I'll Be Okay

 

Sometime between four in the morning and six thirty in the morning last Thursday, the man I lived with for twenty three years, passed away peacefully in his sleep. Mark had been having health problems for many years and this last year was a swift downhill slide to the end. I tried to avoid writing about Mark's illness in my blog out of respect for his wishes. The truth is that we knew he had end stage COPD for quite awhile. COPD is a terrible disease. With only ten percent of his lung capacity left, it felt to Mark as if he were being smothered. Some days were better than others, but the bad days were bad. In the end the disease affected other parts of his body. I honestly don't know how he lived as long as he did. Mark hadn't eaten more than a few morsels of food in the last four months, and nothing at all last week. If he managed to swallow half a spoonful of Jello, it came back up as fast as it went down. For the last two months Mark was totally bedridden and I did everything for him. Now he's gone and I won't have to watch him suffer anymore.

As for me, I miss him so much more than I thought I would. Occasionally I think I hear him calling for me, but I know he's not there. He did that often. He would call me into the bedroom for water, for help with his personal hygiene, and even when he wanted the channel changed on the television. I don't have that duty anymore and my time as a nurse is now over. So I will be okay. I'm not some fragile little flower. I can deal with the grief and sadness. For one thing, I have already started de-cluttering the house. I had refused to touch anything as long as Mark was still alive. I thought it would be disrespectful. The de-cluttering gives me something to do and really kind of gives me some joy. It helps me keep the sadness at bay. My only problem is speaking to family, friends, and others about Mark. Really, other than the sudden sobbing in the middle of a conversation, I am fine. So as long as I don't talk to anybody about Mark, I'm okay.

Rain, Shine, Sleet, Snow. Sure, Now Pull My Finger.

In 2006 Congress passed a bill that required the post office to fund their pension plan for seventy five years into the future at a cost of nearly eighty billion dollars. No other agency or private company has that mandate. So that was the first part of the plan to screw over the constitutionally required department so that private shipping companies could profit when USPS service degraded for lack of money. Fourteen years later we have a crazy person who puts in a new postmaster general, and that guy proceeds to kneecap the post office. 

So  that's where we are, and that's why my mail that used to come every day, has stopped arriving. We have a regular letter carrier who does a very good job when she is working on our street. However, if she goes on vacation or has a day off, or if she is reassigned for a week to another route, we get no mail. That happened last week. No mail on Monday, or Tuesday. No mail on Thursday, Friday or Saturday. And I checked, none of our neighbors got mail either. Don't try to pull the wool over a retired guy's eyes. I'm home all day and I can see if there's a mailman on our street. Now, did you notice? I didn't mention Wednesday. That's because we did get mail last Wednesday. The only problem is that we got somebody else's mail. And the guy next door got somebody else's mail, and the people on the other side got my mail. And so on, and so on, and so on. The entire block on our side of the street got mail one house off from where it was supposed to go. I went out and corrected four of the deliveries. But hell, it's not my job. My job as an old retired fart, is to call the post office on Monday and bitch at the person who answers the phone. Seriously, I wanted to unload. But I couldn't. The lady who answered the phone couldn't have been nicer, and so concerned when I told her about the Wednesday delivery.

"Oh, really? Every house? That carrier should be fired."

"No don't do that. Just make sure she can read and count."

"Well I'll do that. Now what is your address and name? I want to be sure we take care of you."

I hesitated. Would there be reprisals for snitching I wondered? But she was too nice to do that, so I told her. The nice lady then assured me that there would be mail. She also assured me that the outgoing mail I had waiting would be picked up. That included a letter to Mom. So I sure hope some angry person at the post office doesn't spit on it, fold it, and/or mutilate it. You know, just to get back at me for being a whiney bitch.

Mom One Year Later

 

It was about a year ago this month that we moved Mom out of her house and into a small apartment at a very nice 'retirement' facility. It really is nice. Not like one of those places that smell like urine the minute you walk through the front door. I used to go into those places to fix the med machines and I could always tell which were nice, and which were shit holes just by the aroma. Anyway, Mom was not happy about the move. She did not want to leave the home she and Dad had built nearly thirty years ago. I can understand that. On the very first evening that Mom was in her new apartment I got a call. It was Mom. 

"Alan, do you know what they did to me?" 

"Um.... "

"They kidnapped me and put me in this place. I don't even know where I am."

So I had to explain to Mom that I was one of the 'they' she was talking about, and I had to tell her just why she was there. I also had to give her explicit details on exactly where she was in relation to her old home. That might have been a mistake, because she probably started planning her escape that very evening. Luckily they have people watching the doors and Mom wasn't going anywhere soon. For weeks and months I continued to visit her every Wednesday for lunch, just as I did when she lived in her own house. I got to meet her 103 year old table mate and a few of the other characters there. Funny thing, it's a lot like a high school. There are cliques. I'm sure one of those cliques is comprised of mean girls who made it to old age, because they always gave us a sort of sneering stare when Mom and I passed by their table. For many months Mom was pissed about being "dumped" there. No matter that she was getting more visitors than any other resident, she felt abandoned. Then right around the beginning of March when she seemed to be settling in, the goddamned covid19 thing happened and the place was quarantined. Nobody in or out except for employees. We've been able to do 'facetime' on the computer with her. We've also had a couple of supervised outdoor visits where Mom was kept at least eight feet away from her visitors. At eight feet it's hard to determine her moods. But now a funny thing has happened. Mom seems to be happy there. I call her on her new high fidelity phone and she seems happy. I assume that because she hasn't asked me to help her escape in months. 

 

Goodbye to Summer

 

The Tuesday after Labor Day. It means nothing to me now, but sixty years ago it was depressing. The night before, on Labor Day at nine in the evening, Mom and Dad would send us up to bed. Nine was our bedtime, but on Labor Day it meant something different. It was the last day of the Fall Festival at Memorial Park. Three days of fun. A carnival, lady wrestlers, the ping pong ball drop (Ping pong balls dropped from a helicopter. The color ping pong ball you caught meant you had either won a prize or a free ride at the carnival if you didn't get trampled.), and the big parade. Fun times, but at nine in the evening on Labor Day it all ended in a fantastic display of fireworks. We could see those fireworks from my sister Peggy's bedroom window. So there we would be, a gaggle of kids in our pajamas watching the explosions. Oohing and aahing with each burst of color. And then the grand finale. Five minutes of explosions, one right after another, one bigger, louder, and brighter than the last one. As the last glowing ember drifted to the ground I would realize it was all over. Summer was over. Early the next morning we would be getting ready for school. It wasn't like it is now where school starts sometime in the middle of August or earlier. In the 1950s school started the day after Labor Day. A stark line between summer and drudgery. For some reason I never grew to like school. I never could understand the kids who seemed happy to be back in school. I'm not sure why. I do love learning. I always loved reading. I just don't know.... I'll just blame it on the nuns. Something about them simply didn't inspire a love for school. More like a feeling of S&M.

Flat Zach

I got an email from my grandnephew, Zach's third grade teacher. 

"Hello Zachary's Family,

Thank you so much for wanting to participate in our "flat" project. We have been reading Flat Stanley in class. It is about a flat boy who can travel in the mail because he is so flat!

Each year the kids usually send flat versions of themselves to family members of friends around the country or world and those people send back pictures, list of facts, or cool things from their area. Due to the current climate of the world, we cannot do that this year. Instead we are sending our flat versions via email (see attached picture). If you can, please email back pictures, videos, and/or facts about where you live! You can be as creative as you like!

Thank You"

Flat Zach's avatar. He made it himself

 So this is what I sent back to his teacher.
 ________________________________

Welcome to Chicago, Flat Zach

First let's visit with your great grandmother and a bunch of your grand aunts and grand uncles, at your grand uncle Alan's house in Chicago.

Behind your grand uncle Alan's house is an alley. There are 1,900 miles of alleys in Chicago that run behind most homes and businesses. The alleys are used by the garbage trucks and allow residents to park in garages behind their homes.

Now let's take the 'el' train downtown to the "Loop". The Loop is so called because the elevated train runs above the streets in a loop around the main business area. Then they branch out to all areas of the city. There are 103 miles of track that take trains above the street and under the street. And even when the train goes underground, in Chicago they still call it the 'el'.

This is Willis Tower, once called Sears Tower. At one time it was the tallest building in the world. On the 103rd floor of the building is a glass balcony that you can walk out onto.

Now Look down. You're 1,353 feet above the street.

Now let's go for a boat ride out on Lake Michigan. Chicago sits at the southern end of Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes. It is over 300 miles long and over 110 miles wide at the widest point. It is also where Chicago gets its drinking water. To protect that water from pollution the City of Chicago built a lock on the filthy Chicago River so it would run backwards. That was so all of Chicago's pollution would flow towards the Mississippi River instead of into the lake. Since then they have cleaned the pollution from the river, but it still flows backwards.

One last place I'd like to show you. Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Maybe your mom and dad will take you there some day. I'm going to email you back to Florida now because I don't think you'd like to hang around here in the winter. It's not like Florida at all in the winter.