One day at a time

I’ve been avoiding this blog… mostly because I’m still wandering about in the land of loss, pain and disbelief. I’m beginning to wonder if anyone intimately touched by violence, anyone left bereft by violence, ever really leaves this place fully.

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We thought at the beginning that Aaron had shot Jude and then himself; that was the first report we got. Later on we discovered that Jude had shot Aaron – during an episode of domestic violence – and then killed herself.

I tell myself that I don’t understand, that I’ll never understand, why Jude – and for that matter, Aaron – had to die like that. But I think, if I’m honest with myself, I can all too easily understand.

There comes a point when abuse and violence boil over and all the sane responses flee and all the possibilities narrow to one, single, destructive option.  And while none of us will ever really know for certain what happened, I believe with all my heart that Jude did what she did because at that moment, a moment that probably seemed like a hellish eternity, there was only one possibility.

People talk about abuse victims like gossips over the back fence with a particularly salacious story to share. They wonder why women stay with abusers. They wonder why we don’t just leave when he hurts us… I can tell you. Abuse makes us vulnerable. It’s like the wind in the desert, eating away at your strength, your will, your ability to make rational decisions. It eviscerates the you that you thought you were. Pretty soon you’re like one of those gravity-defying formations – at risk of being toppled by the next big blow. You’ll grasp at any promise, at any and all the insufficient apologies, trying to shore yourself up. You’ll do your damnedest to make things work because you know – you really know – that you’re not nearly strong enough to walk away.

Some of us eventually find a way to leave... too, too many of us do not.

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I understand why it’s called heartache…

About the time it seems that I’m doing better I discover that the unbelievable pain is still there – it grabs me and throws me to the ground again, leaving me broken and defenseless.  People keep trying to give me solace. I love them for it, but…

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I am so looking forward to the day when my thoughts of Jude are the kind of happy memories that everyone tells me I should be thinking.

I love you Jude. I'll miss you forever.

Today is Dad's Birthday

He'd be 82. I miss him.

I wish he was here so that I could call him, although I rarely did (*shame*) when he was alive.

He was born in 1929 - the end of the Roaring Twenties - the same year as Martin Luther King Jr., Dick Clark, Grace Kelly, Imelda Marcos, Audrey Hepburn, Anne Frank, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Yassar Arafat,   and countless others.

In the months before his birth Mother Teresa arrived in Calcutta, a revolt (José Gonzalo Escobar and Jesús María Aguirre) failed in Mexico, and Herbert Hoover was inaugurated as the 31st U.S. President.

He was 3 months old when the first public demonstration of color TV was conducted.

He was 4 months old when a secret decree in Russia created the gulags and the Geneva Convention was signed.

He was just 7 months old when the Stock Market crashed.

He was not quite 8 months old when the 7.2 magnitude Grand Banks earthquake occurred, snapping transatlantic telegraph cables and triggering a tsunami.

He was 8 months old when the Museum of Modern Art opened in NYC.

During my father's first year Pablo Picasso painted two cubist works, Woman in a Garden and Nude in an Armchair, the first Academy Awards were given, and Popeye debuted in the comics. ^Source

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Let me tell you about him...

He was extraordinary in his willingness to examine any topic, any idea, any belief that he held. If you had a good argument or explanation he'd be willing to meet you halfway.

He taught me how to look at a problem as something that had a solution, rather than an insurmountable obstacle to complain about.

He taught me how to use tools, how to fix things, how to be more independent and sure of my self than most young women.

He wasn't all that comfortable with us as babies, but as we became able to "do" stuff with him he enjoyed our interactions. He got better with babies as time went along, and was a pro with his grandkids.

He loved cars, and motorcycles and trucks - loved reading about them, looking at them, shopping for them, having them, fixing them, giving them to us.

He often had pit passes to the Indy 500 and Daytona.

He wanted to live to be 100, but said, as he was dying "I've had a great life, not too many regrets. Take care of your mother for me..."

More about my dad

^{Source: Wikipedia}

The Greene County Daily World

Dad's obituary was in the weekly paper one year ago today, along with a photo of him with his motorcycle (although they cropped most of the motorcycle out of the image). It said:

Keith L. May, 78, of Linton, passed away at 8:45 p.m., Friday, August 31, 2007 at his residence.
He was born on March 25, 1929, the son of Curtis and Emma (Wilson) May. He served in the U.S. Army and was a veteran of the Korean War. He worked as a truck driver, a regional service representative for Fiat, a service manager at a foreign car dealership, and later worked for Williams Brothers Pharmacy in delivery until his retirement in July of 2007. He was a memeter of the Bloomington Masonic Lodge and the Linton Goldwing Club.
Survivors include his wife whom he married June 22, 1956, Constance E. (Johnston) May of Linton; two daughters, Monta Gael May (Wes Miller) of Winona, MN and Michelle (Chris) Mattox of Bloomfield; two sons Aaron Douglas May (Jennifer Sparks) of Bloomfield and Brian Keith (Susan) May of Atoka TN; two sisters Mary Jo May of Bedford and Wanda Rush of Bloomington; one brother, Bill May of Bedford; 11 grandchildren Aluna, Nova, Sheba, Emerald, Eli, Aaron (Erin), Tena, Rebecca, Jessica, Blaise and Ava; and two great-grandchildren Taylor and Dominic.
He was preceded in death by his father Curtis May; mother Emma May-Stancombe; and a brother Harry May.
Memorial services were held at the Welch & Cornett Funeral Home, Linton Chapel, at 11:00 on Tuesday.
Online condolences can be sent to the family at www.welchcornett.com.

There was also a color photo of dad on the front page of the paper.

The week's front page headlines were:
Counterfeit bills surface in Linton
Police have suspect in bomb threat cases
Families help break ground on new homes
Music fesitval exceeds expectations

We were already home in Winona when the weekly paper came out. My mother got copies of the paper for all of us. I have copies of the newspaper for all of the kids. I haven't given them to them. The papers are sitting on my dresser. This is the first I have looked at them in a year.

The last time I saw my father

Last year at this time I saw my father for the very last time.

He was laying on a table in the mortuary. Cold and smooth. I touched his face, I held his hand, I could not let him go without doing those things.

9-1-2007

I started this blog on August 2nd of last year. I had just learned my father was dying of lung cancer. The bridge in Minneapolis had just collapsed, or was collapsing - I cannot quite remember the order of things.

One year ago yesterday, one year and 12 hours ago, my father died. I was on the road, desperately trying to get there before he passed on. I did not make it.

One year ago today I was helping with funeral arrangements, trying to transfer airline tickets for our daughters and granddaughter to fly in from Las Vegas, and trying to arrange a ticket for our son, Eli, to fly down from Winona (he stayed home since we had more people than would fit in the station wagon and we never dreamed my father would die that night).

Eli's ticket was not a problem. Transferring the girls' tickets was a nightmare. In the end we ended up spending nearly $3,000 for the airline tickets we purchased that day and the ones we had purchased two days before, since they would not let us transfer the original tickets without paying fees and the difference between the ticket prices. That would have been more than buying new tickets, so we bought new tickets. After that we learned that the initial ticket order had been duplicated and so we owned 8 tickets. Nova and Taylor would fly in from Vegas that night. Aluna would fly in the next morning so that she could work her shift (it was impossible to get a substitute at that late notice). Eli would fly down from Minnesota that night, just a couple hours ahead of Nova and Tay. Eli doesn't drive, didn't drive, so Princess and Matt took him to the airport - a 2-hour drive from Winona.

I am amazed now, looking back, that it all worked out.

One year ago...

I made the biggest mistake I can remember making.

My father was dying. We knew this. Over the last few days he had nearly stopped eating. The lung cancer that had metastasized and taken up residence in his bones was winning. We knew it would, he knew it would - but we thought he had a few months to live. They told us at the end of July that he had two to nine months to live.

The 31st was a Friday. Wednesday of that week my mother had called and said she thought he wasn't going to be with us much longer. I called the girls in Vegas right after that phone call and told them they needed to get to Indiana if they wanted to see their grandfather before he died. Nova had been there in July. Aluna had taken a new job that summer and did not feel that she could take time off. When I told her she needed to get to Indiana now, she went to her new boss and got the time off and made plans to fly herself, Nova and Tay out the following Tuesday.

What was my mistake you ask? The mistake I made was putting my job and my normal life ahead of my father and my family. In all honesty, none of us expected him to pass that day. So I went to work in the morning with plans to leave around noon.

It's a 10-hour drive from Winona to my parent's home in Linton Indiana. If I had piled everyone in the car and left early in the day we would have made it in time.

Instead, leaving at noon meant that we were somewhere between Bloomington/Normal and Danville, Illinois when my brother called to tell us that my father had passed away. They told me that he knew - as much as one can know in the final hours of life - that we were coming, but he just could not wait for us to be there. He died at 8:45pm.

I wasn't there. Forever I will know that my decision to work those 4 or 5 hours meant that I was racing down a highway in a futile attempt to be there when my father died.

I hate it sometimes, that my family is so spread out over the country. I know something like this will happen again.

Today has been rough

It has been five months since my dad died. I was not certain. I had to count on my fingers to figure it out.

Sometimes it feels like such a long time. Sometimes it feels like it just happened.

Cancer can be so hard on everyone. Both my parents had a brush with it. My father had colon cancer 14 years ago, and survived, miraculously considering the growth in his colon was the size of a large grapefruit. No one expected him to make it. My mother at that time had just lost her sister to pancreatic cancer and a good friend to ovarian cancer, and when she heard the doctor say that my dad had cancer she just sort of shut down. I had just moved back into their household with my five kids (ages 5 - 15), and was working full-time and going to school full-time too. I ended up at times being the primary caretaker for my dad since my mother had such a problem with it all. She had to disconnect a bit in order to get through it all. She knew it but could not help it. It was okay, after all. It was a way to get past it and go on.

About 7 years ago my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer (which did not show up adequately enough for a diagnosis on a mammogram until she'd had it for around two years). This time she was as solid as a rock about it all. I do not know if it was because it was her and not someone she loved that was facing it or what the reason was for the stoic and peaceful approach to the diagnosis and treatments. Perhaps it was because my father had survived his cancer... Maybe inside she was just as upset and simply did not feel she should burden us with that. I was not there much. I do not know.

Anyway she is healthy right now and has been for years now.

However, my father, during a routine checkup at the veteran’s hospital this past June, was told he had some "suspicious" spots in his right lung and something strange on one of his ribs. Next step, bone scans and more tests. In late July the diagnosis came back: Small Cell Lung Cancer - Stage IV, metastasized to left thigh, ribs, spine, left hip and skull, inoperable, 9 months maximum life expectancy. This time my mother took care of everything. Things that no one wants to do. I could not be there this time. I could not help very much at all.

I currently live 600 miles from my parents. It takes between 10 & 11 hours to get there by automobile. My father died on August 31^st at 8:45pm. I was somewhere in the middle of central Illinois, trying like mad to get there. I pulled into their driveway just before midnight. They had already taken my father’s body away. My mother fought with them trying to get them to wait for me. But the law required the hospice workers to remove his body from the home immediately.

For me, one of the hardest things about his death was that I waited until noon, because of some stupid meeting at work, to leave Minnesota and drive down to Indiana.

My daily battle is against the tendency to let that fact swamp me and take precedence over the fact that my family went to visit him as many weekends as we could during June, July and August and had wonderful visits, full of stories, tears and laughter each and every time. I did have some time to be with him with full knowledge that his days were limited and I would not be able to be with him any more.

The days that I can remember that go well.

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I miss my dad

It is very hard to remember that my father is gone. I keep thinking about things I need to tell him or show him. It is sort of funny, well not really, but I think about telling him things more often now than when he was alive. Used to be, I would go days, if not weeks, without actively thinking about him. Now I think about him all the time.

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4 Weeks

Last night marks four weeks since my father died. I tried not to think about it too much. I am not into avoiding thinking about it, but I do not want to dwell upon it either.

I wonder if Friday nights are always going to make me sad.

I see photographs of my father and I cannot imagine him gone. He is always so damn strong and vibrant and alive in the photographs. How could someone so present in the world be gone?

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Interstices - Part 3

There are two more fiber sculptures in my show. This one is called Glimpses in Time, and it tells the story of my father's life. It is hanging in the north room of the gallery.

Glimpses In Time: We All Tell Stories
Italian burlap, wooden dowel rods
approximately 60 inches x 96 inches x 72 inches
The two small works visible (on pedestals) are also my artwork
and will be featured in a later post. The work on the walls
is by the other artist in the show, Carol Faber.

Working with commercial fabric allows me to take work with me (sometimes, anyway). Abelisto and I went to a fabric wholesale outlet in the Twin Cities and bought 20 yards of this off-white Italian burlap. I experimented with using all sorts of substances to stiffen it enough that it would stand on its own - without luck. After wasting several yards (a pricey experiment - Italian burlap retails for $20/yard and wholesales for $8), I decided that none of that was going to work and I would have to use some really nasty, toxic chemicals to stiffen the fabric sufficiently. I am trying not to use those types of chemicals in my work anymore...

So I took another path, and created a work that would hang from the ceiling.

I started this piece on the trips to Indiana to be with my family during the last summer of my father's life. It has sections where I have pulled out the vertical threads, leaving only the horizontal ones. This creates visibly distinct sections - narrow and wide bands of open, semi-transparent areas.

So how, you ask, does this piece represent my father's life (and recent death)?

I took this piece with me when we first went to Indiana after learning that my father had terminal lung cancer, and each of the subsequent times we visited this past summer. During the days we spent there I worked on the piece on my mother's huge dining room table in the great room of my parents' house, the room where my father's hospital bed was set up. People would come and go - my brothers and sister, my aunt, the neighbors, friends of my father and mother, the hospice nurses. We we all told stories, lots of stories. The stories soaked into the artwork, the lines of thread being drawn out were the words of the stories, the gaps left behind were the feelings left when the stories were finished. The columns of drawn threads, narrow and wide, sometimes close together, sometimes farther apart, represent all of the lives that touched my father's.

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Home Again

We are back home now. We made fairly good time coming back - left around 8:30 (our time) and got to Winona around 6:30.

I only got sad once during the drive back.

It is impossible to believe that my father is gone. It does not feel real yet... I am not sure it ever will.

I miss him. Now and forever.

A very hard day...

We had a visitation and memorial service for my father today.

I made a video for the visitation. We scrambled for photographs, searching my mother and sister's numerous photograph albums, bought a scanner (my mother's had quit working ages ago), and I scanned about 30 photographs, color corrected and optimized them in Photoshop. I did not overly repair them. I wanted people to see the age of the photos - I just made the colors and contrast a bit better if the photograph was too faded. The wear and tear of old photographs is a big part of the story that each of them tells, to make them too pretty would be akin to telling a false story and I wanted to tell my father's story right and true. We found two of my father's cds - a jazz one and a classical one. I took one track off of each of them and imported all of it into Premiere, added timings, transitions and a title slide and rendered the whole thing through Encore to make a DVD that was set up to loop the movie over and over.

At the visitation people seemed to really enjoy the movie. They sat there smiling through their tears, telling stories about my father.

I mentioned before that he did not want to be displayed at a funeral. He did not want people looking at his body and "carrying on." I think I agree with the idea of being cremated. It was a very peaceful ceremony, and I am not sure it would have been so restful if there had been a body to cry over. I do not know, hopefully no one will be stuck without a way to heal because they did not see a body. The body is not the person. And cremation is what my father wanted. My mother did not agree, but she said she would do it for him. She said she did not want to be haunted. I am not quite sure if she meant that literally or not... she is a Celt after all.

Two ministers spoke, even though my father was not a church goer. One minister was the one from my mother's church. He is new (and very young - not actually a full minister yet, I think), and did not know my father well. He came over once during the last few weeks of my father's life and spoke with him. Even though he did not know my father well, he did very well presiding over the memorial service. The other minister was a friend of my father. He was one of my father's McDonalds breakfast compadres. He had a personal relationship with my father, and was able to speak about him directly.

After they both spoke the presiding minister asked if anyone else wanted to speak. I did not have anything prepared, but I could not let go of the tightness in my chest without speaking about my father. I spoke about his kindness and generosity, about the stories he told us, the stories he created just by living a true life. Actually I am not sure exactly what I said. I did not break down, but I got a bit weepy at the very end. My sister and mother and one brother thanked me for speaking, the other brother looked me in the eye and nodded. I took that as his approval.

After the service we went to a luncheon that my mother's church had prepared for us. Everyone at the service was invited, but only family and the church people came to the luncheon. We thought it was going to be a chore, but it was not. It was a very relaxed and peaceful meal.

1948 Triumph 1800 Roadster

At the funeral home, the room where my father's body was kept for us to view was accessed by passing through a garage. In the garage were two classic cars, carefully covered with tarps. One of them was a 1948 Triumph 1800 Roadster. When he noticed me peeking under the cover, the funeral home director pulled the cover back so that we could see the car.

The car was originally owned by someone who lived in Bloomington. My father worked at the imported car dealership in Bloomington and most likely worked on that very car...

We thought it was strangely comforting and totally appropriate that dad was being kept company by this wonderful old car that he had most likely touched 50 or so years ago.

Just so you know what a 1948 Triumph 1800 Roadster looks like, here is one. The one in the funeral home is dark brown, I think, with black fenders. It is perfect.

So are my memories of my father.

My father died last night...

while we were driving the long road to get to him. We were four hours away when he slipped away. Everyone says it was a very peaceful passing. The mortuary picked up the body before we got there. The hospice people picked up the bed and other equipment before we got there. When we walked in it was like it never happened.

There are several things I will wish forever - that we had started early in the morning, that we had come down the day before, that I had called him as much - or more - than I called my mother these last few weeks.

They told him I was coming. They said he tried really hard to wait for me. I never knew until today how much I really really love him. Right now I have this terribly hard knot in my chest that I cannot ever imagine going away.

He wants to be cremated. They call the ashes cremains - I never heard that word before today. The funeral home director was incredibly good. I thought it would be awful there. It was not.

I did get to see him. He is not being viewed, he does not want a traditional funeral where the body is displayed. He wants just a memorial service.

His body is not going to be embalmed - no make-up, no hairstyling. He looked very good today. None of that artificial look that usually disturb us so much at funerals. I am very glad to have gotten to see him. He truly looked like he was just resting - except for the fact that he was so very still and quiet. He never was a quiet sleeper, always catnapping, moving slightly, sleeping lightly.

I touched his hands, stroked them and curled my fingers inside his. I put my forehead against his and whispered to him, telling him how sorry I was that I could not be with him more these last few weeks, and that I loved him. I had to touch his arms, his face, his chest and legs and feet. I think it made the other people in the room uncomfortable.

My mother called again last night...

My father is dying right before her eyes, a little bit each day.

Yesterday he only had about a tablespoon of water - no food, no other liquids. He seemed to not know my sister.

I called my oldest daughter in Las Vegas and told her she needed to get to Indiana if she wanted to see him while there was any possibility that he would know her or her daughter.

We spent all day today trying to get airline tickets we could afford for her, my granddaughter, and my second daughter. We thought at first the hospice foundation that is associated with the hospice company that is taking care of my dad might be able to help. The people that come to the house to care for him and counsel my family said that there should be funding available.

However, with the increase in airline prices (partially due to the holiday weekend) and the less-than-stellar donation levels this year, we were told that they could only help us with one ticket. One ticket would not do, not at all.

So we kept hunting. Finally my daughter found tickets with US Airways, a red-eye flight that shortens their visit by a day, but is going to cost us considerably less than the $2000.00 we first thought we were going to have to spend. We bought the tickets directly from the airline, which usually costs more, but this time it did not.

So they will be flying out next Tuesday. I hope he is still alive by then. I hope he at least recognizes them at some point while they are there. I hope he does not die while they are there. I do not pray much, but I am praying hard for just those things, nothing more right now, nothing more.

We thought we would have more time with him. All the doctors said months, not weeks, not days, when he was diagnosed earlier this month with metastatic lung cancer. I think he is surprising everyone with his rapid decline.

Perhaps it is not a decline, or at least not a decline in his world. Since when is it a decline to be at rest, at peace, unafraid and calm. I think that is closer to an uplifting than a decline.

I would surely like to think about it in that way...

The days are speeding by, too fast, too fast...

I should have been calling more often. I keep telling myself "I will call tonight..." then I get home and get started on a project or a book, and the next thing I know, it is too late to call them. They live in a different time zone from us.

Last night I heard from my mother. My father is weakening more rapidly than we expected. He has not eaten - not more than a bite of cereal and a slice of canned peaches - in two or three days. He sleeps all but just a few hours. I do not think he will be with us much longer...

Early last week he went out to breakfast with a friend. The friend, a good friend, came and picked him up. He must have taken the wheelchair, loaded my father into and out of the vehicle and rolled him into McDonalds, and then reversed the process for the trip home.

Breakfast is the only meal that is even slightly worth eating at McDonalds.

When I was a kid, we never went to McDonalds when we went out to eat when my father was going along. He did not think it was real food. But sometime, sometime in the last 10 or 15 years, my father joined the McDonalds' breakfast clique. I find it interesting that no matter where you go, no matter what part of the country you are in, if you stop in a McDonalds early in the morning, it is full of retirees nibbling on egg mcmuffins and hot cakes, sausage biscuit sandwiches and egg burritos, drinking their coffee and juice and talking up a storm.

I think I like that. I wish I would have gone once or twice with my father.

My Father's Life

People keep asking how my father is doing.

I have no idea how to answer that. I sometimes just say "He is dying." That is the blunt truth, baring a miracle, he will die sometime soon.

Soon is relative though. Soon could be sometime in the next two months, or soon could be sometime in the next year. The uncertainty could get to be overwhelming.

But I do not want to hurt the kind people that ask. So, instead, I usually tell them about his strength... About his peace with all of this... He has said on more than one occasion, "I've had a good life..." and "I don't want people coming over and sitting there crying. I want to have good times with them now. They can cry later, when I'm gone..." I also tell people about wanting to be with him more often than I can be.

He wants all of us to have good memories - good memories from before he became so ill, and good memories of this time too. The first is easy - he has been a great father. The second, well, I am trying... but it is so hard.

I so resent the fact that circumstances have me 10 hours away from him. I would love to be able to check in with him more often. I would love to be able to stop by in the evening, bringing him a chocolate malt (his current food craving), or watch old BBC comedies with him.

I would like to be able to help my mother more too. I know she needs more breaks than she is getting. For so many years he was on the road most of the time - when they first married he worked as an over-the-road truck driver and was gone a great deal; then he worked at Imported Motors, in Indianapolis, driving up there on Monday morning and home on Friday evening; after that he worked for Fiat Roosevelt, with the same sort of schedule; then after a brief interlude working for one of the Fiat dealers, he returned to trucking; and finally, after retiring 10 years ago, he started working as a "drug-runner" for a pharmaceutical company, making deliveries to nursing homes and hospitals over a large area of the state.

During the time when he was away she was used to running things her way. When he was home, he could have it his way. This worked so well for both these strong individuals. Now things are so different for them. The changes have come so suddenly - until the cancer diagnosis last month, he was still working full-time.

Next time Abelisto and I drive down I want to send my mother off with one or two of my daughters, to spend the day in Bloomington or Terre Haute, shopping, eating out, relaxing and having fun together. Abelisto and I will stay with my father so that she can do this without worry or feeling guilty.

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More on the I-35W bridge collapse

I have been listening to the NPR and MNPR news broadcasts about the bridge collapse. So far, no one from SMU has been involved, although one of my co-worker's sons crossed the bridge just minutes before the collapse.

The NY Times has posted some articles and images of the collapse that convey the sadness without being intrusive. I so despise television news coverage with their reporters sticking microphones and cameras in the face of traumatized, grieving and lost people. Even more distasteful is providing a public venue for reality-show wannabees who show up at tragic events in order to get involved in other people's grief.

Not the most eloquent way to say this, I know...

NY Times articles
At Bridge Site, Search of River Moves Slowly
Last Words of Missing Echo as Relatives Wait for News
Survivor Recounts Terrifying Plunge
Stunned Victim Turns Hero

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