Taking Five with Dave Brubeck and Howie

Almost a decade passed between the time my parents filled out their free copies of Aging With Dignity's FiveWishes advanced directive and my father's final decline.  By then Dad had lost all interest in music or tolerance for most sounds.  It's embarrassing to admit that I had envisioned a farewell concert that was about me and not my exiting dad.

 

Dave Brubeck passed away yesterday, one day short of his ninety-second birthday.  Experiencing a live performance of his quartet in 2009 was a highpoint of my life.

Filling out an advanced directive is a huge help for your family when the time comes that you can't manage your affairs or tune your radio to 88.1 KNTU.


© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

The ducks at the end of the tunnel

The bereavement counselor assures me I will feel much worse soon, but she will be available to assist me for the next thirteen months.  This fails to dampen my general mood of relief bordering on resurgence.  I feel like I'm emerging from a very long tunnel. I already have two more hours in every day, and an enormous weight off my shoulders.

Did Dad see the light at the end of the tunnel?  I don't know.  He was not able to provide hints to those of us monitoring his crossing.

My ducks are not in a row.  I still don't know diddly about probate, except that it's beneficial for some attorney$.  My ducks are under Custer Road up by Schimelpfenig Library.  Make way.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Outdoor-in anole, but no carrots singing

How can it be seven years since the Woolly Mammoth's Lunch Bunch gang had the finger-flick place-kicking competition that impaled carrot sticks on the mini-blind slats?  This evening I am wishing those high school students would magically reappear to laugh with me about the anole lizard playing hide and seek in the condo.  Wishing too that Fritzi, my mother, was here to appreciate both the condo lizard excitement and the Woolly Mammoth's upcoming grad school commencement in D.C.

The anole on the mini-blinds is probably the same lizard I saw scurrying into the hot water heater closet early this morning after I'd been outside cutting flowers for a bouquet.  Still, it could be another anole.  I've been in and out both front and back doors so very many times today.  Anoles are quick.  I have no problem sharing my condo with any who get inside.



Don't know where the anole is at the moment.  I last spotted it on the theater programs saved by Fritzi, including a production with Florence Henderson as Maria in "Sound of Music".  High on a hill is a lonely anole,


Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Now We Are Six

Six years ago this week I flew to Lincoln to see my mother and to give my dad a break.  Fritzi was dying, although we hadn't accepted that fact.  Howard was exhausted, depressed, almost numb, and in total denial. 

In hindsight it's clear Dad was in the earliest stages of dementia.  His issues were obscured by my mother's rapid failing. 

Broken hips, hospitalizations, anesthesia, and rehab relocations have added to the bumps of Pooh being dragged down the stairs.  In this part of my life, playing Christopher Robin to Howard's Pooh, childish mentor to a bear of little brain, we should be learning our sums.  Six years is a long time to a child changing from infant to acquiring early addition and spelling skills.  Instead Dad and I are dislearning everything about time and numbers.  We have been misplacing the names of people and things for quite some time.  Dad calls before six a.m. to enquire the day, date, time, and the name of his roommate.

It's never an easy sum to do. 

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Chickmumps at Bear Lake

The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see. With each verse, the preschoolers named the animal in a photo held up by the music teacher. And all that he could see, and all that he could see was:

• a deer
• a baby bird
• a chickmump
• a what?

The bear went over the mountain and all that he could see was a chickmump!

Took these snapshots with my Kodak Brownie Starmite in August of '68. My little sister is feeding a chickmumps at Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. My brother [not shown] is standing on a big boulder down by the lake trying to skip rocks. I'm thirteen.

The bear went over the mountain and saw my cute parents. I didn't know they were so cute at the time, just sitting there enjoying each other on a mountain picnic--a Budweiser, crackers, cheese, and salami from the Scotch cooler. Mom's wearing her brown Koret windbreaker and matching skirt. She was proud to be slim, and had treated herself to some new summer clothes.

The shopping trip to Simon's at Gateway is vivid in my memory. Must have been the first time Mom sent me out of the fitting room to fetch different colors and sizes. I got to offer my opinion. Then as now, I voted for brown.

I'm sad to be in my fifties and just realizing that my parents were cute. We must have to go over a mountain to reach the point where we can see what we can see.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Mourning Cloak

"Look! There's a mourning cloak by the sandbox," I told the elementary students. We were having lunch at the picnic tables on the playground. The butterfly was being very cooperative, almost posing for our observation.

"Do you know what a cloak is?" Alas, the children are not familiar with Charlie Needs A Cloak, by Tomie dePaola, a wonderful picture book about a shepherd who shears his sheep, cards and spins the wool, weaves and dyes the cloth, and sews a beautiful new red cloak despite comic interference from the sheep.

A cloak is like Superman's cape, but big enough to wrap around you to keep warm. It's not like a coat, because it doesn't have sleeves. The elementary teacher and I were making progress explaining the butterfly's peculiar name.

"Mourning is when you feel very sad after someone you care about dies. People used to wear black clothes for a long time when someone died. A mourning cloak is a big black cape you would wear to a funeral," I explained.

The butterfly isn't actually black, but a very dark brown with hints of purple in the sunshine. Remember those stories of young brides wearing mourning clothes at their weddings before they left their families forever to set off on the Oregon Trail? Mourning cloaks also remind me of the movie "Amadeus" and the grieving common folk following Mozart's cortege.

Our butterfly sunning its wings by the sandbox seems dramatic, not gloomy. I was afraid of mourning cloak butterflies as a child. My parents made butterfly nets for us so I could earn a Campfire Girl bead by catching and identifying butterflies. Chasing butterflies was great exercise and fresh air whether we caught anything or not. Why was I afraid of mourning cloaks?

I wanted to check my facts before I said any more to the children. Mourning cloaks are quite unusual because they live up to ten months, longer than any other species. They can be seen on warm winter days when they come out of hibernation from under tree bark and other sheltered places. They settle on high, sunny spots to absorb heat through their outspread dark wings.

When we used to hike in Fontenelle Forest beside the Missouri River south of Omaha, we would see mourning cloaks flitting about in early February when snow was still on the ground. Mourning cloaks are the state butterfly of Montana, so I found some useful teaching information at www.montanakids.com. I also recommend the Butterfly Lab site for pictures of mourning cloaks and other butterflies every child should learn.

Mourning cloaks were scary, but not nearly as scary as miller moths. Now that I think about it, I probably first learned about "mourning" after the assassination of JFK when I was eight years old, about the same age I became a butterfly-chasing Camp Fire Girl. Going with my mother to pray silently in the nave at First Plymouth Church and trying to understand this national sadness and fear must be entangled in my butterfly memories. How does an eight-year-old understand grieving and mourning?

Miller moths are scary because when you get up in the night to go to the bathroom and turn on the light, they fly at you!


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Campus Walk

Since Tuesday evening I've been walking across my memory campus. Maybe you've had similar thoughts. As my heart goes out to the students, parents, faculty, and administrators at Virginia Tech, my brain tries to wrap itself around the horror. Underlying real life in the present, a continuous loop video is playing. It's the remembered walking and walking and biking around my university campus as if filmed through the shaky lens of my naive, inhibited, careless, opinionated, generous, self-centered, invincible, scared-sheep student 1974 self.

Names of the buildings scroll past in the supertitles. Learning my way from Harper-Schramm-Smith to the the third floor of Burnett, the huge lecture halls in Henzlik and Hamilton, or the odd 501 Building way over on Tenth Street for calculus. Riding my yellow bike in the snow between the power plant and Mabel Lee, around my dear Morrill Hall and Bessey to get a dime coffee in a paper cup from the machine in Oldfather. Late to Econ in CBA when sorority sisters can't quit Luke and Laura on General Hospital. Chaining my Schwinn to the rack outside Avery for the interdisciplinary Intro to Eastern European Studies with Jerry Petr. Cigarette smoke everywhere. Shortcuts through courtyards and quadrangles. Gravel parking lots. Grimy couches in the Union.

Honors freshman English with Miss Daniels and flickering fluorescent lights in the basement of Andrews. Savoring Tom Jones, Ibsen, and Lear. Rhetoric in a June mini-session with the amazing, rumpled Dudley Bailey, but without air-conditioning. Gene Hardy's childrens' literature class making Little Red Riding Hood all about-gasp-sexuality. Poetry-writing with Greg Kuzma.

That's the one that hits me. A dozen poetry students in a room no bigger than the offering envelope for Sunday School at First Plymouth. Pseudo-nonchalant lolling around the one table, always waiting to see if Kuzma would show up. So vulnerable, reading our little poems aloud out into the cosmos to be diced, minced, bludgeoned like baby seals. Not making eye-contact with the creepy guy in his camo. Yes. The older student back from Nam writing bloody raping poems and going off on long, violent monologues. Kuzma being hip to all that, so we felt like such high school babies.

Sitting outside Andrews on a stone bench that sunny, frozen afternoon all inspiration and deadline desperation, pouring out poems in blue fountain pen with cedar waxwings in the bushes. Tears.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Blog labels limited

Just finished adding labels for my blog posts of late 2004. Crying. Stingy eyes. My chest hurts reliving my heart being sucked out with an industrial vacuum. There are no labels for knowing your mother is dying, for knowing you can't prevent it, for feeling that pull on your heart, for trying to send your dad enough energy over the phone to get through the next day, for wanting to grab doctors by their ears and yell in their professional emotionally-detached faces. There's no way to categorize veins that can't handle yet another attempt to start an IV. There's no way to make the pain go away. It doesn't surface as often now, but the ache is the same. I look at my posts and realize I was trying to send whatever positive energy I had out to the universe to envelope Fritzi and strengthen my dad while keeping my head from spinning way off my neck.

While I was in Nebraska helping my dad move home from the hospital, I wondered often what Fritzi would want me to do. I wanted to grab Dad by the ears and yell in his face that I can't blog my way through this again. It feels like prickles and electric shocks all through my veins. I am as dry and brittle as the rice cakes I serve my students for morning snack. Rice cakes spread with wet concrete.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Sentimental Soccer Mom

An important part of my life is coming to a close. I have loved being a soccer mom, and a sometime t-ball/baseball mom since the final year of the Reagan administration!

When I explained to my students and their parents that I would be rushing out of class right at six p.m. to make it to the last regular season game of the PYSA Recreational Soccer Under-19 League, they asked if I would cry on this occasion. They were kidding around, but I seriously answered that it was entirely possible.

Turned out I didn't get to cry. The game was close and well-played. Our team advanced to the playoffs. At least one more game for my career!

Flight Attention

One thing I've discovered this year is that I really enjoy flying now that I am not responsible for anybody but myself. All the stress of maneuvering little boys through concourses, keeping track of "The Special Bunny", keeping them from disturbing other people was so draining, that the fun of a trip was rarely worth the ordeal. Now it doesn't much matter if the plane leaves on time, if the plans change, if silly people with oversize carry-on bags block the aisle. I don't much care if the TSA folks go through my purse three times looking for a non-existent pocket knife. The only thing that bugs me is that some airlines only serve Pepsi instead of Coke.

It's time for me to beam up. Fritzi and I say teary good-byes. Howie drives me to the airport in the cool sunshine. He lets me out to check in with Northwest and confirm that my flight is on time. He parks and comes into the terminal for more good-byes and hugs. Standing still while he walks out the door is one of the most difficult things I've ever done.

By the time I ride the escalator upstairs and take off my shoes for security, the weather has changed. Low snow clouds have blocked out all the sun. Drizzle is hitting the windows. Passengers for the 1:05 flight to Minneapolis are grimly determined. They have no plane. They are making friends with strangers. I think of "The Outcasts of Poker Flats". Their plane might arrive eventually. Some have created a card party, others a pity party.

The 4:05 flight is still allegedly on time. Minutes tick by. I finish my wonderful library book by Stephanie Kallos. No announcements are made, but it becomes clear that flying in and out of Minneapolis isn't going to happen in a timely fashion. A worn-out farmgirl changes my ticket. She's been doing this for hours. I will fly a United link into O'Hare, my old nemesis. Then I will find an American flight to DFW. Fine. I can handle it. Time's not a factor. I've spent three and a half days in a different galaxy. My priorities have been rearranged. Sitting in an airport wrapped in a parka and reading a paperback seems like the only thing out there. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The descent into Chicago is pretty trippy. We fly over residential areas with outside Christmas lights and displays. I consider waving back to waving Santas on rooftops!

Let it go. Let it snow. Let it go.

Through the bugs on the windshield

So there I am driving on back roads this afternooon, seeing coyote, deer, many roadrunners, countless scissortails, gorgeous red earth, blonde and pink grasses, white cotton, vultures, and my hawks. I'm heading back toward Dallas from Lubbock on Highway 82 to Seymour, then on deserted roads to Archer City. Outside the window there is poverty, decay, erosion, promise, creation, renewal, ripeness and light. "Carmen" is blaring, and cleansing quiet tears are streaming....Must refill the windshield wiper fluid!

I'm not good at crying. Tears rarely come to the surface without whacko hormonal assistance. If they did, maybe I would view life through a cleaner mental windshield.

Diving the shipwreck

This whole situation with my mom in the hospital has made for lots of introspection. It was a surprise to find I am strong and centered enough to be sad without becoming overwhelmed by and mired in the sadness. That seems to have brought up many other sacrifices and losses of the last 15-20 years for which I was always too afraid to grieve. The grief work still waited. It has been like discovering a bottle in a submerged shipwreck, bringing it to the surface, and uncorking it.....