THANKFUL FRIDAY

Today is Veteran’s Day and last week I was surprised to discover that I have the day off. I don’t believe this has happened before. Veteran’s Day feels like an overlooked holiday, which sounds about right for this country in general. Most veterans I know don’t walk around in uniform or carry signs depicting their service to this country. I think there’s even a large number of our population who hears the word “veteran” and conjures up an image of an older white man. Military service is distant and remote to many.

The last time I was visiting Mom, she gave me a storage bin filled with my Dad’s old Air Force uniforms. My high school letter jacket was in there too. I took two of the military coats along with the letter jacket to the cleaners. The rest of the bin contains the jumpsuits he wore while replacing breaks on fighter jets. When I was a kid, one of those jumpsuits could always be relied upon as a quick costume. Roll up the pant legs. Roll up the sleeves. Put on a pair of boots and aviator glasses and viola. You were now a fighter jet pilot. Every time I pulled on one of those jumpsuits, zipping it up, I never once thought about my dad as a soldier. He wasn’t. He was a mechanic.

This is my naivety on display.

Our veterans are not just gun totting soldiers. They are medical workers, chefs, mechanics, teachers, aid workers, veterinarians. They don’t have to have seen a battle or have been in the thick of artillery fire. They still served this country.

Veterans Day pays tribute to all American veterans—living or dead—but especially gives thanks to living veterans who served their country honorably during war or peacetime.

I have plans to meet a friend for breakfast before getting as many chores done as I can so that the rest of my weekend is truly free for whatever I want. This is a privilege and one that is afforded to me because of a veteran.

Thank you to all veterans who served this shit show of a country during war and or peacetime.

THE LAST TRAIN TO CLARKSVILLE

Union Station does it for me. Every time I walk into that space, I feel like I am stepping into something sacred. The way the sun streams in through the floor to ceiling windows causes me to gasp and even when it is a mess like it is right now because they’re getting the holiday decorations up, I can’t help myself from getting lost in the light and shadows reflected on the marble tile floor. The last time we were there, we had some time to kill as we waited for a shop to open. The morning had turned from normal errands to feeling touristy. I looked at Michael and said “Let’s go see if there’s a train we can get on and just go somewhere.” Now, as I just typed that, I know exactly who I sound like. It’s almost like he’s whispering in my ear.

Dad.

Dad was my adventure partner. He was the one giving permission to ride any and all airplanes at the fly-ins. It was his truck that we’d jump into to go chase down the hot air balloon or follow the firefighters out to a grass fire. Dad was the one that would suggest we go to the airport and see how many airports we could go see in one day. We never got around to that one and now I have serious regrets for not ever responding to this crazy shenanigan with anything other than “YES!'“ All of those car dealership drives he did? He didn’t do those just for the money. He did those drives because he loved the adventure of hitting the road and just going somewhere.

Micheal and I walked to the Amtrak area to look at the schedule and if there had been any trains leaving in the next ten minutes, I think I could have convinced Michael to get on it with me. Really, though we could have been killing time at the airport or the bus station and I would have said “hey, let’s try to catch the next flight or bus!” It’s just that those places aren’t as nice to hang out in as our Union Station. Our airport is a giant mess at the moment with three different terminals and construction for a new airport that will connect all the terminals in progress. The whole romantic setting of our Union Station should draw more train traffic than it really does. As it is now, there are only two or three train departures a day from the Kansas City station and we had already missed the morning ones. If we had been there earlier, we could have had dinner in Chicago. Instead we just looked into taking the train to Chicago for Spring Break next year.

The train is a mode of travel I have yet to experience for more than an hour or so. The last time I was on a train was in December of 2019 and I rode it from DC to Baltimore so I could spend the evening with Bradley and Ethan. That was the last trip I took before the world shut down and thank goodness it included that epic party in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. In my mind, riding the train is just like all the old black and white movies I used to watch. It is a romantic notion and I have dreams of riding the train just to sit for hours staring out the window or focusing on some writing project. My friend Jeff has ridden the train a number of times from here to St. Louis to visit his parents and he said that he always ends up sitting next to the drunk guy. He said there’s always drunk people on the train. My friend Jason disagrees with Jeff. He said he’s always had a pleasant time riding the train. I think they’re both right.

That day, Michael and I didn’t get on a train. We settled for planning our next adventure and just being tourists in this city with riding the streetcar and wandering around Pryde’s in Westport, talking ourselves out of ridiculous kitchen gadgets. As we walked around Westport trying to decide on lunch, our friend Aaron yelled at us from across the street, where he was bartending at Kellys and we ended up having a beer while chatting with Aaron while we figured out where to eat lunch. We had another beer at Mickey’s Hideaway where we settled for lunch. The walls are papered with an old high school yearbook and Michael pointed to a picture behind me. It was picture of James Westphal, a local celebrity thanks to Paul Rudd’s character in Anchorman. They were college roommates and Michael knows James from his bartending days.

We eventually made our way back to where we had parked the car, getting almost as many steps in as we would roaming around on vacation. And, yeah…we didn’t get on an Amtrak train to head out on an adventure, but we didn’t really need to in order to have a day of being a tourist.

RESTLESS

I think I'll name him Frank

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I went to bed last night at my usual bedtime only to lay in my bed tossing and turning for two and half hours. I don’t know what was going on, but all the voices in my head were talking over each other. I had discussions with myself about NaNoWriMo and what story to write. Then I thought I should just work on something I had already started a while back. I told some parts of that story to myself as I flipped over onto my right side. Then I thought about this up coming alumni trip I’m making to my undergrad this weekend. I started to imagine who I might run into this weekend and the conversations we’d have. What if I run into someone who doesn’t know Chris is dead and they ask me where he is this weekend? I played out a few answers before settling on “oh, he was busy and couldn’t make this trip with me.”

“What’s he busy doing? Oh…you know…stuff…like being dead.”

I flipped over to my left side and started to worry about not being able to fall asleep. I made a mental note to ask Michael (again) to bring the chicken food in from the back of my car. Josephine came out from under the blanket on my right side and moved to the end of the bed. She flopped down with a heavy sigh only to get up a few minutes later and lay down at my left side. I wondered if I should pack a hair dryer. I looked at the clock and flipped over to my other side. Then I started getting mad because I had thought about getting up at five the next morning to study a chapter of Yoga Sutras and meditate. I closed my eyes tight and started talking myself through points of relaxation, starting with the forehead, but got distracted somewhere around my right elbow. The very last thought I had when I finally started to drift off was an image of my Dad on what was probably the second to the last time I visited him in the VA hospital. Dad was in a wheelchair lined up with all the other patients for Twinkie day. He didn’t want a Twinkie which is how I knew he was no longer the Dad I had known my whole life. He’d lost the ability to use words by this point and clutched my hand. I’m still not sure if he clutched my hand because he knew who I was or because he thought I was someone else, someone he’d lost some time ago.

My next door neighbor is a ghost hunter. He’s written a book and is working on a new documentary. I wonder when we chat across the backyard fence if he can sense the ghosts that float around me.

I know I conjured Dad. I had friends over for a pumpkin carving get-to-together and as Michael sliced the top of my pumpkin off for me, I was immediately transported to the den of the our family house. Dad would be sitting in his recliner with newspaper draped over his lap like a napkin. There would be a large pumpkin resting on this newspaper, the pumpkin tilted and turned so that Dad could see the face I had drawn onto it. Even now I can see myself as I lean on the back of his chair, looking over his shoulder. Dad would point with the tip of the knife at an eye or nose on the pumpkin. “You want me to cut out this part?” He’d ask. “No. no…that part.” I would answer while reaching over and pointing with an index finger. This is the scene that would take place every October until I moved out of the house. I know that I conjured Dad as I carved my pumpkin. What I don’t understand is why these conjurings always bring up the memories of Dad near his end. It happens with Chris too. I’ll see both of them as just the shell of the people they were. Faces slack, no recognition of who they are or who I am. Thank the Gods that the last time I saw J, he was wearing his Marine fatigues with a serious look in his eyes, but a shit eating grin on his face. Though he’d probably find it hilarious to visit me in the state of which he died. I admit to having nightmares of what that might have looked like, but that was ages ago.

Halloween is just a couple of days away. If you believe in ghosts and that a veil exists between the living and the dead, then you also know that veil is pretty thin right now. It is the best time to tell ghost stories. The spirits are restless. At least that’s the excuse I’m going to use for my chattery mind.

PROCRASTINATION

I've walked by my computer so many times this weekend, knowing that I really should sit down and write. This weekend has been so light and slightly lazy. Sunday I worked in the garden, harvesting green beans, a handful of cherry tomatoes, two parsnips, a head of cabbage, one cucumber and one okra. Michael helped me hang laundry on the clothes line. A few weeks ago, he put up an extra line so now all of our clothes can hang to dry. I made a fresh batch of ghee and organized the bills. In between tasks, I'd pass a look at my laptop and think "I really should work on that thing or write some words or something". I said I'd put together some of my blog entries about Dad to read at his memorial service. I've managed to dump them all into one place, but it's going to take a little more than that to make them congeal into something that would pass for any kind of eulogy. I have all week. 

One of my coworkers came by my cubicle to give their condolences. I waived it off. "It's no big deal. I know my way around death." I said this in a joking way, but honestly...I know my way around death. I'm not so sure that's such a great super power. I know I never planned on or even wanted to be the type of blogger that blogs about grief. Yet her I am. Cindy Maddera of Elephant Soap, Grief Blogger Extraordinaire.  If I felt a little more confident, I'd put on an outfit like Zatanna's and have business cards made. Maybe that's too jazzy for death or maybe it's time we made death a bit more jazzy. Give it some pizzazz. 'Cause that's what death needs, more pizzazz.

The reality is that grief is heavy and hard and sad. It makes you want to do nothing and everything all at once. It's all the things that I don't want for my blog let alone my life. But hey. People die man. That's the truth. One day one of those people you love will just up and go missing from your life. Then you have to learn how do everything all over again with that person missing. Like learning to walk and talk and chew gum all over again. I know it sounds bleak and depressing, but there's a few things that just don't exist: the Loch Ness Monster, perfection, pots of gold under rainbows and permanence. I suppose a glass half empty type of person would see all of this and say "what's the point of even living?". Good thing I've always seen the glass as half full, because there's something beautiful and splendid about knowing that nothing is permanent. It sets the stage for how I should go about living my life. This isn't going to last. Make the most of it.

Some days I'm really good at remembering this. Other days? Not so much. I just have to get through this week. I just have to get through the next few days. I just have to get through this day. Today, I will pull a rabbit out of my hat and make it all disappear.