Tag Archives: Passing

Loss

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I have edged my way into the time of life when I start to lose people. The simple fact is that people get older and eventually they die. The longer you go, the more it happens. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I found out this past Friday that another of my friends had died. He was 50. Same age that I am as I write this. He attended the same high school my wife did. I can’t say we were super close, but we were friends and I had known him for years. We hung out. We went to lunches, we played games. I’m not adding specifics about things because I believe sharing those things are the family’s choice, and they didn’t share any of those details in his obituary.

One way people can go on is if we remember them. I’m going to share this very short story because it is my favorite.

Many years ago, Bryan was in the navy. He was a diver and he was training to use underwater demolitions. One of the explosives he was working with detonated too early. Among other injuries this seriously damaged his hearing. He medically retired from the service. He wore hearing aids from that point forward.

While we were at lunch at a busy restaurant one day he expressed his difficulties in hearing immediate conversations when there was so much background noise around him. I know others with hearing aids and understood. Then I remembered this cartoon:

Funny because it’s true…

I leaned in and said to him, “You’re at the doctor’s office and the doc said ‘Yes sir, that was very loud! Now I need to hear your heart!’”

He was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. “You have no idea how true stuff like that is!” was all he could muster between laughing bouts. This is how I will remember him. I will miss him. Rest well Bryan.

Death and Perspective

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I’m trying to put the second family death in as many months into perspective. My father in law passed away in May and now my Grandmother has passed away. It’s easy to get caught up in negative feelings. I struggle with trying to see good things when people die.

As I gave it more thought, at the age of 97 my grandmother had been around for a whole lot of stuff. Born at the end of World War 1, her formative years were right through the heart of prohibition and the great depression. She was a bride around World War II and her husband a soldier. Her children became the famous baby boomer generation. She saw the Korean war, Elvis, the civil rights movement, Beatlemania, and the rise of television. Her children were the age of the soldiers of Vietnam. Watergate, the “just say no” campaign aimed at her grandchildren, and the death of her husband. The cold war – from the start all the way to the fall of the Berlin wall and more. Going to the moon, shuttle disasters – all of them – and the start of the privatization of the space race.

In all that time, through all those things and so much more is a pretty amazing journey. In the end, she was still my grandmother. I remember sitting in the squeaky kitchen chairs but being fine with that because they had swiveling seats. The grandfather clock in the dining room and the drawer full of toys in the breezeway. Good memories.

One of my favorites came later in life when I was an adult. We were having a chat around the kitchen table and the old fashioned kettle had reached temperature. I jumped up to grab it right away and she said, “Oh just let it go. It’s the only one that whistles at me any more.” She had a few of my most favorite jokes.

I love her and I will miss her.

My favorite picture with my grandmother.

My favorite picture with my grandmother.

Struggle

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I meant to post this earlier. I sat on this post for a while. I still struggle with putting my feelings forward into words. It’s what an author is supposed to do really, but I just don’t believe I’m that good. Hopefully one day I’ll be good enough to write words that move people.

The past couple of weeks in my life have been the definition of chaotic. An emotional roller coaster peaking and dipping day by day. In the past 2 weeks I’ve had the death of a family member, a 50th wedding anniversary celebration, a departure meeting for the exchange students I’ve worked with this year, an ongoing issue at work involving a substantial amount of money, my daughters spring band concert and the funeral for the relative we lost. Oh and right at the start of all that one of the exchange students suddenly living with us for a little while after she was asked to leave the house she was staying in (surprise!).

Some of these things were one day after the next – a couple of them were on the same day. It’s been… I don’t even know what it’s been. I’m exhausted. Wrung out and done.

Perhaps it’s this state of mind that has brought on my choice of examining these things in the context of the military and particularly the military in science fiction and fantasy.

There’s a lot of debate out there about the best way to handle the military, it’s role and the soldier’s place in it all when writing. There are those that ignore introspection and go for action. There are those that take on the story from a commander’s point of view and those that take it all from the grunt’s point of view. Ethics, sanity, the physical toll and the reasons behind it all. I have spent some time attempting to review military science fiction over at milscifi.com and spent more time considering how it is I feel about all these stories.

At their heart military stories are about the people involved and what war does to them. The soldiers and their families are the ones that pay the price of war. There are stories out there that show the trauma and mental damage soldiers end up with as a result of having everything stripped away to the core of their self and being forced to face that. Some people make it, some people don’t. Some are broken and spend the rest of their lives living with the broken parts. That is the reality we live with, every day.

I have come to learn that what I prefer are the stories where there is a level of heroism. The main character should be someone I can empathize with. He or she needs to be somebody that faces down very real dilemmas, struggles through and ultimately comes out with a positive result, even if not the initially intended result. I struggle with and generally don’t like stories where the mental damage wins. I dislike the characters that don’t make the heroic choice. I want the sacrifice to mean something. I want the positive result, perhaps as a direct reaction to the real world.

I like the fiction. The reality is much more difficult to manage. The death in our family was my father-in-law. He was a veteran of 2 wars and was laid to rest this past week with full military honors. Flag ceremony, rifle salute, taps and a direct punch in the heart for me. I didn’t expect it to hit so hard. I’m not going to lionize the man now that he’s gone. He wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but I suspect that some part of that imperfection might be that damage seeping through. I wept when it was time to say good bye – and I haven’t wept in many, many years.

I wanted to have some grand, sweeping point here but it’s just not coming to me. Maybe one day I will master the words, but today is not that day.

Rest In Peace.

Shell2

My Father Wore Rainbow Suspenders

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“Oh captain, my captain”

I clicked “like” on the post. Those were the only words there. I hadn’t seen or heard anything else related – I just knew the quote and had always enjoyed it. Always, as if there was never a time when I didn’t know a show or movie that involved Robin Williams. To a certain degree this is true. Mork and Mindy came on the air when I was 8. It hit just the right nerve or wavelength or something. It worked. Crazy, funny, alien.

Since then, you know the list: Dead Poets, Good Will Hunting, Aladdin, Good Morning Vietnam. Even the others that weren’t as popular: Club Paradise, Flubber, Hook. I’ll admit I probably reached a point where I took his stage presence for granted. Perhaps even thought, “can’t he do something that isn’t his manic ranting…” from time to time. Funny thing about that – he did. He was in just tons of things. He crossed generations as an entertainer. My daughter knows him as the voice of the genie. Most profoundly, my dad knows him as Mork. I don’t recall any conversations my dad and I may have had about TV over the years – out taste in entertainment / media are about as far apart as they can be – but Robin Williams as a performer crossed that huge gap. The title is true. My dad wore rainbow suspenders.

I am more saddened than I expected. The passing of somebody I’ve never met who lived a life so far from my own and so foreign to my way of thinking, yet he was always there. He’s been a force on television and in the movies for as long as I can recall. Robin Williams touched so many lives. He will be missed.

Mork