ENTRY NUMBER 500

 I finally arrive at the 500th time I have published an entry here in this silly thing called a blog.  I have been thinking about this entry for awhile now.  I want it to be different from the other 499 entries.  I have no idea how this entry will look like.  There is a good possibility that some of what is written here will have been covered somewhere in the previous entries.  Let's see how it goes.

The first entry I published in this blog took place on October 6, 2010.  Doesn't seem that long ago but it has been about eleven and a half years running.  I have not published consistently.  I wrote when I felt like writing, not to meet a schedule.  

Entry number 001 was titled "GOLDEN YEARS".  It had nothing to do with the David Bowie song but may have been inspired by it.  I may have been listening to Bowie as I started writing it.  In short, it had to do with getting old.  My premise was we are always aging until the moment we die.  Those golden years don't happen until we reach our ultimate age, right before we die.  The golden years we all try to get to only last a split second between life and death.  Sounds silly now, but I think perhaps I was trying to come off as a deep thinker and philosopher than just being who I really am.

A few statistics on this tome of mindless thoughts from a "boy" in Missouri:

At the time I am writing, this blog has been looked at, if not read, 86,600 times.  That is an average of 173.5 times for each of the 499 entries.

It has been read in over 18 countries.  Only 55% of the views have been from the United States.  Countries that are represented in the viewing audience include Russia, France, Germany, Ukraine, Sweden, Canada, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Poland, Japan, India, China, Netherlands Brazil, Romania, Latvia and Czechia.

The most read entry, and this really surprised me, was the relating of a story that my grandfather use to tell me about an Indian in the Ozarks named Falling Rock.  Other popular entries include ones about my fear of tornadoes, about two young ladies named Rachel and Alesia and, of course, about Barbara.

These statistics are far larger than I ever expected to attain.  It is still a small blog in the world of the internet but it is out there.  Not all of the 499 previous entries were original writings.  In the early days I did quote Mr. Carlin and some of my favorite songs as well as a quote or two from President Nixon.  The clear majority of entries though are original.

I have written about people in my life.  I have written about events that I experienced as I went down this path.  I have also written my thoughts on things that were going on around me.

I wrote about the summer of 2018.  It was the hardest six month period in my entire life.  It was a time when I lost Barbara, my father, a long time neighbor and good friend, his daughter, and an uncle.  The years immediately before 2018 had their fill of loss as well.  In 2016 I lost my eldest sister and in 2017 I lost a long time friend that I met when I started working at Dit-MCO.  After 2018 I have lost two uncles and four aunts as well as a four coworkers at Dit-MCO who I adored.  One of the most striking posts on Facebook over this past year was put there by my Uncle Jim.  He is the youngest of 5 siblings and after losing his brother (my dad) in 2018, his sister (my Aunt Norva) in 2019 and then finally losing two sisters within the last year (my Aunt Fay and my Aunt Velma) he put up a picture of himself with his brother and three sisters and a one sentence emotion.  "Now all my siblings are in Heaven."  He had lost his family in the space of only a few short years.  I love my Uncle Jim and I know that his faith helps to carry him onward through his life.

I have spent my life observing and listening while occasionally making my maturing thoughts known out loud.  I like to think I was open minded about other ideas and I think I was.  I learned this from my grandfather.  It is okay to be wrong.  It is okay to change your mind.  This is called maturing, growing ... learning.  It is also okay to affirm your thinking and to believe you are correct and not agree with with what others may think.  To be able to stand for what you believe in is very important as part of our growth and maturity.  The important thing is to agree or disagree while being respectful to those who you are speaking with.  There does not seem to be much respect being shown in the world these days.  Disgust and hate have replaced the idea of respect.  What has replaced the importance of respect is the silencing of ideas, not only by individuals but also by corporate entities.  Sorry, I got off track for a bit.  What I was going to say is that these writings that are taken from my observations and some things I have heard and experienced are to show what I have learned from them through my 65 years on this planet.  Not all of it is pretty, but all of it is human.  None of us are perfect.  None of us are totally right in our thinking. What we all are though is human.  As we go about our day to day lives and interactions, I believe this is an important thing to remember.

"I don't think I'm racist."  I spoke these words to my grandfather on an afternoon visit after work one summer day.  His response was short and to the point, "Everyone's a racist .... everyone."  As he said these words he did not exhibit any of his ordinary mannerisms that he commonly used when making a point.  There was no leaning forward at me.  He didn't point his pipe and stub finger at me.  There wasn't a small "hr-mph".  He did not even look at me when making the statement.  He just looked straight ahead speaking steady and matter of factly.  There was no follow up, just silence as we both seemed to let his words sink in.  I have only seen him respond to me in this manner one other time.  It was a personal time when we were alone in the dining room of the old house.  This manner of responding was rare for the old man and reserved for situations that seemed to be very important and personal to him.  The conversation did not go much further than that on that afternoon.  He changed the topic shortly thereafter, his point being voiced and made.

I thought about that short conversation several time over the course of my life.  I still think of that afternoon even today, especially with society being in the state that it is in.  This is my theory on what my grandfather's thinking was.  Knowing my grandfather and his stories of life along with little hints that I observed of him over the remaining years of his life, I think it is pretty close to what he was telling me.  "Everyone is racist.... everyone."  My grandfather lived a life that he thought was proper.  No, he was not perfect.  He had plenty of flaws but when his flaws came out, as flaws always do, he did his best to make it right.  Grandpa wouldn't give this explanation in these words, they are my own, but I think the general idea is there.  The human species is a tribal species.  This is not unusual in nature, many are tribal, some more than others.  The thing about the human species is that although we are tribal that vast majority of humans try to not let that tribalism rule our behavior.  Even men like my grandfather, who are seen by those he encountered as being fair and treating everyone the same, deep down have this tribal sense of belonging.

"I don't think I'm racist."  One day in gym class at Ruskin High School we were playing volleyball.  It was a time when the Ruskin community was becoming more diverse as we were seeing the number of black kids increase every year.  Personally, this did not bother me.  I didn't see it bother any of my classmates that I could tell.  To be honest, it seemed to bother the parents more then us kids.  I had already reached my six foot frame when I was a junior, so I was fairly tall.  During this game that day I had the opportunity to lay down a wicked spike on my opponent across the net from me.  "Yeah boy!!" I exclaimed with a fist pump.  Then I looked my classmate who I had just spiked the ball on.  "Boy, huh.."  The black face looking at me looked both angry and hurt.  I did not say those words intending to hurt.  It was part of my vocabulary.  I did not even realize that he was of a different race.  The words just came out and it hurt and angered him.  I did not respond.  I kept silent.  I should have apologized.  The incident did not progress into anything but to this day I can see his face, I can hear my words.  I should have been more careful, more aware and more sensitive.  I understand that now.  Since that day I have taken care in my words as much as I can.  I keep that moment in my memory as a reminder to do so.

So this is what I got from my grandfather on that day.  We all think others are different.  We all think we are pretty good people and "our" people are pretty good people for the most part.  Every race has great people.  A lot of great people.  Every race also has very wicked people. Not as many as good people but still the wicked ones are out there.  Each one of us understand people of our own race better then we understand people of other races and, of course, each race considers it the better.  All of us have to train our minds to take on an outlook of keeping that behavior under control or better yet, completely hidden and not even thought about.  That tribal instinct should not even be known to ourselves.  Its should be so small in our minds that we don't realize it is there.  Still we have that basic tribalism that stays with us.  It stays with all of us.  "Everyone".  Some are better at this than others.  My grandfather was a master at it.  I am not so good at hiding it as he was.  We all need to try though because in order for this country, this world to survive, we have to.  As for me, I continue to work at it.  I try to see people by what I observe how they live and what they say.  I have a long ways to go.

It took me over three years since we lost Barbara, but I have manage to take another step in moving forward in life.  I won't try to trick you, moving forward has been a very difficult thing to do.  This spring with help from Brett, I began to make this house look more like "Bill" instead of "Bill and Barb".  I got my mind ready to let go of a lot of Barbara in the house.  Mainly her clothes, books and, to be quite frank, junk that she liked to have around.  By this I mean that stuff that didn't bring on strong memories of Barb or our life together, but just stuff that she liked to keep.  The house looks different now.  There is still a lot of Barb there, but I tried to transform into a house that reflects me.  Made it more comfortable for me.  I am happy with the result.  Her wedding dress still hangs in the closet and the shoes she wore on November 21, 1975.  Her chair that she sat in during the last years of her life sits with the crocheted throw that the nurses laid over her after she died.  It was difficult for me to do and I know I should have taken this step a couple of years ago.  It is healthy for me emotionally as well as physically I guess.  I still love her.  I always will.  At the same time I need to keep moving forward in life as difficult as that may be.  I'm getting there with the help of a few special friends, one in particular.  Thank you Lisa for your advice and help.

Barbara's Chair

All of my regular readers know of my love of music, literature and baseball.  What I haven't touched on very much, if at all, is my love for movies.  To start with I have a lot of favorite male actors but there is one female actress that rises above all others.  Sandra Bullock.  It has become kind of a running joke among my family and friends but I do like her.  She is very good in my mind.  Comedies, dramas, sci-fi, she can do anything.  By my calculations she has been cheated out of some 25 Oscars ... just my opinion. 

Seriously, movies have had a big influence on me by the messages they try to get across.   Not all movies are made for a message, most are for pure entertainment value but there are a few that have a statement to make.  I don't agree with all the messages put out there but I think it is a good thing if a movie makes you think after you have seen it.  

I think instead of getting onto all of the messages, I am going to list some of my favorite moves that reach for more than simple entertainment value.  These are not in any particular order as to how I favor them, just a little insight into my thinking.  Let you get to know me a little better.

    "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"  "Fargo"  "Dr. Strangelove"  "Being There"  "Catch 22"  "Grand Torino"  "Miller's Crossing"  "Network"  "Patton"  "Wall Street"  "Girl Interrupted"  "28 Days"  "Lincoln"  "The Man With The Golden Arm"  "All The President's Men"  "The Sunset Limited"  "To Kill A Mockingbird"  "The Mouse That Roared"  "Lilies Of The Field"  "Shawshank Redemption"  "Waking Up"  "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof"  "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner"  "Dog Day Afternoon"  "Forrest Gump"  "Up"  "Conspiracy"  "The Blind Side"  "Philadelphia"  "A Time To Kill"  and many more if I took time to really think about it.  These movies, though, come immediately to my mind so they are more than likely to be the ones I go to.

Over these 500 entries, I have tried to address things that I have learned during my 65 years.  I told them in song lyrics, the modern day philosophers as I refer to the songwriters as.  There is another subset of philosophers and I have quoted them a lot as well.  Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor told their philosophies by making observations of life and relaying these observations honestly but with exaggerations to show how ridiculous some human behaviors are.  If you listen to them, they will make you laugh, but if you listen to the sub logic under the exaggerations, you find the truth they are trying to bring out.

I also told of my observations through stories that, for the most part, are true and are a part of my life.  Some involved teachers and others came from a few interactions with authority.  A lot of the lessons I learned came from those who I looked up to with upmost respect. Family members and those outside the family.  Teachers and clergy.  Neighbors and classmates.  I have been extremely lucky in life and the people who have been a part of my life.

Observing and listening are perhaps two of the most important tools we have as we proceed through life.  Care must be taken though because observing or listening to the wrong ideas and actions can do more damage than good.  I was lucky and I made some mistakes.  I have made some big mistakes in life.

Hopefully, this blog of stories and ideas, good things and not so good things, can make even a small impact on anyone who stumbles across this collection of entries long after I am gone.

Thanks for reading my dear friends.  A lot has been left untold, but I plan on working at getting those things told in the future.

ENTRY NUMBER 499

Like ENTRY NUMBER 498, I will not be posting this on Facebook so I can pretty much say whatever I want without offending anybody.  More or less, as the mind speaks my fingers put down the words.  I was pretty pleased with ENTRY NUMBER 498 so let's try it again.

 My neighbor Sally turns 86 years old next month.  She is a petite lady rising above the 5 foot mark by about 2 inches.  Her mind is sharp.  She has a friendly and helpful personality.  You have to be careful though because she can also be a fiery lady as well.  She and her husband, Bob, moved into the house across the street back in 1996, good neighbors the whole time.  Bob passed away about 15 years ago and it seemed that Sally made the transition pretty good although it was difficult for her.

Sally is independent.  She is strong and does not like to ask for help although she readily gives help when she sees a need.  During the time when Barbara's health began to deteriorate, Sally, along with my other neighbor Charlene, kept a close eye on Barbara.  Barbara was as much of an independent as Sally is.   During the time when Barbara was still able to drive and able to accomplish things with difficulty, Sally was there.  Barbara would come home from grocery shopping and start to carry a bag at a time to the front porch where she would then carry a bag at a time into the house.  Sally would come over and talk Barbara into letting Sally carry the bags from the car to the porch so Barbara could carry them into the house.  As Barbara's health worsened, the more help our neighbors gave.  I am lucky to have the neighbors that I do have.

Sally, as I said, does not like to ask for help.  She has begun to acknowledge that at her age, she does need help here and there but that doesn't mean she likes to ask for it.  A couple of weeks ago I received a call from Sally asking me if I was busy.  The light bulbs in Sally's garage door opener and her overhead light in the garage were burned out.  Her garage door would not open.  I went over and replaced the lights and Sally pressed the button to open the garage door.  It would not open.  After looking at her door I discovered it was locked.  Somehow Sally had accidentally locked her garage door. I walked her to the door, explained what was wrong and showed her how to unlock the door if it should happen again.  As she was walking me back through the house and thanking me, she slowly broke into tears.  She expressed how she felt so alone and didn't know how to do things.  I told her that her, Charlene and myself were there for each other.  That's what friends and neighbors are for.  We lean on each other.

What I want you to take from the telling of that event are four things.  First, of course, is that Sally is very independent.  Second is that she feels vulnerable as she gets older.  Third is that the lady loves to drive her car.  That is not a bad thing.  Not yet anyway.  She is sharp minded.  She is a good driver and she knows her limitations while driving.  For example she does not drive on the highways.  She knows that her reflexes aren't what they use to be and so she stays on the side roads and never drives far from home.  The last thing is that Sally like a routine.  She does not like change or things that take her out of her comfort zone.  She does not like surprises. This leads us to what happened last Friday.

Last Friday morning Sally had gone to the DOV to renew her drivers license.  While she was there something happened that had never happened to her before.  She failed the eye test..  The lady at the DOV gave her a piece of paper to give to her eye doctor when she went to get glasses.  The paper was a sign of Sally getting older.  It was a paper that the doctor would tell the state if Sally was fit to drive or not.

She showed up at my front door shortly after noon that day.  She was anxious.  A wrench had been thrown into her day to day machinery and she did not know exactly what to do. At the DOV they had given her the name of an eye doctor that is approved by the state who was located in Belton.  To Sally, Belton might as well be a hundred miles away.  She did not know the town.  She wasn't sure how to get there and she certainly did not have a clue as to where the address of the eye doctor was located.

I did my best to calm her down and we talked about what had happened that morning.  I would make sure that we got this taken care of.  I had nothing else to do so I would drive her to Belton for the exam.  We called the phone number and made an appointment for Monday afternoon. After telling her not to worry and giving her a pat on the back, she headed home.

Saturday morning Sally called me again to make sure I hadn't forgotten about Monday's eye exam.  Her anxiety was building and I think she was a little scared that she would not be able to drive anymore.  The way I figured it, she was driving around the neighborhood without any problems so the adjustment to her eyes would be minimal.  That seemed to calm her down a bit for the time being.  I would not hear from her until Monday.

I had told Sally we would leave around three on Monday and so a little before three I stepped out of my house to find Sally walking up my driveway.  I smiled at her and she told me to let's get this over with and off we went.  It was a long appointment.  Sally is a talker and loves to tell stories to people.  I imagine there was a lot of story telling going on during her exam.  She came out of the exam with the paper the doctor had signed telling the state that her eyesight, with corrections, would allow her to drive safely.  She picked out some frames and we headed home with a much relieved Sally.

She insisted on buying me an early dinner on the way home so we stopped at Freddie's and got some pattie melts and fries before heading back home.  Sally was happy.  Today she mailed the paper to the state and now all she has to do is wait for her new glasses before heading back to the DOV for her license and her day to day routine returning to normal. 

Having good neighbors is important.  I am saying that from my perspective.  Me having good neighbors is important and I have two great neighbors, Charlene and Sally.  The three of us are single and live alone.  Sally losing her husband several years ago, Me losing Barb in 2018 and Charlene just lost her husband last July weekend.  We are the same the three of us and each of us need help from time to time.  I put a couch and a chair in the dumpster Charlene had rented last fall and Sally put a microwave and some boxes in the dumpster I rented a few weeks ago.  The theme between the three of us is that we are all in this together and we watch out for each other.  

Good neighbors are hard to find.  I am extremely lucky.  You get a good neighbor, help them.  It is indeed a rarity to have such fine ones.

It is 10:30 pm tonight.  It has been overcast but a nice temperature most of the day.  When I went to the store to pick up my prescriptions, a lady who was walking just in front of me into the store informed that it was a nice day but we would pay for it with storms tonight.  I did not ask for her weather forecast, she just offered it to me.  It is nice to have people feel relaxed enough in this day and age to talk to strangers like that.  It felt good.  She was right though.  Thunder, lightning and rain have arrived in Kansas City.

I like the rain.  I like the sound and the smell of it.  The only problem with rain, especially when accompanied with thunder and lightning is getting Dutch outside to do his business.  He doesn't mind the rain but the lights and the sounds make him rather skittish.  Tonight he will more than likely sleep close to my bed during the night as if I could protect him from it.

This rain is also a good thing for my dogwood tree.  It was one of my gifts from Dit-MCO on the occasion of my retirement.  They gave it to me as kind of a replacement for Barbara not being able to be there.  It was a thoughtful gesture and one that I very much appreciated.

Life is marching on.  I was thinking about that this morning as I sat quietly by myself eating oatmeal for breakfast.  Life does not stop and soon I will be a memory just as Barbara, all my grandparents, my sister, my dad and all those aunts and uncles as well as many friends have become.  Just a memory that will fade to obscurity as the generations come and go.

Going to school for the first time.  Playing baseball, then football and finally basketball and making the school team.  That first kiss from Valerie, who is now herself but a memory.  Time with Debbie and meeting Barbara then marrying her.  Working for dad and finding my place in the labor force. Meeting Ronnie for the first time and all the fun we had discovering music together to spending time with Larry and all the evening in the church parking lot playing basketball.  Seeing Brett for the first time and bringing home as my son followed by raising him on Beatles tunes.  Watching Barbara leave this world and telling people at my fathers memorial service in Alabama about my dad.

Memories.  We hold onto them as much as we can.  We lose a lot of those memories over the years due to time or age.  My dad was starting to lose his memory when Barbara died.  Barbara adored my dad and I think dad kind of like her as well.  To be honest dad "kind of liked" me too.  That was dad's answer all the time.

Me: Love you dad

Dad: yeah well I kind of like you too

It brings an unusual smile to my face these days.  I don't smile much anymore.  I am thinking that maybe I am forgetting how to smile.  What about a laugh?  Almost unheard of coming from me.  My sense of humor is fading like the memories.  I look at this world, in these times we find ourselves and I don't think there is much to laugh about.  As Americans we are divided and there is almost a hatred among the people of my country.  I remember studying and observing the fight to desegregate our country and it feels like just as we are right there. I look around and see that re-segregation is on the rise and moving fast.  The strange thing is that the very people who fought so hard to integregate the country are leading it back into segregation.  It saddens me.

I do not understand America anymore.  Hell, I don't think I even understand human beings anymore.  Everything seems to be upside down and sideways inside out.

I want simplicity to make a comeback.  I want critical thinking to become a thing again.  I want the Constitution of the United States to stand for something.  I want to see a return to true ... TRUE ... freedom of speech in this country.  Without that, this country means nothing.  That is what makes The United States so special.  The right to a free and open exchange of ideas.  We do not have that anymore.  The public square has been dismantled.

I think, at the moment I am typing this, that I am kind of glad I won't be around to see the path this country is headed down and where it ends up.  I truly believe that this country, this Democratic Republic that has proven itself, in my mind, is the greatest country in modern history.

My heart is truly saddened by what I have seen happening to it.

Enough for ENTRY NUMBER 499 in this blog.

CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS

 Whenever I think of traditions, my mind goes to Topal singing "Tradition" in the film "Fiddler On The Roof".  When Topal sings that magical song you can truly feel the importance of traditions in life.  We all have traditions of one kind or another.  Christmas traditions though are some of the best kept traditions as each family creates their own in order to celebrate the season.

As I was growing up, our family had some very specific traditions that my parents followed in order to while making Christmas a magical time for us kids, also held our Christian beliefs were emphasized so that we remember why we are celebrating this special day.

It started by going out to buy a Christmas tree at a local lot.  Artificial trees were never under consideration.  The tree never went up immediately after Thanksgiving but rather somewhere between two and three weeks before Christmas.  Dad made our Christmas tree stand using his welding skills to create what had to be the heaviest and sturdiest stand in all of Kansas City.  One thing was for sure.  Once dad had put that tree in the stand and had it clamped, standing straight and tall, the tree was not going anywhere.  Once the tree was up, it was up to dad to untangle the strings of lights and check out the bulbs for those who had burnt out somehow over the year while in storage in the garage.  This was not an easy task.  It seemed that no matter how careful dad had put the strings of lights away the previous year, the entanglement that he found the lights in was excruciating.  Dad would spend an hour or so getting the wires loose from each other.  Then came the task of replacing the bulbs.  Now these were big glass incandescent bulbs and if one burned out, then the who string would go dark.  In order to find the offending bulb, you had to replace bulbs one at a time with a known good bulb until suddenly as dad screwed in a bulb, the whole string lit up in a colorful display that lit the whole living room.  Putting the lights on the tree had a certain process.  Dad would instruct me to go stand at the top of the stairs while he placed the strings on the limbs of the tree.  When he got to the back of the tree, he would hand me the string of lights to pull around the back of the tree and hand back to him on the front of the tree slowly wrapping the tree in lights from top to bottom.

While dad was doing all of this, mom and my siblings were busy popping popcorn and running a needle and thread through the kernels to create strings of pop corn, which would be handed off to dad to wrap the tree in the same way he had done the lights.  Many injuries were inflicted upon those trying to push a needle through a popcorn kernel.  The fingers would heal before Christmas though and would be forgotten.  Foil "icicles" we placed on the tree ... one string of foil at a time.  One .... at  ... a ... time .... Mom oversaw the placing of these little strips of foil to be sure that none of us cheated by putting more than one ... at ... a .... time.... on the tree. (sigh)

Then the family ornaments came out.  They were the same ones every year and each holds specific images.  One set of decorations were plastic balls with "Angle Hair" stuffed inside.  The angle hair was very fine strands of fiberglass that, we were warned, would cut your fingers open if not handled carefully.  Fun time.  The ornaments could attack you while decorating the tree.  Included in the ornaments were ones that each of us had made at school, at church or at home.  Each of us hung our own ornaments on the tree as it slowly became the magical looking tree that would stand through New Years Day.

Christmas Eve at the Clark house was not only full of excitement, but also full of reverence for the holiday.  Mom always laid a bible next to our little Nativity Scene that we had set up.  It was always open to Luke Chapter 2.  This is the chapter that tells the story of the birth of Christ and the visitation of Angels to shepherds in their fields to bring them the Good News.  On Christmas Eve, before we went off to bed, the family would sit and listen as my mother read the Scripture from the book of Luke.  It was followed by a prayer and sometimes a discussion about what had been read.  We went to bed with that story in our heads and the true meaning of the holiday was remembered by the whole family.

Christmas morning at the Clark household was torture.  We kids could not leave our room until mom and dad awoke and gave us the go ahead to go downstairs to see what was under the tree.  I don't think we ever found out what would happen if we had left our rooms before getting the ok from dad.  There was too much at stake to take that chance.

When mom and dad finally came out of their sleep we would WALK, not run, down the stairs and Christmas began.  After seeing what Santa had left us, one of us would be assigned to hand out the presents under the tree.  Before we could play with anything though, wrapping paper had to be cleaned up and the house had to be in order.

While we were picking up paper and beginning to play with our toys, mom was in the kitchen baking apple and cherry turnovers.  That was a tradition that took place every year.  As for myself, I would be in the living room munching on my mom's pecan tassies and was pretty full by the time the turnovers were ready to eat.  All too soon, we had to stop everything and get dressed to visit the grandparents.

We usually visited my Aunt Fay and Grandma Clark in the afternoon.  The Clark family and the Hill family were very different.  At my grandma Clarks, sometimes we ate, most times we didn't.  We would especially enjoy it of my Aunt and Uncle from Colorado were visiting.  Sometimes the Clark Christmas dinner was held at my Aunt Norva's place which was bigger and could handle the size of the gathering.  I really don't remember any traditions at my grandma Clarks.  It was usually a low keyed affair with the adults talking among each other and the kids trying to keep entertained.  To be honest, it always seemed to me that the biggest holiday for the Clarks was Memorial Day.  Definitely some big traditions for that day in the family.

In the evening it was off to my Grandma and Grandpa Hill's place.  I think what made the difference between the Clark Christmas and the Hill Christmas was my Grandfather's love for the holiday.  He absolutely LOVED Christmas and it was filled with family traditions.  From my grandma's candied figs to the eggnog set out on the buffet.  There were two punch bowls of eggnog set out.  On one end was the eggnog for the kids, the other end was "adult" eggnog.  Took me a long time to figure out what the difference was between the two.

Let's take a half step back concerning my grandfather.  One of the traditions he did was to entertain any of the grandchildren when they happened to visit on the few days before Christmas by reciting "A Visit From St. Nicholas" otherwise known as "The Night Before Christmas"  It was one of his biggest joys in life.  I remember several times being over there because we would go down to the Frisco to pick Grandpa up after work.  After Grandpa had cleaned up, we would sit on the floor as he told the story, his eyes sparkling through the entire poem which ha knew by heart and told it as a true story teller.  IT was magic.  In 1982 my sister came up for Christmas and we took Brett, Bo and Kim over to visit my grandfather on Christmas Eve.  As Brett sat on Grandpa's lap and Bo and Kim sat on the floor listening to the old man tell the tale, my mind was carried away to a time when I sat where Bo and Kim were, hearing him tell the story with as much fun and love as he was doing that day.  It was another tradition that the old man created more for himself, I think, than for the grandkids.

Christmas night at the Hill's was about the same every year but special in it's own way.  There was a Christmas goose on one end of the table and a turkey on the other.  Creamed potatoes, oysters, home made cranberries among many other dishes that were presented every year.  The dinner would be followed by "discussions" about politics or college football or the Chiefs.  Sometimes these discussions got rather loud.  I remember Grandma leaving the turkey out and while the discussion was going on, my Uncle Melvin would be picking at the turkey eating the whole time while my Uncle Buster would constantly have a plate full of pie.  Like Buster would have four or five slices of different pies which he ate at one time.  Pumpkin, Cherry, Apple, Pecan, Mincemeat .. it didn't matter.  If it was pie, Buster would have a slice on his plate.

Slowly things would start to quiet down and the families would begin to head back to their homes.  When we got home Christmas night, we were too tired to play with any games or toys.  Christmas had been celebrated for another year and families had come together on both my father's and my mother's side and it was good.  It seemed to be over all too early.

When I got married and began my life on my own, I found Barb and myself slowly developing our own traditions.  That is the thing about traditions I guess.  You can not plan out traditions, but rather the traditions kind of create themselves as you go through the years and find yourself doing the same things from year to year.  My little family traditions started as a combination of Barb's traditions merging with my traditions that we brought together.  Apple and Cherry turnovers on Christmas morning were replaced by cinnamon rolls and coffee cake.  Instead of Brett waiting patiently for his parents to be roused from their sleep, Barb and I found ourselves waiting patiently for Brett to awaken.  Sometimes Barb had to stop me from going into his room to wake him up.  We bought one Christmas album every Christmas so we always had new music to listen to.  Slowly we developed our own collection of family ornaments that became a part of  Christmas. Barb brought the tradition of little toys being placed in the Christmas stockings which was totally foreign to me. My Christmas stocking was always fruit and nuts. 

Now, at this point in my life, it seems all the traditions have died.  Mom and dad moved to Alabama.  Brett is off on his own and I am never quite sure when he will make his way over to my house.  Barbara has passed and with her, it seems the joy of Christmas left with her.  I do listen to Christmas music on quiet nights when it is only the dog and me.  I listen to the songs my father loved and the songs that Barbara loved.  My last three Christmas' have been quiet and tame.  No Christmas tree has been put up and decorated.  I have no need for it.  It was Barb's Christmas tree.  I set it up for her and she and Brett decorated it.  Gone is the excitement that Christmas morning use to bring.

But you know, I do enjoy Christmas.  It is different than it use to be for sure, but it has become a time of reflection for me.  I think back on my life and how blessed I have been.  I can sit back and see my grandfather in my mind holding my son on his lap as he told his Christmas Story of St Nick.  I can see my mother in the kitchen getting those turnovers ready to eat.  I can look back at all the times that I sat and watched Brett and Barb go through the ornaments one by one.  I can open my Bible to Luke, Chapter 2 and as I read the story of the first Christmas, hear my mothers voice reading  it.

No Christmas is not what it use to be.  It has morphed along with the years and the events in my life into something totally different.  But it is still magic.  It is still good.  It is still a special day and most important, it is still a celebration of the greatest Gift that God has given to mankind.

That is how I celebrate now at this point in my life. I guess it is a tradition in it's own way.

Have a Merry Christmas.  Have hope for a good New Year.

JUST A LITTLE CHIT-CHAT

I just noticed that I have not written or posted since July 6th earlier this year.  That is too long of a period between posts.  So let's see what we can come up with.

Today is Tuesday.  Election Day in the United States.  Yeah .... not going to write about that.  I am not going to write about politics at all. You all probably pretty much know what my thoughts are ... at least most of you.  There are those that think they know where my stance is when it becomes apparent that they do not have a clue.  

This whole year has been marred by the CV-19 virus.  No sense in talking about that either.  Lifestyles for all of us have been completely turned upside down.  The thing about this virus thing is that it has been tied to politics and the election and so everyone is up in arms against each other across the board.  Nah, not going to write about that either.

Major League Baseball was different this year.  To me it was a little disappointing.  Because of the virus restrictions, the Majors only played a 60 game season.  They went ahead with the playoffs and had a World Series.  I decided that for me, this was not a legitimate World Series and should not go into the record books.  My basis was that a mere 60 games is not nearly enough games for the cream to rise to the top.  You need at least 162 games for the best teams to prove their worth over time.  However, I was glad they did play this so called World Series because of the last 30 seconds of game 4.  That little amount of time made the whole thing worthwhile.  I encourage you to check out the 9nth inning of game 4.  Definitely worth your time.  But baseball was redefined by the virus and I don't want to write about the virus ... so I am not going to write about baseball.

Actually when you stop to think about it, just about every part of life was touched by either the virus or politics.  Perhaps that is why I haven't written in so long.

I was planning on traveling to Alabama in March to visit my mother and family members but thanks to the virus, It was delayed.  Mom was in lock down at her living facility so there was not much point in going.  I did finally make it to Alabama in mid-October though.  My little brother and his wife, myself and my mother and sister and her husband celebrated mom's 90th birthday a month and a half early.  Mom was able to escape from her facility to spend a week at my sisters.  It was a good visit.  It wasn't a perfect visit though.  I fell off my sister's front porch one night while staring up at the wonderment of the stars and tore up my knee and my ribs.  Those of you who have been following this blog know that I do not have a very high pain threshold and this hurt.  Then there was the hurricane that blew through putting my return to Kansas City off by a day so I wouldn't be driving through it.  Other than those two things, it was a very good week.  I am happy to report that my mother is in very good health and we were able to avoid any political talk.

I don't want this to be a wrap up of the year and it feels like it is turning into that.  I want to save that for December.

Social media ... well, I have been limiting my time on Facebook and stuff because, quite frankly, there is too much hatred flying around the election.  One of my dear friends accused me of being a troll and told me to go somewhere else to do my trolling.  I do not troll.  I asked a question concerning a post by said friend that I did not have the answer to.  Apparently it offended my friend so I was labeled a troll.  I don't play games like that.  If I ask a question, it is a sincere one.  Then there is all of the ignorance people seem to be showing .... nope, not going to go there.  I just have been staying off my computer and the internet a lot.  I don't need all of the arguments and stuff in my life right now and I certainly do not need to be called names or labeled as something I am not.  When I do get on the internet, it is to get news of those that I care about.  How they are doing.  Seeing pictures of my nieces and nephews so I can enjoy them since I can't see them.  I have reconnected with old friends, a couple who are very special in my life as I was growing up.  It has been a good experience.

I can say this about the year so far.  I still miss a lot of people who influenced my life and have passed on.  That will never change.  I still take my grandpa with me everywhere I go in the form of one of his bandanas in my rear pocket of my jeans.  I have been carrying one ever since he died.  On my way to bed each night, one of the last things I do is kiss my fingers and then touch them to a picture of Barbara that I moved out into the living area of the house.  I don't say anything or stop and look at her picture, just give her a tiny kiss each night ... well most nights... at least once a week or so  Last week marked 2 years since my dad passed away in that horrible year of 2018.  I brought out some more of my Uncle Dan's works of art to display and think of him often when I see the results of his marvelous talent.

Now I often stop and ponder my own aging. I turned 64 last month.  One more year until my planned retirement.  I remember when grandpa retired and when my father retired.  Seems so long ago.  Now I am facing my own step into that part of life.  My twilight years are definitely upon me.

This brings about thoughts of my own death.  The thought of dying does not bother me.  I am not scared of dying.  One of my friends reminds me often "To every season ..." and she is right.  There is a time for everything and that includes dying.  Don't get me wrong now, I am not ready to die quite yet.  I feel like I have a few more years on this earth left in me.  However, if my doctor told me I had a week left?  No big deal.  I am ready to deal with that possibility.

I do feel like I am starting to burn out at my job, which is kind of sad.  I have loved my job my whole adult life.  I have loved the company I work for and have been faithful to it.  But I am getting tired I think.  I began to feel the burnout after Barbara died and it has slowly increased.  I think that whole second half of 2018 pretty much burned me out on life in general.  Sometimes, I simply do not care anymore.  Like this election that we are having today.  Yes I think it is important.  Yes I plan on voting.  Bottom line though, is whatever happens, I am not going to have to live with the outcome for very long.  My son will though and that is probably the biggest reason I will vote.  Really though, it is just another election.  This country has survived many of them with different outcomes.  This country will survive this one as well.  But I am not going to talk politics ... remember?

Many of you are bragging "I survived the year 2020!" ... I got that beat easily.  I survived 2018.

TRYING NOT TO FEEL SORRY FOR MYSELF

If you have been reading me for awhile you know that I have suffered some serious losses in my life.  I lost all three of my grandparents who I dearly loved and an Uncle that became a confidant of mine as we grew closer than any Uncle/nephew usually does.  These were expected losses though.  I knew the last time I saw my grandfather, that it would be the last time.  Both of my grandmother's deaths did not really catch me off guard and I had over a year taking care of my uncle as cancer slowly took his life.  None of these were a slap upside the head.

But in 2016 there did begin a series of losses that did hit me hard.  I lost my sister Carol Jeanne in March of 2016.  I lost an extremely close friend in February of 2017 totally out of the blue.  Dennis and I had been almost like brothers since we first met in December of 1979.  He suddenly died of a heart attack in his sleep.  Then of course came 2018.  In the last six months of that year I lost my wife of 42 years in July.  In August I lost a neighbor and very good friend of over 40 years, Jim.  Then September found us in shock and stunned as Jim's daughter, Lori, took her own life.  October arrived and just as I was preparing to make my fall visit to Alabama to see my dad and mom, my sister and the rest of the family, my dad died suddenly.  Later that year I lost my Uncle Dale.  Five funerals, not only funerals but important funerals in less than six months.

On December 31, 2018 I sat and pondered the events of the previous six months of my life. I had spent Christmas and the week following alone by myself.  I searched for answers.  I asked God for answers.  It seemed like 2018 was aimed at me and I began to lose my motivation.  I lost any semblance of meaning in my life.  I wasn't angry, but I was hurt.  I was sad.  I was confused. Since then I have come to realize that I need to keep moving forward.  I am striving to get my motivation back, both at the office and the house.  I am working very hard on it and I am making progress.

Today a new thought has entered my mind. The thought is that I am just me and yes, 2018 was rough, but I know of so many others who are hurting and with far more reason than I have.  What triggered this thinking this weekend was a dear friend of mine.  Today she is marking eight years since she lost her husband.  She still hurts from it and she always will.  I know what it is like losing a lifetime spouse now.  But she has more pain than I will ever know.  In a short period of time not only did she lose her husband, but she lost her father and her youngest son.  I can not imagine the hurt that she must feel on a daily basis.  Yet, she continues on keeping herself on track as she takes care of others in her family as well as herself.  I admire her strength.  I wish I had that kind of strength but I do not.

My thinking goes to Alesia and Rachel.  I have written extensively about these young ladies who passed away all too soon, much too young.  I can look at their parents and I know that they hurt with a hurting I will never be able to understand.  I pray that I don't have to understand their pain.  But I watch these two couples over the years and watched them continue to push on.  Yes they hurt on a daily basis with a hut like no other.  Losing a child has got to be the deepest pain imaginable.  I admire these parents.  I admire their strength.  It would be so easy to lie down and let life run them over but they don't.  I look to them for inspiration and there is plenty of it there in their hearts.

I think of a niece of mine who lost her husband at an extremely young age.  I did not know her at the time, I would not know her for several years after that when she married into the family by way of my nephew.  The strength that she has had to find to get to the point of keeping going must have been tremendous.  Yet she has and I admire her so very much because of it.  I love her.  I admire her.  I admire her strength.

Then I think of an old classmate of mine who I only recently reconnected with.  We share much the same story.  He lost his love at an early age as well, and still mourns the loss.  He will for a long time as I will.  He keeps going somehow.  He mentions his partner often and relates memories he has of him.  I admire him.  I admire his courage and his strength.  I can relate to the pain he suffers on a daily basis.  But he moves forward as difficult as that might be.  I admire him and his strength.  His ability to talk about his loss with love and a thankfulness that he had that love, even if just for a short period of time.

And now, I think of my cousins.  They lost their son at the beginning of this COVID-19 shutdown.   They have more strength than anyone I have ever known I think.  They have not been able to have a memorial service or really anything to mark the passing of their son.  They won't be able to take this important step of honoring him and remembering him with friends and family that everyone else seems to have around for support.  I hurt for them as I  imagine having to work through something like.  It will be another month before we are able to gather to remember him.  Before we are able to show the love we had for him and the love we have for my cousins as they try to deal with all of this.  I do so admire their strength.  Never have I ever wanted to just hug two people so very badly as I do them.  They are special to me and it pains me to think of the hurt they are going through over the last couple of months.  I love them so much.

So we come back to me.  Yes I had a few rough years.  Yes 2018 seemed like a total disaster for me and that year will always be in my mind because of all the loss I suffered.  Since July of 2018 I have tried to continue to write, not only for you but for me as well. Every one of the writings I have done has mentioned Barbara along with some other tragedy that hit me.  That was a rough year.  I realize I will always be effected by it.  I realize that the pain I feel from those six months will not leave me.  But I also realize how blessed I am, in spite of that year.

These others that I have talked about today have much more reason to hurt than I do.  The losses they have suffered through are very real and each one of them hurt on a daily basis. i admire and respect every single one of these people.  I look up to them for guidance, as an example of courage and strength that I feel I lack.

For the last year and a half, all I have been able to write about is Barbara.  Even when writing about dad, I am writing about Barbara.  I wrote about my first girlfriend in an attempt to give my readers a break from reading about Barbara, but I wrote about her still even in that piece.  I WANT to write about Barbara, my dad and my sister.  I think that it is a good sign that I at least have been able to write something lately.  It does not come easy.

I imagine that these people that I wrote about here, look at my writings over the last year and a half and think about how lucky I really am and don't realize it. Trust me my friends, I realize how lucky I have been.  I was lucky I was to have Barbara for those 42 years.  I was extremely lucky for my dad to live into his 90's.  I was lucky to have such a good neighbor and friend as Jim for all those years (side note on me and Jim; our friendship did not start out very well but as time wore on the bonding became very real and he was like a second father-in-law to me).  I realize how lucky I was to have Lori around to take care of Barbara, and to help her on a day to day basis.  I realize how lucky I was to have an uncle like Dale, who I watched change from a slightly bitter man (he had lost two sons while I was growing up) into a loving, caring patient man who thought about others so lovingly.  I never knew my Uncle Dale very well, but when my mom visited him towards the end of his life he had love for me and my family that I didn't truly realize as he asked mom how I was doing since Barbara died. He cared.

I do know I have been lucky in life but it is hard to reconcile that with the losses.  I kind of think it is because time goes by so fast.  Life is so short but we don't realize it until death touches us.  On a daily basis I think of all of you and try to understand your pain.  I will never be able to accomplish that.

The important thing about all of this though. is this.  These people who I have outlined their stories to you about.  These people who are hurting beyond my comprehension.  Every single one of them have been there for me, giving me support.  Giving me encouragement.  Listening to me as I work through my own pain.  They set theirs aside just for a bit to help me with mine.  That, my friends, is strength and love that I never expected nor do I think I deserve from these wonderful friends and family.  Yes I have been so very lucky.

I admire all of you.  I look up to all of you.  I pray for all of you.

May God bless each and every one of you.

YOU AND ME AGAINST THE WORLD BUDDY

I had never had a pet until Barbara got me a German Shepard/Golden Retriever mix pup shortly after we were married.  This pup was a gorgeous dog that had the feathering of the retriever and the facial mask and hind legs of the sheperd.  Stunning looking dog.  He was big and lean and powerful.  He was also very gentle. I named him Milhous after President Nixon.  I know ... that's weird.  Yes it was but it was unique.  I remember taking Milhous to my grandfather's because he loved dogs so much.  My grandpa, a lifetime Democrat, held the pup up and look into his eyes.  Without taking his eyes off of the dog grandpa asked me, "What did you say his name was?"  "Milhous" I answered with great pride and grandpa just chuckled to himself as was his way before telling me, "You know .... when this dog finds out what you have done to him he is going to turn on you."  We both laughed.  Grandpa enjoyed the opportunity to be witty as he always did.

This began a short tradition of mine.  Well, not short as far as time is concerned but short in the number of dogs this tradition effected.  Milhous was eventually poisoned and died from internal organ damage at the hands of some unstable neighbors.  I mourned the loss of Milhous.  My first pet was gone.  Barbara worked on talking me into getting another dog.  We eventually did get a pup that would become a Christmas present for the family.  I named him "Rudolph" or Rudy for short.  It fit well because it was Christmas time and I could tell Brett he was named after Santa's reindeer but in reality he was named after President Ford, whose middle name was Rudolph.  The tradition had begun.  We were on a path of naming our dogs after Republican Presidents which left my mother very confused as to why I would do such a thing and cause my grandfather to further worry about me and my philosophy.  It was fun.

Rudy and I were nearly inseparable.  We went walking every weekend no matter the weather.  He rode with me on rides everywhere I went almost.  Rudy knew his limits but pushed them as far as he could.  Sometimes he would slip out the front door and take off running.  Luckily Rudy loved all our neighbors and when he got out all that had to be done was one of the neighbors to call to him and he would go to their house to get petted and wait for me to arrive to take him home. If it happened that none of the neighbors were out, Rudy would take off running down the street.  I would casually walk into the house and get the car keys to drive down the street about eight houses where Rudy would be sitting on the curb waiting for my arrival.  When I got to him I would open the car door and he would casually get into the car and get a ride around the block, which thrilled him.  Rudy had a good life but as is the case in many retrievers, his hips eventually wore out due to joint displacement.  He could no longer pull himself up from when he was lying down.  Wherever he lay down, he was stuck until I came along to pick him up.  He was in pain and did not have a great quality of life and so we made the painful decision to let him go.  Barbara could not even go into the room where Dr. Lyle was going to give Rudy the shot.  Brett stayed for a few minutes but then he had to leave.  In the end it was just me and Rudy along with the Doctor as he slipped off.  I had  slept on the floor with him the night before and now I was lying next to him the next morning so he would not be alone.  Once again I mourned and once again Barb worked on talking me into getting a third dog.

Emporia, Kansas was where our next dog hailed from.  He was a pure bred Golden Retriever and a member of the American Kennel Club.  His official name on the papers is "Clark's Ronald Wilson "Dutch" Reagan".  Obviously I had high expectations from this dog.  Dutch latched onto Barb from the early days as she trained him and got him prepared to be a dog that stood to my expectations.  She was pleased with how Dutch would snuggle up with her instead of me and I predicted to her that he might be your pup, but he is going to be my dog.  That prediction played out and I reminded Barbara of it plenty of times as the years passed.  Like his predecessors, Dutch goes for walks and car rides with me as often as he can.  He minds very well, even taking his medicine without protest.  He still stuck close to Barb though.  As Barb's health began to falter she spent more time at home alone with Dutch.  They were together practically 24/7 for over two years.  Dutch slept on the floor next to Barb.  During this time I was Dutch's play mate while Barb was the comforter and nourished him.  He went to her for petting and loving and to me for throwing balls and running around.

Then came July of 2018. Dutch had not seen much of me for a week.  I would leave early in the morning before sunrise and come home late at night to let him out, feed him and then go to bed.  He was getting needy I think.  He had grown accustomed to not being alone in the house for such long periods of time.  On that Monday though, I arrived home around five in the afternoon.  He met me at the door and started pushing himself into my leg to indicate he wanted to be petted, which I did.  I let him outside and filled his water and food bowls for him before letting him back in and going to my room to take a nap.  He did not follow me.

When I got up a couple of hours later I found him lying next to the couch.  Over the time him and Barbara had spent so much time together, that had become his place to sleep.  Barb slept on the couch, and he slept next to her on the floor.  As I walked into the living room he sat up and looked at me.  His eyes followed me as I went to sit in my chair.I sat in my chair thinking about the days events.  My life would never be the same.  Neither would his.  I looked over at the couch where he was sitting up just staring at me.  It was as if he knew that things had changed.  He stood up and walked over to me and gently laid his head in my lap and we petted for quite a while.  I couldn't take my eyes off of him.  He was very calm, more so than usual.

I finally found some words to say to him.  "It's just you and me buddy" I said as I rubbed his chest and he looked at me. Maybe it was just my mood but his eyes seemed very sad to me.  As we sat there quietly a song from long ago filtered into my head.  "You and Me Against the World" by Helen Reddy.  Beautiful song and the words seemed to fit this quiet time so well.  From now on it would be me and Dutch together making our way through life.

That night as I wandered off to bed, Dutch stayed at his station next to the couch where Barbara was supposed to be.  Her arm was suppose to be reaching down petting him on the head as they both fell asleep.  Even though it had been a week since he had felt that comfort, he stayed next to the couch as if she were there.  It was where he was suppose to be come night time.

Dutch slept next to the couch for three or four months, expecting Barbara to suddenly appear and pet him to sleep.  As was also his custom he would get up at half past five and come to my room to wake me up for work.  I took a trip to Alabama to see mom, dad and my sister and to try to get myself use to the new life I would be facing while Dutch spent some quality time with his brother, Bernard, at my cousins.

Me and Dutch have been getting accustomed to the new reality that we face.  He now comes into my room with me when I go to bed and sleeps on the floor there.  He still wakes me up at five or so every day, including Saturday and Sunday (sigh).  The routine has changed a bit for both of us but we have established one that works for each of us.  He still misses Barbara though.  I can tell.  He comes to me for his petting now but I am sure that in his head he is thinking it isn't the same.  Dad just doesn't do it as comforting as mom did.

Dutch is getting old now.  He has put on weight.  His joints are starting to give him trouble.  He is slow to lie down and slow to get up.  He brings me his ball when it is time to play and lays his head in my lap when it is time to cuddle.  He walks over to the back door and looks back at me over his shoulder when it is time to go outside.  We communicate very well I think.

I dread the day when Dutch is no longer here.  Right now we comfort each other.  We help each other through everyday.  I need Dutch and Dutch needs me.  We are best friends in it together and we keep trying to move forward together.

Yes I do fear the day when I will lose him but for now, "it is you and me buddy".  We will get through as much of this as we can ... together ... as a team.

I love you Dutch.

BELDEN HOWARD CLARK (DAD)

I have been putting this off for awhile.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have written of many people who have passed away who played an important part of my life.  Some have been relatives, some have been friends and some have been figures that just inspired me.

Dad passed away October 27, 2018, a mere 3 months and 4 days after Barbara passed away.  Those were two of the most important people in my life that I lost in a very short time and it was a double gut punch.  The year 2018 was a rough one for me and the entire family.  However we all can mourn the loss of these two people with sadness but also with the knowledge that they are where they knew they would be when they died.  They are in a place beyond description, both leaving the pain and suffering that they endured behind and are praising their God constantly.  Both of them set an example for all of us and we should take heed to the example they set.  I have already written about Barbara and what she meant to me both in life as well as in death.  Now I attempt to write about my father and the man that he was.

I have written several pieces on dad over the span of this blog.  I have written about him almost if not a little more than I have my grandfather.  I haven't bothered to go back and count how many I wrote of each one but the volume of writing I have done reflects how important these two men were to me.  But this one is about dad.  It is a tribute and a memorial to the man that helped raise me under very serious health conditions for sixty-two years.  And right at the top, I want it made clear that even though dad did face problems that sometimes effected his mood, he did the absolute best that he could and he did it well.  His life and my grandfather's life are almost parallel to each other except for the health issue that dad carried with him through two thirds of his life.

My dad had a brain aneurysm when I was about four or five years old.  He was in his early thirties.  I talked to my Uncle Jack about the day it happened and it went something like this.  Dad and Jack were at a baseball game.  Now dad had some rules about attending a baseball game of which I have written before.  The main rule we are dealing with is the rule that states that you do not leave a ball game until the last out of the last inning.  Major rule.  Jack told me that around the fourth or fifth inning dad began to complain of a headache.  It quickly worsened and dad began to slump a little in the old wooden seats of Municipal Stadium.  Then around the sixth inning, dad told Jack that he had to leave, the headache was getting worse.  At this point my uncle knew that something was terribly wrong.  Dad leaving before the end of a game was simply unheard of.  So the two of them left the game early (I honestly think it was the one and only time dad ever left a game early) and headed home.

Facts get a little fuzzy for me here because I do have a vague memory of that day and am not sure what really went on.  Sometime after dad got home from the game and the next morning, a blood vessel in his brain burst and rendered him unconscious, basically in a coma.  I remember mom calling my uncle on the phone and it seemed like Jacks little white Beetle was in front of the house before she hung up..  They rushed dad to the hospital in an ambulance to the emergency room where I assume a team made up of many doctors and nurses worked to save his life.  They were able to stabilize him and admitted him to the intensive care unit.  However he was still in a coma.  My mother was told by the doctor that dad had maybe a 5% chance of making it through this tragedy.  It was a daunting thought for her as she began to prepare for what could be a life without dad.  She had four young children and did not have a job.  And so the praying began.

A quick word about praying for healing.  I believe that God does hear every one of our prayers and that He answers them.  All of them.  Barbara had so many people praying for her as she lay in a coma for a week after her surgery.  I do believe that God answered those prayers even though it wasn't the answer we wanted.  God answered our prayers by taking Barbara home.  I think God had His reasons for that and looking back I can see some of those reasons and I am not angry with God, but I am thankful that if it was time for her to leave this earth, she found a place safe in God's arms. The answer to the prayers for Dad was a different one though.  God willed that it was not time yet for dad to join Him and slowly dad came out of the coma and began to heal.  It would be a long and rough healing process though taking many years before he would be free from the terrible pain inflicted on him.

The aneurysm had left dad with the process of dealing with the most horrific headaches on almost a daily basis.  The pain would be so bad at times that he would need to go to the local clinic to get a shot that would knock him out so he could get some sleep through the pain and get up the next morning and go to work.  I am not sure if the pain ever really left him during those many years or he adjusted to it so that when the pain wasn't as bad as it could be, he would manage to function as if there was not any pain.  That is the theory I hold to.  I believe he was in constant pain for decades but when the pain lessened somewhat, he took advantage and took care of the family as best he could.  This is the definition of a strong, loving, great man in my eyes.  After oh so many years, the blood vessel that had been clamped off and was the cause of the headaches eventually rerouted itself around the clip and once the connection was completed, the pain started to dissipate.  He still had headaches now and then but not to the point of not being able to sleep or function on a daily basis.  I believe God healed that in a way only God could and dad became a little more able to tolerate noises and people than he had for most of his life.  It was a blessing.  A blessing that took a long time to realize but it did come.

Now comes the tough part to write.  It is rough because I can look back on the time I was growing up through my preteen and teenage years and on into time after I had married and left the house and I am not proud of myself and my actions in relating with dad.  I am not going to speak for my siblings, I am sure they had different experiences with dad than I did.  I was a stubborn and independent child and teenager.  I eventually outgrew that after I had a son of my own but for almost half of the time I had with dad I messed it up.  Because of dad constantly dealing with pain, he was not as patient as a normal person would be.  He would get frustrated easily.  I feel like I did everything I could to test those few weak spots that my dad did have.  I look back and can see all of the many things dad tried to do for the whole family.  He tried his best to have a normal family life.  He would take us on day trips like to Fort Osage.  He would take us to baseball games of course, but I also remember he took us to a soccer game when Kansas City had the Spurs as a home team.  He took us to hockey games.  He put up a basketball goal over the garage and put up with all three windows in the garage and one of the living room windows being busted out by a basketball that came from my fingertips and he replaced the windows without complaint.  He went to most of our little league baseball games and my band concerts.  I even remember one time that he took off from work early so he could come to Smith-Hale Junior High School and watch me play a basketball game.  He did absolutely everything he could to give us as normal of a family life as possible and he did it well.  But as I was growing up, I could not see all of this.

Now I am not saying dad was perfect, he was just a man after all and I certainly wasn't perfect, I was far far from perfect.  We butted heads quite a bit.  It got ugly at times.  It got a little violent at times.  I can look back at those times now though and clearly see that it was my stubbornness and rebellion and independence that trigger the vast majority of the conflicts.  I am not proud of that fact.  The thing is dad and I had so many things in common.  We both loved music.  I got a lot of my taste in music from listening to dad's old albums.  Hank, Jim Reeves, Eddie Arnold and Jimmy Dean were great singers who sang wonderful songs and I still to this day listen to a lot of those artists that dad loved.  He taught me about the great players that I watched growing up.  The Orioles, the Twins, the Redsox were all held up as legendary teams ... and oh yeah, those stinking Yankees as well.  For some reason though, neither of us connected to each other on all those things we had in common.  We spent more time butting heads then enjoying what we had in common.

What started to turn my thinking around was when I went to work at Rycom Instruments, where dad worked.  When I first started working there, it was after school picking up trash and sweeping floors but it was also a chance to observe my father at his absolute best.  He was so intelligent.  He was a sheet metal worker and along with grandpa one of the two greatest sheet metal workers I have ever seen.  He did not us a calculator but did all the math on the blue prints so he could see how he got the final figures.  The things is, most of the days I saw him working he was in the grasp of those terrible headaches.  I would see him wince in pain, rub his forehead and continue to work a full eight hours.  I may be wrong, it may just be my perception but I honestly do not ever remember a day that dad took off sick.  He practiced, and I learned, that you give eight hours work for eight hours pay.  And that was a full eight hours without any halfway working but a full hard eight hours of focused hard work.  That was when my respect for him started to turn and to grow as I realized how long he had been doing this day after day.  It had been decades. And he never complained.  Oh he would complain about some of his co-workers but never complained about his job or what he had to go through.  It was this work ethic of my dad's that formed my own work ethic that I carry with me today.  It was probably the greatest gift a father could give a son.

Well, dad worked until retirement.  He made the adjustment fairly well as he began to learn how to help mom clean house and do dishes.  He was determined to make life as easy as he could for mom and I think he was pretty good at it. Then he began to age and it began to catch up with him.

He suffered from a hernia.  He had a couple of heart attacks.  But it was after retirement that the biggest challenge he would face since his aneurysm happened.  Dementia was starting to settle into that sharp mind of his.  It didn't start off drastically, just little things for the first several years.  Forgetting things, redoing things that he had already done, just little things like that.  The first time I really noticed that something was happening was when he was in the hospital for something that I can't remember what it was.

In Kansas City they like to torture the Royals fans.  They do this by showing a ball game live and after you watch them lose that game, they have a half hour post game show followed by??  yup, a half hour PRE-GAME show that would be followed by rebroadcasting the devastation once again.  You not only got to see the Royals blow a game once, but just to make sure you get the full effect of another loss, they show it a second time.  Well, I was spending the night with dad at the hospital one night and since the Royals were playing, we watched it.  Dad tried to never miss a Royals game.  During the game dad would comment on each play and each player, he enjoyed it so much.  Of course the Royals lost the game and after it was over we watched a little of the post game then started to talk ignoring the television.  Suddenly, dad looked up at the television and the Royals were playing a SECOND game!!  And so we watched it.  It was at this time that I first noticed that something was slipping.  Dad began making the same remarks that he had during the same game four hours earlier.  He watch the full game as though it was the first time he had seen it.  The dementia would not really worsen for awhile or at least get worse very slowly but the process had begun.

Over the next few years dad's dementia continued to worsen and my moms eyesight weakened quite a bit.  It was time to pay back to them what they had sacrificed for us.  And so with help from my sister Karen and my niece Tara, both who went above and beyond the call of duty, we took care of mom and dad.  It was also during this time that Barbara's health began to falter tremendously.  Without Tara and Karen I would have been beside myself.  I had to spend more time taking care of Barb and less taking care of mom and dad, although I tried to stop and check in on them everyday after work.  So, just a shout out to Karen and Tara.  THANK YOU BOTH SO VERY MUCH!

After awhile dad's knees began to give out on him and before long he had to use a walker to get around, even in the house.  Adding taking care of Barbara to the care taking of mom and dad was piling up and becoming a little too much.  Elaine discussed with mom and dad the idea of moving to Alabama where she could take care of mom and dad and I could concentrate on Barbara.  It had a lot of benefits.  It would give mom and dad a social life once again was a big one.  Meals would be provided and a hospital was right across the street.  And so in October of 2016, mom and dad moved to a small apartment in Camden, Alabama and I began to focus on Barbara.

Dad's dementia continued to worsen.    It wasn't too long before it became apparent that with mom's eye sight as bad as it was and dad's dementia problems getting worse, it was getting to the point where both of them needed more help than living in the small apartment provided.

They kept dad in the assisted living facility for a short amount of time to evaluate him before moving him to the dementia facility.  It was the first time in their marriage, other than dad's military time, that mom and dad were separated.  We began studying dementia and the effects it has on people who suffer with it.  We studied and listened to how the disease progresses and the how people with the disease make their way through the steps.  Dementia is not pretty in the latter stages.  It seemed like dad was heading towards another frustrating part of his life that the an aneurysm would bring him to.  Our prayers for dad began to change.  We did not him to leave us, but we didn't want to watch dad go through the suffering that progressive dementia would take him.

I was going to go to Alabama to visit dad once more before winter set in, knowing that by springtime his dementia probably would be to the point of him not knowing who I was.  I was going to leave on Wednesday, October 31.  However on the afternoon of October 27, my sister Karen showed up at the house to give me the news.  Dad had passed away.  I left for Alabama the next morning.

Once again God had answered prayers.  It wasn't what we wanted necessarily, but it was God's plan, God's schedule to take dad home.  I miss him.  I loved him.  But just as God had plans for Barbara, he had plans for dad.  Dad would not have to endure the frustration and the misery that dementia would bring upon him.  He had died quickly and easily as his heart suddenly just stopped.  No real pain.  No lingering around waiting to die.  God took dad home in a most merciful way.   As with Barbara, it was not only merciful to dad, but it was a show of mercy for all of us that we did not have to watch dad suffer.

Dad was buried in Blue Springs, Missouri.  We had two memorial services for him.  One in Camden Alabama where he had made friends with a lot of people and a lot of his family was there.  The other was held in Blue Springs, Missouri for all the friends and family in the midwest.  Both services were closed out with the attendees singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" in unison as a special tribute to dad and his love of baseball.

Dad is at peace with God along with so many people that he knew and influenced over the years, including Barbara.  I am thankful in knowing that dad will not suffer from the horrors of dementia.  That he will no longer have those headaches.  That his knees will bow before God without pain and stiffness.

Our God is loving and merciful and gives us the gift of grace.  If I learned anything during the year 2018, it was that.  I already knew it, I believed it, but now I have a concrete belief in his love, grace and mercy.  He has shown that to dad, to Barbara, and to me.  I thank Him for that.

The last photo of just my dad and myself together

BARBARA ANN CLARK - PART ONE

I honestly do not know how to do this.  I think what you are going to get will be just random thoughts as they enter my head thinking about the last forty five years of knowing and sharing life with Barb.

All I know about Barb's childhood is what she told me which was not a lot.  What I did gather from her is that it was not an ideal childhood which is probably why she kept it mostly inside of her.  Barb's mother developed schizophrenia when Barb was young.  Because of this, her mother had several inpatient stays at mental facilities while Barb was growing up.  Her father, Harry, doing the best he could for his youngest daughter often had her stay at friends or relatives houses so he could work and Barb would be taken care of.  You are probably thinking, as I did, that this does not make for a stable childhood.  Apparently she was very good at making adjustments as needed and she turned out to be a pretty good woman.  I am not sure how old she was when the following event happened, I don't think she ever told me.  She did recall to me that one time she had come home from school to find her mother attempting suicide.  She immediately ran down the street to her Godmother's house and with her help, Barb was able to save her mother's life that day.  Many years later, after Barb and I had been married close to three years, her father came home from work to find his wife overdosed on pills and deceased.  Barb handled her mother's death as well as could be expected I suppose.  What the death of her mother did do was to bring her and her father closer together.  Harry and Barb were very close anyway, but this event solidified that bond and made it even stronger.  She adored her father and with good reason.  To me when I think of Harry Kissinger I think of a very strong and very caring man.  A great man that did the best he could for his girls.  When her father died, it was truly the first time I saw Barbara really crushed emotionally.  I did my best to support her during the time she was working through it but I am afraid I fell far short of what she needed.  She kept her dad alive in our house by framing his military patches and pictures in frames that were hung down the hallway between the living room and the bedrooms.  She came out of her childhood pretty good for the most part considering all she went through.  She came into adulthood a little cynical, very determined and very caring for those around her that needed help.  She fell in love with kids and that love grew more as she grew older.  I don't think I ever saw anyone just flat out love kids the way that Barbara did.

The ironic thing about Barb and her love for kids is that the two of us were not able to become pregnant and have a child.  After a few years of marriage, we agreed that we would try to have a child.  After a year or so, we started seeing fertility specialists.  We went through test after test, we tried this and that and eventually the experts told us that we could not bear children.  Once again I saw Barb just devastated.  She would see and hear young mothers complain about their children and think "why not me?"  She would hear pregnant women complain about the horrors and the pain it was to be pregnant and she would think "I will gladly trade places with you."  The biggest effect the situation had on her though was strengthening her opposition to abortion.  She was always against it, but this made her more vocal about it and resolved her opposition to it.  Her belief, and mine, was that there was no such thing as an unwanted child.  People were on waiting lists to have a chance to have a child.  However, she quickly pick herself up, dusted herself off and began to work with the Missouri Baptist Children's Home to see if we would be eligible to adopt a child.  Oh the paperwork that she went through during this quest.  It was all her.  I was okay at the time with adopting a child but I thought it would take forever to do so.  Barb was determined though.  She faithfully filled out the papers.  We went to parenting classes and to couples therapy to be sure we would be good parents.  Our finances were looked at.  Our neighbors were interviewed about us.  We had visits to look through our house to see how we lived.  Virtually every part of our life together was put under a microscope for two years.  We had to prove that we were capable of being good parents, which by the way brought out Barb's ire at girls having babies that could not care for them or even want them.  But we, we had to prove we were good enough to have a child.  Finally, one day we got a call from the Children's Home.  With the help of an inside source, they had decided that they had a little boy that was ready to be adopted and they had decided that we were the couple that should raise him as our own.  On December 22, 1982 Derrick Brett Clark came to live with us and became our son.  Barb's dogged determination had paid off.  It was the happiest I had ever seen her.  She loved Brett so very much and we raised him as our own and he was our own.  Job well done Barbara and thank you, thank my Uncle Melvin and mostly thank God for the gift of Brett.

The mention of Brett brings up another topic concerning Barbara.  Something that flooded the DNA of my family and was not even a blip in her DNA.  It was something called baseball. Barb was a football person.  Well, she was a Kansas City Chiefs person.  She didn't know about college football or college anything nor did she care.  It was Len Dawson, Buck Buchanan, Willie Lanier, Johnny Robinson, Otis Taylor, Fred Arbanas .... you know, the Chiefs.  As far as sports were concerned to Barbara, nothing mattered but the Chiefs.  She was aware of baseball and basketball and a few other sports, but that was about as far as her knowledge went.  Chiefs or nothing.  When we first started dating, she had never attended a baseball game.  She had never even seen one on television.  She did not have a clue as to what baseball was about.  Before we got Brett, I had taken her to more than a few Royal's games and she suffered through it.  One of the things my dad had us do every time we went to a ballgame was to buy a score card and keep score.  He figured it made us really pay attention to the game and to understand it better.  Barb would look at me in wonder as we entered the stadium and the first thing I would do would be to buy a scorecard.  She would just shake her head during the game as I kept score while she was trying to talk to me about something.  She did not have a clue as to what was going on in the field, what the rules were, or why I got excited during a game where the pitching dominated both teams and the bats were almost silent.  Then we got Brett and the day arrived early one spring when Brett was a little over two years old that I cam home with a Wiffle Ball set.  Now this wasn't the set with the big fat red bat and the softball size wiffle ball.  No, this was the skinny yellow bat and the baseball size wiffle.  I walked in and announced that I had made a purchase that I thought would carry us through many years (which it did).  She expressed her doubts about Brett being old enough for this silly game but I assured her he was just at the right age.  Over the next two summers and falls.... and let's face it spring and winters as well, I would take Brett out in the back yard and we would learn to hit.  Every once in a while I would look up at the kitchen window and see Barb staring outside watching, but as soon as I looked at her, she disappeared to continue fixing dinner.

Cable arrived in our house about the same time Brett did and I discovered the magic of Harry Carey.  He was the play by play for the Chicago Cubs and soon Barb was put through a summer of Royals games and Cubs games both.  Summers back then were very long for her I think.  But she knew that the teams were not going to leave our house and so Brett's wardrobe started to change little by little.  George Brett jerseys began to show up during the summer.  Little shirts that said "Cubbies" appeared and then a Cubs jersey.  Finally one Christmas she went all out and got Brett a Cubs batting helmet, Cubs bat and a Cubs baseball.  Then the ultimate test arrived for her as far as baseball was concerned.

I took Brett up to the local YMCA and signed him up for T-ball.  From that day forward, for the next fifteen years or so, baseball would become an integral part of Barb's life.  She enjoyed the T-ball years because after all it was just kids running around in circles.  As Brett grew older and he established himself as a very good second baseman who could hit, she began to take notice of what was happening on the field.  She began to learn the basics of baseball.  When Brett got into high school he played baseball for Bishop Hogan.  The fall out from playing for Bishop Hogan was that to keep the boys sharp and in playing condition, they would play in a second league along with the metro league.  Soon Barb was watching baseball four or five times a week.  Then came the two years when the boys played in a spring league, two summer leagues and a fall league.  In those last two years of Brett playing ball, Barb became hard core baseball.  She was washing uniforms every night of the week. (No son of HERS was going to show up in a dirty uniform).  She would be watching baseball in hundred degree heat, watching baseball until eleven at night sometimes, and during the fall be wrapped up in a coat, blankets and stocking cap to watch ball games.  She had become a baseball fanatic.  Her appreciation (love is too strong a word for baseball as far as she was concerned) for baseball grew and after Brett's playing days were over, she would watch the Royals and the Cubs with me and later watch Mizzou play baseball and softball when they arrived on cable.  Through all those years, she never ever missed a single game of Brett's.  She missed very few World Series games no matter who was playing in it, although she got extremely happy in 2015 and 2016 when the Royals won the Series and then the Cubs took it.  When the Royals had their big celebration at Union Station in the late winter, early spring of 2016 she was in the hospital preparing for her third heart surgery.  Her room looked out over the street where hundreds of Royals fans were making their way to the Station.  She was not able to get up and go to the window so I describe the parade of fans to her.  Then she watched the celebration on her television, then I had to go back to the window to describe the parade of fans returning to their cars.  Baseball had worked its way into her DNA.  It had taken over thirty years, but she had found what baseball was about.  However, through all those years, football still stayed number one in her sports heart.  It had expanded from just the Chiefs though to the Chiefs and Mizzou.  That would never change.

Somewhere along the line Barbara developed a fascination for sign language.  I honestly do not know where it came from but she must have had an experience or something with either a signer or a deaf person.  She took several classes at the community college, at Rockhurst and I think she even took one at the Kansas School for the Deaf.  At one time during this process she shared with me that one thing she would really like to do would be to work at the school for the deaf.  That never came to fruition but she did learn to sign very well.  She would watch television shows that had a signer in a little circle of the screen and watch, sign along with, and under her breath say the words she was signing.  Every time we went to the Kansas City Men's Chorus Christmas show her eyes would never leave the signer for the entire time.  One night, after the show, we were standing out in the middle of 14th Street with all of the other attendees and she saw the man with the long blonde hair who did the signing for the chorus.  He was about six foot three or so and Barb, of course, was four foot ten.  She walked up to him and looked up in the sky and started talking to him about signing, about her love for it and how she appreciated his ability to be so fluent and smooth in his signing.  They ended up talking for about fifteen minutes as he shared some of his experiences and she shared hers.  I got the feeling that this man really appreciated her coming up and engaging him about his craft.  Barb had that ability though.  Her smile broke through all barriers.  Her voice was soft and smooth and she was always capable of expressing her sincerity in what she was saying.  On the way back to my Uncle's house, she told Dan all about her talk with the gentleman.  Dan was fascinated with her talk about her talk with the signer.

Okay, let's go back to her love for kids for a second.   When Barb and I started dating, someone at the church brought up the possibility of a children's choir for the church.  Barb thought about it and decided that she would really enjoy that.  Since I played the piano, she talked to me about it.  Why don't the two of us start a children's choir in the church?  Well, if you know me at all, you know I don't like to play piano in front of people.  Never have.  But Barb was pretty convincing as she always was and so one summer Wednesday night we held our first choir practice.  There were about four or five kids but for Barb, that was plenty.  She found some old books that the youth choir use to use and we picked songs out to teach the kids.  After about a month, Barb asked if the kids could sing one Sunday night for the church.  They agreed and so on that night I sat at the piano in the sanctuary and five kids stood before the church and sang.  Barb was so very proud of the kids.  She immediately began thinking ahead towards the Christmas season when the kids would perform again.  By the time Christmas rolled around, Barb had a choir of almost fifteen kids and she taught them well.  She had them express themselves in song.  For example if a song had the word "shout" as part of the lyrics, Barb would have the kids actually shout out the word "shout".  I was so proud of her and what she had accomplished.  She carried on the children's choir until we got married and joined a different church.

In the new church, it was the same situation.  No children's choir.  It didn't take Barb long to get the ball rolling to create one.  She again worked her magic with the kids and soon had a fairly large choir.  It was during this time at the new church that Barb began one of her personal traditions.  She would teach the kids to sign a song as they sang.  Most of the time she did this during the Christmas season.  I have seen her teach kids to sign "Away in a Manger"  "Silent Night"  "Jesus Loves Me" among many others.  The parents loved it that their kids were learning something like sign language and the choir continued to grow.

When we started attending another church, we discovered that the pastor at the church was a member of her original children's choir so many years before.  He still remembered some the songs she had taught those kids and asked her to start a choir at his church.  Barbara jumped at the chance and so once again she started from scratch and built a choir that would sign at least one song a year.  Eventually she bought a set of kids hand bells and taught the kids to do songs with them.  When it came to kids, Barb was always looking for something to enhance their experience in her choir.  I do believe it was one of the biggest joys she had in her life.  Eventually her health deteriorated to the point where she was not up to the task and she reluctantly retired from the children's choir job.  She did love it though.  When she was directing those kids in front of the church, she would have a smile on and her eyes would twinkle and she would sing along with them.

Family.  Barbara always considered the family to be very important.  I don't just mean Brett and myself but the FAMILY.  The uncles, the aunts, the cousins, sisters and brothers and nephews and nieces.. People who weren't technically a part of the family were considered family to Barb.  A good example of this is my eldest sister's best friend since childhood.  Barb always saw Karen as another sister and her daughter, Ginny, as one of her nieces.  She would spend literally hours talking to my aunts and uncles as well as hers.  Her cousins on both her side and my side were more like brothers and sisters than cousins.  She would be so proud of her nephews and nieces and make sure they knew that she was.  And when those nephews and nieces had kids of their own, she loved them as much as she had their parents and were proud of them as well.  Probably the most important link between Barb and my family though were my grandparents.  She loved them so very much and always was concerned with how they were doing.  She held back tears when each of them passed.

As time went by, members of the family began to age and pass away.  It was during this time that Barb  showed how she felt about her Clark and Hill families.  My uncle Dan had been surviving with AIDS for decades but one day we got news that brought everyone together tightly.  Uncle Dan had been diagnosed with lung cancer and it did not look good.

Through the years Barb and Dan had grown to be very close.  When Dan was diagnosed,  Barb and myself ran point to organize the care of Dan as members of the family came into town to help, friends from Seattle came into town to help take care of Dan but Barb was always on watch with me to look over Dan.  Dan fought for a while very hard and Barb was there to encourage him on.  Barb gave me tremendous support during this time.  Many times my uncle and I would be up late into the night, early morning talking about things and Barb was there most of the time.  She was asleep, but she was there.  She always fell asleep in what became one of her favorite chairs and we would chuckle when we found her asleep so many times.  When we put Dan in hospice, I was there 24/7 as I promised my uncle i would be.  Barb spent almost that much time there to help however she could.  The night that Dan passed, i had fallen asleep on the couch in Dan's room.  Barb came over and shook me awake and told me it was time.  I looked at her confused and she repeated that it was time and shortly thereafter, my uncle passed away.  A few weeks before he passed, Dan had told Barb that she could have her chair that she spent so many hours sleeping in.  That chair became Barb's chair in our house and the place where she spent most of her time as her health got worse.

When my sister Carol came up one summer to help me take care of mom and dad, Barb was herself  well on the way toward poor health.  Carol was diagnosed with cancer that summer and along with Karen, we got her well enough to get back to Georgia.  Barb wanted to help out so much but just wasn't able to.

Before I wrap up this part of writing about Barb, I have thought of a couple of events that made her laugh and brought smiles to both of us.

She was taking a deposit to the bank for her office one day and found herself in line behind one of her heroes, a man named Len Dawson.  Dawson finished his transaction and she watched him walk away.  When she got to the counter, she asked the young teller if that was Len Dawson.  The young man looked at Dawson's receipt and said "Yes it was.  Do you know Mr. Dawson?"  Barb was floored.  LEN DAWSON.  This kid did not have a clue.  When she got home that night she told me the story with a lot of emotion and voice inflections and wonderment.  Then in describing the young teller she did what she did so often in describing young adults... "B-A-B-Y" ... and she would smile.

We had spent over a year with nightmarish neighbors on our south side.  It is too much to go into detail here, but it was horrible.  It was so bad the whole neighborhood were hassling the landlord on a daily basis to get them evicted.  When those people finally moved out and a new for rent sign was put up in the yard, Jim from across the street marched over, picked up the sign and threw it into the back yard.  After a few weeks a couple came over to look at that house.  When Charlene and Robert moved in, both Barb and myself would greet them every time we saw them.  We were both OVER nice to them.  Barb would go over and talk to Charlene constantly.  Then one Saturday when Barb got home from one of her talks with the new neighbors, she sat down and smiled as she said "you know, those people probably think we are totally NUTS!"  and she laughed thinking out loud that they would probably move out to get away from US.

I could write forever about life with Barb.  I have forty-five years to look back upon.  That is a lot of memories.  The purpose of part one was to try my best to let you know who Barb was.  How she was.  What was important to her and how she handled things.  We had rough times during our time together for sure.  We went through some rough times.  But when you take the over all story of Barb and her life, she was a very good person, certainly too good for me.

The next part will deal with her health issues and how they effected her both physically and emotionally.  I will try to get that written soon.

Thank you for reading this and allowing me to show how I saw Barb over the course of our time together.