Thankfulness

A Couple More Days

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Seems like every time I want to close my eyes for a small little tiny nap some health person is encouraging me to get up and move around.

Today the occupational therapist had a gap in her schedule and just as I pushed my chair back to NAP position the phone ran.

May I come and assess your functionality? Sure why not. I will be here.

It actually makes me laugh. All the attention about a little thing like cardiac arterial bypass graft surgery. CABG “cabbage” is the term used by the cutters. All week long I have kind of complained a little that I did not feel all that bad and that is true. Most of that seems to be due to something described as a freezing nerve block that will wear off over time as my body heals.

Every day is a bit better and today is much better.

Today on the way home from the cardiothorasic surgery visit we stopped at one of my favorite diner chili parlors to get a 5-way for lunch. If you live in southwest Ohio you do not need more description.

Carpe Diem.

3 AM Sometimes

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Day Six and Beyond

A major surgery makes one think about things one might not think about.

I awoke from a nap this afternoon wondering what God had in mind. I imagine that we all have these thoughts occasionally. What is the big picture? Or is there a picture? I could feel the love from people near me in my life.

Love is a powerful emotion. It is freely given.

The person that I am with, Debbie, is staying with me to help me through this piece of the recovery journey. After Cheryl’s death I did not think that I would feel the same way for anyone again. Debbie makes me happy. It is that simple. Loving someone is a connection between souls. It is deeper. She is here with me through this recovery and I am more concerned for her health and well being than my own. Love is a two-way street.

Last night a spontaneous gathering arose as David, doing his master chef on the grill, invited his brother and family to join us. Love was in the air then too.

My sister and I talk every day. This is something we have not done since we were children. There are three time zones between us which adds certain amount of thought process on my eastern end when I want to initiate a communication. It seems to work out though. Love figures into the process.

It is as though the love that I radiated out during my previous life before my heart attack is returned as I need it. A simple beautiful concept, love the people around you and they will love you back.

These past few days as I recover post-surgery, I am overwhelmed by love.

I am grateful.

Carpe Diem.

Days Four and Five

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Fourth day and Home

Open heart surgery – cracked open my chest – the whole thing – has come a long way since Mom had it many years ago.

I woke up about 9pm after surgery on Friday. The breathing specialist took the plastic tube out of my mouth and lungs. A little one, two, three and its out. Wow I am hoping to never have that experience again. There were four other drain tubes still in. two around my lungs, two around my heart. And to keep with the twos I had a double bypass.

I could talk so the first thing I did was call Debbie when the night nurse whose name was Austin gave me the phone it was great to hear her voice and I knew she would sleep better knowing that I was still my annoying self. I thought she would spread the word that Paul was back.

What a long slog this will be. The nurses and physical therapy folks – Emma and Amy – don’t leave you alone. The first day was simply sit in a hospital recliner chair until its too much. And they talked about keeping my elbows near my body, move in the tube is phrase that they use to help you remember. When they cut your pectoral muscles and your breast bone apart, your body tells you. There is that little pulling sensation in your chest that says – hey, hey, hey we are are healing down here – that will remind you to be careful.

On the Fifth day

What a remarkable feeling it is to sleep in one’s own bed. There is the added bonus of not getting poked in the arm somewhere at 3:15AM because they need another blood test. The chest x-rays at 5AM were also reduced to none at home.

I am truly amazed at my own progress.

I think I will stop here but God taught me two things; exercise is good for all recovery and do not ignore chest pain. I do have a greater appreciation of life.

Carpe Diem.

Ohio is Home

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Reflections After a Wonderful and Pleasant Trip

While waiting for the dryer to finish up I sat in my guest bedroom for a bit to think and reflect and simply enjoy the quiet for a bit after returning from a very pleasant trip to Naples Florida with two of my favorite people. We planned this trip before the holidays. In a bit of universal serendipity the late January snow-mageddon that blanketed the Midwestern section of the country remained aloof until we were settled in our little rent-a-cottage near old Naples.

We are back now. No matter what I may think about cold Ohio temperatures, it is great to be home. I have lived in this part of the world all my life and have had the opportunity in my working career to travel to many other places in the U. S. and abroad. It is always great to be back home.

Over the weekend as I was watching the newsy shows, a weather guy reported that temperatures in the 20s were expected in Miami on Sunday. Alas for them. They will need long pants and socks.

Later, folding and rolling and putting away, I thought how many pairs of socks does one need? Immediately behind that came a thought about T-shirts. We do live in a great place. Again is not an issue.

Fortunately, not all of Florida is beaches and crowded restaurants. Fortunately also, there are direct flights to Naples, Florida from Cincinnati, Ohio (and back). The car started easily. Very little snow was on it after having been parked in an open lot for eight days.

Debbie and I made it safely home. Joyce is back in Portland. It was a nice respite.

Carpe Diem

Funerals

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These events are for the living. The usefulness to the living is a final farewell. The tradition helps the living cope with the fact that they too will eventually succumb. (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we are here and then we are not.) Nice music and often monotonic recitation of traditional prayer provides solace.

This particular funeral service was held for my sister-in-law. Three of us brothers-in-law are widowers now. Is this a trend? I hope not. I chose to sit near the back of the church to avoid sitting with the grieving immediate family and to be alone with my own thoughts. Cheryl is still fresh in my mind.

As the homilist was speaking I heard the first allusion to purgatory in a Roman Catholic sermon that I have heard without using the word for a very long time. (It could be that I did not listen to funeral sermons carefully before this one.) I was interested by the implication that the person might not be in heaven. But me being me I was not alarmed, I went off to the Wait wait What? to read current doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. Every thought, idea, law and religious doctrine exists on the WWW somewhere and it exists for any religious philosophy.

There is a YouTube video for the reading challenged at www.catholic.com that tells all. Reserve an hour or so if you are interested. I have got to admit that the current view of purgatory is much different than what I got from reading the catechism and listening to the Sisters of Mercy seventy years ago.

I have misunderstood the difference of “praying for” and “praying to” for many years. Today I read this: “… prayers for the dead: “In doing this (offering a sacrifice) he (Judas Maccabee) acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin” (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in heaven, and no one can help those in hell…”

There is an in-between state (Limbo of the Fathers, Purgatory, Sanctification) and those souls we pray for. Souls in heaven do not need prayer. They are there. They are sanctified. They are prayed to. Souls in hell (damnation) are lost and cannot be helped. That is sad. The distinction was lost on me when I was six years old and I was not interested enough to ask. Catholic philosophy is laden with guilt and I did not seek out more of it by asking the nun to compare and contrast for and to.

As for me, I prefer to sit near the back of any church. It is a fine old Catholic tradition that if you get in early you can sit in the back. Cheryl liked to sit midway up and to the left side. After her death I sit near the rear and to the right. I can look at the other side of her. I see her often in church, any church, when I am there.

Family is mostly what I thought about during her funeral after I made a mental note to educate myself about the concept of purgatory. Two of my children sat with me. We did not stay for the reception in the church hall afterward. Cheryl’s death is too fresh for all of us.

Cheryl… when she died I was sad and happy… She was better at religion than I was and am now. I think women are better at religion. It is odd, I think, that men are in charge of them, all of them. I was sad that she was gone from my life and I felt that here in church at Teri’s funeral.

Cheryl came to me in an early morning dream a few months ago. It is incredibly vivid in my memory, as though I had lived though it. In the dream there was a special service in our church – Nativity. For some unclear reason we had to bring our own chairs to the service – a mass as I remember it. At the end of the service she hoped up and announced to me that she had to go. I can hear her, “I have to go!” I thought she meant to the lady’s room. She was in the midst of her Parkinson’s and with that her memory and spacial issues. She could not always find her way around. In this instance she was moving with ease towards the lavatory door which was around the corner and out of my sight as she moved through the crowd of folks leaving the service. I waited anxiously near our chairs gathering our stuff up to leave. I looked in her direction often to be sure she would make her way back. She often was unsure of where she was, so, I was worried. She was gone a long time and as I began to move towards the lady’s room a young man came up to me and asked if he could help with the chairs. He explained that Cheryl was gone.(He said, “She’s not coming back. She’ll be okay.) It is a very vivid memory/dream and I cry whenever I recall it. She is in heaven. This is what I take her last visit to me in this dream to mean.

I am happy for her because she was no longer suffering from Parkinson’s scourge that took her from this life and my life. I am happy that I can pray to her.

Carpe Diem

Fire

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https://wlwt.com/article/4-people-displaced-after-fire-engulfs-home-in-pleasant-ridge/69582581

A house fire is a terribly scary thing.

This picture of my son’s house on fire makes me glad and sad at the same time. The whole family went to a nearby church to buy a Christmas tree. Gone for perhaps 20 – 30 minutes they returned to this conflagration at their house.

Glad – they were not home.

Sad – their home was messed up and will need extensive repairs.

So now starts the extensive task of cleaning and repair.

What caused it? A small remote control outlet that allowed them to turn on a floor lamp without climbing over the couch to do that task. (Ah, It shorted out you said to yourself.) Not a “short” as electrical folks think of it. A short circuit would have popped the breaker. This did not. It cooked and got hotter until the nearby couch caught fire.

Many of us have similar devices. I have one I talk to, “Alexa! Light on!” Same thing, different remote style. I have touched all of those little chargers, bricks, power supplies, thingies plugged in anywhere in my house. Look at the picture again. Scary stuff. I will do it more often, maybe even, a nightly routine.

“I bet they did not have smoke detectors.” Social media is rife with experts and lookie-loos. One of them took this picture. “I saw them take someone out on a stretcher.” Nope.

The smoke detectors were screaming when the fire department showed up. I am glad no one was home to hear them. One of the pet cats, “Snowball”, did not make it.

Glad – they are all safe. Glad my family is safe.

Sad – one of the cats died in the fire.

Glad – they have good insurance. Things can be replaced.

Sad – for all the clean-up that will occur going forward. Enough laundry is done to get on with life and the recovery process.

Both sad and glad. Several days beyond the initial trauma, the world has stabilized a bit and the clean up begins. My son got a ticket from the zoning commission for having an unlivable domicile. We laughed at that. My grandson who stored all of his toys and cars in the living room where the fire occurred incurred a loss of all of those. When my son mentioned that to his teacher at school the first day afterward, she replied, we can fix that. My grandson came home with cars and truck carrier and some new clothes.

He has a great teacher and a wonderful school.

Carpe Diem.

Thankful

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This time of year I think of the things, people and situations in my life for whom and which I am thankful. The positives outweigh the negatives. Do this for yourself and assess were you are. (I am rarely thankful for negatives.)

People: (Be careful here. It is easy to miss someone.)

  • Anna & Eric & the kiddos
  • David & Melissa & the kiddos
  • Scott & Mavis & the kiddos
  • My sister Joyce
  • Debbie Joy
  • My cousin Bob (also Tom)
  • All the Nancys
  • Sr. Carren
  • Sr. Janet
  • The stock club guys
  • Grief Share support
  • Bea, Bev, Marg, Peggy, John and Peg and the back pew support crew

I stop after this list because the people who have saved me is too great for me to remember and the people who are so very special to me crowd my thoughts. It is remarkable that Cheryl is talking to me in my head; “you forgot… and what about…“ After three rounds of Grief Share group support I can hear her voice with almost perfect clarity. So, I tell her, “okay maybe I shouldn’t try to list everyone. You are right someone I missed will be sad I did not list them and they will think I forgot what they did for me.” She just said, “I am (right)!” I laughed out loud at her.

Things:

  • A place to live
  • Bike paths and a car big enough to put my bike into for travel.
  • No mortgage or loan payments
  • Enough cash to last until the end of me
  • Enough food and the ability to prepare it
  • Pie and coffee cake
  • Blueberry sorbet (I am listing the truly important things now.)
  • Also pecan pie. Mavis sent me her pecan bars recipe with the note that the filling makes THE BEST pecan pie. I have made it twice now and she is ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.

I am thankful that in our society I think I will get by with the means at hand. I am pretty sure I will get to the end of my life before I get to the end of my money. We (Cheryl and I) have always been fiscally frugal.) Tricky to do raising three kids but they all turned out perfect and these days their families are perfect. (I am thankful for them too.) I think the little pile of money Cheryl and I put together will last until the end of me.

Situations:

  • Good health
  • Bike paths and the ability to ride on them
  • Loving family
  • Wonderful friends
  • I have decided and have started the process of complete retirement. I hope to have enough time to pursue my own interests and hobbies without interruption of commitment not of my own decision.
  • Mental relief of making that decision and starting the process.
  • Wearing pajamas until noon

One of the reasons for retirement – maybe one of the best – is wearing pajamas until noon. On baking days and writing days I do this. No one is here except me. I do not concern myself with good looks when no one else is about. Lately there have been fewer writing days. My school schedule has picked up. All of that changes at the end of 2025 and I look forward to it.

Carpe Diem

Late Summer Early Fall

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Dear Dad,

I was thinking about you today. I realized that I have not written to you in awhile.

How are you doing in heaven? Have you and Mom found each other? I suspect it is crowded there. I wonder in my own mind how you are able to find her but I imagine that love and connection is an eternal string. You just follow it to the end and there she is.

I am writing this time because I haven’t told you about what is going on in my life. A lot has been happening since you left this plane. That will be eighteen years in a couple months. (Wow.) You taught me well, Dad. I don’t feel like I need you every day but quite often there are things that happen and other thoughts that I want to ask you about, talk to you about, get your opinion.

Cheryl is gone too. You know that, of course. Look around for her too. You know about Bill and Laura. By now you have found them in the crowd there.

I met another girl, Dad. She is nice. She has five kids. Her first daughter is hers. All the rest because of who she is and maybe, because of, what she does are adopted. She is a wonderful woman, Dad. You would like her. I would like you to meet her but as we both know that is not possible right now. Just be on the look out for her. (I do not know which of us will get there first and Debbie does not want me to talk about it.) I love her, Dad. I did not think that possible with all the time I spent with Cheryl but I do. She makes me laugh. Much like when Cheryl was here, I feel an aloneness when I am not with her. Did you feel that when you were away from Mom?

I have been feeling this for some time. It is why I am writing to you.

Yesterday was a working day for her. She called me in the afternoon and told me that she was free for dinner after work if I wanted to meet her somewhere but she was not sure of when our Grief Share group was finished. We met at a restaurant near that LaRosa’s where we used to stop on the way to the playhouse on Sunday’s when we had tickets to the play. Remember? Anyway, this restaurant had the best beef stroganoff. I think Mom used to make that. Isn’t that right? But it was not the food at all, it was Debbie being there. I think it could have been a so-so dinner and I would have ignored all that. It was very good though and that made our conversation all the better. We talked about our day and how it all went. Not a lofty conversation but we caught up with each other about our hours apart.

I forgot to tell you about grief share. Remember the kerfuffle I had with the cemetery years ago when Cheryl and I set up our place there? A woman came to our group session who had lost her son in a flood on a rain swollen creek while camping. A very traumatic experience for her and her family. I remember you telling me about your friend who had drowned in the Ohio river when you were young. But anyway, the cemetery buried him in the wrong place. Can you imagine? (Do you imagine or can you just see it, Dad.) They waited several days for them to recover her son’s body and then the cemetery tried to lose it. Her anger with the cemetery folks is visceral. She is very sad right now. It has been just a few weeks since this happened. I felt sad for her. She was angry and sad and cynical and disappointed and on top of everything grieving the loss of her son. We let her talk for some time. She needed to get it out.

There is a lot of other stuff going on but mostly I wanted to tell you about Debbie. We did go out to Portland and visited with Joyce. Joyce is doing good. We had a great time touring around. We also spent a couple days at the coast. Joyce had found a place to take her dog teddy along. That dog is really attached to her. It took off down the path to the beach and then turned around. Then it ran around the little house we were staying in. then around Joyce and back inside. Teddy took in all the smells quickly and found its owner after the enthusiastic jaunt around the property. It was fun to watch.

There is a lot more for me to write to you about but I think I will save it for later. I hope all is going well with you.

I have one more thing. This deer often visits in the morning. I call him Fred. He has a buddy that I call Frank. Now that they both have their antlers back it is hard to tell them apart. They are majestic animals and I think they grew up in the woods out back. Whenever either of them saunters by they are snacking their way to the old golf course across the street. I think that is where the girls all hang out.

I love you, Dad.

Carpe Diem.

Text Banter

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All the puzzles were easy to do for me. Is it a good sign that I was able to do both the Wordle and Connections in the NY Times and solve them both rapidly? Some mornings my brain is alert and my favorite puzzles are easily solved. They are almost trivial.

Is that because I will be with Debbie today? Both of us have Friday off. We have a couple of activities planned. My heart is happy. My brain is anxious for our bantering conversation.

A typical morning text string from a few days ago:

You up?

Me, Of course but you are not sleeping late… (smiley face)Ÿ˜

Me, Happy Wednesday

Asleep before 10 so woke up by 6. Happy Wednesday ! 82 degrees today ! 15 percent chance if rain now. Very windy tho

Oops 50 percent

Me, Yep. Gayle is wearing red and black too

Me, Lonnie lost Wisconsin

Gayle? Weather looks bad tonight. Good to hear about Wisconsin . Lonnie needs to learn how to lose. He’s like a spoiled 5yr. old.

Me, BMWs will be more expensive tomorrow

Darn I’ll get mine today then.

Me, (smiley face)Ÿ˜Š

Wanna come?

Me, In general? Or to get a beemer?

100 percent knew you’d say that. Yes and yes

Me, You are incorrigible (smiley face)Ÿ

Thank you

Me, Hmmmm….

Me, Tuff schedule today?

Right? Lol. Only 6 today thank goodness.

Me, AustedoXR comes with a free coffee mug. It’s orange though.

Is that a bmw?

Should come with a free trip

Me, How come Donnie has so many blond haired women around him.

Me, Does no one else notice stuff like this?

Me, XR is some kind of drug for some thing.

Few people notice what you do.

Men in power frequently want blondes with big breasts around them. Just sayin

Me, I think Tara only has 3 pairs of shoes

Now I like her more.

Me, Hmmm… now I have to focus on tit’s. Hard to see past the podiums.

Where there’s a will there’s a way

Me, Eureka! A side view of whatshername reveals nice boobs. How do you know these things? Are you psychic?

You’re welcome. Yes I am psychic

Me, Huh. I imagine that can be burdensome on some days.

Kids at office say that too. Haha. they think I can read their minds. Yes I would actually not want to be psychic.

How’d you sleep?

Me, Pretty swell. I only woke up twice. I’m unwoke today.

Me, Wordle

Me, (picture of the puzzle)

Me, Going to look for more coffee

Good. And you are the opposite of unwoke. What’s the orange mean?

Me, (picture of the puzzle)

Me, S out of position

Did you get it?

Me, Yep… moving on to Connections

Well let me know if you need help. Haha

It is a common back and forth us and I love it. We are a little smartypants and a little flirty. It makes me laugh out loud.

Carpe Diem

Kilo 8 Kilo Bravo Kilo

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Yesterday as I spent time paying bills electronically a conformation code from my bank began with KBK. It made me think about my older and only brother.

When I was much much younger, fourteen to be precise, I took all the testing and successfully received an amateur radio license. My brother Bill had achieved that many years prior. His call sign was K8KBK or as he often said, and I can still hear his voice, kilo number eight kilo bravo kilo. Dad was also a ham radio operator. His call sign was K8JZA. With my success I became WA8PRQ.

It is interesting to me how earlier experiences in life influence situations later in life. Early analog radio communication was often full of scratchy static and in order to clarify that communication a mnemonic was added after the original series of letters.

“Hello, CQ, Hello CQ, this is K-8-K-B-K, kilo number eight, kilo, bravo, kilo.” This is a request for contact of a non-emergency nature. CQ is Morse code shorthand for: calling all stations that are able to hear me. Ham radio folks just like to yak a lot. I used to have a key much like the picture. I could not get proficient with the dual key. We had one but I did not like it. I could do about 15 words a minute with this J38 style. Those days are other memories.

To this day, if I see WTF in a text message, in my head, I translate that to Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Other leftovers from my Morse code days include TNX for thanks. Text messages from young people are often full of cryptic hieroglyphic-like emoticons and pictures of vegetables. The old Egyptians would be proud.

My ham radio days with Dad appeared in my head last summer while wandering through my time without Cheryl and wondering what to do with my time. I thought to develop old interests and maybe make new friends. Something that I was looking at caused the Facebook lunacy checker to send me a teaser about the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and memories from teenagerhood came flooding into my head about QSL cards, Field Days, portable communications, hidden transmitter hunts and the Oh-Ky-In clubhouse which is now part of the I-275 loop around Cincinnati.

The memories are numerous and fond. I got excited and sent them money to get the current books to study up get a license back which made me wonder if I could get my original call sign back. I have not found that out, yet. When the books turned up a week or so later, I wondered what I was thinking about when I ordered them.

Life is like that when your anchor gets disconnected from the chain as mine was. The summer moved on and so did I. The books look good on the shelf next to other technical references of greater but passing interest. Once an engineer, always an engineer.

Cheryl was not interested in any of that but she was if I was. These days I write and read and read and write and wonder if I will ever get certain students to understand certain engineering topics and translate a control diagram into a physical circuit (that works.) I have over time morphed into an instructor at a community college near me. It has become over time either more of an interest or less of an interest depending upon which day. Life is full of ups and downs.

I think I have found a new anchor, a person to be with, a listener, a friend, a place to feel comfortable and home.

We read and I write and we text and we talk. She teaches me the meaning of various glyphs (emojis). She admonishes me for the incorrect use of other glyphs. We have fun and enjoy each other’s company.

I think I have mentioned that before in other posts here.

I have fond memories of my earlier days. It has taken this past year and a few strategic moves and removals for me to mainly think about the great times in my life.

Reminders of recent sad times are still here and there. They are just not in the front row any longer.

Carpe Diem.