October 2003 Archives
$500 down, and I'm now on my way to Prius ownership: I just placed an order for a fully-loaded Prius in "Millenium Silver Metallic" with gray/burgundy interior. Jeff and I went by the Alexandria Toyota dealership this evening for an appointment with one of the salesmen with whom I'd emailed on Monday, after having seen his name in their ad in the Blade, Washington's gay weekly.
Within 5 minutes of arriving at the dealership and meeting the salesman, we were outside looking at a sleek new Prius in "Driftwood Pearl" (a light metallic gold, basically); just a few minutes later, after a quick rundown of the various systems, I was in the driver's seat and heading down Route 1. Jeff was very quiet in the back, even when I asked him how he was, whether the seating was comfortable, etc.; I was worried for a bit that he didn't like the car. After the 30-minute test drive, we were seated at the salesman's desk preparing the minimal paperwork for my pre-order. When the saleman left to make a photocopy of my driver's license, Jeff asked "Was it just me, or were you drooling over the car as well?" Turns out he loved it, too, and had been so quiet just because he was so engrossed in the car's cool technology and features.
Part of the coolness is that you don't even have to put a key in an ignition slot; as long as you have the key fob on you, the doors and hatchback will unlock once you're within 3 feet of the car, and the car itself starts with just a press of a Power button (imprinted with the same power icon you find on a computer or monitor). To put the car into drive, you merely step on the brake and lightly push a small dashboard-mounted lever to the left. To put the car in park, you push a button marked "P" just above the lever.
The speedomer, odometer, gear indicator and fuel gauge are digital, deeply recessed into the top of the dashboard at the base of the windshield for an almost heads-up display. The wow feature that is most readily apparent, though, is the systems monitor display, a good-sized LCD display panel that controls the audio system, the voice-activated DVD navigation system, the Bluetooth phone integration, the climate system, and also can show a continually updated display of the usage of the hybrid system and various statistics.
The ride was smooth and extraordinarily quiet (whenever the gas engine cuts out for battery power only, like at stoplights or going downhill, the car is eerily quiet; the initial impulse is to assume the engine has stalled and to look for the key to turn to restart it), and pickup from stoplights and while passing was more than sufficient, even when starting from a battery-only condition at a full stop; the interior is spacious and comfortable; and there's lots of cargo space.
The salesman said that they've taken orders for just over 60 Priuses, and they're expecting the first large shipment sometime in November; he said my car could be in as early as that shipment, and more than likely before the end of December at the latest. So before Christmas I may finally have a new car. Happy New Year, indeed.
After we concluded the paperwork, the salesman asked how I'd heard about the car and the dealership, and why I'd emailed him specifically. I told him I'd been following the Prius for some time, and noted that I knew someone (hi, Gene) who already drove an earlier model Prius and who had ordered a new one from that same dealership, and then I told him that I'd contacted him specifically because of the Blade ad. He said that they'd only just placed their first ad in that paper a couple of weeks ago, and already had gotten a lot of response from it. So it looks like after giving up one gay car in the Saab convertible, I'm just moving to what may turn out to be another.
The cutest thing in the brochure is the "Complimentary Roadside Assistance" offered by Toyota. Jeff and I simultaneously mused that the response might go something like, "Thank you for calling Toyota Roadside Assistance. We're so sorry to hear that you have a flat tire. But may we say that your hair looks marvelous?"
When looking at the GLCensus web site earlier today, after receiving an email about their partnership with Nielsen to conduct a three-day survey of GLBT TV viewership habits, I came across an interesting study from this summer that I'd missed at its original release.
According to the study, which asked respondents first if they belong to a religion and second if they consider themselves to be practicing, the more embracing a given religion or denomination is of GLBT issues the higher the percentage of practicing GLBT members of that religion, unsurprisingly. Of the top ten religions named, Catholicism was the specific religion claimed by the highest percentage of GLBT members, at 17.6%. Filling out the top ten, with between 4.3% and 2.3%, were Methodist, MCC, Episcopalian, Jewish, Baptist, Lutheran, Unitarian, Pagan and Presbyterian. However, 30.3%--more than any other single response--said they had no religious preference at all, while 6%--more than any except Catholicism--considered themselves to be atheists.
The highest percentages of those practicing their respective religion, however, came from Pagans at 84.6%, MCC at 79.4%, Unitarian at 66.7%, Episcopal at 57.6% and Jewish at 47.5%. And Catholics were the lowest among the top ten, with only 29.5% considering themselves to be practicing.
Back in July, I posted about my invitation to be a Nielsen household for a week. This weekend I received another phone call from Nielsen asking me if I would be willing to participate for another week, starting November 20; this time they specifically are interested in my experiences as a PVR (TiVo) owner, and are sending a diary designed to make it easier to note the things I record as well as watch during the week.
Then today I got an email from GLCensus Partners asking me to participate in a special three-day initiative in partnership with Nielsen to measure the television viewership habits of the GLBT community, beginning the end of this week.
For someone who six months ago watched almost no TV at all, I'm now apparently an important influence on the television-watching possibilities of the American public. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!
The paperwork is done and on its way back to the loan agent, so the process is underway: by the end of November, I should have a new mortgage for 15 rather than 30 years, a lower, fixed interest rate, and some cash in hand. The condo tentatively has been appraised at almost 75% more than I paid for it six years ago this month; an official appraisal will be done in the next couple of weeks as part of the refinance.
And Wednesday night I have an appointment at the local Toyota dealer to test-drive a new Prius; assuming I like it as much as I fully expect, I plan to place an order for one that night. Since my boss ordered one two weeks ago and was told it "probably" would be here before the end of 2003, I don't expect I'll be seeing mine before late December or January.
Similarly, the new heat pump has a ship date of six weeks from now. There were no right-handed units in stock, and the contractor says that basically the company has to build one. Since that puts me into mid-December before the unit is shipped here, and then an installation date has to be set afterwards, let's hope for a very mild late autumn.
Ok, I admit the title is an obscure play on words on several levels. "Pied" is meant to evoke the concept of dance from the French word pied, "foot," while "piper" is from the name of the dance troupe--"George Piper Dances"--we saw Tuesday night. And, just as the Pied Piper of fable mesmerized and enchanted the children of Hamlin, George Piper Dances enchanted the audience with a dance piece called Mesmerics. Got it?
The first piece the troupe performed, William Forsythe's Steptext from 1984, was described in the program as "a spellbinding exercise in deconstructed classicism. Enormously challenging for its four-person cast, Steptext is a powerful display of dance at its very limits." The piece didn't look "enormously challenging" to me, though admittedly where dance is concerned looks can be deceiving. It was complex, but it left me completely cold. The only thing I did find interesting was how any interaction between opposite-sex partners was organic and fluid, while that between same-sex dancers felt tense and conflicted, almost confrontational, with gestures giving a strong impression of "back off, buddy."
Pieces two and three, though, Christopher Wheeldon's Mesmerics and Russell Maliphant's Torsion respectively, were just amazing. The former really lived up to its name; a series of repeated and restructured movements set to the similarly repetitive music of Philip Glass and involving the entire five-person troupe was compelling and hypnotic.
And Torsion was, as the program described, "a spectacular example of strength and balance work, with an intuitive understanding of coordination. Created in 2002, Torsion is a graceful, compelling, atmospheric and technically brilliant example of dance drawn to its ultimate expression." Performed as a male duet by the two principals, Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, the piece moved seamlessly and with the appearance of effortlessness from simple individual movements to complex feats of balance and strength, with the two dancers sharing and alternating the roles of balancer and balanced, holder and held. Beautiful, evocative and inspiring, truly; I kept catching myself holding my breath in awe.
The three pieces were interspersed with personal video clips--with a home movie feel--taken by the two charming and disarming men around the world as they discussed their work, their surroundings and their lives while meeting with choreographers, rehearsing (allowing themselves to be seen occasionally as klutzy and graceless as the rest of us), joking, sightseeing and even, in one case, stripping down and bathing (and, William Trevitt, you're a gorgeous man).
It's been a somewhat productive afternoon. After calling the heating contractor and hearing the cost estimate, I finally was spurred to start the process of something I should have done several months ago but, unfortunately, procrastinated: refinance my condo. I've missed the incredibly low rates of just a couple months ago, but the rates are still good, still better than my current ARM, and with the equity I've built over the past seven years I'll be able to stop paying PMI each month.
So I'm planning to refinance and take cash out. I can use the cash to pay for the new heat pump and to finance my new car significantly if not entirely, and I'll be able to deduct the interest. That will also reduce my car payment to nothing or nearly that, and I can use the difference to fund a higher mortgage payment, meaning I can refinance to a 15-year loan and save a lot in interest over the lifetime of the mortgage.
I've got a phone appointment with a loan officer this evening once I'm home from work. I'm really excited about finally moving on this, and having the cash to take care of these big ticket items without depleting my savings and cash-on-hand. I may just treat myself to an iPod after all.
After conferring with Jay, my ex, who's very knowledgeable about the heating and cooling systems at my condo (he lives in the same building, and is on the board of directors), I placed a call on Tuesday to one of the contractors to inquire about getting a new heat pump installed. The contractor called me back later that afternoon, but I wasn't able to return the call until today.
Of course--given my luck--the heat pump in my unit has a right-hand intake (the contractor says that half of the units in my building have right-hand and half have left-hand), which apparently is rarer and harder to find; the contractor says that it can take as much as six to eight weeks to get one installed if the distributor doesn't have any readily available (they keep many more of the left-hand models in stock). I'm going to call him when I get home tonight to verify the model number of my existing system, which will allow us to determine the capacity needed in the new unit.
And Jay was pretty darn close in his estimate of the cost, telling me it would likely be about four grand. The new system itself will be $3,680 (covering removal and disposal of the existing system and installation of the new), with a programmable thermostat an additional $250, for a total of $3,930 before tax. Granted, everyone keeps saying that a new model will pay for itself over time because it will be so much more efficient than the old one that my heating and cooling costs will be reduced. But my electric bill--which covers not just heating and cooling, but cooking, washing, drying and computers, televisions, etc.--has only been $82 at its highest during the month of August when the air conditioner was on almost non-stop, and has averaged just $56 over the past six months. The lowest, when the heat pump wasn't running at all, was $45. So even if the new unit were so efficient that my costs never went above $45, it would still take me almost nine years to recoup the cost of the new system. On the other hand, a new unit should add to my eventual resale value, and will definitely be quieter and cleaner.
So that's one big problem nearly resolved. Now I need to turn my attention to my transportation situation; I think Jeff and I are going to visit the Toyota dealer this Saturday to see about putting a deposit down on a new Prius.
When we first started getting hanging out together and then started dating, Jeff and I saw some concerts, musicals, and a lot of films. More recently, though, I'd been feeling guilty because I felt like my schedule--hospital visits, home visits, work--had been preventing us from going out at all. But we seem to be getting back into a bit of a cultural groove.
After having planned earlier to see Arena Stage's production of Shakespeare in Hollywood, circumstances seemed to make it unlikely. Last Friday, however, on a somewhat spur-of-the-minute decision earlier in the day to purchase same-day half-price tickets, we had dinner on the waterfront and then saw the play, which I found very funny and enjoyable. I was surprised to overhear a 20- or 30-something man after the performance say that it "the most ribald play he'd ever seen." Since I found the sexual humor in the play no more bawdy than Shakespeare's own work, I found myself wondering if the young man's previous cultural experience had peaked with Disney on Ice.
And tonight we have tickets to Ballet Boyz, a very intriguing-sounding troupe from the George Piper Dances dance company out of London, principally comprised of two male dancers formerly with the Royal Ballet.
Should be fun. As the Washington Post notes:
When they fly into Washington Tuesday for their area debut at Lisner Auditorium under the auspices of the Washington Performing Arts Society, Trevitt and Nunn will have video cameras in tow. For along with their envelope-pushing program choices--which include William Forsythe's tensile "Steptext," British choreographer Russell Maliphant's male duet "Torsion" and New York City Ballet resident choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's contemporary yet classical "Mesmerics"--the two also have a knack for filmmaking. They carry cameras everywhere on tour, in rehearsal, in airports and restaurants, making short films that they intersperse between the performed pieces. These video diaries might offer a glimpse of rehearsal, of life backstage, of their idiosyncratic impressions of living on the road or, as Trevitt, 34, says with a hint of wink, "a night out with the showgirls in D.C."
I've seen the purported sociological studies of usage and avoidance patterns for urinals in men's bathrooms (e.g., in a bank of urinals, the newcomer takes the urinal that affords the most distance from men already standing at others), but there are a range of interesting bathroom behaviors. There are the usual suspects of those who never flush or those who repeatedly flush every ten to twenty seconds while seated on the toilet, those who wash their hands when they enter the bathroom but not when they leave, those who bypass the seat cover dispenser but then are heard tearing off strips of toilet paper to line the seat, etc.
Yesterday, though, I saw evidence of an unusual and previously unobserved behavior: scattered over the floor in and around one stall were little pills of paper, as though the person sitting on the toilet had torn off strips of toilet paper, rolled them up into little balls, and then randomly tossed or rolled them under the partition.
My mom has one uncle, her father's youngest brother, who's actually only a few years older than she. Moreover, his two daughters are only a couple of years older than me. When I was a kid, they lived in Northern Virginia and we didn't see them very frequently, usually once a year for sure on Independence Day and only very occasionally otherwise. I regret this, because they were a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the times we did spend together.
And, in the way that these things so often go, now that we're grown and I'm also living in Northern Virginia, I actually see less of my great-uncle and his family. The eldest daughter still lives in the same general area with her own family (including one child in college and another who's a senior in high school; where has the time gone?), but because of job demands the younger moved to Vermont with her husband and son a number of years ago.
Fortunately, on a business trip there in 2001, I got to have dinner with my cousin (first, once-removed) and her son. It was so nice to see them, but we hadn't been in touch again since. After my father's death, though, she sent me an email (and a card) explaining that after she heard the news, she was thinking of me, searched on my name online and found this blog. This is one of the reasons I so love the Internet.
So, hey there, cuz! Great to hear from you, and I hope I can get back up there to see you again.
Last month I posted about my ongoing search for the best sour apple martini. Although the drink I had last night was called a sour apple margarita and is therefore not a martini, most of the other contemporary drinks called "martinis" are not technically martinis, either, so with my complete editorial discretion I'm going to include last night's anyway.
Jeff and I had dinner at Chevy's Fresh Mex at Pentagon City, and I ordered the Sour Apple Margarita, a "tart blend of Sauza Gold tequila, Pucker Green Apple and fresh-squeezed lime juice." Served in a heavy, large, attractive green margarita glass, their standard size (they also offer an option to supersize it, or whatever catchphrase they use) is quite large and a real bargain at $5.75.
Larger and cheaper than Fuzio's sour apple martini ($7.95), the sour apple 'rita presentation included three huge floating slices of a Granny Smith apple (complete cross-sections), and tasty sour apple-flavored sugar on the rim. Taking a sip, Jeff agreed that this drink was quite yummy (and his own mango cocktail, served in a mug, was so fruity-tasting he didn't quite remember it contained alcohol until he nearly swooned).
Of the current three contenders, the Chevy's sour apple margarita is now the sour apple cocktail to beat.
[Addendum 16 Oct 2003 15:32]
Since this entry originally was published, Jeff also has posted about our evening at Pentagon City; it has indeed become a meeting place for us. When my car was working, it was the closest Metro stop from my house and an easy pick-up spot when he would come over after work; now that the car is garaged for the moment, it's an extremely convenient, five-minute bus ride from the end of my block.
As my cat-sitter, personal baker and incredibly understanding boyfriend noted, I went back to visit Mom and my family again this past weekend. I calligraphed my dad's name on acknowledgement cards and addresses on envelopes for about 50 thank-yous which Mom was going to complete this week. We also took care of several "firsts"--Mom's first trip outside the house for groceries without Dad, first meal out, first return to church, first visit to Dad's sister, etc. Life slowly returns to a semblance of what now passes for normality.
I've been sick since last Wednesday, with what appears to be a bad cold--congestion, headache, cough. Thursday and Friday I sounded like the adolescent Peter Brady as his voice changed, and at times I'd open my mouth to speak and nothing at all would come out. I'm feeling better each day; the cough lingers on, especially bad at night, but my voice is returning to normal.
Work has been much more stressful than usual lately, for all of my group, with some amazingly bad timing given the personal demons that several of us are fighting--besides my father's death, one co-worker's partner broke up with her and is kicking her out of the house, another experienced a personal tragedy not unlike mine, and another was notifed of the death of a close family friend. Additionally, due to circumstances not completely in our control and just bad timing and worse luck, some people in high places haven't been altogether happy with our department recently.
But my co-worker Waldo supports me with his perennial positive outlook, despite his own stresses and troubles, and my friends and family console me with their outpouring of love. And most of all, Jeff is just there with his calm assuredness about us and his unwavering support during a time that could be trying for any relationship, much less only a burgeoning one. I do feel sad and regretful that circumstances haven't permitted us as much fun as we had been having, and that our time together has been significantly proscribed as I've spent all but the hurricane weekend away for the past month, and will likely be spending many more away. But I need to take to heart his words to me today, as he reminded me that I can continue to lean on him, that "a friend doubles your joy and halves your sorrow." And what the sometimes cynical, at times self-pitying me might have considered just a platitude in the abstract, really does feel truer here in the reality of my sorrow, anger and even still the occasional joy.
And--at the risk of another "aww, shucks" from himself--some of those specific joys included returning home last night to Jeff busying himself in my kitchen and feeding Alex, and to a loaf of delicious pumpkin bread (even if Jeff does say so himself), and the warm fuzzy from Jeff earlier having said on the phone that he'd meet me "at home"--not at "your home" or "the condo" but just "at home." And it does feel like home when he's here.
From his recent trip to Boston, Jeff brought me back a truly gorgeous, green-gold tie from the MFA store.
On Thursday, when we were picking out a suit and accessories to take to the funeral home for Dad to be dressed in, Mom told me to take any ties of his that I wanted to remember him by; I chose two, one an abstract sky blue and gold pattern on a violet background, the other a tie from Harrods that I'd given to Dad after a trip I'd taken to England in 2000 with small gold foxes and hunting horns on a red background (Dad's longtime nickname was "Fox," as in "Crazy like a...," and he collected foxes).
In the course of writing this entry, I was reminded of another incident from the weekend, among the most personally touching and emotional but which I had neglected to include in my Day 3 entry. On Saturday before we left for the viewing at the funeral home, Mom called me aside into the bedroom and shut the door. She then placed a ring in my hand, a signet engraved with the initials for the first and last names shared by my grandfather, father and myself. The ring had belonged to my grandfather, my mother said, and upon his death had gone to my father. She said that Dad had always said that if anything happened to him, he wanted the ring to come to me. A fit for my middle finger, it was much too small for my father's significantly larger fingers, so I don't recall ever having seen it or having known of its existence. But it's an interesting connection with my paternity, and a beautiful, simple piece of jewelry, and its passing to me at that time and in that way created a special emotional moment between my mother and me.
While I both wanted and needed to be with my family through the events of this past week, I'm also very happy to be back home now. I love my family, but even under less stressful and tragic circumstances being with all of them can be overwhelming after a few days. And I'll be spending a lot of time there over the next few months, so I'm trying not to begrudge myself enjoying being back here in my quiet, peaceful little condo.
And it was so, so wonderful to meet Jeff last night for dinner and to come back to my place together afterwards (where we watched Down with Love, a very cute film he'd been talking about for months). I hadn't seen Jeff since I left for Richmond and Covington very early last Thursday morning, and I'd missed him quite a lot in the intervening week.
Saturday Mom and I stayed home all morning and afternoon. My oldest nephew had to referee two soccer games in the late morning, and afterwards my sister took him to the funeral home, so that he could see "the remains" on his own before the viewing and visitation scheduled that evening.
The viewing for friends of the family was scheduled from 7 to 8:30 p.m.; the family went down early, around 6, to have some time alone before people started arriving. Unfortunately, people started arriving by 6:30 and we didn't really have a chance to organize ourselves first into a receiving line. Suddenly there was a crowd of people and we were inundated; Mom and I were both at the front of the room, near the casket, but about ten feet away from her. We were so surrounded by people that it took me ten to fifteen minutes to get back to her; I got her a chair, but she never really had a chance to sit, as people kept pulling her up and into hugs. And the tide of people kept sweeping me away from her again and again.
It was really rather a brutal experience, and part of the entire death/funeral process the value of which I don't entirely appreciate. While I understand that people who knew my father needed a chance to see him and grieve, and to tell us about him and to express their love and condolences, there's almost a cruelty done to the family, keeping the emotional wound very open and raw; the visitors get to come in, say their piece, and leave, but we were faced with such raw emotion again and again and again, and never really were able to get in touch with our own. It was one of the most emotionally exhausting experiences I've been through; by 8:30, we were all aching both physically and emotionally. By the time we got home that evening, a part of me just wanted to scream to all the visitors to get out of the house.
In fact, we almost never had any time to ourselves. Family and friends would start arriving as early as 8 or 9 a.m. and there would still be people at the house as late as midnight or 1 a.m. By the end of the weekend I found myself torn between wanting to remain there with my mom and the rest of the family and coming home to my quiet condo where I could finally hear my own thoughts and feel my own emotions, rather than constantly listening to other people talk and reacting to their feelings.
I was filling out my leave slip for the four days I was away preparing for, attending and recovering from Dad's funeral, and just discovered that federal employees don't receive any special bereavement leave. We can use our sick leave for that purpose, but I'd used all but 12 hours of sick leave over the past year visiting my dad in the hospital and getting tested as a potential kidney donor. So I had to take two-and-a-half days of annual leave out of the four I had left. I haven't had a vacation--with the exception of the long weekend I took to visit Roger and Raymond in Tucson this spring--since I started this job. And with a day-and-a-half of annual leave to my credit at the moment, it doesn't appear that I'll be doing so any time soon.
When I got to work this morning, I walked in my office and sat down at my desk; I hadn't even had a chance to check my email or voicemail when I got a phone call from the executive director. I thought she might be calling to welcome me back and express her condolences. I really should have known better; I suspect her Myers-Briggs is not inclined toward F on the Thinking-Feeling axis. True to form, she was having a crisis and needed me to sort it out, stat. On the positive side, it did keep my mind occupied for the next several hours.
On Friday, we began with some of our difficult responsibilities. Dad already had purchased a number of cemetery plots--in fact, the receipt for their final payment had arrived while he was in the hospital--though he hadn't yet chosen which one he wanted. Our first stop, though, was to the funeral home, where we had to provide the information to go into his obituary for the newspaper, and deal with all the details and arrangements for the viewing, the funeral and the interment. I don't begrudge the staff of funeral homes making an honest living, but I'm disgusted at how much it costs to leave the world after you're dead. It's a couple thousand dollars just to walk into the funeral home, before you've even selected the casket, vault, flowers, cars, etc. My father, a financially savvy, frugal man, would have been appalled at the potential costs that literally were going to be thrown into a hole in the ground. In addition to the casket, which is seen for brief periods of time over the period of a few days, there's the vault--the container into which the casket is sealed--which is never seen by anyone; at the interment the vault was covered by astroturf. These two items cost within a range of about $1,000 to as much as $12,000--each.
It's not precisely that I begrudge spending money in someone's honor, but this is a substantial amount that comes, at least immediately, out of my mother's living expenses--compounding the injury, when Dad turned 65 just three weeks ago his substantial life insurance policy ended, so all Mom has now is a little bit of social security, and the stocks and mutual funds into which Dad had invested over the years (not insignificant, but which lost a great part of their value in the recession of the past few years). Mom's by no means destitute over the longer term, but has little in the way of liquid assets more immediately, and that's where the funeral expenses are drawn. And my sister and I want to help, but she and her husband have three kids, one of whom hopes to enter college this fall; and, while I do well for myself, especially as a single man, my own savings are about to be plundered for a new heat pump and either a new engine for my current car or a new car altogether.
Anyway, that's just a gripe about the compounded injury when a person dies; you've lost not only the loved one, but suddenly your financial health potentially is threatened as well by the loss of their income and by the funeral expenses. I don't know how poorer families cope at all in the face of a death.
After we'd chosen a casket and vault, and signed off on the preliminary cost estimate, we made our next stop at the florist to commission a floral spray for the casket. We went to a florist shop owned by a high school friend of mine, known for his beautiful work. We told him we wanted autumn flowers and colors, a favorite of all of ours but also appropriate because of the closeness of the date to the anniversary of Mom and Dad's wedding, at which they'd also had fall flowers. Beyond that, we gave him no instruction, but just told him to create what he wished. When we saw it the next day at the funeral home, we were stunned; he'd gone far beyond even his usual fine work, and certainly had created something for which normally he'd have charged far more. It was an amazingly beautiful arrangement primarily of yellow, orange and red flowers among the greenery, with an occasional deep purple, and with accents in copper and golden-brown. There was some sort of needled evergreen-like branch threaded throughout, upon which were the prettiest little coppery white flowers; I'd never before seen conifer sprigs that flowered.
Our final stop that morning was to the cemetery to see where the plots were located, and to choose one of them for Dad. They're in a new part of the cemetery, in a pretty little field bordered on one side by the woods.
In the meantime, my cousin Susan, who cuts hair for a competing mortuary in town, received permission from the funeral home with which we were doing business to come cut my dad's hair. I'm amazed that she was able to do so for my dad--she also cut our grandmother's hair after she died--but she did, and she did a wonderful, loving job.
We spent the rest of the day at home, where a steady stream of family and friends visited well into the night. We did go back to the funeral home that evening to view the body, just with family; walking into that room the first time was one of the hardest things I did all weekend, but within a little while my mom, my sister and I were sharing funny stories and memories of Dad. A little while later my brother-in-law arrived with the two youngest of my three nephews, and that was very, very painful. I can't quite imagine what it's like for Shane, at 8. At times he was almost blithely secure in his little boy certainty of Dad's fate: he drew a picture of Dad playing softball in heaven with dead Brooklyn and LA Dodgers--Dad's favorite baseball team--of the past. At other times, though, he was a pitiful little boy, crying but feeling embarrassed, wondering if "Grandaddy is really dead, or if the doctors and machines just made a mistake."
As I noted in the previous entry, after nearly ten years of hell and until his sudden illness and death from an unrelated cause, my dad had about eight glorious fully active months of good health again, because he received a kidney transplant. Please, please, please consider filling out and carrying with you an organ donor card and/or the equivalent on your state's driver's license, and make sure that your family knows your wishes to be an organ donor upon your death.
If you work for the federal government (and similar policies exist for many states and private corporations), you are eligible for up to 30 days of paid leave to serve as a live organ donor, or up to seven days of leave to donate bone marrow.
In lieu of flowers for my father's funeral, we suggested that family and friends consider making a donation in his name to a fund at the Virginia Transplant Center that provides medications for transplant recipients who cannot afford their own. I'd be happiest if people just completed their organ donor cards, but I'm also including the information for the fund below:
SEOPF
c/o Virginia Transplant Center
1602 Skipwith Road
Richmond, Virginia 23229
ATTN: MOB 110
SEOPF is the South-Eastern Organ Procurement Network.
After getting off the phone with my sister Thursday morning, I had to find a way to get to Richmond and then to my family's home (as I had reported, my car had become undrivable again after my return from Richmond the previous weekend). I immediately thought of my friend Craig, who'd loaned me his Santa Fe for almost two months this summer when he was vacationing in Europe. I had an old home phone number for him on my computer, though, and woke someone up--for which I'm very sorry, and I hope I didn't panic her with that 5:15 a.m. call. I then called him on his cell phone, which went into voicemail, and while I was looking up his correct home number on my mobile, he called back and told me he would bring the car right over and that he wouldn't need it before Tuesday. I started throwing clothes into a suitcase, interrupting that just long enough to let Craig in and then drive him back to his home. By 6:00 I was back home to finish packing, put lots of food and water out for Alex, and then drive Jeff home; by 7:00 I was on the road to Richmond, and arrived at the apartment about 8:45, where my mom, sister and I held each other, hugged and cried, talked on the phone with other family, and sat with two of the nurses from the Transplant Center who had become good friends of ours over the past few years, while waiting for my uncle and two cousins to get to Richmond to Covington to drive my mom's car back (since my sister and I each had our own vehicles to drive) so that she wouldn't have to try to drive under the circumstances.
We were at my parent's house before noon, where we spent most of the day just in a state of shock, with a house full of Dad's sisters and their families, and the beginning tricklings of what would become an almost unceasing flow over the next few days of family and friends, with every new arrival seeming to break Mom's heart anew; just as she'd begin to calm, someone new would arrive to hug her and her heartrending sobs and protestations would begin anew. I try to understand intellectually the value of the visitation and funereal process in America, but I sometimes fail to grasp it, having just lived through it. It seems as though the family is kept so raw for the days up to and including the funeral; while other people come in, express their grief and leave, we were faced with theirs over and over again almost non-stop for several days, only having time to feel our own during the almost non-existent moments between visits and at night.
Food had started arriving even before we got home Friday morning, especially lots and lots of fried chicken and desserts (beginning with a box of more than 50 pieces of chicken brought by the family's minister). I discovered that under these strange circumstances I, the thinnest member of my family--who at my own home never eats breakfast, sometimes skips lunch, and often doesn't eat dinner until late, and have even been known to forget to eat--started eating almost non-stop; while my sister, who is overweight, threw up every time she tried to eat anything; and my mother just wouldn't eat at all.
My sister slept on the floor of my parents' room that night. I slept in my parents' former bedroom in the old part of the house. The word "slept," though, is not altogether accurate. I was up most of the night with acid reflux, while my sister and mother report that they slept only fitfully as well, and were up and around by 5 a.m. Friday.
I knew, of course, as soon as my brain woke up enough to realize a phone was ringing and my eyes simultaneously took in the bedside clock display of 4:55 am: it could have been a wrong number, of course, but I knew.
Still, it wasn't supposed to happen this time. Yes, Dad was very, very sick, but every single doctor, every single nurse kept reassuring us that he would recover; Guillain-Barr was scary, certainly, but every case they'd treated at the hospital eventually had walked out--albeit after a long, often painful therapy and recuperation--under their own power.
So while I instinctively knew what the call was about last Thursday morning--especially once I saw the phone number on my caller ID indicating my sister's or mother's calling card--it was still at many levels completely unexpected. In fact, Mom was convinced that Dad had been doing better, though Wednesday apparently saw a couple of setbacks but still nothing that indicated any increased risk of death.
We'd been prepared for his death before--as much as one can be, at least--after his heart attack in 1994 but particularly during his severe and almost intractable bout of peritonitis from April through September last year. But after his recovery from both of those, and his amazing good health after his kidney transplant this past January, everything seemed right with the world, and none of us really expected he wouldn't leave the hospital with us in a few weeks or, at most, a month.
The past eight months before the sudden appearance of the Guillain-Barr were a new lease on life for Dad, and I'm so grateful now that after having endured so much for nearly ten years he had a joyful, active period before the end; he accomplished so much around the house, and was even mowing my grandparents' and sister's lawns "because he could."
In the end, though, it was everything he'd been through that just made it impossible for him to survive the tremendous stresses upon his body that the Guillain-Barr was creating; after three weeks on a ventilator, his heart just apparently wasn't strong enough to keep him going. I just hope that he didn't feel too much pain those last three weeks, during most of which he was kept sedated; I know, at least, that he's beyond any more pain now and, given his negative reaction to the physical therapy with which he's had to deal in the past, the long, painful recuperation and therapy--to relearn how to walk and how to speak--after Guillain-Barr likely would have been much more than he'd have wanted to endure.
My family, at least, have the strength of their faith and their absolute assurance that Dad is in Heaven, to help sustain them. I have only my memories and my love to ensure that he lives on in some fashion while I yet do.
"Mrs. Watson? This is the hospital; your husband has expired."
These were the cruel words, so cavalierly delivered, that greeted my mother at 4:30 a.m. last Thursday and changed her life--and mine, my sister's and the rest of our family's--irrevocably. The nurse used just those words, and didn't ask if my mother were alone or not--fortunately, my sister was with her, to comfort her and to take charge during my mother's resulting and understandable hysteria.
I wonder sometimes why some people, so obviously unsuited to a caring profession like medicine, especially direct patient-care nursing, choose such a field anyway. Throughout my dad's long battle with kidney disease, peritonitis, and later his kidney transplant and most recently three weeks with Guillain-Barr, he had been mostly blessed with excellent care and compassion from the physicians and nursing staff; two nurses from the Virginia Transplant Center and his supervising nephrologist even have become like members of the family. But there always seems to be a bad apple or two, and one of the nurses assigned to the CCU his last three weeks was one of those.
Mom was able to create a particular bond with the day shift nurses, whom she saw frequently, as she was at Dad's bedside every possible minute she was permitted; she participated in his care and treatment to the degree possible and permissible. During the hurricane, before she lost power, she even had invited several of them to stay over at the apartment if they needed, and she and they shared food and stories of their lives. They all knew that she had moved from the hotel to the hospital-owned apartment, and knew how to reach her there; the information was in Dad's chart, as well.
The night nurses, though, did not have the same rapport with Mom; they were never on duty during any of the short visitations permitted by family. One in particular never seemed to be interested in communciation with my mother, and Mom reports that she often seemed exasperated even to speak briefly to my mother each morning when she would call the hospital to check on Dad's progress over night--the other nurses encouraged us to call as often as we wished, but this one nurse always made Mom feel guilty and as though the five-minute call each morning was an imposition.
Unfortunately, she was the nurse on duty the night Dad died. I don't doubt that she did everything she could to resuscitate my father (apparently he coded once, was revived, but then coded a second and final time), but her care just didn't extend beyond her medical expertise. She did not know that my mother had been moved--by the hospital--from a hotel to a hospital-owned apartment, so she tried to call my mother only at the hotel, taking three hours to finally reach her at the apartment when someone else realized the mistake. And then she delivered the cruel message in such a casual style and followed by admonishing my mother--adding to her feelings of guilt and despair that she had not been at his bedside when my father died--that she "had been trying to reach [her] for hours," as though it were Mom's fault that the nurse hadn't looked up the correct information in Dad's chart, or hadn't bothered to listen when Mom had told her about the change of address--which had occurred two weeks earlier.
Even now, in the midst of my grief about my father's death, and the complicated mixture of other emotions, I get so angry when I think of the way that this woman unnecessarily and unprofessionally added to my mother's burden.
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