Goodbye to 2011

It was a year that started out with the knowledge that my mom was going to die. Not that I wanted to start this thing that morose, but hey, that’s reality. She had been struck with cancer (ovarian) three times in the span of one year. She had surgery twice to remove tumors and chemo for several months. And still that stuff kept coming back.

I got to eulogize her twice. I got to see two very different groups of people gathered together to say goodbye, to talk about her, reminisce about her life and her impact.

I spent most of the next few months pining over a woman that eventually decided, without communicating it in any way, that she wasn’t interested. I would have thought crap like this would have ended in high school.

Work was tough. Challenging and rewarding, cause for learning and patience. I work with some of the best people I could hope for. For two years I’ve pestered them with, quite simply, the dumbest question they will probably ever have to field. And yet still they answer them, still they take the time to make sure I have the info I need.

Right now there is a big hole in the ground with pockets of cement and rebar strewn all about. But I know that in two years this project will revolutionize the area; not just Denver and Colorado, but potentially the surrounding states as well. And I’m a teeny little part of that.

Certainly the year ended on a high note with finishing the first draft of my novel. It’s not very good at this time, what writers would call the SFD – a sh**** first draft. But the idea is solid, and there’s some research to do (what did farmers in Easter Colorado wear near the turn of the century?) but it’s there. It exists.

What’s up for 2012?

Provided my knees hold up, some 10Ks; a second draft of the novel; some finished (and submitted!) short stories; maybe I’ll start on that play.

Regardless, let’s see people, if we can make this year our bitch, and not the other way around.

One Last Gift

I was lucky in this life to have two chances to eulogize my mother. The first, just after her death, in Colorado; and in April, in Maryland, where my mother grew up and spent a great deal of her time after the chicks had left the nest. When my cousins told me of their intention to have a second service for those on the East Coast that couldn’t make it out to Colorado, I expected that I would read the words I prepared for my mom’s funeral.
But as a writer, I’ve come to listen to the niggling little voice I hear sometimes. That voice that makes me pay attention when I hear something interesting on the radio or see something unusual on the street – the voice that lets me know I may find the kernel of a story.
When my cousins told me of their plans, I kept having this word run through my head: gift. As it got closer to the time to fly out to Maryland, the word had morphed into a phrase: one last gift. Paying attention, I tried to figure out what my subconscious was trying to tell me.
During her last days, my mom doled out quite a few of her possessions to her children. I was on the receiving end of quite a few things – her TV, a Bose stereo. It got to the point that my siblings were getting a little green at the things she had singled out to give me.
But none of these items seemed to fit the bill as one last gift, mainly because her giving of these items bore a certain amount of morbidity to them. Sure, I’d love a TV, but the price seemed a bit high.
When she did pass and we had to start thinking about arrangements and plans, we were a bit stuck. None of my siblings, nor I, had ever been in a position to plan a funeral, to plan the end of a life. What does one do? What comes first? Which plans take precedence?
Luckily, we had quite a bit of help along the way. The first thing we had to think about was a venue for the service my mom wanted us to have for her. (Talk about an ultimate strange conversation: making plans with your mom for her service. Whoo boy.) But none of us children had voluntarily stepped into a church that wasn’t holding a wedding or a funeral in decades. And if not a church, where would we hold such an event?
Someone had the bright idea to contact my nephew and have him inquire about the church he was married in just a few short years before. It was a great place, austere and comfortable at the same time, with unique architecture and wood pews. Austin had become a member of the church since his wedding and was able to contact the pastor and secure the hall for us.
The relief I – and I’m sure my siblings – felt when that obstacle was navigated felt like cresting a hill in a long road race, almost euphoric. But we were still a ways away. Another part of the “whoo boy” conversation was what music she wanted played. And because it was my mother, it was a mix of classical, traditional hymns and Irish ballads that we had to find.
Itunes can be a wonderful place. Where else can you search for an obscure hymn and get thirty versions to choose from? So I set about getting the music straight, listening to 30-second snippets of songs to find the right versions, or at least the versions with the least bombastic.
I managed to download the songs and burn them onto disc, one that we would be used with the a/v equipment at the church. We also managed to find a friend who could scan a group of photographs from my mom’s collection (yes, real photos; heck, she still had slides) so that we could project them onto a screen with the same equipment at the church. At one point, my sister’s laptop wouldn’t read the disc, but another that we tried did.
Things began to come together, to work out, but I still didn’t feel that anything fit the ‘one last gift’ ideal.
Then the morning of the service, with seemingly half the family at my oldest brother’s place, we managed to shower nearly a dozen people, and clothe them, and get them on the road it plenty of time. With the disc, and the laptop, still at the house.
Of course, I only noticed this when we had less than a half an hour to go, and my brother’s house was forty minutes away, round trip. I mentioned this to my nephew – who promptly whipped out his iPhone and, faster than it took me on my laptop, downloaded all the songs and got them to his father-in-law, who agreed to run the a/v system.
Crisis averted. Again. So all we had to do was greet the guests. Certainly after the week we had, this had to be the easiest part. We were all there for the same reason, there was a ton of great food for afterwards – easy-peasy.
Fairly early, only moments after the ‘music debacle,’ a family member (not sure I can use her name) arrived and I was the first to greet her. The usual things were said – I’m assuming, this was only the fourth funeral I had been to – when she reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope. It was a very nice envelope I seem to remember, high quality paper and surrounded by a ribbon. But it was what she said handing it to me. Something like, “We’ve planned a date in March; I hope you all can make it.”
She’d handed me a wedding invitation. I could just imagine my mom, standing just over my shoulder, nearly shouting, “Be nice. Be nice.” I remember looking at the envelope for a second, then putting it in a pocket and saying something like, “Thanks for letting me know.” Even that, the seemingly direct intervention by my mom, didn’t seem to be the last gift.
The service was fine. Tears were shed, there was lots of laughter. But like all eulogists, I’m sure, I was unsure of how I would do. Would I stumble? Would I have to stop? Would I be the first to have to walk away from the pulpit, unable to continue?
Of course not. Tears were shed, there was lots of laughter, the music started and ended on cue, each of us that spoke were, I dare say, ridiculously good, and the photographs displayed just as we needed them. So what about this gift?
I’ve come to realize that the last gift, one she’d been preparing us for her entire life, was the ability to pull this thing off. And pull it off well. My last gift was being able to say goodbye to my best friend, in the best way I knew how, with people who had come to realize just how irreplaceable she was.
And if I can do that – I can do anything.

The Big and the Small of It

My mom has suggested that I turn my recent economic experiences into some type of writing project. I’m not exactly sure I agree with her, but at least I owe her the attempt to put my thoughts down.
So as I thought about this, I came up with the idea of a universal portion to this predicament and a personal one. Universal means what it says; a quality to my situation that is, unfortunately shared by a great many people. On a personal note, my situation probably is shared by quite a few people as well.
Universally, a lot of people have lost their jobs. If the graph I saw the other day is correct, in the span of less than a year and a half we have nearly double the unemployment rate. If we hit 10% for the country by the end of the year – and by all accounts, we probably will – then more people will be out of work than have been for decades.
Think about that – decades.
This is an idea I want to impress upon anyone that has advice about how to look for a job. Things are different now. This is a phrase we’ve used in the past, but like most overused platitudes (It’s not that bad. It will grow back in.) it has lost its power to describe what is really going on.
Put it a different way, with another overused platitude: the rules have changed. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, or certifications or whatever else you can name that used to help you in a job search. Now, employers are guided by one rule, and one rule only: who they can get that will cost them the least.
That, in a nutshell, is how an employer has always looked at you. But now it is especially true. I worked for law firms and there were, depending who you talked to, different kinds of people. (Alert: Gross generalization to follow! If you are easily offended, sorry.) If you talked to the lawyers, there were two kinds of people: lawyers, and everyone else. If you talked to the paralegals, there were three: lawyers, paralegals and everyone else. If you talked to the secretaries, there were four: lawyers, paralegals, secretaries and everyone else. I was always in the “everyone else” category. Compounding that is the idea that, in a fiscal sense, there are two halves to the business of law firms: the lawyers, who make the money for the firm; and everyone else, easily defined as an expense.
On the very day I was laid off, the Denver Post ran a story about how large firms were weathering the times. The firms’ solution: cut staff. Translation: cut expenses.
On the micro part of the situation, I run the risk of creating the “Awww…” moment, but so be it.
Ultimately, I will be going through this alone. I have many friends that have given me advice and support, as well as family that check in periodically to see how I’m doing, but the fact that I am facing this crisis alone really hasn’t changed. The older I get the more I understand why people get married and, more importantly, why they stay married. Especially if they don’t seem very happy together.
It is for times like these. At best, a marriage is a partnership between two friends. At worst, well, we’ve all seen or heard of the worst a marriage can be. But in times like these a marriage is that stretched out blanket the firemen are holding down on the street as you plummet downward. In times like these, a marriage is, “At least I have this.”
I’m really not looking for sympathy (okay, well, maybe a little); I’m just trying to explain my mindset. It’s not like I’ve not had my chances. I’ve known some extraordinary women in my life. Women that, knowing what I know now, I would walk through fire for. But alas, I had my chances and I blew it. Several times.
And it’s not the big moments I miss; it’s the quiet ones. The Sunday mornings; the ride home from work, knowing I’ll see her; the momentary hesitation before I flush the toilet with a smile and mess with the shower; than undeniable knowledge of another presence in your home; that unmistakable feeling that someone else is there.
So to bring this back to the original subject: does the loss of my job make me unique? Hardly. Is it that I can’t seem to hoodwink another female into relationship that makes me unique? Hardly. But perhaps it is the combination of the two that I can spin into a story people may be interested in.
Or maybe I’m just coming across as a whiney little putz that needs to dig in and weather this like a big boy.

The Waiting

I liken this feeling to one of a medicinal bent. Imagine you were told by your doctor that something had “come up,” something “strange” was in a scan, or an x-ray, or some test of fluid they took from you previously. Imagine that icy stab of fear – that falling feeling of the unknown – and you begin to understand where I and 9.5 million of us are at. Jobless.
I admit, I didn’t think I would ever be in this position. I didn’t think I would ever lose my job to the economy. I found it much more likely I was going to lose my job because I got sloppy, or bored, or…worse. Before I felt I understood how the world worked and before I rediscovered writing as my escape – my tool to beat back the mediocrity of American existence – I struggled with what I subconsciously understood as the “quiet desperation” of life. I was both impressed and repulsed by the idea someone could go to a job day in, day out, for twenty, thirty, even forty years and consider it normal. Indeed, the obverse – not having a job or having a succession of jobs – was, and for the most part, is considered abnormal.
There had not been anything in my life as I thought about this I had ever done for a decade or more; now, of course, in my 40’s I’ve lived for many decades and it has been decades since I graduated high school and college (the biggest events of my life so far). To consider that people could work at the same job for as long as I had been alive or been out of school was nearly inconceivable.
To be fair, it is remarkable and enviable that someone can achieve such a milestone. For whatever reason they managed to get to such an objective, whatever gave them the ability to do so, it is laudable they were able to do so.
What I didn’t know then was that, more than likely, everything else the person did made it bearable to do the same job day after day. The car, the homes, the hobbies, the spouse, the kids, the pets, the family, the vacations – all of it was fodder for the mind. Or grist to chew the cud of everyday life. Every day life – those eight hours of work plus the time it took to get there.
But back to my original idea. I received such a pronouncement – notice that something was going to change. I thought I was untouchable. So when I was laid off, when I was let go purely in a move to save money for a corporation I had been with for such a short time, I had to shift how I was going to live for the next few weeks or months.
Well, it turned out to be months and I still do not have a new job. And it is likely I won’t get one anytime soon. Each time I look at my home page I see some expert saying that things are going to get worse before they get better.
Things can’t get much worse for me. Well, they could, I have to admit. I could get a non-metaphorical diagnosis of impeding medical doom. I could have an accident and lose my car. I could lose my house. I could lose my books. (Those of you who know me know that last one is one of my worst nightmares.)
So where in the process am I now? I decided on a course of treatment; and we’ve adopted a wait and see attitude. I have been given a good prognosis – as long as everything proceeds according to plan – and I’ll emerge, if not better, at least on a more level playing field than before. (Remember folks, this is just an extended metaphor!)
But the waiting…well, it’s just…damned…annoying.

The Evolution of Music

Recently, I was able to de-mothball a stereo my mom had purchased nearly 30 years ago. It was from JCPenny’s and was one of those “all-in-one” units. The radio, functions (equalizer), cassette tape player and 8-track player were all contained within one ‘box,’ cleverly disguised to look like several components. Only the turntable and speakers were separate.
I actually still have albums – been carting them around for WAY too long – and I pulled out some to play. One group of vinyl had, at some point, gotten wet, so that in addition to the obligatory Colorado dust I had to remove for playing, some records actually had to be de-molded.
I somehow managed to locate my Disc Washer – essentially a piece of wood with velour used to pull dust and other stuff off of the records so they play better. (The Washer is held so that the record moves against the nape of the velour and all the gunk gets caught in the fabric.) Some records were remarkable free of dust and others, well let’s just say that the black velour was turned gray.
The music…was sublime. I had forgotten the hiss and pop I had come to accept and even fold into the music. Like a percussionist that adds to a track after it is finished, the sound of a needle passing over a vinyl disc is as distinctive as the gravel in your uncle's voice as he tells you, for the 20th time, that story about the bear they saw at the lake when you were kids.
I even managed to find several 45's I had purchased, thinking at the time, that I would need to find these songs in some format or I would loose them forever.
And that is the most facinating part of this. Today, with the largest iPod out there, you could literally, aside from power issues, listen to music non-stop for days, weeks, or even months.
However, with a record, you get, at best, 25 minutes of music before you have to get up, turn the thing over and play the other side.
And we used to do this. And gladly.
The first record I bought was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The first cd I bought was, you guessed it, Dark Side of the Moon.
I went from listening to half the album, to being able to listen to the entire album, crystal clear, to being able to listen to the entire Pink Floyd catalogue in any order I want.
What's all this mean? I don't want to sound like some old fogey decrying the decline of civilization because "kids today" have it so easy, having their entire music collection literally at their fingertips.
No, what I find interesting is that music, in 20 minute blocks - or if you like, 4 minutes jabs my parents had when they were kids, listening to one song records - actually helped foster communication. By having that time between album sides, we talked about what we heard.
These days? If it's not ear buds that block out the world, it's a Bluetooth headset that keeps people at arms' distance and creates just one more buffer between us humans and give us one less opportunity to engage with the world.