Channeling Andy Rooney....

Andy Rooney was a commentator on 60 Minutes, a television news show.  In his later years, he was most famous for his little observations in the show's final minute or two.  He served as a US Army reporter during World War Two, even winning a Bronze Star.  I had a few observations of things, and it immediately made me think of Rooney's minute.

• Why do Americans automatically associate a religion with a nation?  Israel is not all Jews, Iran is not all Shia, and the US itself is a polyglot of beliefs.
• The US has never won a counter-insurgency, so why do we constantly provoke the need to fight a type of conflict we can't win?
• Those who would have peace should prepare for war.  The saying says prepare, not start.
• Jimi was right--there will only be peace when the power of love surpasses the love of power.
• Why do conservatives claim Jesus as one of them?  Have they read the Bible?  Jesus disliked the greedy and rich, he cared for the poor and the weak.  If he was alive today, Jesus would be a Democrat.
• Why do politicians who have never been in a classroom know better than teachers how to run a classroom?  Since government makes a hash of most things--do we really want it increasing in teaching?
• If teachers get paid so much for such a great job--why is there a shortage of teachers?  Great pay, no work...you'd think people would be lining up for teaching.  Hmmmm....
• Ever notice how administrators always want to cut costs by cutting the salaries of staff, faculty, coaches, etc, but very few administrators think it's good to cut their own salaries?  Chop a teacher's salary 30% and you save $10,000.  Chop a Dean or VP's salary--save yourself $50,000...enough to hire another teacher, too.
• Only one university in the US cut it's administrator:faculty ratio from 2000-2015.  Curious that it's in a state that hasn't seen a tuition increase in four years, either, for any of its state schools.
• Why do people complain about doctor competence, yet when the physician says 'Take this for 10 days', they stop after six...then get surprised when the same illness returns and is more resistant to the medication?
• Men and women were not meant to run naked.  Really.
• Former Confederate States of America states all demand less government spending, yet get more than the national average and don't see a problem with that.
• When Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater can't pass your 'litmus tests' for being a true conservative, your political party has a problem.
• When JFK and LBJ are 'too conservative' to be true Democrats--your party has a political problem.
• I wish Al Sharpton would spend more time paying his taxes than ramping up hate and rage.
• Politics today are much more polite than they used to be.  Once upon a time, Thomas Jefferson insinuated John Adams was a pedophile.  Ahh, the good old days of the noble Founding Fathers!
• Speaking of Founding Fathers--I wonder if any Senators or Representatives have actually read what they wrote, things like their belief in helping the poor, or not meddling in every day affairs....or maybe wanting to avoid political dynasties? 
• You know, if you purchased one of my novels, you could help me not pay taxes like Sharpton.  Have you read one of my books?  Well, you should.
• Why do administrators think equal rights means hiring people based on their gender?  Isn't equal rights about hiring based on ability and ignoring gender? (Don't actually mention this to most college athletic directors...really.)
• If states want to improve student abilities--rather than look at lots of standardized tests, why don't we not let kids use calculators on math problems in 3rd grade?  Maybe we could have reading time every day--and homework, too?
• I like watching athletes with skill and work ethic regardless of sport.
• Adults wonder why fewer kids play sports.  Maybe the fact that travel teams now exist for 4-yr olds has something to do with that?  Let kids be kids and not play only a single sport.  Step back--let them play.
• I wish I could've had a fastball to match the curve I can throw.  My elbow wishes I didn't ever try and throw curves.
• I forgot the last time I missed back-to-back serves playing volleyball.  How hard is it to not do that?  I don't know--but I know it's at least nine years now.
• In thirty years, every boy/young man who 'manscaped' will regret it when their children see their pictures.  It'll be like the big hair for many in the 1980s.

Foster House and Barry Goldwater

This morning, as I procrastinate from working--a bit annoyed that there are no decent seminars here at the AVCA Convention this morning, I came across a comment from someone that "Inequality is the root of social evil."  It was attributed to Pope Francis--and it sounds like something he would say, but this is the internet, and like Abraham Lincoln says, "You can't trust every quote you find on the internet."

It reminded me of like in Westgate 307, the year I had Chris Gabel as a roommate, living in a suite with Steve Haugse and Dave Meythaler.   Steve Haugse had a message board posted outside his door in case people stopped by while he was out--yup, this is long before email, cell phones, or text messages...back in the era when people actually talked with one another.

Sometimes Meythaler would post quotes on the board, and often, we found it fun to mess with him...and the quotes.  The best was when he posted one of Barry Goldwater's most famous quotes:

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." 
(Editorial comment: Recent torture revelations certainly prove this an inaccurate assertion)

So we changed it a little:

*Liberty in the extremism of vice is no defense.
*Vice in the defense of extremism is no liberty.
*Extremism in the vice of defense is not liberty.

And we put every combination up on the door.
Dave wasn't amused initially.  He'd posted the Goldwater quote as something profound and we made a mockery of it...which Foster House excelled at.  If snark was an Olympic event, Foster House of 1986-88 would have been repeat Gold Medalists.

But having written all this above, what's shocking is that Goldwater's quote, considered outrageously radical in the early 1960s in a time of tension with the USSR, the height of the Cold War, today is accepted by more than half the American population--torture to get info from MAYBE-bad guys?  Good.  Lack of due process?--if it means "security", great, doesn't affect me.  But at what point does it slide further--we already have tortured foreigners we thought could potentially be terrorists--when do we start the torture of citizens?  When does it become okay to rectally insert food for the sake of stopping a string of robberies?

Would Goldwater appreciate that the LA School District now has a mine-resistant APC or grenade launchers?  (Yes, that's right--a school district has THREE grenade launchers)  Think he'd be happy with the increase in SWAT raids across the country, the accidental deaths of hundreds of people in those raids (the total over the past decade is now something like 105).

The answer is no.  The world changed.  Goldwater, once considered a conservative extremist, saw politics move in his lifetime (after white Southerners took over the Republican Party, infusing it with silly fundamentalist religious, political, and racist views) so that at the end of his political career, Goldwater was considered a moderate and on some issues "liberal".  The man who admired Goldwater, Reagan,--Reagan couldn't be elected today--doesn't pass Republican 'litmus tests'.

I guess maybe we shouldn't have been so flippant about that Goldwater quote.  It proved to be far more prescient than I, as a nineteen year old, could ever have suspected.

In honor of "Dead Week"...

So it is Dead Week in Ames this week, and for some reason, I got to thinking about the way Dead Week used to work--I have no idea how it goes any more.

Anyways, once you got to the week before Finals, everything had to be quiet for 23.5 hours.  The only exception was 10-1030pm where the noise restrictions were lifted and pretty much anything would go.

Of course, it's important to realize that in an 'academic' building, things were usually quiet, and Foster House was in between an all-girls floor, and a group of uber-nerds on the floor above (Nelson).  Nelson took their studies wayyyyy too seriously and would complain throughout the year about conversations they heard through the bulkhead-like walls of Westgate or music being played or any number of things.  --I can still name people who lived on Stalker, Lowe, and of course, Foster, but the only name I remember from Nelson was Yvette Louisell, and I remember her because she murdered a paraplegic and now lawyers are arguing she was a minor and should be released because she's paid a 25-yr price.  ...makes me want to vomit.  So anyways, no one from Nelson ever did anything social.  Ever.

So it was the winter of 1987 when we invented a new sport that burned like a meteor, played furiously for a week, then forgotten.  The game was Hall Ball.  Yes, a very original, unique name.  Westgate's halls were only 7-8 feet wide, a narrow corridor, extending for maybe the equivalent of half a city block.  The game involved however many people were around trying to kick a basketball from one end of the hall to the opposing end.  There were no other rules....which meant tackling was fine.  Elbows, gouging, everything, which was all the better given that there were 12-16 people playing.  Ahhh, the noise was enough to even bring about the wrath of the girls living below us.

Do people do these sorts of things now?  I remember we'd go in groups of 8-12 to get pop at KwikShop (and I remember one person at the end of the line drinking everything before reaching the register and then not paying at all...funny how that was amusing then and now strikes me as ethically unacceptable)

I also made sure during Dead Week and Finals to do a couple extra shifts over at KUSR--Ames' Best Choice for Rock and Roll, though now the station is KURE and soon they will be moved out of Friley Hall to locations unknown.  Maybe reading about that triggered the urge to write this.  I don't know.

What I know is that I lived with the greatest collection of personalities the world has seen.  If you are one of those and read this--you are loved.  If you are not reading this, you're loved, too.

Greetings and welcome to the annual installment of the Dietz Christmas Letter. I know, I know...under most circumstances, you're thinking, “Ahh, holy crap, they still have my email, still have my mailing address,” and you know what—you're right. So suck it up, you get to take one for the team.

I thought about doing something nice (no, you still have to read this) and making an advent letter, sending everyone a new letter every day of the Christmas season because I know you guys would've LOVED 25 letters. Except it's already December 3, so out the door that one went. I thought about doing a crossword puzzle, but SJTBWPSOWSWHWWLCLPSOCWMOTGCAKOFMHROKS informed me that I've done that before. Crud.

So let's start with a recap of the 2013 DCL: “I'm an athlete, baby!!!” --and the witnesses are still alive who heard that.

And now, on to 2014...(and your free continuing education credit in poetic forms):
 

BRIGITTE (the name)
Brigi is the nickname they gave her

Right when she arrived in Hungary for the year

It's fitting, but sentimental, I prefer
Getty-Spaghetti or just Getty, but I haven't called her Debbie in months
I wish she could be home for the holidays
Though I can't describe my pride of her
Time abroad, it flies fast, so I'll see her soon enough
Except then she comes home just to head to college.
 

 

SPECIAL BLOG BONUS--PHOTOS!!!  

This is when we went and picked up a 1965 Mustang.  My mom said to do something silly when I could with some of the money she left when she died.  My mom loved Mustangs, so this felt right.  Right now the car is having some restoration work done to it and a professional paint job.  It'll reappear just in time for spring!  (I may even let her drive it.  Once.  For half a block.)

 

 

Brigitte is studying abroad this year with Rotary International. She was assigned to Debrecen, Hungary, where she's gone to school, played volleyball (which is REALLY important), and already traveled to Rumania and Austria. This spring, she may hit most of the rest of Europe. After that, she'll come home, spend the summer helping me with volleyball working for slave wages because she loves me and looks like me (I'm so sorry, sweetie), and then off to college. That's right—you have to read NEXT YEAR'S amazing, spectacular 359^th annual DCL to find out where she decided to go to school.

 

This is Brigitte and three of her exchange buddies from August when they arrived in Hungary.

ERICK (the haiku)

 

Eats lots of pizza

College: Sleep, study, student gov

Three semesters left
 

It's odd to think that Erick's on the 'downside' of his undergraduate degree. It was only yesterday he was in Poland, the day before we were playing boardgames in the basement, and the day before that, he was crapping up his neck in his carseat in the back of my old Saturn. I miss those days...but not the crap in the hair rollin' down on I-74. Erick's still at God's Own University (Iowa State) studying Material Engineering/Stuff that Makes My Brain Bleed. He's no longer President of Friley; instead (hey, notice the properly used semi-colon—this DCL is quality, I'm telling you), he was elected as a senator to the ISU Government of the Student Body. He also does tours for the Engineering College—so if you're in Ames, you should take one—he's not allowed to be snarky, has to be polite and charming...really, I am not making that up. You have to see it to believe it.

 

 

Erick is on the right.  He's in the M-Shop, an Iowa State landmark known for great live shows.  It's in the Memorial Union, upstairs (I THINK) from his government office.

 

 

MIKE/TMOC (the tanka)

Maker of chaos

Junior High, soccer and band

Eats like there's no tomorrow

Please send us money, we're broke

Teenage boys eat so much!

 

 

This is Mike at Julie's department summer picnic outing with a co-worker's dog.  Trying to find photos of Mike sitting still are difficult...unless he's laying under dogs or playing Xbox.

One of the great joys of parenthood is seeing how kids develop. Mike has retained a love of comic books, but has branched out by spending the summer at camp doing rock-climbing and archery, and continues to play soccer (football for the civilized readers), but he's also found he loves being in the band playing clarinet—and this spring, I think he's going to go out for track. I think that's where his aptitude is—he can fly when he runs. The only sad thing—he hasn't really done anything chaotic this year...well, other than manage the current presidential administration's foreign policy. That's probably enough for one thirteen year old.

 

JULIE (the cinquain)

 

My wife

Advising Prof

Knitting, church, parenting

More help than a man could deserve

Awe. Some.

(just enjoy the choir...these aren't our kids...not that I know of anyways.  Then again, Julie knits a ton--remember her acronym...so these MAY be her hats...)

SJTBWPSOWSWHWWLCLPSOCWMOTGCAKOFMHROKS: St. Julie, the Blessed Wife, Patron Saint of Women stuck with husbands who write long Christmas letters, Patron Saint of Coaching Wives, Mother of the Golden Children and Keeper of the Most Holy Room-Occupying Knitting Stash. I could just copy/paste that every year and you'd have the scoop. Julie decided to go musical (with Brigitte) this summer and had a role in a production of The Music Man, so you know where TMOC gets it from (there's a genetic joke in there...think about it)

She's every bit as amazing today as in this picture.  Me...not so much.

JIM (the ABC)

Another year of coaching

But this year, I added time with USA Volleyball

Jolly Roger did well with another new release (Kremlin),

My preference would be to earn enough to retire as

I (but not Julie) grow older

That won't happen writing the DCL in multiple poetic forms.

(My group of athletes at USA High Performance in Las Vegas.  I'm in my USA shirt.  It's a big ego rush to be part of the national program.  You wear the shirt with pride....and the program paid off later as the actual adult national team won the World Championship this fall.  I owe big thanks to Denise Sheldon at USAV for trusting me to work with a great group of young athletes--I hope I lived up to expectations and hope to do this again in 2015)

Picked up win #500 this year and had a fun season; the team improved all the way, but unfortunately we hit the #1-ranked team in the country in our region final and that was that (the equivalent of making the 2^nd Round of the NCAAs if you are unfamiliar with NJCAA sports). I also got to work with USA Volleyball this summer—that was a lot of fun and I got to enjoy meeting several coaches who are now friends (Denise, Emily) and got to work with some amazing young athletes—I'm jealous of what they are already capable of as 11-12 year olds! Jolly Roger did all right—still in business. For my ego, another book was accepted for publication and should've been out last month (I understand publishing delays!) called “Kandahar”. I'm hoping to submit a couple more in 2015—though if anyone knows an agent who can help...that'd be great. Heck—find me an agent, I'll buy you dinner!

(Dave Pieart, Greg Smith, me, at a vb tourney in Cedar Rapids.  They can tear down Westgate...rat bastages...but Foster House expatriates will still join together wherever possible)

And for the rest of the update—I'll spare you the poetic forms, though without question, the greatest mother-in-law in the world (see how I schmooze there—yet another tip for a better life provided free of charge in the DCL) is deserving of a Homeric ode. Julie's parents are doing fine, still in Herrin, other than the two weeks they went road-tripping to San Padre Island for Spring Break—Julie's dad was featured on MTV...I wish I would've seen it, but I only imagine...) Julie's brother and his wife added a baby girl to their family—Isabella. I would've named her Julie—that's the best possible name for a beautiful woman to have (see the previous schmooze comment).

So, Debbie/Brigitte had to go and match—having babies is an arms race, so at the end of December or start of January, I'll be an Uncle again. You know, me and SJTBWPSOWSWHWWLCLPSOCWMOTGCAKOFMHROKS will get bled dry in a few years when it comes time for graduation gifts...this is like 37 nephews and nieces now. You can help though—send me cash or a check payable to “Help Jim and Julie Pay for Graduation Gifts or a Vacation to Rio Fund”. We take PayPal also. She's fine, still working for the VA, and her husband Chris is doing well—he does amazing art stuff, both for people like hotels and small stuff! I do worry about my oldest niece, Zayn, though—she's 11 and is already worried about the recidivism of the proletariat as related to the bourgeois angst related to the financial crisis of 2006.

Last, but certainly not least, shortly after the writing of the instant-classic 2013 DCL, we had a couple additions to our family here—because you can never have enough chaos (That's chaos with a lower case 'c', not upper-case 'C' which stands for Michael...). We added two puppies to the family: Kaiju and Jaeger. They were supposed to be small rat-terriers we picked up from a rescue organization. Turns out the people who gave up the dogs to the shelter lied—they aren't rat terriers. They are partial terriers...but Kaiju, he's 50% rottweiler (or rat-weiler) while Jaeger, she's got some collie blood in her. Instead of 10-15lbs, they are MUCH bigger (Jaeger is 30, Kaiju is 47), quick as can be, and really friendly and energetic (unless you are a cat, Christmas decorations, a deer shaped archery target, or blowing paper—then you are mortal enemies) With two kids out of the house, Kaiju and Jaeger keep life loud here—between them, they eat everything—plastic, string, paper. Julie turned her back and Kaiju was able to snag a pound of bacon from the counter (yeah, our dogs have good taste in real food...mmmm, bacon).

(At about 3 months, playing 'Let's Catch the Creature Hiding')

(At nine months...this was about 8-10lbs of weight ago.  It was nice of them to pose for the picture, usually they are a blur of energy.)

(Notice Mike having to lean back?  Yeah, Kaiju and Jaeger are lean, mean running machines unlike, say....me.)

That's the end of the snark.

Far more seriously—we are happy you read this because it means you are friend or family. Too many people worry about power and money, just as many hate and live bitter—there's not enough time for that. I wish there was more time to spend with all of you—Julie and I value you more than anything, more so as years pass. If you are ever in the area, give a holler, spend a night. Send an email or a Facebook message. Take care and enjoy Christmas and New Year, enjoy the family time, the family 'arguments', the food, the chaos of kids and presents, the hugs, the music, all of it, and please know that you are in our thoughts and conversations here regularly. Except for Dave. We don't talk about him. (Yeah, you thought I could stay away from snark for the rest of this? Crap—that was SIX whole sentences of seriousness...it almost killed me)

Merry Christmas,

Me

SJTBWPSOWSWHWWLCLPSOCWMOTGCAKOFMHROKS

Brigi

Senator Palpati---Erick

TMOC

Kaiju

Jaeger

Monday

Twenty-nine years ago, this Monday (selected since it is the first day of the school year now at Iowa State), I started college.  Of course, back then the first day was mid-week and move-in was on a Sunday with two days scheduled to buy books, register or fix schedules.  My goodness, I was a 'hot mess' back then, though with good reason.

If you are reading this, you already know me in all likelihood--but there's some trivia you likely don't know.  Did you know I never graduated high school?  It's true.  I left a year early and the headmaster was a bit...no, not a bit--he was a 100% tool, so that he blocked me from going to MIT, but couldn't stop Iowa State--my parents got involved and most bureaucrats have a fear of private sector lawyers, but I digress...

As a 'compromise', I was told I could go to State, but that I'd need to finish a list of graduation requirements they would create just for me.  Of course, Iowa State didn't care...once I was on campus, paid my bills, and wasn't flunking out, they didn't give a crap about my high school stuff.  And once State was good with me, I didn't really care about graduating high school, so I never did take the classes I was supposed to.

Yup, a BA and two master's degrees--and no diploma.  Bet you won't find anyone else in America who can say that.

But now--my son starts his junior year there.  Junior year was awesome for me--Foster House president, brother floor to Henderson, and with a great cabinet to run things-_Dave, Mikey, Arnel/Trent, Ron/Chris...quite possibly the best start-to-finish year of my life, really.  I want him to have the same luck I did--not just in the classroom, but my growth as a person.  That's the greatest thing Iowa State gave me--it sounds cheesy, but it gave me most of the things valuable in life--a tolerance/respect for differences whether of opinion or culture, the ability to ask "Why?", to continue learning about any and everything.   It's the year I found that I liked literature, first thought of writing stories (Robert Boston's fiction class), that The Great Gatsby truly is a masterpiece.  It was the year of VEISHEA in Chicago with Paul, Brian, and Jeff watching the Cubs take two of three from the Giants...Jamie Moyer on the mound for a 1-0 loss to Rick Reuschel on a Jose Uribe homer....ahhh.

Is there a point to most of this?  Nah.  Just love for my son and alma mater, the best university in AMerica.

Thought of someone today...

I was talking with someone about a relative of theirs who died recently, and mentioned that as long as the deceased are remembered in some fashion, according to African theologies, the dead aren't really dead.

So today, I took the Mustang to a car shop for pricing on a paint job, etc--and this became important.  Heritage Classic Cars is next to a truck stop in Effingham, and for some reason, that got me thinking about Ken Irion.

Ken was a friend I met during college.  I met him through Jeff Arnold, if I remember right--sometimes with friends, it seems they were always there, always will be....  We became pretty decent friends while he was in Helser Hall at Iowa State.  After his sophomore year, Ken moved out and in to Koinonia, a Christian home owned by the Methodist Church across from Friley.  Church and being active within it was important to Ken.

In any event, I got to thinking of him because of the truck stop.  Ken was from Bettendorf and for a night out, his parents and he would go out to the I-80 Truck Stop restaurant (which IS good food) and seeing a truck stop restaurant triggered my thoughts.

Ken started as a science and engineering major, but changed to English.  It wasn't that he couldn't do the math (failed Engineering students usually become business majors anyways), but there was something missing for him, so he spent his next year studying as an English major,  except he was a semester behind with the English degree requirements.  But that was when things changed, going into the spring of 1989

Ken figured out that he wasn't interested in the degree and he decided to quit school--fifteen credits away from graduating.  Instead, he decided he wanted to help people, so he volunteered to do missionary work abroad.  That volunteering led him to the Ukraine, helping with food and relief after Chernobyl, a nuclear meltdown three years earlier--before the end of the Cold War.

Ken went to Kiev--Ukraine's biggest city.  Some of the stats afterward showed that casualties from Chernobyl (volunteers helping to clean up, etc) afterwards totaled maybe 0.2% of those who helped.  But somehow, the extra radiation in the area four years on, was enough to trigger thyroid cancer--apparently, if you are predisposed to thyroid cancer, the iodine-131, etc released by Chernobyl causes your chance of malignant cancer to skyrocket.

And that's what got Ken.  I figure he ignored it initially--must've been a flu causing a sore throat or just sleeping on it wrong causing neck pain.  But if it's malignant, that gives it time to spread.  Ken died over there in the Ukraine.  He's buried there--likely because of the radiation.  I have no idea if his parents ever got to go visit the site or anything like that.   I sent a sympathy card to his parents, but what more can you do after that?

Ken was a good guy with a good heart.  ...it's funny how sometimes days or even years can fly by and then memories return that are vivid as if you saw the person only minutes ago.

A College Moment--25 years ago (5/9-10/89) --long

If you want, you can look it up, but I assure you, in 1989 May 6th was a Saturday.  It was the night I went to see a brand-new movie, "Major League".  By that point, I was on Easy Street.  I was a graduating senior suffering Short Timer Syndrome.  I had my graduation permission turned in, only had a final in one class, and otherwise, had nothing to do for the next two weeks, other than that final and packing to head home.  It should have been paradise on Earth...though of course, any day spent in Ames at Iowa State is awesome.

I know May 9th was a Tuesday.  A nice day, I'd gone to class, playing out the string, come back and done the usual--watched some TV, read the Des Moines Register (because in the '80s, that's how you got news), and then gone down to Windows for dinner. 

*Windows was the name of the East Cafeteria within Friley Hall, known because of all the windows (gasp), creating a ton of natural light and a nice view of campus outside, pretty whether it was green with spring or the all-white of winter.  The other cafeteria was Dungeons--because it was in the basement and had no windows at all.  Sadly today, Windows is used for conferences or storage while Dungeons is a study center.*

After dinner, I went down to a women's floor, Lowe, to hang out with people there.  My friend Brian's sister lived there along with her roommate who was a huge Cubs fan (but I've forgotted her name now), as well as Tami Cott who was dating my friend Paul, and Cathy, who was my roommate's girlfriend.  Lowe had been ejected from Westgate at the same time as Foster House, moved to Friley, so that there remained a connection between the people on the two floors.  I was in Cathy's room--I can still find it--talking with her and a couple other people when her phone rang.  Two rings at a time--on campus.  She picked it up, looked at me, said "It's for you.  It's Ron."

It was Ron, her boyfriend/my roommate.  He'd just got a call up in our room from my mom.  I needed to call her immediately.  Something happened.  Since the phones had codes to access long-distance, I called the number from Cathy's room--it was my mom's work number at the hospital.  When I reached her, she told me my dad had just been brought in--he'd collapsed, had a stroke, but was stable.  That was 815.

The rest of the night is missing for me.  I remember nothing.  I know I talked with my sister at some point to coordinate me picking her up in the morning to go home--because Mom was specific: He was stable, he was okay.  She'd call if there was a change.  No call--so we proceed as planned, leaving Ames around 8am. 

May 10th was a Wednesday.  Classic Rock Night at Welch Avenue Station.
The car ride home was silent.  What's there to say?  We were both worried.  It's different facing mortality when it is a parent rather than a grandparent or distant relative.  This was Dad.  I remember it was a decent day to drive--nice temperature and overcast.  The plan was to drive home, then walk over to the hospital (since we lived across the street from it).  Mom and Pete would meet us there.

*My parents had been divorced almost a decade by that point and Mom and Pete were married 3+ years then.  Pete and my dad had known each other and been friends going back to the early 1950s.  Life is weird sometimes.*

Except that when we got home and went in the house to use the bathroom before heading over, I opened the door and both Mom and Pete were there in the kitchen.  They were waiting for us.  Pete was standing in the same spot where they found his body when he died last year.  Yeah.  I'm writing this now and have Gordon Lightfoot pop in my mind--Does anyone know where the love of God goes...  I'm many things, but I'm not stupid.  This wasn't the plan and the look on Mom's face.

But dammit, she didn't call. 

He'd taken a turn for the worse in the early hours.  She didn't want to worry me, knowing I was driving.  Didn't want me to speed or be reckless.  I understand her logic--and still disagree with it.  I wish she would've said something.  So we walked over to Genesis West on a cloudy day.  In the ER, the woman my dad married was there along with her biological son, as well as a relative of my dad's.

*That woman he married was/is one of the most evil, horrid women I've ever known.  I love my dad, but his judgment on her was so messed up--I have no idea what he ever saw in her.  Dad's relative was there simply to see who she could get in good with--she was broke and wanted money....ahh, the joys of family, right?  It's not like your family doesn't have people like either of these women....*

We walked in and the doctor, trying to be gentle, said he was already brain-dead.  There weren't going to be miracles.  So the question then was what to do next.  And that was a horrid moment.  Because of a pre-nuptial agreement, the decision about my dad's life could not be made by his wife.  That meant it fell to me as oldest surviving child to decide.

So there it was.  I decided to put his organs up for donation (they were able to use his eyes and one other), and then I had to sign the papers to remove him from life support.  Twenty years old and I signed the papers killing my dad.  I know I didn't kill him, but those papers say otherwise.

Once they were signed, we each got a chance to go in and see him, to say goodbye.  When that moment comes, you have to do it.  I wish I didn't.  I'm glad I did.  They'd tried to fix the problem.  That meant brain surgery at some point during the night.  They'd shaved his moustache, all his hair.  The meds and the brain injury had caused him to retain fluid or caused swelling--so that his hand nearest me was swollen enough, the fingers were a little spread apart.  But the worst was his eyes.  They were open, pupils wide, but there was no response.

So I talked to him.  That's between me and him.  The last time I talked to him before that moment holding his hand in the hospital, it was April 24.  I'm sure of that, though maybe it had been the 25th.  So I'm not sure.  But I remember that conversation, too--because it ended with me saying "Go to hell, I hate you."  Yup--last words ever to my dad, at least that I'm sure he heard.

And then he was gone.  49 years old, less than four years older than I am now.  I'm the age he was when I started college.  He'd be 74 now, probably retired if he'd found a buyer for the family business (which is sadly no longer family).

I wish he'd been here for what he missed.
*Julie
*Three great kids
*My first novel, my first coaching text. 
*Starting my own businesses, now just Jolly Roger though.
*Erick's graduation, Brigitte's impending graduation.
*The joy of me meeting Julie
*7/24/93

But it doesn't work that way, and how could he foresee what his sister would do, what his then-wife would do?  He couldn't.  For all of those problems, I still love him.  He was imperfect, even as a dad, but I'm older now I understand.  He did the best he could.  It's all anyone can ever do.

But even when my sons are 49 and I am old and retired, it will still be with me that May 10, 1989 was a Wednesday.