Boston and Washington, D.C.

There are many reasons to travel. One of the main reasons is that I feel the need to move around a lot when I have time off is because I do a lot of sitting at my job. A second reason is that my job isn’t intellectually challenging so. I can feel my brain turning to concrete and I need to aerate it; to turn this gray and dull thing into something that is alive and pulsating. Not that I am complaining; I have a great life and I know it. Still, every once in a while I need something to knock me out of my complacency and a road trip is just what the doctor ordered. My final reason for travelling is "why not?” I have the time and money and what better way to spend the both of them than by hitting the open road.

Our first stop on my fall break was Boston. I had ordered tickets for the hop on and hop off tour bus but since out tour didn’t start until10:00, Grant and I had some time to kill. We walked around Quincy Market and took some cheesy selfies in front of the Sam Adams statue before making our way down to the waterfront. ‘Coach’ was our tour guide and he was really good at his job, which was fortunate for us since we took the same tour with him two and a half times. On the second time around, we got off at the stop for the USS Constitution and, since it was closed, we walked up to the Bunker Hill monument. It was such a nice day with no rain, a full sun, and seventy-degree temperatures, that I laid back on the grass and took a little nap in front of the obelisk. It was one of the many small moments that I experienced that made the trip worthwhile.

We took the tour a third time in the afternoon to kill an hour before we met up with JT, Grant's best friend from his school days, at the Hard Rock Cafe. It was a huge restaurant but, because of the virus, we had the place to ourselves. A second moment that I will treasure is when JT sheepishly told us that it was his birthday. Clearly, he hadn’t made any plans, and was excited to spend his big day with his friend from Louisville.

On Friday, I took a side excursion to Martha's Vineyard while Grant spent the day with JT in Boston. The bus took two and a half hours to get to the island, then there was a forty-five minute ferry ride, and then I took a three-hour tour of the island. It was an endurance race and I think that is what attract people to Martha's Vineyard; it is very difficult to get to, expensive (the ferry ride alone is $120 for a car), and the residents are ensured a lot of privacy. There are no streetlights, no industry, and very little commerce. I imagine that the people who buy a house on Martha’s Vineyard need a break from the hustle and bustle of Boston or Providence and need a place to do nothing for a couple of weeks out of the year. The island is packed during the peak season of June through August but it is dead for the rest of the year because it is cold and wind.

Tom was our driver and he liked to drop a lot of names about who lives on Martha’s Vineyard. Past residents include Walter Cronkite, James Cagney, Billy Joel and Christy Brinkley. People who currently own a place on the island are Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Carly Simon, James Taylor, and Dan Ackroyd. Seth Meyer and Amy Schumer have been broadcasting their shows from their houses on the island since they cannot have a live studio audience during the time of the plague. John Belushi is buried there. Finally, Barack Obama bought a fourteen million dollar house from the owner of the Celtics and has had Michael Jordon stay with him. The two luminaries play golf on the course that abuts the former president’s property.

Martha’s Vineyard is where "Jaws" was filmed and Tom tirelessly pointed out the spots where the movie was filmed; Quint’s shop, Chief Brody’s house, and the bridge where the shark swam under to feed on the people in the tidal pool. He had been a tour guide for a long time and got to know Bill Clinton when he visited the island during his presidency. With a little prodding, Tom showed us some pictures of himself with the Clintons and let it be known that he was at Chelsea’s wedding. I knew that the Clintons often came to the island, which is why I thought that it would have one mansion after another, but really there were just a couple of cottage towns spread out over the island, and that added to its charm for me.

On Saturday, we took Amtrak from Boston to D.C. just to see the fall colors. It was a seven-hour train ride and we had to travel light, with just the backpacks and nothing else, because we would not get to the hotel until late in the evening. It felt like we were in an episode of “The Amazing Race” because we were constantly in motion and carried all of our possessions with us as we rode the rails through the most populous cities on the eastern seaboard. At one point I turned to Grant and said, “I am proud of us” because this was our fourth day of hard travel and we endured without getting sick or turning on each other.

Once we arrived in D.C., we left Union Station and then walked to L’Enfant Plaza to meet up with our Segway tour. Emily was our guide and the two young women who joined us, Mikayla and Kaitlyn, were clearly nervous about getting on the Segway. Mikayla was so afraid that her hands were visibly shaking as she grabbed the handlebars for the first time. Kaitlyn apologized at every intersection because she was too scared to power her Segway up the ramp to reach the sidewalk. We heard “I’m sorry” at each traffic light. When we turned around, we saw Kaitlyn at the bottom of the ramp, looking up at us sheepishly, because her machine had stopped half way up and she had to get off and walk. Meanwhile, Grant was clearly enjoying himself, chatting up our tour guide while riding the Segway, because they had found common ground. Emily was a self-proclaimed science fiction nerd and they talked about the Comic Cons that they had been to.

D.C. looks a lot different at night and, although I have been there several times in the past, it was a very different experience in the dark. The highlight was stopping in front of the Lincoln Memorial and walking to the statues of the Korean War soldiers. By the end of the tour, however, I was visibly tired and ready to go back to the hotel. We had reservations on an early flight back to Louisville on Sunday. Still, I had accomplished what I had set out to do and that was to travel as much as possible over the course of a five-day weekend to see as much as I could see. Given the chance, I would do it all over again.

The Night My Mother Died

The Night My Mother Died.

My mother's eyes had become hollow. She was always looking around but since she didn't wear her glasses anymore, and because she was as blind as a bat without them, her eyes were always searching yet unable to focus on anything. In those eyes was the constant look of fear. Fear of what, no one could say, especially Mom, because she couldn’t verbalize her thoughts. The look of anxiety was always on her face. While her mind was somewhere else, her body became a wreak. Her back formed a perfect "C" as if it had been molded into the wheelchair. Her shoulders had become thin and hunched; her legs turned into big bags of jelly from lack of exercise. My mother’s bottom had become huge from sitting all day long. Sometimes she forgot that she could no longer stand and when she tried to get out of the wheelchair by herself, she fell. Her face and arms were full of bruises from when she came tumbling down to the floor.

When Mom could no longer do her own toileting and had difficulty feeding herself, she was moved to the advanced care wing of the nursing home. All of her personal items were moved to her new room and anything that she couldn't take with her were donated to charity. The nurses in the advanced care unit simply could not attend to everyone’s need every minute of the day, so Mom had to wear diapers all of the time. She was given plastic pants to wear for easy access to the toilet. Aside from those pants, Mom always wore a t-shirt or sweatshirt, and an old pair of worn out shoes. The shoes were given to her by the nursing home because none of Mom’s old shoes fit. Her feet had become bloated, and otherwise disproportionately large, because of lack of use. It was a sad sight to see; a once proud woman who now looked like a homeless person in a wheelchair.

The other residents of the advanced care unit were even worse off. For example, one sweet looking old woman sat by herself in a corner and cussed like a sailor. Mostly, though, they were herded together in groups of five or ten wheelchairs, and they just sat there or slept. The wheelchairs were positioned to form circles so the residents could stare at each other all day. Very few people came to visit because what would be the point? There was not even a glint of recognition when a visitor entered the enclosure. I continued to see my mother out of a sense of duty, but I understood why other family members did not want to visit their loved ones in the nursing home. No one wants to see his or her parents live in purgatory.

Visitors cannot just walk into the advanced care unit when they want to see a resident. It is a secured facility and visitors have to ring a doorbell and wait for someone to let them in. However, the doorbell is difficult to hear, and a sign had been posted stating all visitors are to knock if no one answered the doorbell. In much smaller letters, the sign says that the visitors are to wait a few moments because the staff may be busy with the residents and it may take a few minutes for them to unlock the door. It always took a while, but eventually an over-worked, and apparently frustrated, nurse’s aide would open the door. There, in the middle of the common area, were all of the residents. The wheels from their wheelchairs are touching together and the residents were arranged in one large circle. They stare at each other all day. No one bothers to break away from the group because they had nowhere to go. It was an endlessly monotonous existence but the residents didn’t seem to care, probably because they had already lost their minds and nothing bothered them. They were in heaven’s waiting room.

When I find my mother among the other residents, I wheel her away from the larger group. No one notices that the circle has become broken and that one of the members is missing. Since I am not allowed to take my mother off the advanced care wing, I wheeled her over to an adjacent common room and try to strike up a conversation. Inevitably, after a few minutes, Mom asks me to take her to the bathroom. The only time that she speaks to me is when she needs to go to the bathroom. When I ask a staff member for assistance, she invariably tells me that my mother just went to the bathroom and she will have to wait in line. Several over residents had already asked to go and there were only two staff members working the floor. When I told Mom that she had to wait in line, she became irritated. She asked to go again but this time she was more demanding. Rather than cause a scene, I decided to say goodbye to my mother and make a quick exit. Every visit at the advanced care unit began and ended this way.

A good death is when the old person dies while surrounded by her family and friends. My mother did not have a good death. In fact, she had one of the worst deaths imaginable; alone, in a nursing home, miserable because she was in pain, and undignified because she was wearing a full diaper. She had taken all the precautions for a good death by making her wishes clear in a living will, so at least Mom did not have any tubes shoved down her mouth. Also in her favor, was my sister, Cheryl, who took a leave of absence from work to start a deathwatch. Cheryl stayed with Mom in her final days when she became comatose. I decided that there was no use in visiting Mom on her last days on earth because I thought that she was all but dead already. Besides, Cheryl is a nurse and could shepherd Mom through her final hours and I would simply be in the way.

Cheryl called me late at night. As soon as I heard her voice on the other end of the line, I knew what she had to say even before she had a chance to share the news. “Is it over,” I asked, plaintively. “Yes,” said Cheryl. “Mom has passed.” “I’ll be right over,” After a quick drive over to the nursing home, I entered my mother’s room and saw the corpse on the bed. The scene was so much like it had been over the course of so many Sunday visits; the same lifeless body and the same translucent skin devoid of any color. It was the same sight that I had seen so many times before, but now it was clear that Mom really was dead. Her head tilted back a bit, and her mouth was wide open, but the image that remained with me was that of Mom’s nose sticking up prominently from her face. It stood out like a lighthouse on top of the shoals of her face and body.

It was anti-climactic. There were no dramatic goodbyes; no deathbed confessions or anything like that you would see in the movies. I stood over Mom’s body for a while, awkwardly looking down at the corpse on the bed. Finally, after a long and empty pause, Cheryl returned to the room after having left to call for an ambulance. “It should arrive any minute to take the body away.” That was my cue to take my leave from the death room and let my sister finish her duties with preparing the body for transportation. My first thought, as I left the nursing home, was that I needed to go to the laundry so that I would have clean shirts for the visitation and funeral. Then, on the drive home, I silently cursed myself for thinking of only practical things when I should have been grieving the loss of my mother. I had mourned her dead on so many Sunday visits that I could not dredge up enough emotion to weep when it mattered the most. Silently, I drove back to my house, wondering what it meant that I couldn’t cry on the night my mother died.

Trinity Alum Magazine Article

While training for the Ironman, I make sure that I put the campus of Trinity High School on my route. I turn off Shelbyville Road, run down Sherrin Avenue to Marshall Stadium, and stop at the gates. When the gates were originally put up the contractor added the Power T to them to mark the entrance as the home to the sports program of the Shamrocks. By the time that I reach the gates, I am a sweaty mess and I like to take my fist and wipe it on the Power T. I do not mean any disrespect by this gesture; in fact, I feel the exact opposite, that the imprint of my sweaty hand shows the respect that I have Trinity and its academics and sports program. It is the sweat that I poured into Trinity that has made me into the person that I am today. My four years at Trinity marked my transition from boy to man; from what I was to what I am.

When I was in grade school, I had undiagnosed ADHD. This was before anyone even knew anything about this affliction and I had difficulty concentrating for even short periods, much less reading lengthy books. Fr. Zettel was my admissions counselor and he took a risk on me by allowing me to attend Trinity even though my entrance exam score did not warrant a place for me in the incoming class, and for that, I am forever grateful to him. During my four years, I participated in three sports. I learned the satisfaction that comes with long distance running by participating in cross-country and Mr. John Kahl was one of my coaches. Mr. Bradford ran the theater and I was involved with every production during my time at Trinity. I learned how to speak well and how to carry myself with confidence by Mr. Bradford. Finally, Mr. Dubay was the sponsor for student government. I ran for office, and lost twice, but the experience proved to be invaluable for me in that I was given the chance to speak in front of the whole student body. Mr. Dubay was nothing but encouraging and he let me participate in government activities even though I was never elected to an office.

To thank all of those teachers who meant so much to me, I have started a scholarship fund at Trinity. After all, I am proud of a career that was kick started during my high school years. I have been a teacher for 32 years, and have been right down the road at Sacred Heart Academy for 28 of those years. In addition, the skills that I learned while on the cross-country and swim teams have helped me train for my tenth Ironman Louisville. I would not be who I am today without Trinity and the sweat that I put into my academic and sports career. So I imprint the Power T with my sweaty fist, gaining strength with the knowledge that I owe my loyalty to my high school, and to Fr. Zettel, who took a chance on a skinny little incoming freshman with learning differences.

Cheerleading

I have always craved attention. An amateur psychologist might say that I felt ignored because I was the third child in our family. I needed a lot of attention and would go anywhere to find it. For example, even today I update Facebook every morning and obsess over how many “likes” that I get on my posts. Back in high school, I read the morning announcements and was an actor in the theater. When I was a counselor at Camp Tall Trees, I loved to tell the campfire story and lead the kids in song. But the most blatant example of me looking for the attention of my peers was when I became a cheerleader in high school and college.

The year was 1978 and my sister had decided to run for homecoming queen at Eastern Kentucky University. She won first runner up that year but what I remember was that she got to ride in a convertible down the main street of Richmond, the heart of E.K.U. One part of that parade was a group of cheerleaders who were screaming their lungs out while riding on top of a fire engine. The girls were so pretty and the guys looked like they were having so much fun that I remember thinking to myself, “I want to become a cheerleader, too!”

My first stint as a cheerleader came in 1979 at Trinity High School only we didn’t call ourselves cheerleaders; we were the Yell Team because it sounded a lot more masculine. We were at an all boy school and looking manly was important to us. What was great about being on the Yell Team was that we got to be on the field during the football games at Cardinal Stadium. Karen Spears was my partner and my job was to stand behind her and clap a lot. The guys on the squad didn’t know any gymnastics, and we didn’t do any stunts, but it was still fun to cheer in front of thousands of people. I remember a lot of campers from Tall Trees came to the rail to get my attention during the football games and the girl that I was dating at the time thought that it was cool to have a boyfriend who was a cheerleader.

In 1980 I attended Xavier University and thought that the best way for me to become socially active was to become a cheerleader. When I tried out for the squad, no one was more surprised than I was that I had made the team. The best part of being a cheerleader at Xavier was the road trips. We travelled to DePaul in Chicago and stayed in their dorm rooms over break. Our game was in the evening so we spent a day in downtown Chicago. I remember looking out of the bus at staring at all of the high-rise buildings, one after another, and I whispered to myself, “Gosh!” with my mouth agape. Loraine said, while laughing at me, “you have never been in a big city before, have you, Jeff?” I must have looked like a rube, gawking out of the window with my eyes open as wide as saucers. While we were in the downtown area, we did a cheerleader pyramid in front of the old water tower building. It was all in good fun as we were so excited to be in the big city to cheer on the Musketeer basketball team.

The other big road trip that we took was when the Xavier Musketeers took on the Evansville Aces. The Aces were a powerhouse in the 1970s but they were also known for a tragedy. Three years before I travelled with my team to southern Indiana, the University of Evansville Aces basketball team suffered a calamity when the plane that was carrying the basketball team crashed and all 29 people on board died. A memorial, built in the shape of a weeping basketball, had just been built in the middle of the campus. It was a somber reminder of what the university had just been through, but the tragedy had made their basketball program even stronger.

Emotions ran high as the Aces played to sold out crowds. The Musketeers were their first home game of the season and I had never seen anything like the preshow that the Purple Aces put on. They turned off all the lights in the arena and then shone a spotlight on Mr. Ace, the team mascot, who drove a mini-car around the court. When the floor was cleared, the announcer introduced each player and the spotlight shone on the him when the player’s name was called. The crowd yelled “Aces! Aces!” after the introductions were made and I thought that the arena walls would come tumbling down because the whole place seemed to shake with noise and excitement. Streamers and glitter fell from the ceiling at the end of the program. It was quite a show.

The Evansville cheerleaders put up the Xavier cheerleaders in their dorm rooms for the weekend. One of the girls threw a party for us at her parent’s house after the Saturday night game. The family had made a lot of money off coal and their father had the resources to build in an indoor pool and a billiards room with a television and VCR. This was in 1980 and, back then, very few people had a VCR in their house. I remember being so impressed that I could watch “Alien” or any other movie, whenever I wanted, when previously I would have to go to a theater to watch a full-length film without commercial interruption.

I was the youngest one on the squad and was intimidated by the cheerleaders, most of whom were two years older than I was. Usually two years doesn’t mean that much but there is a wide gulf between a freshman in college and a junior in college. They were adults and I was just a kid. In addition, Xavier attracted the best and the brightest and these ambitious people were going to be something someday. Playing against type, these cheerleaders didn’t party on the road trips but instead studied their textbooks on the team bus.

Tom Burkhardt was our captain. He was a short man, built like a refrigerator, and was attending Xavier on a ROTC scholarship. He openly declared his love for Lorraine, a beautiful cheerleader and pre-med student who was way out of his league. She was wicked smart, had long blond hair, and Tom’s crush was so deep that he often referred to Lorraine as “a goddess.” Tom’s buddy on the squad was Steve Kaitenowski and the two couldn’t be more different. Where Tom was hyper active, constantly spitting out his opinions on politics or sports, Steve was laid back and would calmly say, “Okay, Tom” when his buddy got too fired up. The two guys traded barbs with each other but as different as they were, I could tell that they really liked each other.

Jennifer was a little Italian ball of fire, with long black hair and an athletic physique, and she was madly in love with Chris Groefer, the rakishly handsome pre-med student. Maloo was a tiny little girl from the Philippines who was our flyer. She partnered with Tom, who was as strong as an ox, and those two turned out to be the best on our squad because Tom could toss Maloo high in the air to do many great tricks. On one long road trip, Maloo fell asleep on my shoulder when she was done studying in the bus. It wasn’t about romance, it was one friend being comfortable enough around another friend to let her guard down. She felt safe and I felt like I belonged.

My partner on the squad was Andrea Tryba. She was a popular freshman but was too tall and too heavy to be a cheerleader but she brimmed with confidence, and that made up for a lot. The problem was that I could barely pick her up at the beginning of the season and, when Andrea gained the ‘Freshman Fifteen’ pounds, I couldn’t pick her up at all. I was already strong but began to lift weights in earnest to build the muscles need to lift Andrea off the ground. On our last road trip, the whole squad went out to a bar and I was so frustrated at my inability to do any tricks with Andrea that I called her a heifer. She was a city girl who had never left Chicago, so Andrea didn’t know what a heifer was, but she glared at me with rage in her eyes when Tom told her that a heifer was a female cow. To this day, I feel badly about hurting her feelings. Andrea barely spoke to me for the rest of the year and didn’t try out at all for our sophomore year.

One of my regrets is that I only cheered for Xavier for a year. I was frustrated, tired of the politicking and gossip, and just wanted to play rugby. If I had the chance to do it all over again then I would have stayed at Xavier and cheered for all four years. Instead, after two academically and socially frustrating years, I transferred to Bellarmine University, and thought that I could meet a lot of people quickly by becoming a cheerleader again.

It just wasn’t the same. Where we didn’t take ourselves too seriously at Trinity, and at Xavier we were professionals; Bellarmine was somewhere in between those two opposite poles. Since I was a transfer student, it was clear that I would have to find my own way to fit in because the others had already established their friendships. Most of the guys were in ADG together and the girls were in the Little Sisters program associated with that fraternity. Also, there wasn’t a lot of leadership on our squad. Marilyn was our sponsor but wasn’t a coach. We had a team captain but he was more of the problem than the solution. The whole situation stank of amateurism and I longed to go back to Xavier where the squad took cheerleading seriously and we had a good coach. After a single season on the Bellarmine squad, I stopped cheerleading all together, finding it much more gratifying to work at a part time job and earn some money.



Trinity Yell Team: Steve Tompkins, Matt Higgins, Mike Higgins, David Hobbs, Brigid Sheridan, Jill Joseph. Karen Spears was my partner and our sponsor was Mr. Spitzer

Xavier Cheerleaders: Steve Kaitenowski, Steve Johnson, Tom Burkhardt, Tim Beno, Julie, Lorraine, Jennifer, Edie, Maloo. Andrea Tryba was my partner and our coach was Chad

Bellarmine Cheerleaders: Mike Epperson and Suzanne, Jack Horn and Susan, Rick Olgine and Lisa Young, Doug Strothman and Doris Swenson, Paul Garner and Brigid Sheridan, David and Mary. Helen was my partner and our sponsor was Marilyn.

Book 3 Chapter 10 The Day My Father Died

The Day My Father Died

My father died early one morning in the spring of 2006. Once I received the word of his passing, I called into work to tell my boss that I would be out for a few days. After driving over to my parents’ house, I sat with my mother and sister in the kitchen as we waited for the ambulance to take away the body. Every once in a while, I peered in the living room to look at my father who lay on the couch. The thought occurred to me that it isn’t like the movies where the deceased’s face looks peaceful, almost like the dead person had fallen asleep. No, it was nothing like that at all. My father’s crystal blue eyes were crossed because there was no conscious muscles there to keep them in place. They rolled around when ambulance driver picked him up to put him into the body bag.


The three of us waited in the doorway and watched as the technician certified that Dad was dead and then two men loaded the body onto the gurney and wheeled him out the front door. Mom cried quietly. She said, to no one in particular, “my father would not be proud of me right now. He would have told me to keep a stiff upper lip.”

Dad’s health had been declining for years so his death wasn’t unexpected. When I was a freshman in college, my father had his first major stroke. He recovered nicely and suffered no visible damage but his doctors told him that it was time to slow down. It was probable that he had several small strokes before and after the major one but they didn’t register with Dad or his doctors. Ten years later, Dad retired from the company that he helped to build up for three decades. He never talked about it but, after he died, I went through my father’s personal papers and I found a sheet with his unique handwriting on it. There were two labored paragraphs where Dad tried to write about being conflicted about retirement, but the words wouldn’t come. He wasn't used to expressing himself in emotional terms and shoved the paper in the back of a drawer for me to find twenty years later.

After his career ended and his health slowly deteriorating, my father began to lose interest in almost everything. Even the simple act of going out to eat became a chore for him. An example of this is when he went to his favorite restaurant and the waiter asked Dad if he wanted any change from the fifty-dollar bill that he used to pay the check. This question irritated my father, who didn’t like that the waiter assumed that he earned a fifteen-dollar tip, and he tersely asked to be given all of his change. The waiter became testy and, with an attitude that no owner would have agreed with, he asked my father not to sit in his section any more. In his younger days, my father would have given the waiter a tongue-lashing for his impudence, but now he meekly accepted the rebuke. He never went back to his favorite restaurant, and eventually stopped going out to eat altogether. In fact, he rarely left the house and asked my mother to go to a drive through restaurant to bring home sausage and biscuits.

When he first retired, my parents took many vacations to Europe together, but that was just to give my father something to do. He enjoyed planning the trips more than actually going on them. It became an undertaking that was too much for him because of the hardships of travelling, having to find a place to shelter the dogs, and the disruption of his routine. As time went by, and his health declined, Dad didn’t want to do anything at all, so my parents stopped taking trips. Since they no longer went on vacations or out to eat, Dad’s only distractions were reading the paper and watching television. When asked how things were going my father always answered "Peace and quiet."

Because he rarely left the house, my father stopped taking caring about the way that he looked. While he still had a career, he wouldn’t leave until his hair was in place, his suit was cleaned and pressed, and his shoes were shined. After a few years into retirement, he rarely wore anything but a t-shirt and shorts around the house and he stopped caring about how his hair looked. The highlight of his day, and what occupied his mind, was taking “a big poop.”

When he was about fifteen years into retirement, Dad’s gait was so unstable that he began using a walker. He had to lean over it to keep his balance and, when he looked up from that cramped position, the emotion that registered on his face was one of fear. In order to see where he was going while using the walker, my father had to crane his neck upward. It was an awkward posture and he was afraid of losing his balance and falling down. Once he was seated and comfortable, he looked like his old self; but the simple act of moving from room to room became a trial.

At the end of life, having switched from the walker to a wheelchair, Dad resigned himself to his fate. He had given up. After he lost his health, he also lost his social life and, since he could no longer enjoy his hobbies, my father spent most of his time sleeping on the couch; the same couch on which he would die. It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t leave the house, he never left the den. A hospice nurse visited him to give him a sponge bath since he couldn’t manage to take a shower by himself. If he needed to relieve himself then he had a bottle to urinate in and a toilet chair set up in the middle of the family room, which was available for him to take "a big poop" in if he needed to.

After he died, it took a couple of hours for the ambulance to arrive to take away Dad’s body. I remember thinking that I regretted that I never had the chance to sit down and have a heart to heart discussion with my father before he died. I would have liked to ask him if he was ever happy and if he took any joy in raising a family or building a career. Later, as I looked through an old album, I saw a picture of my father sitting next to his first-born son, who must have been just five or six years old at the time. At that moment, he was happy, taking pride in his eldest boy and was clearly full of hope for the young family that he had created. The old pictures give me a clue as to what was truly in my father’s heart and I like what I see in the albums.

Book 3 Chapter 4 Section 2 Tom and Gail's Salad Days

Book 3 Chapter 4 Section 2: Tom and Gail’s Salad Days

Thomas Frazier III was such a pretentious name for a man who showed so little promise as a young man.  His father, whose nickname was Junior, was a truck driver who tried to own his own business but could not make a go of it.  Junior tried to get into the regulated freight business but when the trucking company didn’t take off; he sold it and bought an irregular route carrier of truckload commodities, which ran from Minneapolis to Iowa.  When Junior’s son was in his teens, Junior needed him to drive his trucks.  At a very young age, Thomas Frazier III was well travelled, having driven his father’s trucks all over the West, from Minnesota to Montana to Oklahoma.

Thomas and Junior did not get along.  The father was content with being a good old boy trucker owner and operator while the son was filled with piss and vinegar.  The younger Thomas couldn’t wait to begin his life; to strike out on his own.  In fact, Junior’s oldest son did not invite familiarity but instead insisted that everyone call him Thomas.  This pretension drew a lot of sniggers from the other truckers, but never to Thomas’ face because, even at a very young age, he was lean, scrappy, and always spoiling for a fight.  The older men often said to Thomas, “Don’t get above your raising” because they thought that Thomas was too full of himself.  The young man never listened to anyone else’s advice, especially his father’s, and was proud of becoming strong and independent.

  From his earliest days, Thomas suffered from eczema and, since he was the oldest, he often asked his younger siblings to apply the medicine onto his back.  Sometimes he itched so badly that he couldn’t sleep and he ended up reading the night away before attending school the next day.  He had read so much that he had read every historical novel at his local library and had his name on the list to check out the new book arrivals.  When the itching became so bad and Thomas missed more than one night of sleep, he was prescribed phenobarbital, a very strong narcotic.  Occasionally, his family woke up and found that Thomas was nowhere around.  The narcotic had make him so groggy that he couldn't figure out how to get into his own bedroom so he slept in any corner of the house where he could find peace.

            While he was in high school, Thomas worked at the local bowling alley.  He worked the late-night shifts because the manager had left and he could run the place without being harassed by his boss.  Although he was only fifteen when he started to work at the bowling alley, Thomas knew that he could avoid the child labor laws, which strictly prohibited youths from working at night, and the young man would often act as the closing manager.  When the local police decided to enforce the child labor laws, Thomas had to develop strategies for avoiding the cops.  Often, he hid up in the machinery at the terminus of the bowling lanes, squirrelling himself in a secret corner spot until the cops left.  One time he didn’t have any notice that the police were coming and to avoid a confrontation Thomas pretended that he was part of the family who was bowling in middle lane.

            After his junior year in high school, Thomas joined a traveling carnival for a summer job.  The truck driver in the carnival became too sick to work and asked Junior if he knew of anyone who could take over his route for a couple of weeks.  Junior volunteered his son.  Thomas had to hitchhike to Dallas in order to meet the semi and assume the driving duties but what he didn’t count on was that the load he was carrying was a Ferris Wheel.  This carnival ride is heavy, shifts easily, and is difficult for a novice to handle.  Still, Thomas had a lot of confidence in himself because he was a teenager and still too young to have been truly tested.  He had not been on the job for even a week when he found himself driving down a steep road that led to a small town in Montana.  Thomas lost his brakes because he had not down shifted enough and he sped straight through the town with his horn blaring.  This same situation had happened many times before to other drivers, so the townspeople knew what was happening and cleared the streets before anyone could get hurt.  When the truck finally came to a complete stop, and the police showed up, no one seemed to know who was driving the vehicle because Thomas had fled the scene.  Since he didn’t have a commercial driver’s license, Thomas knew that he would be arrested and fined if he were found with the truck, so he snuck away and hitchhiked back to Minnesota.

After the carnival fiasco, Thomas entered into his senior year in high school and almost immediately got into a grudge match with Principal Kleinert.  After flaunting the rules whenever he could, Thomas was caught smoking on the school grounds and Kleinert expelled him.  Junior went to the assistant principal’s office to voice his disbelief that the principal could remove his son from the school on this one offense but Kleinert told him that Thomas had a history of being a rebel but was too clever to get caught.  The principal would not take away the expulsion so Junior had no choice but to transfer his son to the next closest high school, which was over ten miles away from his house, in the hope that he could get the boy to finish out his senior year.  Unfortunately, the goal of graduating from high school just wasn’t that important to Thomas.  He became a truant and, even when he did make it to school, he cut class so that he could sneak out for a cigarette.  By the beginning of the second semester of his senior year, Thomas decided that high school wasn’t for him and he dropped out to join the Air Force.  Junior had to sign the papers to admit him because Thomas was still only seventeen. 

After boot camp, Thomas went back to his old rebellious ways and became a pain in the ass to his superiors by flaunting the rules and defying authority.  For example, he didn’t see the need to stop at the security check point and reentered the base by speeding his rental car past the officer on duty.  The officer quickly gathered a couple of MPs to track down Thomas and they found him within an hour.  He was eating dinner at the mess when the MPs grabbed him, cuffed him, and took him to the police station.  “Come on guys,” said Thomas, trying to bargain his way out of being arrested and charged with violating the security regulations.  “This isn’t that big of a deal.”  The security officers realized that Thomas was just a raw kid who wasn’t worth their time, and not some kind of terrorist, so they let him go after roughing him up a little bit.

Thomas seemed to rub everyone the wrong way.  Once, while on leave, he had left a bar at closing time and decided to take a back way to base.  A group of young toughs saw him walking in an alley all alone and accosted him.  Instead of meekly handing over his money, Thomas tried to fight off the robbers but it was four to one so he never had a chance.  The robbery cost him more than his wallet because one of the robbers hit Thomas so hard with a bat that he lost several teeth.  For the rest of his life Thomas had to wear a bridge in his mouth but was too embarrassed to talk about it.  Only after he died did his family find out that Thomas had implants.

The guys in his unit didn’t like Thomas very much either.  He was a smart ass, and a know it all, and to teach him a lesson the young man’s sergeant ordered Thomas to fix the radio antennae on a hill above the base.  The antennae was attached to a fifty-foot tower and the sergeant told Andrew to check on the connections to make sure that all transmissions were going through.  In fact, there was nothing wrong with the radio or the transmissions, the sergeant just wanted to see if Thomas had the guts to climb fifty feet up in the air with nothing between him and eternity but a flimsy tower.  It was in that moment, holding on for his dear life while scaffolding up the tower, that Thomas decided that maybe the Air Force wasn’t for him.  He wouldn’t quit the service but instead would earn his GED before he was discharged and then he planned to go to college once he became a civilian again.

It didn’t work out that way.  Eczema, the skin disease that had plagued Thomas since he was a young boy in Minnesota, continued to trouble him while he was in Asia.  The local farmers fertilized the soil with manure and once the stuff dried up it blew away with the wind.  The dust settled onto Thomas’ skin, making his eczema much worse than before, and the condition became so bad that the young man was sent to a hospital in Japan to recover.  Even with treatment, the affliction would not go away, and Thomas’ face blew up to twice its normal size, and his back and legs became bloated.  The doctor who was assigned to Thomas decided that time, and fresh air, were the only cure for his affliction.  He prescribed a prolonged stay at a base outside of Burlington, Vermont in the hope that a month’s long convalescence would help.

            The problem was that in addition to bad skin, Thomas had inherited an excess of energy and could not sit still for long periods of time.  As soon as the bloating had subsided, Thomas decided that he needed to get off the small base and socialize.  The local women had organized a U.S.O. club and organized parties where the young service men and local girls could meet.  Thomas made it a habit of his to show up for these parties on the first Friday of every month.  His uniform was pressed, his hair was slicked back, and his body was lean from the months of convalescence.  In short, he cut a very attractive figure.  This brash young man had been rolled up, tight in a coil, and was waiting to be sprung.

In the corner of the church basement where the U.S.O. parties were held, Thomas noticed a beautiful young lady with her nose in a book.  He craved attention and thought that if he sat next to this girl then maybe she would give some to him.  She was reticent.  Gail hadn’t earned much in the way of social skills in her youth or at her short stint at Green Mountain College where she had been content to sit in her dorm room and nap her days way.  Now she had to deal with this brash young man who had sat down next to her, uninvited, and it appeared that he would not leave until she danced with her.  Gail had seen Thomas strut across the dance floor, towards her, and thought that if she could get past his obvious skin problem then he was good looking.  The pox marks and acne may never go away but she was willing to look past them.

She danced with him.  Over and over they shared the dance floor together and promised each other that they would do it again the following Friday.  It went on like this for months until the Air Force decided that Thomas was well enough to be medically discharged.  After a brief engagement, Thomas and Gail were quickly married in Vermont and then he whisked his new bride away to Minnesota so that they could begin their new lives together.    

It was at this point in his life that the self-confidence that Thomas possessed came in useful, for these were the hard years that would test his metal.  After earning his GED, Thomas enrolled in college and earned extra money by driving a tanker for Archer Daniels Midland on the weekends.  He left school after his last class on Fridays, picked up his fully loaded tanker, and drove to New England and back and still had enough time to sleep for a couple of hours before his Monday morning classes.  Gail spent most of her time in the G.I. married housing unit on campus.  Because housing was in short supply, the newlyweds were forced to live in a temporary housing structure; an old Quonset hut.  It was a prefabricated structure of corrugated steel formed in the shape of a half cylinder.  They only were given the front half of the hut, another couple lived in the back of the hut, and there was no insulation.  Gail liked to tell the story of how the condensation on the window of their hut froze during the cold Minneapolis winter and there were icicles everywhere.  Still, even though they were crowded and cold, the young couple was free and independent, and they could not have been happier.

            These were the salad days of Thomas and Gail.  He was busy going to class, studying, driving a truck, and otherwise growing into his name.  She worked at Dayton’s Department Store to help with expenses.  Thomas decided that they needed a car so he took a second part time job unloading boxes from trucks at night to earn some extra money.  Eventually he saved up enough to buy an old model maroon Dodge with a Desoto race engine.  Thomas loved to tinker with the engine whenever he had the time but, no matter what he did, the engine rocked the car back and forth even while it was idling.  Still, that car was hot, and Thomas would let his bride drive it whenever she could come up with some gas money.  Gail drove the Dodge like a banshee through the streets of St Paul.  Like riding her horse on the trails when she was just a girl, Gail felt a new sense of freedom whenever she was behind the wheel.  On the rare day when they both had time off, Thomas and Gail loved to go to the lake so that she could swim and sun herself while he worked on the Dodge.

After Thomas graduated from college, he found a good job working at a family owned barge line in Minneapolis.  The owner and manager of the small company, Minneapolis Harbor Service, which was run by Frank Eiple, who wanted to hire Thomas before he even graduated from college.  Thomas insisted that he be allowed to finish his course work, but was willing to put off going to law school, and started to work for Frank the day after he graduated.  For the rest of his life, Thomas regretted not going to law school after earning his undergraduate degree.  However, since Frank and Mable Eiple were an older couple, they took Thomas and Gail under their wing and treated the young couple as if they were their own children.  For example, When Thomas and Gail started a family of their own, Mable volunteered to babysit.  In her spare time, Mable knitted sweaters for the babies.  Thomas moved his wife out of the Quonset hut and took an apartment next to the Eiples so that the two families could spend even more time together.  For the first time in their lives, Thomas and Gail were truly happy and settled down to a marriage that would last for over fifty years.

Elderhood: Forewarned is Forearmed

                          Elderhood: Forewarned is Forearmed
       About twenty years ago I was called to visit my aunt, who had cancer and wasn’t expected to survive, and she said, “It is alright if I die.  I have had a long and fulfilling life.”  She ended up beating that cancer and, when she turned 80 last summer she said, “What was I thinking?  At 60 I was still young, and I didn’t realize that I had many fulfilling years ahead of me.  Being a grandparent became the best part of my life!”  It is comforting to think that my aunt considered 60 to be young since I am only two years away from reaching that age.
       According to a book that I have just finished reading, there are three age-based subgroupings: childhood, adulthood, elderhood.  The final category, elderhood, is the final thirty years of our lives.  As I approach elderhood I have learned that the key to successful aging is to approach it with the same shameless ambition accorded to childhood and adulthood.  My personal philosophy is to shoot for being an exceptional senior.  That means that I want to continue to do the triathlons, only at shorter distances, and I will keep working.  I want to be as low maintenance as I can be until I can’t live without assistance.  If I can give my life meaning and purpose, all the while keeping my perspective and self-respect, then I will consider myself to be an exceptional senior.
       Elderhood is the climax of a lifetime spent building a bank account and raising children; now is the time for resolution.  If adulthood is filled with the stress that accompanies work and family life, elderhood sees a rise in contentment, wisdom, and agency.  Since Tracey and I have been blessed with good health and financial resources, the options for us are unlimited.  Our lives can evolve into a new form.  We could quit our jobs and move to the Fontainebleau in Miami.  If we became bored with our lives of leisure, then we could volunteer.  If retirement didn’t agree with us, then Tracey and I could unretire.  About 40 percent of Americans begin an encore career because retirement brings on a lack of purpose, a lack of social engagement, and a lack of needed income.  What scares me the most is that I will feel a loss of self-worth so I doubt that I will ever fully retire.
   Elderhood can be broken up into two distinct age groups; the young-old who are in their 60s and 70s, and the old-old who are in their 80s and 90s.  Tracey and I are about ready to enter the young-old stage.  The good thing about being in our 60s and 70s is that we have not taken up permanent residency in old age.  We are the young-old but feel like we are in our 40s.  Of course, there are physical challenges that go along with being older: hair loss, weight gain, wrinkles, graying, and general weakness.  Degradations also include hearing loss and vision loss.  As we get older, we are more concerned with mobility and remaining independent, while the vanities of physical appearance and social recognition become less important.  That is probably for the best since the young-old have become invisible to our youth-obsessed society.
One of the good things about being at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation is that is that there is silver tsunami of 40 million people aged 65 or older.  These folks who have started elderhood right before Tracey and I and they can help to shine the light on successful aging. 
   The final stage of life, the old-old, begins somewhere in our 80s, and will eventually take the steep downward plunge towards death.  Our main goal is to remain independent, but that goal becomes harder and harder to achieve as we face more and more challenges.  The physical challenges that we will face in our 80s are a compressed torso, humped back, losing teeth, constipation, high blood pressure, heartburn, and obesity.  The loathsome expanse of the years begins to catch up with us as we have trouble with the simplest acts, like standing up, because we suffer from a loss of balance and weakness.  Depression can set in because by the time that we are old-old, we will have to give up on a lifetime of gainful employment.  Driving a car can become problematic and there will be grieving at this loss of freedom.  Growing old isn’t a battle, it is a massacre.    
   The old-old face many mental challenges including managing finances, handling medications, and such mundane chores as shopping, cooking, and cleaning.  They worry about who will take care of them when they are no longer able to take care of themselves.  The secret to aging well is to have good genes, good luck, enough money, and one good kid.  Usually a daughter.  Ultimately, however, the hard fact is that 60% of Americans die in an acute care hospital, 20% die in a nursing home, and the last 20% die at home.  To make matters worse, more than one third of all people over the age of 85 have dementia.  No one will get away unscathed and the old-old suffer from a sense of fatalism and a general loss of interest.  The last thing that I want to do is to become a burden to my family; a problem to be solved.
   My final wish will be to have a good death, meaning that I can die at home surrounded by family and friends.  The worst way for me to die would be alone, in a nursing home, miserable because I am in pain, and undignified because I would be wearing a full diaper, and tubes would protrude from my mouth.  And yet I know that even if I take all the precautions for a good death, and that I have made my wishes clear in a living will, there is no guarantee that my family will follow through with all of the arrangements that I have made.