.

Crap, I thought as I looked around for the guy, I can't really afford a cup of coffee. I could make five pots at home for the same price as one cup here... gripe, grouse, grumble.

"Can I help you?"

" A grande."

"We are out. Can you wait one minute?We'll have fresh in a minute."

"Sure."

A minute later I had coffee, which the barista informed me was free. Right on.

Before long my new pal and I were seated at a table, introducing ourselves. His name is Gene and he plays rhythm guitar and sings. He is old, nearly my age.This is a relief to me. Tim, the bassist, is 22. Gene, recently from the Washington DC area, asks me about my musical history. I like answering this question.

I've played in a lot of bands. I give Gene a scaled-down version of my band history- the whole thing seems a bit far-fetched, even to me. Very few traces remain of what I once thought of as a career...it was all so serious then. Not anymore.

Gene asks what I'm looking for in a band -a question I've been waiting to answer. I want to work with a new band as a musician/producer and record a really shiny demo tape, preferably on archaic and/or malfunctioning equipment with little or no budget. I'd like to litter the soundscape with cleverly worded guitar utterances and flesh things out with thoughtful synthesizers, percussion, tuba...anything that works. And I wanna play in front of people again.
Problem is, I no longer have a recording studio in my basement. I don't even have a basement anymore-about all I have is guitar stuff and the junk pictured above...my apartment isn't fit for bands.

Gene, it turns out, has a digital multi-track recorder and a nice rehearsal space. He doesn't really know how to work the recorder- maybe I could help with that?

Hell, yes. I can help with that.

I've already heard some of his songs and I have some ideas...we wind up talking for an hour. Plans are made to play on Sunday. It feels good to be making plans again.

Pouring

I was getting ready to pull out of my building's parking lot when I realized I had forgotten my thermos; I shut off my car and ran back inside, a quick dash that set my trip back about ninety seconds. I cursed myself for my absent-mindedness and headed for the interstate.

After a few miles of rain and heavy traffic I was seeing red. The red wasn't my temper, it was the sudden flashing of brake lights- I was watching scarlet dominoes as they fell towards me, blinkity-blink, closer and closer...I skidded to a stop a few feet from the car in front of me.
I thought the guy behind me was going to hit my rear but he didn't. I didn't see anyone hit anything - we just stopped.

I wish I had brought my camera, but I wasn't on the sort of trip that one takes snapshots of- otherwise I might have photographed the milepost we stopped at. I'm going to call it '150' .
I was stopped at 150, nothing to be done but watch the emergency vehicles race down the shoulder.
Ziiieeeooowww!!!- State Troopers.
Wweeoohweeeooh!!!-Ambulances.
AraraaaaaAarrrrraaaarrrraaa!!!- Fire Trucks.
Beeeppppbeeeeppp!!!- Animal Control. Animal Control?

Shortly after the vehicles passed traffic started creeping along...after an hour I rounded a long , sweeping curve, passed milepost 151 and was presented with the accident scene- a tractor trailer was on the right shoulder, four or five badly dented cars and SUVs were lined up along the narrow left shoulder, shaken people talking to police and medics. It didn't look too bad until I saw that there were wheels sticking out of the small ravine separating north and south-bound traffic...someone had flipped over.
I didn't see any animals.

By the time I reached milepost 152, traffic was almost back to normal. I estimated the accident occurred one and a half miles from where we first stopped. That's a ninety-second trip at 60 mph. Ninety seconds is how long it took me to run back into my apartment and grab my coffee.
If I hadn't forgotten my thermos, I might have been much closer to that wreck. Maybe.

A couple of hours later I arrived at the family home. My twin brother was waiting.

The Twin went upstairs and came back with a paper grocery bag full of poison. Here, he said, and handed me a beer- Miller in a bottle. Yech.
For the first time in over two years, I opened a beer. The Twin opened his.
Together, we poured them down the kitchen sink.
It was a strange feeling.

We followed the Miller with a half-case of Busch, then another half-case of Yeungling. I topped it all off with a 1.75 liter bottle of Bowman's Virginia Vodka- my old brand. When I died in 2005, it was Bowman's that killed me.
To me, Bowman's Virginia Vodka is not a life-affirming beverage.

Our dad, who is ostensibly not drinking, had beer and liquor stashed all over the house. It's difficult evidence to ignore. Alcoholics who don't drink don't have to hide their liquor; he hides liquor, therefor it's a sure bet that he's drinking. I'm not sure that he ever really stopped.

There's a wonderful feeling of liberation and freedom that sneaks up on you a few months after the hiding stops- it's a rush of empowerment and once you have felt that, it's hard to imagine ever wanting to go back. I have tried to discuss this sensation with my father, but he doesn't seem to know what I mean- it made me wonder if he really wanted to sober up. He doesn't want to. He wants his mother to die so he can resume his business of mortal drinking.

I know this because Fred Thompson told me so in a dream. Fred's Law& Order character was serving me a Manhattan at an old bar that doesn't even exist anymore.

"Arthur", I was complaining, "Manhattans were the ex's drink. If there was nothing in the world to drink but Manhattans, I would have quit drinking in 1988."

"Look at your glass", he said.

He studied my face with jowly authority as I looked down. It was empty. Had I drank it? All of that work wasted on a Manhattan?

"Arthur", I reasoned," I don't consider a Manhattan to be a drink, it's a waste of whiskey is all. Just because you are wasting bourbon it doesn't mean you are drinking. You can't knock me off the wagon with a Manhattan. It's a technicality."

All of those Law & Order marathons were finally paying off.

"Look again", he growled.

Four fingers of Wild Turkey bourbon. Straight,101 proof, no vermouth and no cherry. I raised it to my lips, thought better of it and set it down. Pushed it back to Arthur/Fred.

"Nice try. No thanks."

Fred looked at me with dead basset eyes. The drink vanished.

"Too bad about your father", he said, ice forming on the words. He didn't explain what he meant because he didn't have to. He was gloating.

"I know,"I told him. "I'm ready to wake the fuck up now."

And I did. Fred didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

*******************************

In 2005 I was very sick.
When I got out of the hospital I went home and poured my Bowman's Virginia Vodka down the sink. I never wanted to touch it again. No more Bowman's. No more hospitals.

In the last days of 2007 I found myself pouring Bowman down the drain and preparing to enter the hospital, this time as a visitor. My grandmother is very weak and ill - she has a recurring blockage - but she was alert enough to give me a highly detailed description of the gruesome and invasive medical procedures she is undergoing- out of nowhere she started talking about a cyst she had removed in the 1950's, something we had never known about; I blotted out the details at "then they split me open"- after a few minutes of that, all I could hear was my brother's voice saying: You better stop talking about the cyst, I think Allan is going to faint.

Maybe you should get some food into him, suggested my grandmother.

So we went to a nearby diner and I ordered a deep-fried salt block with a lard-based cream sauce, extra starch and green beans soaked in pork brine. In my younger, fearless days I would have called this a 'chicken-fried steak special', but yesterday it seemed more like a blockage waiting to happen...that's why I ordered it. I need some potentially self-destructive danger in my life, but that danger has to have a certain plausible survivability.

I can outlive dinner. That's easy. I can even do dessert.

What I'm dreading is the unknown. My family, as I know it, will be soon be extinct. When the inevitable occurs, there are going to be complications- always complications- and the idea of having to babysit binge-drinking adults while dealing with lawyers and funeral homes is not a happy one.

The Twin needs to return to work but he is afraid to go home, lest he need to return immediately, our gran's been touch-and-go all year long and there isn't any real hope of improvement- if this blockage passes (as of 6pm , no go) , there will be another soon after.
Four times this year alone- four hospital stays in one year. That's too many.

Still, she's stronger than me. I am completely spent after a hospital visit. I start having panic twinges as soon as the doors open...when I am in a hospital all I can think about is getting out. The sounds are too loud, the smells are overwhelming, the lighting is all wrong -everything spins, blinks and whirls- I want to curl up on the floor and scream until I am somewhere else.

But I know that if you curl up and scream in the hospital, it dramatically lessens your chances of getting out, so I didn't do that. Eventually I found myself back here, but now I don't feel like screaming anymore, which is an improvement.

Best of all, I slept without dreaming of Fred Thompson, bourbon or vermouth.
I dreamed about the buoyancy of salt. It was good.

Spiller

I have a long story to tell, but first I need to take a moment and acknowledge my own personal awesomeness. I usually don't brag- I take great pride in my humility and my unparalleled modesty is the stuff of legends- but RIGHT NOW I am the #1 search result on the Google engine for this phrase : doing dishes as erotic foreplay.

I wonder what they were looking for? Tantric Domestic Bliss?
That doesn't sound too bad, really.

-------------------------

I'm tired. Things are quiet. I found a substitute DJ(thanks Scott!) for my show in case I didn't make it back- as I feared, I didn't get back until late and now I can't sleep. Today will be the first show I have missed this year- and the first time I have slept past 7am on Sunday in over a year. I'm aiming for noon.

Later I will tell you about:
-A horrible accident involving five cars, one tractor-trailer and the coffee that saved me.
- Drinking Manhattans with Fred Thompson and what happened next.
- A visit to the hospital.
- The deep-fried salt block that comforted me.
- The Boston Tea Party and how it felt to be there.

Now I gotta crash. I'll be along shortly.

Play Guitar and Wait

My twin brother gave me this 'inspirational' poster for X-Mas. He picked it up at a museum in Chicago.
It's the first inspirational poster that I didn't hate on sight. I loved it.

4 pm, Christmas evening. The food was ready.
The Twin had just finished setting the table, so I walked into the living room and announced that dinner was served, come on in and have a seat...it's a small Christmas, but there's a huge feast awaiting!

Instead of enthusiasm, my father and uncle displayed worry. Why worry? I've been cooking for thirty years and haven't killed anyone yet.

Oh.

My Grandmother was not feeling well. She was having difficulty breathing.

I leaned in closely so I could hear what she was saying.

Oh.

So I went to her room to gather a few articles of clothing while my father fetched her cane and the Twin prepared her portable oxygen tank. The whole thing had the feeling of a drill
but it was not a drill; ten minutes later we were gathered in the waiting room of the local hospital's Emergency Room.

A nurse escorted my Gran, my father and myself into an examination room. The Twin and my uncle waited outside while the lady asked the requisite questions and took the obligatory measurements. On a scale of 1 to 10, my grandmother rated her pain a '12'. She's been sick for years, terribly ill at times but she has never exceeded a '10' before...could she please get some pain medicine? But her blood pressure was too low for that...she was wheeled into another room where the nurse started hooking her to tubes and machines .

My father and I were banished to the ER waiting room, where it was decided that we would take 'shifts' going back to the house to eat...the Twin and I would go second, so we sat in the ER and watched a CSI marathon on the TV. At first, I felt that an endless barrage of simulated autopsy footage was inappropriate fare for a hospital waiting room but after about forty minutes I was engrossed, wondering who murdered the Crazy Cat Lady.
I never found out, but it was a welcome distraction while we waited...our wait was interrupted by the nurse, who informed us that they were waiting on tests and the arrival of another doctor.
Nothing to do but wait some more...eventually it was our turn to go home and eat.

By this time it was after 7 pm and the food, which had been abandoned when we rushed to hospital, had gotten cold and dry and was about as appetizing as paste...we ate anyway, we would need our strength, we reasoned. It was likely to be a long night.

When we returned to hospital, we learned that they had decided to admit my Grandmother- no surprise, really. We were allowed to go back and see her; she had stabilized enough to be given a bit of morphine...the nurse kept up a steady stream of banal questions as she administered the drug- after a minute or so, our Gran's answers started getting fuzzy and her pain had gone down to a "six or the number like six". The dope was working.

Then she started to vomit.

The last time I saw someone vomit in a hospital, the person I saw was myself; I was observing from a vantage point several feet outside and above my body, which was entering a grande mal seizure.
It's not something I like to think about, so I usually don't- but all the sights, sounds and smells were the same.

I started gasping and my vision was flashing white, black, white...the next thing I knew I was in the hallway, being held by a family friend as I bawled my eyes out. After that- a long while after that- I was able to pull myself together and assist the lone nurse as she navigated the gurney down the corridor to the elevator and up to my Gran's new room, where she was placed on a real bed and further sedated. Finally, she was calm and quiet and there was nothing for us to do but return to the family house.

It was after midnight. Christmas was over.

What should we do with our gifts?

My father, amazingly, was the one who stepped up. We need to exchange the gifts, he said.
He was right. We needed to. We did.

So I got the poster above...and this t-shirt( below, front and back), which, as I told my brother, is the best T-shirt ever. The Twin knows how I feel about signal flow.


BACK:

My father gave me a 'Car Talk' CD of songs about car trouble (ha!), which is something that I can use for my radio shows and a book called Auto Repair for Dummies...I gave him my old set of PC speakers so that he could listen to me play the CD in hi-fi. In our family, there is not much stigma on the giving of 'hand-me-downs' as gifts, it makes sense to us...why throw away an item that works fine and then spend money on replacing it?


I also got a set of Pyrex cookware and a shower curtain, two things I can certainly use...I actually asked for the shower curtain- I've already been fixing my own meals and doing my own laundry for decades- if I were to actually go shopping for a shower curtain I am afraid I might be lurching into metro-sexuality, a leap I'm not prepared to make- so I asked my Gran for a 'sensible' curtain. She came through- solid blue, no frilly floral pattern crap. Right on!

Best of all, the Twin gave me a new compact audio mixer, a TAPCO (below). My old Behringer died months ago and I've been feeling bereft ever since...now I can re-create the signal flow diagram as illustrated on the world's greatest t-shirt, above.

My uncle had to work today, so we left home early this morning...there was very little traffic, the interstate highway is a strange place at 3 am...especially the day after Christmas.
Today, I slept later than I have for months- well into the afternoon.

The Twin remained at home, waiting...as of an hour ago, Gran was unchanged, still stable- we continue to wait.

At first, I felt guilty about hooking up my new mixer and playing guitar until my fingers hurt- I mean, my Gran is in ICU and I'm playing guitar...but then I looked at my new inspirational poster and I knew that I was doing the right thing.

Other than wait, there is nothing else to do.