update and thoughts on dying

hello,
Again I'm feeling lazy for not posting as frequently as I could or should. I know folks like me are encouraged to refrain from using either of those words, but sometimes they am what is. I want to post more often and as I type I've decided to at least peek in every Sunday. As we start the new school year that appears to make sense to me for reasons that I don't even think can count as such.

I have been busy and working on things as I let other things work on me. The politics and inner workings of any large organization are an interesting behavior to observe. It can make you laugh, cry, curse, and sometimes shout. One must often apply a good slap to your own face and refocus on what is the only reason we bother, the kids. No longer a classroom teacher every single time I help a teacher in some way that in the end helps students, makes me feel good. That's why I do the job. My district isn't perfect but has many dedicated teachers and staff members who want to help shape a better world for the students. I have a peer who repeatedly tells me that in his opinion about 80% of the teachers are just here for the paycheck and summers off. Every time I hear that it is like a fist in the gut. Offended and puzzled on every level, I disagree.

I honestly wonder what does it say about someone if they believe so little in the organization they work for? With that perception are they just taking a paycheck as well? Why bother to be involved in a system that is such a dismal failure. By the only standard we have, imperfect as it might be, test data suggests more success on our part. It bothers me that someone without objective criteria would verbalize such a statement. How can someone without a teacher's certificate(he has his own area of expertise and does his own job well) feel that they are qualified to make such a negatively emotionally charged statement? I guess it also shocks me that someone I respect to such an extent could seem so far off base and make such hurtful remarks without qualification or factual evidence. Let's all shout fire in a crowded theater, shall we.

If anyone with children in the district reads this let me just tell you that your child, no matter who they are, has been assigned to one of the 20% that try. I'm proud to work here. My own children are students here. I hope that says something.

Now to thoughts of death.

Almost two weeks ago my uncle died. He hadn't been doing well with his variety of ailments. When the phone rang and caller ID showed me it was my cousin I knew what the call was about. I just knew it. I had very similar feelings when they called me about my mother between 5 and 6 one morning. I was sitting in a meeting at school when my father died. I remember looking at the clock and thinking Dad died at 10:45. Immediately after the meeting I was called to the phone in the office to get the news from my brother. It is a very cathartic process to work through.

Back to the phone call, due to all sorts of things, my uncle was to be cremated within 24 hours and a service was planned for late the next week. I had almost a week and a half to stew about death.

I did.

When I was a child I was terrified to death about death and dying.(I did the terrified to death about death on purposed because I'm not terrified about cliched writing, obviously) I grew up Church of Christ and just knew I was going to die and go to hell. I think it was to be expected. It happened in every single dream about death and judgment day I ever had. Trust me, I had lots of them. Loud bang, spirits rising from the graveyard, big gatherings in the shadow of a giant Jesus, throwing our shoes on a big pile in a wagon others sifted and sorted. Standing in line as the giant Jesus sorts us like the shoes in that wagon. No matter how the dreams started, even with all signs looking good for me, I always got the wrong nod, the sign I wasn't seeking, and headed anywhere but to the right.

As I grew older I become so frightened some nights I couldn't sleep. Once I became so scared I got up and wandered into the living room. Dad was out of town. Mom was watching Johnny Carson and reading the New Yorker.(no mysteries about where she was headed). Worried about my tears she was quick to hold me and ask just what was the matter. I told her all. Not my specific sins but I explained just how the cards were stacked and how the rows of dominoes spelled out, headed to a hot spot, and were just waiting for a tap from the giant Jesus' finger.

She hugged me, comforted me, told me not to worry. Besides that was something that would be decided long after we were dead and I wouldn't need to worry. Wow, that made me feel good. Then I remembered this was the same woman who only years ago in the midst of a massive breakdown from reality explained that vomit was only us casting out all of our evil and babies are tools of Satan to convince us of the illusion of the possibility of renewal and how periods of great war and turbulence led to the false hopes provided by periodic ages of peace and love and on and on. I went back to bed remembering that and was even more confused and frightened than I was when I woke in a panic a half hour earlier.

Luckily, by now fear of death isn't a concern. Folks cringe when I say it, but in lots of ways I look forward to and welcome it. All of my rambles down the road of dealing with the adventures brought on by faulty arterial pipes has led me to lots of meditation on that which I once feared. In the early part of this century I read, "No Death, No Fear," by the wise man known as Thay Hanh to many. One of the most helpful books I've ever read it set me straight in my own head about many things.

My uncle Charlie gave me the chance to revisit a topic that sooner or later will consume almost all of us. He did me a big favor. The night before the service we'd been to see my cousin and as I was trying to go to sleep I typed out with one finger a short email to him. The next morning less than an hour before the service he asked me if I'd read what I'd written. I tried to remember if it was something I could read in a church. It was and I agreed. I wanted to help and if PDub wanted me to read it I would.

However, I made the mistake of following his three kids. GranCharlie's(probably not spelled right)only grandchildren. The three of them, Lydia, Frances, and Charles, stood together in a group, a team, like I remembered them, a unit, while Lydia said her piece and Charles read a short incredible poem he'd penned. Frances saved her poem for cemetery where we had no hole to place him(come December's Christmas visit and his ashes will be placed with much of our family that is already gone).

I made my way forward wishing I'd declined my offer to read now. I knew it would be rough. Carson said, "Dad, everybody knows you're a cryer" Well, I got through it, and even with the crying everybody said they could hear and understand me. When I went back to my seat, my cousin, Mary Fran, who I always thought was so cool when I was growing up, she was the beautiful one of the big girls, reached back from her pew in front of us and gave me one of her smiles and one of the best hand hugs I ever had.

My extended family is simply put,one of the best there ever was.

So...

For my cousin Paul, because he liked it enough to ask that it be read at his father's funeral, my thoughts about my uncle Charlie.


We bury my uncle Charlie tomorrow
Only what's left of him
The leftovers that don't even begin to tell his story that we will
keep alive gathered around the fire pit on days that only echo the
glory days of regular trips from the valley for Couger encampments
with odds and ends thrown into flames stirred by non regulated sticks
that maybe should have been
Many ways he had been absent even when he was here these last few years
but there was a time when autumn brought them north of the Brazos
To a spot on the top of a hill that was a kingdom unto itself ruled by
former river folk who came to town for education and stayed
If Charlie hadn't married in he would still have fit the same
The bear would have seen to it
On reaching the house Charlie came to see my other uncles
Different family but not really
He bought the round he would spice and hang from small wire hooks
attached where once the family wash dried in the same west Texas
breeze and sun that now transformed beef to jerky that would be
savored around the pit and washed down after a journey half way to the
lake for supplies best kept in a cooler in the back of his vehicle
That is how I remember him best
In November and the three week thanksgiving celebration
Where the family played out the melodrama he did his best to avoid
With books and radio and days in clear autumn light
By the fire
Being Charlie
My uncle, we bury tomorrow

The Trauma of Serial Napping and Font Addiction

It intrigues me how lots of times I can sing a good song in the car, making it up as I go along, good images and rhymes with potential and then when I get to a pen and paper I can't remember tunes or words. The same things apply to stories. So I thought what if I started just jotting down just the first paragraphs of my books I want to write with a title and then the reader can piece the rest of it together in their head. Sort of like a word doodle. I invented that, "word doodle", send all royalties to me.

A quick aside, the inventor of the "cheese doodle" died recently. Here is the URL of the details:

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2010/08/02/2010-08-02_morrie_yohai_90_inventor_of_the_cheez_doodle_dies.html


Read it and feel free to add comments and keep in mind I try to run a respectable blog. So here is one I call:

Serial Napping and Font Addiction

I’m not sure if either caused the other or vice-versa. Now, it all just seems confusing. Sixth months ago if I you asked me if I’d become an addict or develop a sick and tragic habit I probably would have laughed in your face. That’s not like me, never has been. I’ve always been a straight Joe, the kind of person you called on if you needed somebody on a committee or to coach a little league team. Man oh man, if my Cub Scout den saw me now, accused of the things I am and those sordid things others have whispered that I’ve done. It just makes me sick, that’s what it does, makes me sick. Then when I sit down and shut up long enough to think and to just sweat in my chair and stew in my own juices I start to wonder. Even if I have no memory of it doesn’t mean I didn’t or couldn’t have. Then I think of my girl and wish she was here to help, but I know if she was, she wouldn’t, she’d just spit in my face, or maybe worse. This is crazy I tell you, just flat out hinky and I’m gonna get to the bottom of it if I have to sit here all night.