Green Oak Ranch

The summer after I was made a deacon, my mother sent my brother Gene and me to Green Oak Ranch, located in the rolling hills of scrub oak and Manzanita trees, about 20 miles from our home.

When we arrived at camp, we learned one thing vey quickly: There would be fun—horses, the ocean,  horseshoes, tag, kick-the-can at night. There would also be Bible study—a lot of Bible, taught by heavily muscled athletes from Biola College , UCLA and the famous Bob Jones University, a Christian College for those interested in Christian ministry.

Gene and I met some of the nicest, kindest, accomplished Bible teachers we would ever meet outside our own LDS religion. The memories and the songs live on, which means that at times we have while walking around the BYU-I campus,  broken into a healthy outburst of “Do Lord, Oh Do Lord,” or “Gone, Gone, Gone, Yes, My Sins are Gone,” songs we learned at night around the campfire or on the bus on the way to the ocean.

Clyde Cook would stand tall at the front of the bus and swing his gorilla-like arms in  large circles, pitching the left side of us happy campers against the right side. We all sang loud but not pretty.

At lunch we were always on the look-out for an elbow-leaner. “Get your elbows off the table, Clyde Cook,” And on it would go.

The teaching came straight from the Bible—stories told with vigor and imagination. Paul Denton, who had calves like Steve Reeves and had played football at UCLA, pulled us bodily into the world of Daniel, along with his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, living  on “tossed salad and raw vegetables, defying the king’s orders to munch on prime gazelle rib, pork chops, and chasing  all that rich red meat with plenty of heavy wine.”

And when Paul got to the lions and Daniel, we felt like we were inside the San Diego Zoo or even better, running wild and free on the open Serengeti.  But there was one more thing even better than the raw cucumbers and the cowering lions:  Grace Jenkins.

I had no words as a 13-year old to describe her beauty.  My allusions  will be a hoot for my grandchildren and ancient history for older folks.  What about, say, Hedy Lamar [Delila], Rita Hayworth [Bogie’s Babe] or a budding black-haired starlet who had turned the world upside down as a child in National Velvet.  A year later, after the “Grace” shock, I would fall hopelessly in love with Elizabeth Taylor, pursued as hopelessly by a poor underdog named Monty Cliff in A Place in the Sun.

The heavenly vision of Grace Jenkins, dimmed, however, when three days before camp’s conclusion she married the heavily-muscled golden-voiced Paul Denton.  Broken hearts everywhere, betrayal and pain.  Ralph Waldo Emerson promises us “compensation,” however, and my brother and I were more than repaid by knowing our tent leader, Mr. Peepers.

Short [which is a good thing], dark-haired and bespectacled, he entered our tent and told us his real name.  Too late.  I was already naming people and this guy was definitely an instant replay [a phrase which did not even exist in the 50s] of a show called, yes, Mr. Peepers.

He graciously accepted the accolade and responded in a soft southern drawl saying, “you all want to love each other and get along and never forget each other or Christ.” And that was his mission statement.  His humility and patience amidst pillow fights and contraband candy crunching taught us more than all the words we heard each day.

The last night before leaving, we all had to say something about our commitment to Christ, then we threw a pinecone in the fire.  I mumbled something about “being a new Larry Thompson” and then tossed my token of penitence into the fire.  However, the flames consumed the cone in about the same amount of time it took me to be a forget that “new” person I said I was.

My brother, Gene, as he has continued so, stuck to his pinecone vow and held on to his little green Gideon Bible much longer.  He even read it and endured [if my painful memory serves me] a short period of persecution—from me.

My recollection of that moment was of the two of us walking the tracks across old Highway 78.  “How long can you hold on to this Christian stuff?” I said.  I spoke with much authority.  After all, I was his older brother—and a deacon.

A Typical Day With My Three Grandsons

School is in full gear now. The ambience in the house is different. All three boys have hung up their swim trunks for the season.  I think my two younger grandsons are fighting "screen-itis" but do seem to spend more time pouring over artifacts we once called books.  Cam and Josh struggle through a full day: early morning seminary, off to classes, homework, tennis lessons, scouts.  Occasionally they count the hours until one of their five favorite television programs hit the air each night--one favorite escape.

I’m usually reading, but I think one Wednesday night program has a South American girl in it who speaks broken English; apparently a weak plot, but excellent acting, according to the boys.

Cam, whom I call “Cal,” named for my favorite character in Lonesome Dove, is our media sponge.  I take some pride in those genes his mother inherited from me that passed on to him.  That gift allows you to imitate the voices of characters in film and on television and, occasionally, in real life [if it’s tasteful, that is].

Cam has great tolerance for the familiar.  He loves to reread and watch old friends.  Last Christmas after 8 showings of It’s a Wonderful Life, I hated Bedford Falls.  I never thought the day would come when I would tire of Jimmy Stewart’s whiny voice—one of my more famous imitations during high school algebra.

Cam’s best work, though, comes out of O Brother, Where Art Thou? Having taught Homer’s Odyssey for years, I approve of this edgy film because of the striking parallels between film and epic. “Friend, I think some of your money’s come unstowed,” Cal whines while quietly pulling five dollar bills out my wallet, which he has deftly lifted from my pocket.  In the scene a few remember, thousands of bills fly out of crazy George [not “Babyface] Nelson’s Model T while he attempts to out-race the cops.

Another parlor trick of Cam’s is to cross-reference characters in different films. “See her,” he shouts, “that’s Glenne Headley; she played Elmira in Lonesome Dove and Janet Colgate in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.  I tell him we need to talk more about job descriptions one of these days.  Surely this kind of encyclopedic knowledge can float somewhere...

Soli is the last of the three Mohicans.  Soli [Josh], picked up this name from Grandpa. Yes, I have a penchant for renaming my friends and loved ones.  If I care about you, you’ll have to live with either a strange new name or a reworking of your old one.  I call myself Old Son, adopted name of a character in a Masterpiece Theater  production.  I refer to my wife with bird species; a dear friend in my ward I address, using the names of flowers.  My daughter says it’s like living with Mr. Audubon.  And every “Bill” or “Bob” soon becomes Billy and Bobby.

Now the name “Soli” was born of Barbara Kingsolver’s, Lacuna, a term of endearment Frida Kahlo uses for her dear friend, the narrator, who reminds her of sunlight and a “little son” she never had.  I think there might also be a sense of isolato in the name’s Spanish roots.  But Soli is not isolated.  His weekends are full of pool parties and sleep-overs; summers, he’s “booked” solid.  Kids and parents like him because he’s gentle and sweet. When I put on a "Forrest Gump"voice and facetiously beg him for some attention for 35 cents, he very nearly tears up.

His idea of a “fun night” is to watch one of Old Son’s occasional  hours in front of the television.  He envisions storms, dreams of snow and thick flannel, shielding us from the raging Idaho snow.  He’s not a Texan.

Yesterday afternoon, Soli burst into the house, red hair flying.  All of 75 pounds when he emerges from the pool soaking wet, he told us with consternation that he has to “commit,” concerning next year's athletics program.  “Be ready to declare next fall, boys.  If you don’t opt for a 'real' sport like football, we’ll throw you into regular PE, where you’ll be lucky if the kid next to you can man up and throw a ball ten yards."

So...what do you think we have next year?  A potential UT Longhorn football player.  Probably a running back.   But if he fails as a Longhorn, he can head to Hollywood.  His mother has tried to catch some candid moments with Old Son, usually with a grandson nearby.  If he sees the video camera, it’s game on . . .

I pretend to be a gruff grotesque character out of Dickens, collecting rent, like the Artful Dodger, running a stable of diminutive Olivers trawling the London streets for pences and shillings, etc.  Soli falls into high-pitch cockney, “Grandfathah, I’ve got no spending and me stomach growls like them forest wolves..."  Perfect accent.  He has the ear, like Cal.  That’s why I hired a private native tutor, “una mujer alta y delgada,” to capture that genuine sound, while Old Son sat idly by, reading a book.

Zac, the senior [no nickname yet], blond as a Swede, nearly 6 feet, runs like a gazelle each morning on the cross-country team.  Then he attends seminary at night and on Sundays.  He runs—well, because, Hell,--he’s a Texas boy. And, you guessed it, he has to run cross-country so he can play soccer.  

Zac talks too fast for my hearing most of the time.  I usually fake it, but that often leads to strange mis-hearings. “What time is it, Grandpa?” usually comes out one way and goes into my ear as “who left these things on the bathroom floor?”

Yesterday he came home from the high school college/career fair and calmly showed his mother a decal from the US Marines. “Mom.  I may or may not have just enrolled in the US Marines.  I'm not sure.  The guys were so nice, I filled out some stuff and signed my name."

After we revived Lora, quietly mumbling “Afghanistan,” Afghanistan,” several times, I thought,  laughing, “How many more "Zacisms" before my daughter stops biting the bait, like one of those big bass in Henry’s Lake?”

The Torah says, "find a teacher, then find a friend."  I'm overjoyed to be the occasional "teacher" of three lovely friends.

Beauty

I have lived long enough in the church to watch a kind of evolution of Christ-art.  Many of us were moved by the Bloch exhibition at BYU last summer.  He and Harry Anderson [a Seventh-Day Adventist] seemed to capture the physicality of Christ, the energized blood and bone Christ so unlike, say, El Greco. We wanted a true man in our Savior. “Ecce Homo,” Pilate said.  “Behold THE man.”

More recently, new illustrations have further enhanced the Savior’s “beauty.” More than likely His skin color would have been the honey-brown of Hispanics or Palestinians today, I seriously doubt he had blue eyes.  Change continues.  His physical features have become further enhanced:  stronger arms and legs, a man of apparently large stature, silky hair flowing, facial features much closer to early Greek obsessions with ideal proportions, i.e., the length of the space between his nose and his mouth, the length of his arms in proportion to his torso and legs.

I plead for patience when it comes to Christ-art; However, we are fortunate Arnold Friburg did not paint the Savior.  Such outer muscularity, which he felt mirrored the inner spiritual resources of, say, Moroni, would push back the heart-felt Isaiah version of  the “man of sorrows” who is without “beauty that we should desire him.”  Instead, the Great Poet, says Christ, was “rejected, . . . acquainted with grief,” someone the Great Unwashed “despised and esteemed him not.”

Isaiah’s vision stands, then, in stark contrast with the Hellenistic world of which Christ and the early apostles were a part.  Inundated as we are these days with Calvin Klein’s beauty, adds to the swirling, frenetic world of high energy foods and exercise equipment, propelling us into obsessions with health and endurance.  We wear out our knees and ankles before our hearts give way.  But we must, as Yeats says, “labour to be beautiful.” William Wordsworth walked 150,000 miles; most young housewives run that many miles in a month.  But I stray here.

Let me counter my own version of beauty with two examples:  The “Catadores" [garbage pickers in Rio] “art” and Abraham Lincoln.  Be gentle and patient, folks.  This effort comes from a man who just two weeks ago wanted a set of Steve Reeves’ calves in the next life.  Dare I ask Spencer W. Kimball what his take might be on my “resurrection reconstruction” project?  I shudder to think. . . . .

Early in 2010, Vik Muniz, a Brazilian transplant to New York, felt “compelled,” he said, to transform the infamous Rio de Janeiro landfill, the largest in the world, into an art piece.  Moving among the tireless “pickers,” Muniz snapped pictures of old and young, the weary and the dirty, the sad and, strangely, the happy majority.

Watching him and 8 of those chosen for their striking [but not 21^st century] beauty, he greatly enlarged their portraits, outlined them artistically with garbage and then took final pictures, reducing them to gallery size.  Tears sprang to my eyes as I watched the participants stand on a scaffolding, looking down at themselves in interesting poses, their faces aglow.  And they all wept as they saw themselves as beautiful, captured by Muniz’ genius with perspective.  He saw something no one else could see.

The exhibit, along with the contestants, flew to London and around Brazil, where over a million people visited these Catadores, now called “recyclers,” organized into a union.  Now Brazil is one of the most productive recycling nations in the world.  Garbage has become art; art has become money and jobs.

Not too long ago, a young returned missionary from Brazil sat next to me in Sunday school.  I told him my son had served there, and that he had loved the people and the language, and that he still prays in Portuguese and often converses with clients in their beloved tongue.  “You should see the documentary on the Rio landfill,” I said.  It moves slowly enough that you’ll grasp the workers’ conversations, and you’ll see the people you served.”

“A garbage dump?” he said.  “Don’t think that would interest me in the least.  Garbage is garbage.”

William McLellan, the worst general ever to serve in the US army, along with Custer, called Abraham Lincoln the “big gorilla.”  His puerile, envious letters to his wife reek of hatred.  When Lincoln visited the troops after Shiloh, they mockingly described his “extra spindle shank legs, his long underwear showing; his lanky body perched precariously on a donkey.”  This was their Commander in Chief.  And yet they loved him, and yelped and clapped up a storm.

When we speak of beauty, of “perfection” on that “perfect resurrection morning,” maybe we should rethink beauty and perfection.  Does Lincoln want to awaken, looking like George Clooney?  What of that scar at the top of his furrowed brow?  The one for Bull Run.  The second, more shallow gulley after Cold Harbor, the deeper line, embedded in both cheek and forehead, the one for Mary Todd, his bipolar wife who could not stop spending, who could not stop worrying, who could not stop dancing.

And what of the sleepless, melancholy Lincoln himself, weeping for Willie. “My son has been taken from me,” he told Stanton, his head in his hands.  Now as Commander in Chief, he led, but without other Chiefs to follow.  He learned the art of war, teaching himself [a personalized West Point experience], because “no Union office has the guts to “go out and kill Lee’s army,” he confessed to his often divisive cabinet.

Then Grant. Victory.  Election.  Assassination.

I  will not compare Lincoln with the Savior, but I do suggest that our scars, won on life’s battlefield, just may be the “beauty” about ourselves we don’t want to lose.

God as Poet

Years ago, a friend of mine who taught at the BYU law school told me of a non-member professor who had joined the church.  “I think I’m growing bored,” he said.  “The God I keep hearing about every Sunday school class is a kind of Organization Man [published in the 50s].  I was hoping for more of a poet—a Being in love with trees and clear, cool mountain  streams.”

Bruce assured him there were probably streams, probably full of rainbow trout, and that God loves William Butler Yeats and is moved by Bach’s Cantata 154 [“Sheep While Safely Grazing].  Yet a bright fellow like Malcolm Mugggeridge couldn’t imagine “God deriving any pleasure from a Mozart concerto.”

The Lord blessed me with the best job in the world.  At Thomas E. Ricks College [the proper  name] and BYU-I, I was paid an honorable wage for spending my time leading students through the land of poetry.  Here poetry includes philosophy and the history of ideas.

At the beginning, I would reach into my desk, pull out the scriptures and then hold up a stack of paperbacks.  “The scriptures are the roadmap; the “poetry” provides valuable supplementary readings and footnotes.”  I then drew a large, shaky, often oblong circle on the board.  “This circle is my 'world,' the space I live and worship in.  My goal is to make it ever larger each day of my life here, and in the Other World, and to invite you into at least one little corner.  Some of you find this frightening.  If so, you’ll want to sign your drop card and find a more comfortable pew.”

Yes, some always left.  A little co-ed from Spanish Fork said she “didn’t want a world that big.  Mine is small and safe,” she whispered.  A towering football player stepped to the desk and said, "You’re  good. Real good.  But I don’t want ya.  Circle or not.”

Don’t worry, I’m not about to start quoting long lines that rhyme, nor am I sure that all of you should watch the movie, Wit, starring Emma Thompson.  It’s a DVD about the most frightening word in our language other than “death.” “Cancer.” A professor of the poetry of John Donne, Emma  proves demanding; so rigorous in her treatment of the brilliant, paradoxical Donne, that even science students take her class as a kind of intellectual Fort Bragg in preparation for medical school.  They love her logic, her mercilessness, because they want to be objective and analytical with their patients.  Just what everybody wants in the people with the white coats and that thing around their necks.  Note: This is not my dear student, friend and doctor, Michael Packer.

Emma’s character contracts cancer and agrees to a “new and vigorous” approach a hot-shot oncologist is experimenting with--and secretly writing an article for a medical journal.  She becomes a commodity; an experiment.  How long can one take 3 times the usual amount of chemo? How many hours can she “hold on” until inevitable death?  [Again, I know of two exceptionally humane and deeply religious oncologists: Drs. Hancock and Dixon.]

So where does she go, sliced and diced, full of legalized poison?  She, an expert on the God-fearing poet of comfort and purpose, discovers she has no inner life; no inner space where peace and light rule and maybe a trout-filled brook quietly flows nearby.

In the end, therefore, she doesn’t want to read Donne.  That’s the paradox and the tragedy of the intellectual life without the Light of God.  The true life-meaning in Donne’s magnificent Divine Poems and his Holy Sonnets remained still-born, mere intellectual gymnastics.  She never got the point. 

Her mentor in Donne’s poetry in graduate school lies beside her, pulls out a copy of the Runaway Bunny, a book for her great grandson.  Poetry produces peace.  If Donne doesn’t work, try a bunny book, and crawl into a world where Divine Love and Compassion prevail.

Class at the Reunion

Several times as we journey through life, we find ourselves in a time warp.  One moment we were “there,” now we’re “here.”  Scripture is replete with warnings about space-time shifts.  Life is like a “dream,” a “weaver’s shuttle” flying across the threads, a “day” [ephemeral literally means “a day” in Greek], and “the [brief] flowering of both flowers and grass,” etc.

We all remember kicking off our shoes for the summer on the last day of school.  Actually, that was in my yester-years.  Kids don’t go barefoot anymore.  They wear $280 Mephisto sandals or Chinese-made flip-flops for 1.29 at Walmart.  I’m not sure about the comfort of either, but hold fast with my high school friend, Truck Driver, who always contended that “no one looks good in glasses.”  No one really looks good in flip-flops.  Sorry.  I’ve done a whole book on calves, so I’m not about to get started on feet.

The point here is the passage of time.  It “flies,” we say.  One day the flip-flops, the next day a “Back to School” banner over Abercrombie’s darkened door—or KMart.  When you’re squirreling your way through the rabbit maze called high school, you wonder if civics or physical science class will ever end—all 50 minutes of it.  Now think about your class reunions around the corner.

I conceded one reunion to my wife. We chose the 40^th—40 years zooming at what we now know as “faster” than the speed of light.  At the 10th reunion, everybody is looking at  body type: heavy—or even heavier.  The cheerleaders usually take a beating on this one, often unfairly:  children, a heavy cheap college carb diet, the frustrations of “real” marriage, the impact of moving from Provo to Toledo or Cleveland.  [Lora says 10 years is usually too soon anyway…everyone is still jealous of each other.]

The 20^th is less “show and tell,” and most of the original couples have played marriage musical chairs and ended up with someone else from. . . . Toledo.

But the 40^th is sweeter.  In our class, 2^nd and 3rd marriages seemed to be working, at least that night at Martino’s Winery.  Everybody has pictures of grandchildren—his, hers, theirs, another former mate’s. It’s a joyful jumble.  Carolyn and I and another couple, Jim and Judy Berquam were the surviving four left standing.  Judy was kind, even though she had only vague recollections of me from high school, while Jim hardly remembered my name, though we seemed to have spent all our late-waking hours talking about utter nonsense our prodigal senior year. Chris, the early morning literary DJ in Northern Exposure confesses that he “lost” his 27^th year.  “I don’t remember a single thing,” he says. Here comes Thoreau, shouting, “Can a man waste time and not injure eternity?” And that’s the reason we went to this gala affair in our hometown, Escondido.  I went as a penitent, having vowed to show all that the class clown, the infamous yet often funny “dink-off” had landed on planet earth.  My restless, wasteful wandering had miraculously led me Home—to college, to church, to Germany on an LDS mission, to that deeply tanned little beach-bunny who had actually swum out to a battleship on her senior “ditch-day” because she was not interested in Bud Light.  And we had four children, a job, and no bills. Wow, did we stick out!

Cursed with a near perfect memory, I meandered among the unsteady, recalling whole days, quoting vows and curses and promises they had all made between classes or on the bus home.  As a piece of that collective mismanagement of time and energy, I felt a great desire to say “I’m sorry.”  "I'm sorry for being the chief distraction of the Class of 1958.  I changed.  Now I know who I am."

No one could remember anything I said they said.  When I told Jim Berquam that I remembered the spring day in 8^th grade when he said he was “going to Berkley because they had a great name, The Golden Bears; and that Johnny Oshevsky played fullback,” he gave me the blank, sardonic stare of a Norwegian sardine fisherman.  Nothing.

When I told Richard Dixon [a consistent LDS] that I was sorry for discrediting the church by being thrown out of chemistry class a record 8 times, he smiled and said, “forget it.  It’s over and you’re not the same guy.”

When I squeezed Karen Painter’s hand and said, “I wish I’d had sense to date you instead of that blonde banshee who ate my heart raw,” she simply smiled and said, “I didn’t know you cared then."

And that’s the point of this babble. Most people forget;  most people forgive, if they remember; most people do not really listen to each other; most people do not see each other… though they look.

Henry James, the writer, said we ought to be people "on whom nothing is lost." Painful as high school was, I did not lose it.  Better yet, I  built on the mistakes.  Over the years as I have deconstructed and reconstructed the experience, I have learned in both heart and  mind how I would do it again.  This exercise is part of the repentance process.  In the words of Paul, "Through Christ we make all things new again."

As we walked to the car, hand-in-hand, I did feel renewed.  In spite of an occasional washed-out bridge or unexpected rock slide, we were well along on our journey.  I have high school in the memory pot, still simmering, curing, becoming something sweeter, more nutritious, something to feed on.  I have not forgotten my classmates and more importantly, I love them.  Had Jim Bergquam chosen to spend five minutes talking with me instead of dancing all night with his wife, I would have apologized for those hours I robbed him of homework time and valuable energy. You see, he did fulfill his own “prophecy” and finished all three degrees at Berkley.  I wonder if he ever saw Johnny O?

The Strange American Way of Death: Part III, Conclusion

Growing up around the poet of practicality, my wise Oakie dad, I imbibed gallons of home-brewed wisdom.  “The American burial business is sheer nonsense.”  When Pop died, mid-swing with a wedge about 100 yards from the 3^rd hole at Teton Lakes, we followed orders.  In June of 1998, the first Oakie funeral went down at Rexburg cemetery.

1. One particle board box;
2.  No Viewing;
3. Family burial [and golfing buddies Karl Edwards and Lee Gifford] before the memorial service;
4. A series of rather informal comments about this amazing man.

Cost?  An outrageous $2,200.  Later, in August of 2001, my mother followed Pop.  Same scenario.  Cost?  $4,400.

Last October, we buried our little Lonesome Dove.  One exception to earlier funerals: We did embellish and add programs.  Later that evening, we laughed and cried till midnight.   We were still munching on the famous anything-but-funeral dinner, provided by our dear friends, Don and Joan Hammar.  No green Jell-O. Scott Samuelson called the ceremony, “a work of art.” Quite a comment coming from a REAL artist. Alyn Andrus, my bishop when the stake organized the 15^th ward, called it “the best damn funeral I’ve ever attended.”
 

The cost of Carolyn's funeral?  $5,800.  “Inflation,” the man said.  “And I’ll need to take the dividends on your funeral policy [a maximum $4,400 package].”  The inflation rate was really zero, but the $2,200 low-ball affair had morphed into $5,800.

What am I trying to say here, folks?

1. There will be “inflation” whether there is or not.  Your “average" $12,000 funeral will soon be pushing $20,000. 
2. Buy a funeral package now—this afternoon and lock in a price.  Ask yourselves the painful question, “Just who is going to pay for this EVENT?  Your children?
3. Count the emotional costs: one uncomfortable hour of looking at a walnut or cherry wood box that distracts the congregation from the speakers.  Yes, a whole hour or more waiting for the final departure, the cutting loose, the “final” good-bye—the coffin in the ground. Do it earlier; put it--the “body--” which is NOT the person, in the ground.  
4. We buy coffins and plots “with a view of the Tetons” as if we were really in there.  No, the person has become an “it.”  The Spirit ascends.  She is NOT in the box, so why not particle board [no longer made in America; must be imported from—no, not China—but Canada.  Something is rotting in Denmark.
5. Bury early in death, then, and focus in LIFE on the good-byes.  Let your constant “view” of her be your most recent conversation, lingering hug, your heartfelt, “thanks for being in my life.”  We overdo what morticians cloyingly call, “closure.”  Get closure today.  What if  we loved each other and lived our lives as if it were our LAST DAY?  Let us heed Thoreau's warning, “live deliberately [so] that when we “come to die, we discover we had not lived.”
6. Finally, bury locally.  I have a friend whose wife wants both of them to be buried, “by tradition,” with countless former family member in another state.  They are NOT there; they are in the Other World. Why hang around a cemetery when you can see the stars up close, read all the books in the Trinity College library and climb the Grand Teton without fear of gravity?

I was deeply touched when so many came to say good-bye to my little Lonesome Dove.  I only wish that more had come on those long winter days to say hello.

Do the math.  Investing and even saving is a challenge these days.  Save for the future and buy your funeral today—in the cool of the day, without the burden of grief and, sometimes, a little guilt.  A walnut box and a $500 dollar spray of lilies won’t change much.

But what of respect for the dead?  The real reverence for those who are gone is locked in the vault of the human heart.  When you talk to your friend today, touch his arm, or tell her she radiates like the sun; squeeze his Little League muscles and say, “that’s my boy, my all star, no matter what ESPN says.”

Die Trying: Part II

One of the many family jokes at my expense is about my Type A personality. Several of us are taken prisoner by terrorists of some kind.  “We are going to shoot one of you every hour," the burly leader threatens.  “I’ll go first!” I yelp.  My cool, calm son-in-law, Tim, would say, “I’ll go last, and I would also like to go over this plan with you.” He’s an investment counselor, so he’s used to money--volatility, extreme nervousness, and Type A folks like me, who like the Rainbow trout in our famous Yellowstone River, leap for the first fly.  [I must mention here that I do eat fish, but I do not catch them. I leave such sport to Bruce Hafen and Vic Forsnes, two experts who also find time to read books and do tons of church work.]

It did not surprise my wife, when for my 40^th birthday, I treated myself to a DNR bracelet. “Do Not Resuscitate.” Good fortune and the Lord’s protection kept me safe for my wife and family until everyone was squared away... sort of.

When Carolyn passed away, I (as the kids say), “tricked out" myself with an additional DNR necklace the size of a Harley Davidson Motorcycle chain.

When I moved to Austin, however, I found myself in the paper-chase capital of the US.  Only the Germans love stamp-pads, duplicate copies, and legal work more than Texans.

Jumping through the hoops, I became completely paranoid.  I added reduced-size copies of my Living Will to my necklace, a list of my children’s phone numbers, my attorney’s number and copies of all ephemera in my bedroom. Sharon and Steve Oakey can testify of my madness.  When I told them what I was schlepping around my neck, they doubted.  I lifted my shirt, which was about as horrifying as lifting a pant leg. There dangled a deck of documents that looked like a cool hand right out of Vegas.

When I moved to Texas to live with my daughter, Lora and her family, Austin officials told me I was “completely unofficial.”  My Living Will is invalid in Texas, so I hired a new attorney for a Living Will which includes the added word "TEXAS."

And yes, I also had to buy new DNR bling, engraved “Texas style”: “Texas OOH," which translated into Idahoan means, “In the country of Texas, do not resuscitate me Outside Of Hospital.” But my paranoia still drives me to wonder whether a rookie nurse would know what she should not do inside the hospital.

Finally, full of frustration, I wrote the Surgeon General.  I’m guessing it’s the gal with the uniform and all that fruit salad on her chest.  My complaint went unanswered, though I was sent an interview schedule should I wish to fly to Washington DC to talk things over.  I leave you with the paragraph that sums up the agitation of a transplanted Idahoan, where rules are anathema.

“My point, Madam/Staff member/General, is that I’m still trying to figure out just what one must do here in order to have a “clean” death.  How in the Hell does one die inexpensively and quickly?  How do I stay in the Tunnel before an overly-anxious intern pulls me back into the relentless heat and drought of this place?  Like Rick, in “Casablanca,” I was “misinformed about Texas being part of these United States.  The folks here tell me I need a separate, unique Texas Living Will.  What happens, General, if some tourist from South Dakota happens to face-plant in downtown Austin while on vacation?” 

So, take this for what it’s worth.  Probably nothing.  At an assisted care facility in Rexburg, of 80 patients, only 5 had DNRs.  Someone has to pay the light bill in that building on the hill.  I think I know who.  Let me end this jaundiced diatribe with a book suggestion that just might change your life—and your death:  Susan Jacoby’s, Never Say Die.