Cliff jumping

Cliff jumping. You stand on the edge of the precipice, making sure that there’s nothing between you and the water, nothing hiding below the surface. You go over in your mind how you are going to position yourself in the air, how you are going to land. Then you take a running start to clear the cliff and plummet to the water. There’s no going back once you jump. You can make a quick mid-course correction, knowing that it will slightly change the outcome, but the ending is pretty much written when you make the jump.

This is me. Cliff jumping through life. About 7 years ago I told my husband I thought we should separate to try to work things out. Long complicated story, but I was hoping that we would go through counseling, fix us, and move forward. Well, he moved forward all right. Told me in counseling that everything was my fault, said he wanted a divorce, and then went out and got himself a girlfriend before our marriage was dissolved. At the same time, a close relative said she and her husband thought I was having an affair, an assumption that was untrue, discussed, and dispatched in one of our counseling sessions. So I got pushed off that cliff and had a brutal landing on some rocks. The pain from that whole mess remains and there are wounds that I suspect will never fully heal, but I am working through the issues one by one with honest self-evaluation. It’s ugly, messy work but it has to be done for me to feel whole again.

So I moved to the next town over, got an apartment which I loved. It was a sunny, airy apartment – just lovely. The only problem was it had mice. Lots of mice. Apparently the building was built in such a way that there was a highway to the second floor for the mice. Great. But my landlady was lovely and her husband would invite me to pick produce in their garden in the summer. I made loads of chard pie that year.

At about the same time, my daughter was having issues at her home about 4 hours away. I asked if it would help if I moved closer to her for emotional support. I can’t tell you how expensive housing is in the Boston area, so when one of her roommates moved out, I moved from NY to the Boston area. Another jump which, thankfully, had a softer landing. I was still incredibly raw from the first one.

I got a job at a tutoring company working for a tyrannical ex-Army alpha male. I would go cry in the bathroom some days because his words were so caustic and I could not take any more meanness on the heels of my divorce. Thankfully my position was eliminated before my 2-year contract was over, and I took a job at an elementary school working with kids with learning challenges. I loved the kids, but realized that I was not happy in education any more. So I took another leap from education (which I had done for 15 years) into biopharmaceuticals. Good landing this time, into…

…the best job I ever had! My boss was a fabulous gay man who was (is) incredibly kind, funny, competent, intelligent, caring, and just lovely overall. I opened the office every day at 6 AM (loved the early hours), and helped people poop every day. Seriously. The company I worked for had developed a therapy to help people with antibiotic-resistant Clostridium difficile (c diff), which is a common bacterial infection picked up in hospitals. And the raw material for the therapeutic material? Human poop from very healthy people. I loved my boss and loved going to work. If only I could have stayed there forever!

Then, in October 2021, my daughter said, “Mom, I want to move. To California. Will you come with me?”

…gulp… approaching another cliff edge…

A cross country move to a place I’d never been. This was a big, black, craggy cliff and I couldn’t see the bottom. But I trusted that there wouldn’t be a strong wind to blow me back into the rock face and that the landing would be OK. So I cashed in one of my retirement accounts and jumped. We drove across country with our 3-legged cat and landed in Modesto, CA. Our belongings in storage, we rented a hideously expensive furnished apartment and went about looking for jobs and a place to live. After much searching, hair-pulling, and gnashing of teeth, we both got jobs and found a house. We both ran out of money and were living for a time on a prayer and some credit cards. I had to buy a fridge and washer/dryer and our cat needed a brief hospitalization, which cost us thousands. Right now I am living paycheck to paycheck, but that’s nothing new. Despite the financial stress, I see nothing but blessings the Universe has heaped on us. I feel such gratitude.

• We have each other for support.
• We live in a beautiful 2-story home with a yard for gardening and a garage for the car.
• We are healthy.
• Our cat has recovered from his asthma hospitalization and is as frisky as usual.
• There are amazing fresh fruits and vegetables available year round.
• We have great neighbors that watch out for us.
• We have jobs.
• We have a library card and can explore the world again through words.
• Louise has friends here.
• I joined a book club.
• Our car still runs well.
• Our kitchen has enough room for me to do prep AND cook.
• and the list goes on and on

To say that this was a soft landing would be incorrect. But to say that we hit the water feet first and resurfaced without going too far under would be 100% correct.

Joseph Campbell said, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.” He was right. When I tried to force life to go my way, it didn’t. When I put the adventure in Life’s hands and just went along for the ride, I was OK. I am OK. Still healing, still learning, still exploring. But I am OK. Now we move forward.

Namaste, y’all. Mama Deon is back.

What a Year!

Wow. 2020. You are either a massive lesson in humility or a cosmic “F*** Y**” to humanity.

I don’t know how to write about this year because it has been the oddest one in my lifetime. I do, however, want to catch some sense of what it has been in our little apartment. It has been rife with a sense of loss, fear, anger, resignation, hope, confusion, determination, longing, and myriad other feelings.

How does one capture the dysfunction of a presidency that was (and continues to be) stunning in its incompetence and hubris? How does one react to the normalization of lies, and the absolute acceptance of them as truth by such a massive swath of people? How do we, as a nation, recover from the past four years? Can we? Is it possible to find hope and a sense of community again? Right now I find that I loathe people who support the Pig in Chief. It is stunning that anyone, most especially Christian people, would support a man who has broken every moral law in front of them and doesn’t care.

Can we recover from the unveiling of the truth that so many of our friends and family and neighbors are closet racists and don’t give a whit about George Floyd’s or Breonna Taylor’s death, falling back on the sentiment that “they must have done something to justify it”, as though systemic racism in the police force and the very real existence of rampant racism in the populace could EVER be justified. Apparently conquest and subjugation have always been the true American ideals and all the rest is just given lip service. “All lives matter” may be true at its core, but all lives are not under fire. The country that was founded on “All men are created equal”, but only counted black men as 3/5 of a man”, should be ashamed to its core at the refusal to accept and try to dismantle white privilege.

How does one explore the gutting of our lives due to the invisible viral enemy we all face? Do words like anger and fear and emptiness and longing cover all the emotions that we feel being deprived of seeing our loved ones and friends? Getting on an airplane is penalized by a 2-week quarantine and a few naso-pharyngeal swabs to confirm our continued health, so we choose not to go that route. We don’t hug anyone outside our immediate bubbles, and even then we do so with some trepidation because they might have had 15 minutes of close contact with an infected person. We watch as our friends get sick and die, as coworkers lose family members, and as people in esteemed positions call SARS-CoV-2 “fake” and refuse to mask up (but insist on being first in line for a vaccine). We watch our elders, scared and alone, in nursing homes and elder care facilities, unsure if they will be able to touch us again in this lifetime. And, the kick in the ass is that we watch our president scoffing at the severity of the virus from yet another golfing trip.

Then there were murder hornets. Welcome to America, you little buggers. The hornet that kills 50 people every year in Japan and has an excruciatingly painful sting made it to our shores. In fact, a single nest found (and destroyed) in Washington State contained 50 live queens and 108 nascent others. Can you imagine the speed of spread were they to get loose? With our luck they would eat honeybees.

Should I mention the explosion in Beirut that left 300,000 people homeless? Or the many storms and subsequent floods in India, Bangladesh, and Somalia that killed thousands and left millions homeless? The death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg? The wildfires in the US that burned 4.2 million acres (think CT and RI put together) or those that burned 46 million acres of Australia’s forestland – an area 10 times larger? The global recession due to the pandemic?

And can we talk about the inexorable progress of global warming and the shameful withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement (this was announced in 2017 but went into effect this year)?

Despite all of this, or perhaps to spite all of this, Louise and I remain optimistic and safe in our home. We jettisoned our plans for a garden behind our building and planted indoors instead. No vegetables, but beautiful houseplants and herbs. We have a roof over our heads, food in the pantry, and enough toilet paper to get us through the winter. We eat well, laugh and hug a lot, and eat at least one meal a day together (usually lunch). We grieved the loss of Justice Ginsberg, and celebrated the victory of the Biden/Harris ticket and the fact that we now have a woman in the White House. We were pleased when 45 was impeached, but dismayed when the trial ran along party lines and had nothing to do with truth. We have used whatever means we have to stay positive, whether that means going on news or social media fasts, indulging in mind-altering substances, cursing wildly and loudly, or sleeping a lot. We re-wear our clothes several times so laundry gets done only twice a month (at 6:00 AM when the laundromat has just opened and is empty). We get our food and other goods delivered (which also means that they are more expensive so money is tight), but we are healthy. We are strong. We are grateful. We are hopeful. We will get through 2021 just as we did 2020 – together.

May the new year bring you what you need to be well and happy. I wish you enough.

A new chapter

Fruits. Vegetables. Grains. Flesh. Booze. Candy. Cheese. Eggs. This was my diet for years. This is what forms many people’s diets. I’ll admit that mine was heavy on the cheese and booze and light on the fruits and vegetables, however. I watched the scale go up and up and the chins on my face multiply until I was seriously unhappy and beginning to have a lot of pain from carting around nearly 230 pounds on a 5’2″ frame. A change was in order, the more radical the better. So on the fourth of July, I started a new eating plan. One that I’m really excited about. One that has me down 9.6 pounds in 3 weeks.

Back in the 1980s, a book called Fit for Life was released. It was all about high water-content food and food combining. I bought a copy and thought it was great. Honestly, I was in my nascent phase of culinary exploration and was seduced by the cover art. All the colors, the vibrant health possibilities. The juicy fruits and substantial breads. No white bread or canned food in sight – so sexy!

The original Fit for Life cover

Obviously a lot of nutritional research has happened since the 1980s, and some of the “science” presented in the book just doesn’t wash. However, the freedom to eat until full has always been a deal breaker for me. I have tried (and failed) with diets that say I can only have 1/2 cup of rice and a piece of meat the size of my palm. That just makes me want more. I absolutely refuse to spend my life weighing and measuring the food that I eat, and that is a key part of Fit for Life.

You want fruit? Eat it! You MUST eat it! Whatever kind you of fresh fruit you want in whatever quantities you want on an empty stomach in the morning. Stagger your fruit intake throughout the morning. If you get hungry, eat more fruit! It will help flush out your body. This morning I had a fruit salad at 6 AM that contained mango, pineapple, blueberries, and raspberries. Then I ate 2 beautiful juicy peaches at 10:00.

Breakfast! Yummo!

You want pasta or rice or bread or grains or anything like that? Have a big bowl for lunch with veggies. Today I had cavatappi with broccoli, shredded carrots, cucumber, tomato, and a homemade herb/lime vinaigrette. Yum.

The only caveat of this plan is that you should eat concentrated foods (dairy, meat, grains, etc.) one at a time with veggies. So, no steak and baked potato, but a big, juicy grilled steak with some green beans sauteed in olive oil with garlic and a crispy green salad? Totally! Twice baked potatoes (no cheese) with steamed carrots and a plate of raw veggies to scoop out the potato pulp? Sure! I have been able to plan for my cravings with meals like this. Tonight I am having a large salad with a huge scoop of chicken salad. Because I wanted chicken salad.

The other facet of my new eating plan is the elimination of all sugar (including alcohol) and processed foods (except ketchup – I have yet to find a good ketchup recipe). I started making my own salad dressings and barbecue sauce. I use the spice blends I have perfected over the years to make tacos or other foods that used to rely on packaged mixes. I also deactivated my social media accounts because the stress I felt from seeing people sniping at each other made me want to eat and drink to escape from the animosity of the online community. That was a huge trigger for me.

I admit, the first four days of this new eating plan (the detox time) was brutally uncomfortable. I slept a lot, and had a four-day headache. But I stuck through it, and now I have abundant energy, and am sleeping better. The excess weight is coming off, which is no small thing, and my feet hurt so much less that I haven’t needed to take any NSAIDs since I started (like Tylenol, Advil, aspirin, etc.), and am able to walk more. Last week, my daughter and I walked nearly 2.5 miles around Cambridge doing our errands. It felt great!

So, I’ll continue to post about my progress with this eating plan and share recipes as they develop. Here’s to your health!

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North Country Roots

Week before last, my cousin Janine died quite unexpectedly. She was still young, one of the four children of my Aunt Jean. I have many fond memories of visiting my Grandma Buffo, Aunt Jean, and her kids in Heuvelton, NY in the summers of the 1970s.

Janine’s official Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Department photo.

Even though Janine and her kids lived in Oklahoma, her ashes were brought to the North Country of New York for burial with the love of her life, who predeceased her. She was buried next to my Grandpa, and my Aunt Jean’s ashes were laid to rest at the same time next to hers. It was profoundly touching to realize that there are 3 generations of my family together in eternity in the fertile North Country soil.

Even though the reason for my coming to the North Country was sad, seeing my cousins was joyful and involved lots and lots of food. There are a lot of regional foods in Northern New York, and I took advantage of them while I was there.

On the way up the Northway (I-87), I got off the highway at Warrensburg and stopped at Oscar’s Smokehouse. A fabulous place to buy all kinds of smoked meats and cheeses, I would buy from Oscar’s even if the food was only fair. You see, it’s owned by a stand-up guy. Oscar’s burned down in 2009, and he kept every single employee on at full salary while they rebuilt.

They sell online, so I would suggest that you check out their website. https://oscarsadksmokehouse.com/

Since I knew I would be attending a barbecue with my cousins the night I drove up, I bought a lot of food at Oscar’s. I brought chicken sausages with bacon, buffalo chicken sausages with blue cheese, smoked cheddar spread with bacon, teriyaki beef jerky, and smoked elk and venison sticks. I also bought a small tub of smoked turkey salad for me, along with liverwurst and a loaf of onion rye bread. Delicious!

At the barbecue, my cousin Jerry grilled burgers, dogs, and chicken. He also grilled a type of northern New York hot dog that is made down the road from his house – Glazier’s red hots. It’s a garlicky red dog with a natural casing. I ate mine without the bun, with no toppings, with my fingers. It was sooooooo good! (Sometimes you can find them at Sam’s Club, so if you have a membership, keep an eye out for them.)

At the reception following the burial, there were some amazing homemade dishes. Pretzel pie, macaroni and cheese, all manner of salad (some involving Jello), roasted meats, and banana cake. It’s a style of cooking borne of thrift, using the bounty of the preserved harvest and enough processed food for taste, with an eye toward keeping the hard working men and women of the North Country going through the frigid winters.

Because Louise knew I was going into farm country, she requested that I get farm fresh tomatoes. The Amish farm stand in Rensselaer Falls didn’t have any, but I found an incredible farm market in Potsdam called Martin’s Farm Market. What a place!

The cold room at Martin’s 

I bought a lot. Really a lot.

I bought kale, stuffing zucchini (giant ‘b’ zucchinis), a dozen ears of corn, a huge bucket of tomatoes (over a peck), basil, cilantro, chives, thyme, parsley, dill, zucchini, cucumber, butter lettuce, raspberry jam, potatoes, onions, hot peppers, eggplant, blueberries, and a liter (!) of pure Mexican vanilla extract. I spent $75 , which included the $20 bottle of vanilla and the $10 bucket of tomatoes. While I would have loved to stay up north and spend more time with my my family, I was eager to get home and start using the produce. So far, I’ve made:

• 2 tomato pies
• basil pesto
• hot corn and black bean salad
• corn on the cob
• green salad with lime herb dressing
• pico de gallo
• tofu scramble with carrots and herbs
• home fries with zucchini and hot peppers
• blueberries, mango, and cherries with yogurt and granola

Since I’m home with Louise, everything is vegan again. For the next week, I’ve got planned veggie burgers and eggplant fries, pasta with pesto, herbed cream cheese with bagels for breakfast, rustic guacamole, zucchini stuffed with spiced TVP and rice, Portuguese kale soup (it contains the Portuguese sausages linguica and chourico, and is non-vegan, but I’m giving it to my friend Lynda), and kale chips. I’m also going to make two more tomato pies and freeze them. Who knows what else I might dream up?

Send me your thoughts on other things I might make. I’m totally open to suggestions.

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New Beginnings, Life, and Granola

Hi there, everyone!

It’s been years since I last posted – my apologies for the absence! Here’s what’s been going on:

After going through the grieving process from losing both my parents to cancer, my marriage fell apart, and my husband and I divorced. While emotionally handling that breakup, I went through a year of hell at my job dealing with a stalker, so I decided to throw in the towel and make a move to another state. This involved packing up and moving, finding a new job and a new apartment, and starting over.

So here I am. Living down the street from Harvard University and MIT, in an un air-conditioned 3^rd walkup with my 25-year old daughter and a smart, kooky 3-legged cat we affectionately call Fuzzball. Fuzz was a rescue from the MSPCA about a year ago, where he’d been run over by some sort of vehicle, given up because his owners couldn’t afford the medical bills, and had one of his rear legs and tail amputated. About a week after his surgery he was climbing the 5’ walls of his cage, so we knew that, even though he was hurt and suffered major damage, he was a total fighter. Kinda like both of us.

When I moved here, I got a job at a tutoring company but less than 2 years later, I have been laid off due to financial troubles with the company. That position was with a start-up, and I had a boss that could be an abusive asshat but could also be funny and relevant, which has left me very confused. I imagine it not unlike escaping an abusive relationship with someone who constantly gaslights, so I’ve taken a few weeks off to seek the counsel of friends that I trust with the innermost groanings of my soul. I need to heal, and writing is part of that healing process.

I’m also on the hunt again for new employment, have had to find health insurance, and figure out a financial plan until a job turns up. I will be fine; I’m confronting my worries, and am looking forward, not backward. I am also cooking, which is massively therapeutic for me.

Readers of my blog know that I love food “formulas”, as they allow for great results with maximum creativity, so I’d like to share a recipe for a granola formula. Having to be very mindful of pennies these days, I started making my own granola because I refuse to spend $6 or $7 on an 8-oz bag of granola at the store. This recipe is based on a recipe by Cookie & Kate (cookieandkate.com) and is flexible, healthy, crazy easy, and cheap. It’s also totally vegan if you don’t use honey. Enjoy!

Granola with pumpkin, sesame, sunflower, and chia seeds

Coleen’s Granola Formula

4 cups old-fashioned oatmeal

1 ½ – 2 cups lumps (see note), raw and unsalted

½ – 1 tsp. sea salt (I use a scant tsp.)

½ tsp. cinnamon or pumpkin spice blend (optional)

½ cup melted coconut oil or vegetable oil (see note)

½ cup liquid sweetener (see note)

1 tsp. vanilla, almond, rum, or other extract

1. Preheat oven to 350F (177C). Line a baking sheet with a Silpat sheet or parchment or use a non-stick pan. I usually use a half-sheet pan (13” x 18”) with a Silpat lining.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the oats, lumps, salt, and cinnamon or pumpkin spice (if using).
3. Combine the oil, sweetener and vanilla in a bowl with a whisk. Pour over oat mixture and combine well with a spoon. Every piece should be coated. Pour onto your prepared sheet pan and level into an even layer.
4. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring and re-leveling every 15 minutes. This works best if you remove the pan from the oven and close the oven to maintain the temperature. The granola will eventually become golden. If your oven runs hot, set the oven temperature to 325F (163C) and use the same process. The batch I made this morning only took 45 minutes.
5. Remove the granola from the oven and let it cool on the sheet pan, stirring occasionally. Feel free to mix in your dried fruit at this point. When it’s completely cool, store in an airtight container or Ziploc bag at room temperature. It should last a good solid month at room temperature. Cookie and Kate say that you can freeze it, but I’ve never done that.

NOTES:

• Sweeteners:  Your sweetener can be anything liquid. I’ve used honey, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, and molasses and have had great success each time. If you use molasses, it’s kind of hard to tell the doneness of your granola by sight, so you’ll have to go by the toasted oat smell instead.
• Oils:  Using coconut oil gives you a crunchier granola. Keep an eye on it at the end of the cooking time, as it tends to brown faster as well. It doesn’t really get crunchy until it’s cool, so don’t expect much crunch right out of the oven. You can also use any vegetable oil or EVOO.
• A word about lumps:  I like each batch of my granola to be different. I have made seeded granola, which contains a total of 1 ½ – 2 cups of a combination of pepitas, sunflower, sesame, and chia seeds. I have made maple/walnut granola which is sweetened with maple syrup and the lumps are chopped walnuts and currants. Our current batch is pecan granola. Contains nothing but oats and pecan halves. If you want to add dried fruit, feel free to include it in the 2 cups, but don’t add it until the granola comes out of the oven! Baked dried fruit is pretty awful. Use raw nuts if possible, and always use unsalted nuts. It’s a taste thing.

Granola with chia and pumpkin seeds, almonds and cashews, cranberries, blueberries, and raisins

Pecan granola

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Be Careful What You Ask For

The other day, on my Facebook page, I bemoaned my lack of knowledge in contemporary culture, most notably film. It seems that for the past 40 years or so, I’ve missed out on a lot of movies that I should have seen, what with having a career that took me all over the world, and raising a kid, and all that. So I posted the following picture of four movies I had just taken out from the library, along with a request for titles of movies I absolutely must see.

Holy Smokes! I was not expecting the response. Friends gave me the names of their favorite movies from the past 40 years, as well as some from the Golden Age of Hollywood in the mid-1900s. I collected all the titles in a little spiral notebook. Then some friends asked for a copy of the list. Egads, all that typing!!

So, without further ado, I give you my social life for the next year. I have omitted what I’ve already seen, but if you would like to add to my list, please do! (Also, if I’ve screwed up a name, please let me know so I’m not looking for a movie that doesn’t exist. Thanks!)

#
8 Seconds
10
16 Candles
The 40-year-old Virgin
A
The Abyss
The African Queen
American Beauty
An Affair to Remember
As Good As It Gets
B
Bachelor Party
Beaches
A Beautiful Life
A Beautiful Mind
Best in Show
Better Off Dead
Big
The Big Chill
Big Fish
Big Trouble in Little China
The Birdcage
Blaze
The Blind Side
The Bone Collector
Borat
The Book of Eli
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Boyhood
Brave
Braveheart
The Breakfast Club
Bridges of Madison County
Bull Durham
The Burbs
C
Caddyshack
Casablanca
Catch Me If You Can
Chocolat
Clueless
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Cradle Will Rock
Crazy Stupid Love
Crybaby (Johnny Depp)
D
Dead Poets Society
The Devil Wears Prada
Don’t Look Now (we’re being shot at)
Dragonfly
Driving Miss Daisy
The Duff
E
Edward Scissorhands
Elizabeth
Elizabeth I (BBC)
Escape from New York
Event horizon
Ever After
Everything Is Illuminated
F
Fast Times at Ridgemont high
Father of the Bride
A Few Good Men
Field of Dreams
Flight Club
Finding Neverland
Flicka (Tim McGraw)
French Kiss
Friday Night Lights
Fried Green Tomatoes
G
Gandhi
G.I. Jane
The Gift
Goonies
The Great Outdoors
The Green Mile
Grosse Point Blank
H
Hairspray
Harold and Maude
Heart and Soul
Heartburn
High Fidelity
Highlander
The Holiday
Hook
Hope Floats
Howard’s End
The Hunger Games
I
Il Orfanado (Spain)
Indiscreet
Interstellar
Into the West
Invictus
It’s Complicated
J
Jack
Jacobs Ladder
Jerry Maguire
John Q
K
Kung Fury
L
Labor Day
Ladyhawk
Lady Jane
The Lake House
Last Ounce of Courage
The Last Samurai
A League of Their Own
Life Is Beautiful (in Italian)
Like Water for Chocolate
Lonesome Dove
Lord of the Rings
The Lost Boys
Lost in Translation
Love, Actually
Ludwig (Luchino Visconti)
M
Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
The Maltese Falcon
Man on Fire
A Mighty Wind
Million Dollar Baby
The Mirror Has Two Faces
Mona Lisa Smile
Moonrise Kingdom
Moonstruck
Mr. Holland’s Opus
Mrs. Doubtfire
Must Love Dogs
My Sister’s Keeper
Mystic Pizza
N
The Notebook
Notorious
Now Voyager
Now You See Me
O
O Brother, Where Art Thou
On Golden Pond
P
Pan’s Labyrinth
Patch Adams
Pearl Harbor
The Philadelphia Story (Hepburn, grant)
Phoebe in Wonderland
The Piano
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pitch Perfect
Places in the Heart
The Power of One
Predator 1
Predator 2
The Prince of Tides
The Proposal
The Protector
Pursuit of Happyness
Q
R
Rear Window
Rebecca
Red
Red Violin
Remains of the Day
Remember the Titans
The Right Stuff
Road House
S
Saint Elmo’s Fire
Say aAything
Schindler’s List
Scream (all of them)
Secondhand Lions
Se7en
Seven Years in Tibet
Shaun of the Dead
The Shawshank Redemption
Signs
Simon Birch
Sissi (1953)
Six Pack
Sleepless in Seattle
Sleepy Hollow
Slumdog Millionaire
Smokey and the Bandit
Soft Fruit
Something’s Gotta Give
Somewhere in Time
Spaceballs
Steel Magnolias
Suspicion
Sweet Home Alabama
T
Terms of Endearment
Thin Blue Line
The Thing
To Catch a Thief
Trip to Bountiful
The Tudors
U
Uncle Buck
Under the Tuscan Sun
The Usual Suspects
V
The Village
W
A Walk to Remember
The Water Diviner
Wedding Crashers
What about Bob
What Dreams May Come
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
When Harry Met Sally
While You Were Sleeping
White Queen
Willow
The Women
X
Y
You’ve Got Mail
Z

Series/Miniseries
Ashes to Ashes
Blue Blood
Breaking Bad
Gettysburg
House of Cards
Law and Order
Life on Mars
Monarch of the Glen (Netflix)
North and South
Power Watch
Roots

He Would Be Proud

The cavernous white interior of St. Therese’s church was glowing in the late afternoon sun. He lay at the feet of Jesus in a humble pecan casket lined in white, dressed simply in a long sleeved shirt and black pants. The rosary beads we found at his bedside were in his hands, the Miraculous Medal and wedding ring he had carefully removed before they brought him to the hospital were back on him where they belonged. He will be buried with all three.

When we first stepped into the church, my breath caught in my throat. The only vivid color in the church was the blood red stripes of the American flag draping his casket. The funeral director had waited for us to arrive before carefully folding it back and opening the lid. That was the only moment today that tears filled my eyes, because I was suddenly so proud of him and so proud to be his daughter.

Dad was an Air Force veteran, serving in post-World War 2 Germany as a radio mechanic. Achieving the rank of Staff Sargeant, he received three medals during the course of his service, although we have been unable to find them. He didn’t talk too much about his military service, preferring to downplay his contribution, but he was a proud and responsible American. He voted in every election and was actively involved in the election process. He raised the flag in front of our house every morning, and lowered it every evening. He taught us how to respect it, fold it, store it, and dispose of it. He took us to Washington DC so we knew the capitol was a real place. We had reproduction copies of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence in our house and he made sure we knew who the Founding Fathers were.

Dad would have been proud to know that, on his final trip to the church he loved so much, he would be lying under the flag of a country he loved so much.

Joy in Pain

“Well, we all like things to be predictable, don’t we? We expect things to be safe and to keep on happening just the way they always have. We expect the sun to rise in the morning. We expect to get up, survive the day and finish up back in bed at the end of it, ready to start all over again the next day. But maybe that’s just a trick we play on ourselves, our way of making life seem ordinary. Because the truth is, life is so extraordinary that for most of the time we can’t bring ourselves to look at it. It’s too bright and it hurts our eyes. The fact of the matter is that nothing is ever certain. But most people never find that out until the ground suddenly disappears from beneath their feet.”
― Steve Voake, The Dreamwalker’s Child

Sunday night I called my Dad from the road. I had stopped for a break somewhere in Missouri, and just wanted to hear his voice. He sounded good. He was still in the hospital, but was fully hydrated, thanks to an IV line. His speech, which had been horribly slurred and difficult to understand, was clear. You could hear in his voice that he was tickled I was almost there, and would be there the next day. We exchanged “I love you”s and hung up.

I was stoked that he was sounding so good, and started imagining all the things we were going to do – playing cards, maybe making a puzzle, sitting and talking about Life, drinking a sip of port or scotch or beer. A sip is about all he could handle – he hadn’t eaten in over a week due to the tumors pressing on his stomach.

Climbing into my car at 3 am, exhausted after the previous day’s 1000 mile drive, I was determined to make the final push to Albuquerque and get Dad out of the hospital and back into his house. I had to pull over and close my eyes a few hours later, but I kept on going.

Then my sister called.

“Bad news…” uh oh

Dad had died in his sleep peacefully around 8:00 am.

I pulled off the highway – well, that’s sort of wrong. I didn’t gracefully put on my blinker and ease to a stop. I slammed on the brakes and swerved to the shoulder, winding up directly under the Exit 40 sign (Elk City, OK, if you’re curious). I put my head on the steering wheel and sobbed big, heaving sobs. Then I texted the only person I could think of, and he called me back immediately and listened to me blubber. I have no idea what I said…

After we hung up, I pushed back the tears, texted a few friends and family to let them know what was happening, and looked at the road. I took a deep breath, sat up straight, blew my nose and wiped my eyes, and pulled back onto the road. I still had 7 hours to go and, damn it all, I was going to get there.

As I drove, I thought about impermanence. I thought about how none of us really knows from minute to minute what lies ahead, and the only thing we can do is be flexible and roll with life, grabbing it by the horns and living it. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, said,

“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.”

As that floated through my head, it occurred to me that my suffering was because of MY expectations about the coming weeks, and MY loss and how it affected MY life. I shifted my perspective to think about what his own death meant to Dad.

It meant that he went to see Mom on her birthday (yes, he died on my mom’s birthday).
It meant that she most likely greeted him with huge platters of homemade food and exotic cheeses and fruit and fresh, crusty loaves of bread – a feast to celebrate his arrival. I bet she even made a cheesecake.
It meant that he got to hold my sister Maureen in his arms again for the first time in 40 years. I can only imagine the emotion in that hug.
It meant that he could breathe freely and laugh again.
It meant that he could have a tall, cold German beer.
It meant that he could sit and talk with his mother and father. He never really knew his father, who died when he was only three.
It meant that his pain was gone.

When I started thinking about his death from that perspective, taking myself out of the equation, I became joyful. I cried again, but they were happy tears over the fabulous day he must be having. There were so many good things happening all at once for a man who sacrificed so much of himself here for so many people. How could I be sad?

So, despite my loss, I choose to rejoice over the fact that I had this lion of a man in my life for 51 years. I rejoice that he was my father, and taught me through his actions about honesty, integrity, morality, compassion, and love. I rejoice that I was privileged enough to witness his passionate focus, his sacrifices for his family, his determination, and his ability to overcome heartbreak. I rejoice to know he is walking somewhere, fingers intertwined with my mother’s, whistling as he goes.

Sleep well, Dad. See you in about 40 years…

Divine support

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.” – Paul Coehlo

When I made the decision to spend time with Dad as he transitions from this life to the next, I was not prepared for the speed at which his illness would progress. News of his diagnosis came this past Tuesday, and I felt that getting there on April 13^th would be soon enough. That gave me time to put my belongings in storage and get to Albuquerque. After talking to his parish priest on Thursday, who told me how weak Dad was, I moved up my departure to Sunday (Easter). This morning I got a text from the deacon who checks on him every day. Yesterday he was hospitalized because he was unable to get out of bed. Depending on who you talk to, he was either unconscious or sleeping when the deacon arrived. So he was brought to hospital next door where he refused medication of any kind.

Stubborn Irishman…

He is on IV fluids, and will not be released until Hospice care has been arranged and there is someone in the house with him all the time. He is frustrated that he is not home, and I am frustrated that I am not there yet.

This morning I went to the bank to let them know that I was relocating temporarily to New Mexico until Dad’s illness had concluded. Silly me forgot that one of the assistant managers is a former student and Facebook friend of mine. She came out and said everything would be taken care of and I just had to let her know when I got back. Then she hugged me and told me to take care. It was all I could do not to burst into tears right there in the bank. I choked out, “It’ll be alright, right?” and she responded quietly, “Yes.”

There has been such an outpouring of support for my sister and I over the past week. My heart is full of the love and compassion that have been directed toward us. I know that, as difficult as the coming weeks may be, I am not alone; there are hundreds of hands holding me up when I feel like falling. It is in those moments, when I am at my most raw and unprotected, I know that I am catching a rare glimpse of the divine in my friends and family. Each smile, each kind word, each hug, and each look of concern are windows to the Sacred and give me untold courage and strength.

Thank you. Just thank you.

The Decision

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” – Pema Chödrön

My dad has cancer. There, I said it. He doesn’t just have some small, localized, fixable cancer. He has the kind that spread all over his internal organs, insidiously invading his whole body. There are tumors hanging on his insides like ripe fruit on a tree, but this fruit can’t be picked. There’s no way to operate and remove his cancer. It dangles, tauntingly, putrefying on the branch, destroying everything it touches.

So we have begun a waiting game. He, waiting for the inevitable reunion with my mother, my sister Maureen and his next adventure in a place unknown to us. Me and my sister Kat, waiting for the inevitability of losing a man whose presence has always been steady and unfailing.

The writer Jane Green, in her book The Beach House, said, “Nothing in this world happens without a reason. That we are all exactly where we are supposed to be, and then the pieces of the puzzle have a tendency to come together when you least expect it.”

There is truth here. Decisions made by a family member living close to my father, the breakdown of my marriage, the independence of my daughter, a contractual obligation that I move out of my apartment by the end of June, are all pieces of my puzzle that, when completed, reveal a perfectly clear picture of what I need to do in response to my father’s diagnosis. I will be moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the duration of his illness, which according to the doctors is expected to be between three weeks and three months. I will be vacating my apartment, putting my belongings in storage, and hitting the road with only the desire to make my father’s last weeks on this earth joy filled and loving.

This was a remarkably easy decision to make. There is, despite my poor skills at keeping in touch, nothing more important to me than my family and friends. I routinely forget to send birthday cards, frequently forget to update my family on changes in my life, and don’t have the best track record for staying in touch. However, that just means I’m a poor communicator, not that I love any of them with any less than my full heart.

It is my hope that this blog will afford me an outlet. It is a chance to chronicle my father’s journey as well as my own journey toward becoming a more whole, compassionate human being. I would like to talk about the lessons I learn, the things my father teaches me, and small moments of each day. I would like to share the joyful and loving moments, and the moments of heartbreak as well. I will share his humor, his stories, and reveal the lion among men that he is. My father has lived an extraordinary life, one that is part of a lineage that has its roots in Ireland’s County Roscommon. I am honored to have the opportunity to share the end of his life with him.

This is going to be a fairly raw journey, to pretend otherwise would be to lie. I have to remember, however, that there is still much joy to be had in my father’s life. There is still much living to be done, and so I will help his failing body accomplish what his strong soul still reaches for… And Life goes on.

“Before us great Death stands
Our fate held close within his quiet hands.
When with proud joy we lift Life’s red wine
To drink deep of the mystic shining cup
And ecstasy through all our being leaps—
Death bows his head and weeps.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke