Each time I see a Sycamore

Each time I see a      Sycamore

I wonder what the hell it’s for.

It doesn’t even drop its leaves

In season like the other trees.

Nor make I any sense of its

Eternal bark psoriasis.

Among things furnitureal

Its presence is mercurial.

Perhaps its bumpy tumorous wood

Is hard to carve or shape, no good

For rails, panels, spans or dowels

On which might hang miswoven towels.

In columns they line boulevards

And singly found in some backyards

Where graciously their shade provides

Refreshing coolness while it hides

Picnic tables, swings with seats

From the summer’s cruelest heats

Although not well. The maples and the oaks

Shadow with far darker cloaks.

Perhaps one answer I have found

While casting all these thoughts around:

This tree whose wood’s so decorously curly

Supplies unique veneers called burly?

Of all sylvan varieties 

The Sycamores are garbage trees

Because of their relentless droppings:

Seeds, twigs, branches, other ploppings

Too numerous to mention

And on this point there’s no dissension.

Patience, my eager granite, wait

        Patience, my eager granite, wait.

         Suffice for now to list my birth.

         That space for when I leave this earth

         Reserve, I need not know the date.

         Blessed are they who have no stones

         To chide them of life’s bounded course.

         Must I a somber life enforce

         Before they burn my wretched bones?

         No; soon will I with my love lie

         Whose ashes are herein interred.   

        ‘Til then by grief my life’s deferred,

         And for how long? I can’t descry.

         Perhaps once all the tears are done

         And thoughts of her don’t choke my breath  

         I’ll be then free enough of death

        To stop subtracting days by one. 

A rose by any other name . . .

This picture could easily be a "recruiting poster" for al Qaeda in Iraq. It is only one of many photographs taken by US military personnel stationed at Abu Ghraib and circulated among other soldiers until finally leaked to the media.

Happy 10th Anniversary of Abu Ghraib!

How time flies when we're having fun. April 28, 2014, is the tenth anniversary of the release on Sixty Minutes II of the first pictures from Abu Ghraib which awakened America to its role as a garden variety torturing power in the 21st century--Cheney's dabbling in the "dark side."

You would have thought we as a modern nation would decry such policies, or at least significantly debate them, possibly even have the courage to prosecute the authorizers and perpetrators of such blatant violations of our military code, body of national laws, and international conventions. You would have thought so given our nominal "principles." 

There are so many terrible policies which flow from our failure as a nation to call torture by its right name and our failure to hold the people accountable for their evil deeds. But to do so in President Obama's opinion would be "looking back," when he'd rather we "look forward." 

"Forward to what," we should ask . . . further retrenchment from our beloved principles? Say like authorizing the killing of American citizens without due process? Yep. We do that now. Say like authorizing the deaths of women and children by remote control drones because we can't "efficiently" capture terrorist suspects and try them in our own courts or, God forbid, in international courts? Yep. We do that too. 

Karen Greenberg reviews the whole story up to today which, while it's not comfortable reading, is timely and necessary. Not to review this horrid condition would be to redon the moral blinders prepared for us by both the Bush and Obama administrations. [cf., Dangerous Recent Reading: The Necessity(?) of Evil in War TWT&NB March 2014, especially remarks about Adolph Eichmann in Eichmann in Jerusalem]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175836/tomgram%3A_karen_greenberg%2C_abu_ghraib_never_left_us/#more

Daddy Volunteer for the Zoo Field Trip

 The PDZenani, a female mandrill, looks over her new surroundings in the
Primate, Cat, and Aquatics Building at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
 The prominent and colorful facial striations turned out not to be the most
fascinating anatomical feature of the mandrills to the third graders.

My youngest, Nat, was in the third grade when I was magically volunteered (as devoted husbands and fathers sometimes are) to be Daddy Helper for the spring field trip to the zoo. Since the other parent volunteers were women (a fact which will figure prominently later in  this story) it was daunting for me to assume any authority among the youngsters. They were by this age conditioned to hear only a woman's voice during school hours. Ensuing events, which I sincerely regret, proved otherwise . 

A charming day, replete with warm sun, safe travel, relatively controlled young passengers who stayed seated as instructed and who thanked the driver as they got off the yellow bus and walked carefully to the meeting spot near the ticket area. Our best strategy was to stay together as a group so that no portion of us got too far ahead or too far behind. Parent volunteers played border collies and kept the herd in a bunch by rerouting the wayward and the stragglers and returning the avant garde to the mother ship. 

For the most part the kids were pretty good. No fighting, no screaming, occasional running--all in all better than I had expected. As the morning wore on and the Rain Forest gradually lost its appeal, chatter surfaced about, "When are we going to see some animals?" By animals I think they meant bellowing beasts. The kids were tiring out from all the walking. Scientific explanations quickly proved "boring" and the buzz among the boys reverted to video games and among the girls to "tween" magazines.

With lunch came the promise of going to see some "animals" in the afternoon. Their spirits picked up following the sandwiches and milk, but since the rest of the zoo involved considerably more walking, and the prospect of "bellowing beasts" was heartily thrashed by seeing lions curled up snoozing at the far ends of their cages to escape the afternoon sun, the little buggers grew more irritable and given to more "boring." 

Finally, after about an hour of wandering through most of the outdoor animal areas, we came upon the indoor display for the primates. Like the lions our munchkins were glad to be out of the sun and in some air conditioning. We could easily all get a good view as there was plenty of glass for us to line up along. I tried to get them interested in the differences of the species housed in each section as we passed. 

We had come upon the mandrills--one of whom was "up close and personal," within a foot of the glass and staring straight at me. I called to my laggards, "Hey, kids come look at these guys with the colorful striations on their cheeks." However, as I hinted in the caption of the picture above, the face was not the only colorful feature of the mandrills. 

As the children approached the glass where I was going to knowledgeably and authoritatively discuss the pronounced features of the mandrill's facial cheeks, another mandrill, climbing a nearby limb, showed off  its huge posterior cheeks, glowing with a polished redness heretofore found only on fire engines or teachers' apples. The kids found it impossible to ignore the errant mandrill to come see mine. "Wow! What an ass!" they screamed as more and more scrambled to see what was the fuss.  

Not only the children but my sister volunteers and the third grade teacher herself came by to see what got the children so excited. Without saying a single instructive word I turned to wander away from my mandrill who, to his credit, kept looking at me as I departed, perhaps himself sensing the lost learning opportunity.

Across the room was another variety of primate of whom one was grooming another near the glass as I approached. Through my mind I practiced what I would say about the social nature of primate life where one was picking bugs from the fur of the other's back and how this behavior solidified a group or family consciousness among the members of that species. 

The hubbub at the mandrill display had died down thanks to the efforts of the teacher and the other volunteers. We would soon be leaving the zoo they explained. Now with only one chance left to restore my dignity I again called out to the kids, "I'd like you to see this." 

The words left my lips and the grooming ceased. The male primate who had been being groomed turned to face the glass. From his crotch began unrolling what I thought was some cheroot about nine inches long and half an inch in diameter. Only it was not a cheroot.

I could hear the kids crossing the room to see again what Mr. Manista wanted to show them. 

The bus ride home was relatively quiet. Some of the kids fell asleep. Nobody talked to me on the way back to the school or after as the kids reassembled in their classroom. 

I imagined the conversations at the dinner tables of the third graders who had been to the zoo: "The other helpers were moms. But we had this guy too, Nathaniel's daddy. He wasn't much until the last building where he showed us some of the coolest stuff." 

Fortunately the phone didn't ring the entire evening.

Survivor Star Magnolia

Spring 2014 and the White Star Magnolia survived. (cf., "Oh What A Night!" March 2013)

Earning (and Trying to Live on) Minimum Wages in America Today, Part I

You may not know Peter Van Buren* unless you've been keeping track of what happens to whistleblowers in this country. Peter worked for the State Department, lastly in Iraq, and drew on those experiences to author We Meant Well: How I helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. 

Because he had the temerity to speak openly about the shoddy work of the State Department in Iraq during the war he was promptly given the boot on publication of his book. Eventually his resources ran out and he had to seek work in the post 2008 economy--which meant he had to look for a minimum wage job at age 53. 

Last post I took a class warfare stance toward the abomination our democracy and economy have become. I will underscore that with urging you to read Peter's article linked below. Not since Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America has anyone written as succinctly about trying to live on the minimum wage as has Peter Van Buren in the article below. 

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175835/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_i%27m_a_whistleblower%3A_want_fries_with_that/#more 

*Peter Van Buren is one of the few whistleblowers who have not served jail time as John Kiriakou is now for openly discussing torture in the CIA or as is Chelsea Manning for showing American war crimes in Iraq or as Edward Snowden is virtually exiled to Russia by Attorney General Holden's promise of his prosecution for his revelation that all our communications are open to NSA recording and inspection (Hi, Barack).

In his early and innocent years candidate Obama talked a strong suit about whistleblowers deserving government protection. But then he also talked about closing Guantanamo and reforming the immigration mess, among other things. (Good night, Barack.)

Why Don't We Stop the Rich from Getting Richer? Part I

Economics-- "Dismal Science"--Not necessarily

We've been told by the bankers, banking is way too complicated to leave to the likes of taxpayers such as we. "Just trust us," they say and have been saying since we bailed out their collective asses over the years since 2008. 

But we are not so stupid anymore. We can see that the ranks of the middle class are diminishing. The wages of workers have been flat since 1980. And, for some of us, who now have time to read, we can both learn and understand why it's all happening.

Watching the linked Bill Moyers interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman of Princeton may stir your curiosity. I know I'll be reading it as soon as I can get my grubby little hands on a copy.

http://billmoyers.com/video/

Compendium of the Four Major Food Groups (according to American Men)

1. Beer

2. Pizza 

3. Snacks  

4. Ice Cream

Discussion

1. Beer--Some may argue that we have omitted water but as any Ameri-man can tell you beer will substitute for water in just about any recipe.  Liquors are dehydrated beer. Wine is what constant complainers do.
2. Pizza--Some may claim pizza is actually just another variety of "snack." Talk to any male college student. Because pizza necessarily contains meat (thereby making it a meal, there is no such thing as veggie-pizza. What most people refer to as veggie pizza is actually wheat toast sprinkled with rabbit food.
3. Snacks--This is the one that puzzles most Ameri-men: how can chocolate be in both categories--snacks and ice cream? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. That's my story and I'm sticking with it. Snacks are not limited to 8 1/2 oz. shiny bags. Single servings may be contained in 5 lb. cans especially on game day. 
4. Ice Cream--This food, used mostly among the fairer sex to alleviate dumpalgia or other varieties of feminine emotional distress, will often be used by Ameri-men as an esophageal lubricant to ease the flow of excessive ingestions of items 1-3 returning to the natural environment. Its cool temperature and creamy texture are frequently helpful in reducing the nasty acidic burn of ralphing. Watch out, however, for the flavors with nuts--pistachio, Rocky Road, et al,--which will give the vomitus the feel of only slightly chewed glass.

The first in a series delineating and explicating the mysteries of human male behavior in the US of A, this article addresses how Ameri-men understand eating healthily. Others in process will discuss testosterone poisoning, driving while male (limited to white male driving for reasons too obvious to mention), and why most Ameri-men believe old clothes (including shoes) are never too old to wear and why we keep pulling them out of the trash when you throw them away. 

If you, Dear Reader, have other topics of interest in the same vein, feel free to suggest them in the comments. No Ameri-man's idiosyncrasy is too small to receive our analysis nor too complicated for us to simply make up stuff on the spot for the sake of a cheap laugh.

The One with Which I Won M'Lady's Heart (ca. September 1966)

October 2, 2000
Leaving for Jean's dream (and last) vacation

And who could miss

Your hinting for a kiss

In that broad remark about 

The moon's romantic quality?

But shoe shuffling and unsure

And like a seventh grader

At his first date's door I stood 

Denied it all, fumbled a while 

And ran, so afraid of giving any 

Sign that you had touched a living core. 

Not so soon to let you know 

Nor so quickly could I show 

That I was pleased and felt 

Far more at ease with you than had 

For some long time before.

Yes, ACDs are worse than STDs

Dear  Family, Friends, and Colleagues,



What do

1. dust storms in Texas and New Mexico,

2. hungry monkeys raiding farms in northern India,

3. California trucking 30 million salmon from the Sacramento river to the Pacific ocean,

4. people in Wichita Falls, Texas waiting to drink "potty water,"

5. record losses of oysters and scallops in British Columbia, and

6. North Sea fish which have shrunk 29% in the last four years

all have in common?


Rather than keep you guessing I'll refer you to Dahr Jamail's latest monthly summary of ACDs:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22999-evidence-of-acceleration-on-all-fronts-of-anthropogenic-climate-disruption

And whatever your response, please don't shoot the messenger.




Love, Peace, and Hope,
James Manista

Telling Mildred: Reminiscence of an Untimely Death, Part IV

Peter's Eulogy for Jean

August 9, 1999 Peter's release from Marion Correctional Institution

My mother wanted all of her children to feel loved. 

Earlier this summer when I was recovering from my own illness, my mother gave me a birthday card. The message on it reads, 

"Today I wish I could run back through time, back to when you were little. I would try to find you on your birthday--in the middle of celebrating or even better, at some quieter moment when you were alone . . . . And if I knew what I know now, I would tell you: never forget the hope and the joy, the vitality of this moment. Never forget that you deserve happiness, that your life is precious to so many people. And never forget how very much I care about you."

My mother gave of herself in more ways than I could ever understand. It was during this season in 1977 that she was going through the process to adopt me. I would grow up to become her special child--the troublemaker, the one who always needed special attention. Mom always had that to give.

She loved her husband, her children. She loved her community and held the church dear to her heart. Mom loved this church very deeply. Anyone who ever sat near her at a service would know how beautiful her voice was and how she loved to sing hymns. 

Last Sunday when we sang "God of the Sparrow," I could her hear voice singing loudly. She loved that song. I always thought it was the music that she liked; maybe it was the last line of that song that gave her comfort. It reads: "How do your children say Home?" 

Our mother showed us that home is when we were together, whether at the house or on one of our many family trips--or if she drove to visit one of us, which she did with devotion wherever we may be. [Every month we visited Peter while he was in prison. Not everyone knew this reference.] 

So let us sing this next hymn in remembrance of Mom and give thanks to the Lord for working through our mother to teach us, and many others, how to say Love, Joy, and Home.

Jim's Eulogy for Jean

About twelve years ago Jean and I attended the funeral of an adoption advocate from the Council on Adoptable Children. People attending overflowed the allotted space, crowded other rooms and stood in the hallways to hear of his remarkable  family of foster and adopted children, to hear of his humor, his caring, his struggle, and his love. To everyone's surprise the minister touched none of it, not even his name, and his remarks were confined to biblical passages of comfort and reassurance of an afterlife. Perhaps it was the family wish that he be noted only as a humble anonymous Christian in need of the Almighty's eternal mercy, a lesson for those in the audience not to ask for whom the bell tolls as it clearly tolled for them. 

As Presbyterians, we have greater cause for joy. Assured that God has redeemed the world and that all is made new, we live the kingdom, here and now, without waiting, with the confidence of love overflowing us from the Eternal Spring. Few accepted this good news more happily, nor lived it with more conviction than blessed Jean, whose life we celebrate tonight. 

It would be presumptive of me to claim a unique knowledge of this wonderful woman. Each of you here tonight has known her goodness in some special way, some special encounter. Many of you could as easily relate examples of her high character and deep faith. 

I will not summarize her life. None of us can be contained in a finite number of words. You may read the biographical information at the photo display her daughter and sons put together so proudly, beginning first with one board and finding such a wealth of remembrance that we finally agreed to stop at four until Peter told me to make that five. 

Rather let me tell you how Jean was a great inspiration to me. I often put my wordly gift to praise her in poems, typically sonnets. 

Beauty to my Beast, Roxanne to my Cyrano, Dulcinea to my Quixote, she accepted them graciously if somewhat uncomfortably, feeling in humility that she could not be the model of devotion so grandly serenaded. I will read only two which hopefully capture some sense of how being married to Jean was a rocket ride of playful sensuality, heartfelt emotion, and intellectual challenge. 

The first relates to her love of her children, of me her husband, and of the free-spirited wandering and discovery in the travel that she loved so much. To preface, we had left our four in the care of a teenaged sitter, had visited with our dear friends Steven and Susan in New York, and had spent the day in Mystic, Connecticut, a town of seafaring history, whaling museums, tall ships, Captain Ahab, Moby Dick, and all the paraphernalia of 19th century American maritime industry. Misquamicut is the Native American name of a public beach nearby where we went for a walk in the moonlight:

     At night in Misquamicut's still-warm sand     

     You stick-scratched our children's names one by one     

     Knowing by the hour, they would all be gone     

     Erased by the Atlantic's second hand.     

     Next morning, having the time of our life     

     In a sunlit century bedroom, we      

     Played eager whaling captain home from sea     

     At long last to his faithful waiting wife.     

     However brief, such evanescent signs      

     Must to some high eternal court convey     

     Our true devotion, powerfully sway     

     Their judgment, for relying on these lines     

     They must conclude with wistful, envied sigh     

     That no two ever loved, but you and I.

In this next, I must explain we met at Indiana University and had a scandalously brief courtship--thirty days from the time we met on a blind date to the time of our engagement. I had dropped out of graduate school and was in a quandary about being drafted to fight in Vietnam or going to jail as a conscientious objector to indiscriminate bombing and torture of the captured, and Jean was a student in the graduate Spanish program in preparation for a career in the foreign service. 

On intense evening walks we discussed everything, discovering our backgrounds, shared values, plans for the future, what hurt us, what healed us, our fun, our pain, in that blessed romantic headspin of delight and joy that someone could be so attuned, so admirable, so admiring, so full of promise we lost sleep anticipating another day in the presence of the beloved. We are seated on a park bench outside the IU Student Union.

     Once, when I was young, and slim, and golden     

     Of an Indiana summer, your head      

     Upon my shoulder gently lay. Moonlight      

     Softly filtered through late autumn's yellowed      

     Leaves, made pearls of teardrops on your scarf.      

     Then your words came into me, scholar long dead,     

     Like spring's mountain freshets bubbling crystal white     

     Enlivened all from winter's icy hold.     

     So have we melted, time and time again    

     With words, thoughts, and flesh--we every hunger fed,     

     Defeated seasons in this angels' flight     

     Tapped eternal power and with its fire glowed.     

     For this then did we in history pair:     

     To grow by love and then to glory share.

How encompassing was Jean's love? Look at her family. Look about you who are here tonight. Look to those whom she served. Was there anyone, rich or poor, high or low, in whom she did not see Christ as alive or waiting to be born? 

However often she was frustrated by poor health, she mustered the energy to help. She was quick to listen, to forgive, to encourage, and to hope. She prayed in secret but loved openly and vulnerably and without limit, shining like a lamp on a lamp stand. 

So let us remember with great happiness the gift that was Jean, that her grace was God living in our world, and that we shall all meet again in the glory of saints before the Everlasting Creator.

October (?) 1966 Our earliest picture together 

Telling Mildred: Reminiscence of an Untimely Death, Part III

October 7, 2001
[Cleveland Heights OH]

Dear Aunt Mildred,

[Anoka MN]

I drank too much coffee yesterday and was up half the night. I tried to write but only cleared the last letter off the computer to start this one. I just couldn't get my thoughts organized but I couldn't get unconscious either. 

On August 9th we had a relatively simple morning. We had all slept fairly well and Nat in particular slept late. We fixed a special breakfast of eggs and fruit and toast with all the jams and jellies out for people to use up those already running low. The ICU wouldn't let anyone in until 11 AM, so we had time to catch the mail before we left for the hospital. The dogs were properly walked and we sent e-mails to our friends telling them what happened. 

The ICU was easier to get to than Jean's room at Lakeside. It was located in a section of the Lerner Tower (Lerner owns the Browns but gets his money from MBNA credit operations), a newer building with better air conditioning and less comfortable seating. Families were required to sign in to the waiting area and keep their ruckus down insofar as practically everybody was there to watch someone die. We knew there would be plenty of us soon, so we nailed our turf as one of the former counseling rooms that sat ten. 

Andy and I went in first, I think. She hadn't changed in any way. The chest heaved in its regular fashion; the screen showed no changes. Her eyes, which had been open since the day before, were now glazed over and liquid-like. Nurses explained that they apply a clear paste to keep the eyes from drying. What we thought might be tears was science, more precisely, medicine. To me it was comforting. Had they been tears, I would have been shattered to know she could feel but not move. 

We talked to her on the possibility she could hear and understand but without conviction. Nurses stated she was responding to nothing--not even pain stimulation as we had been mistakenly told. Somehow I knew she was already gone, that she had died when her heart stopped on Wednesday. She was still cold and clammy. The only comfort was thinking this horrible event would soon end.

I can't remember how many people came to see Jean that day. So many said they were sorry they hadn't known she was ill until it was too late. Several grown men cried in my arms. It puzzled me how those removed from the scene could feel so broken and we, who had been in the thick of it, were feeling relief for the first time in a week. Everyone who went in emerged visibly upset. Jean was so grotesque, so swollen with tumors, and felt cold as the dead anyway. For me these days had more the character of a wake than a hospital visit. We simply told and retold the same story. 

Interestingly, my niece Jennifer, who had been so distraught when she first saw Jean on Sunday, had calmed considerably in the presence of her cousin Nathaniel and kept close by us. It was easiest for her to visit as her job was very nearby and her apartment was on campus. I can't remember what occurred all that day except for the visit of Pat Ross, an artist friend of ours from when our children went to school together. Pat had become a Patient Relations Specialist (read: she mollified complainers). I had met her husband Curtis again the previous year; he had become a teacher for the Cleveland schools. She gave us discount tickets for the hospital food service and free parking privileges. I had run into her in the halls earlier that week (I think Monday, August 6) and told her to see Jean as soon as possible while she could still communicate. 

I received your letter of 10/6-7 and by now some of your questions should have been answered. 

Visitors took up most of our time Thursday and nothing special happened. We said good night to Jean, whose condition was unchanged except for needing more blood pressure medication to keep her functioning. I'm not sure what we did Thursday night. I think Andy's girl friend came up from medical school in Akron and we got some videotaped movies to watch. We tried for something lighthearted and ended up with murder mysteries. 

Friday we knew was decision day. Sunday I had given the hospital a copy of Jean's living will. They knew as we did that all criteria for terminating supports were already met. Jean was in a coma from which she would not emerge and she was suffering from a rapidly progressing terminal illness. No one knew if continuing pain medication was needed since she wasn't responding to any stimulation. 

Ms. Park came again to visit Jean. She had been there Sunday trying to give us all some hope. She had known Jean only briefly as the lady of the house who had recently taken a leave of absence from work because her back hurt so much. A month earlier Jean had helped her sign a lease for Andy's room. Jean had been more active then. When Ms. Park moved in, she knew Jean as the lady who sat in the lounge chair most of the day, exhausted and in pain. Now she was at the ICU and Jean was clearly without hope and unconscious. What a vast change. Ms. Park brought her some miniature Korean shoes to pin to her gown as the most important gift a Korean visitor could give--the greatest wish for someone's good in life. She left in tears. 

Visitors continued. Most knew the end was very near. No one asked about recovery. Andy had arranged for us to meet with the director of the Neurological ICU one floor up. It was often this doctor's job to counsel families to terminate life supports on brain-damaged teenagers hurt in auto accidents. Often in such cases the body looks perfect but because of the brain damage there was no possibility of recovery. 

We [Andy, Emily, Peter, Nat, and I] met with the neurologist in a room adjacent to the ICU waiting area. He reiterated Jean's brain had been without oxygen for twenty-four minutes, four times longer than is common with injured persons who regain consciousness. Even with cardio-pulmonary compressions keeping the blood flowing to the brain in a diminished capacity, the oxygen level of the blood was way too low to keep the brain from beginning to die. He clarified were it his wife, mother, or daughter he would not hesitate to withdraw supports. We asked a few questions and he left us to decide.

Everyone understood there really was nothing we could do to help Jean live but we could help her die. I don't think anybody thought we were moving too soon. We had been told that most people who recover do so in 48 hours. We had waited that long with no sign of change. 

I told the rest of the family that whatever their vote the decision legally was mine alone as Jean had appointed me her power of attorney. Jean had made her living will very clear and made her intentions very well known. Even if they had all voted against my choice I at least would honor their mother's wishes. Andy said we all wished the same so that a year from now none of us would regret the course chosen. The vote showed we all agreed anyway. We told the doctors that we had decided to withdraw supports as soon after each of us had spent some time alone with her. 

[I learned later that Andy had dressed in his performance tuxedo and gotten permission to bring in his huge double bass to play an hour-long concert as a special gift to his mother that morning. No one in the ICU complained. The music was somber. Many patients, visitors, and staff were openly in tears.] 

Each of the family went in, some taking longer than others. Nat was there for almost an hour. We got worried about him and sent the hospital chaplain in to see if he was OK. The chaplain returned to assure us Nat was fine. Everybody did this his own way. My own visit was very brief--I knew I had lost Jean on the eighth--this was just two days of mechanical perpetuation.

The nurses told us they'd need a few minutes to prepare her for the procedure before we would be allowed to go back in. Andy and the other doctors were confident we wouldn't be waiting long because so many systems were losing ground even with the supports. Andrew, Emily, Peter, Nathaniel, Rita (Peter's girl friend), Jennifer, and I formed a circle around her bed as the nurses turned off the ventilator and closed the IV drip. 

It took eight minutes. Her breathing unassisted was irregular, halted occasionally, then suddenly restarted. Her heartbeats varied also, never quite recovering the pace from the ventilator's push. No one spoke. We watched the lines on the screen as the factors resolved. We watched her face, somehow less strained, more natural, paradoxically more lifelike. The nurses had closed her eyes. I could imagine her sleeping. 

Unlike the movies where the failure of the heartbeats sounds a signal, the machine simply went silent. The doctors and nurses were watching a remote screen at the central desk and knew when to come in. "Time of death--5:17 PM" was all he said, but we felt he was sorry for our loss. We filed out quietly, first kissing the remains, cold and clammy as it had been all during the process of death.

________________________________________________________________ 

A neighbor brought over supper, a delicious slab of salmon with an excellent cream sauce. We fed everybody except Jennifer who decided to stay at her apartment for the night. Rita invited us to her house to use the swimming pool.

Andy had called John Roisum while we were making our goodbyes to Jean for the last time and he set about getting a flight from Atlanta. We also heard from our pastor, John Lentz, who told us he would be flying into Cleveland Saturday morning. His wife Deanne would drive their kids home with the car in another day or so. 

I went to the pool. Everybody seemed to be having a good time. I knew I hadn't a pair of trunks that would fit me comfortably so I stayed out while the young people frolicked. Rita has a son, Evan, who's in first grade, a cute kid.  Rita stays with Evan's grandmother in a fairly sumptuous house (pool, remember?) because the grandmother wants to watch Evan grow up. Rita once lived on Tullamore, our old street where she spent her childhood as friends with Peter. 

Eventually the bugs began biting and I tried to go home and watch TV and get some much needed rest. Peter ran out of the pool and chased me down the walk. "Wait. Pop, stay here. You can watch TV here," he pleaded. Andy had told the others I was not to be left alone. Rather than get everybody upset I watched for a while over there until Emily decided to walk home with me. 

I didn't sleep well, but since we had planned a large meeting at our house, I had to get up and get things ready for a brunch at our dining room table. Friends had offered to help with funeral arrangements and I took them up on it. Jeanne's (Andy's girl friend) mom, Mary Jo Piunno-Lackamp, who had served as a hospital chaplain and grief counselor, some friends from church, Carolyn Vrtunski, a forensic psychologist, and Katherine Eloff a lawyer specializing in domestic law, had all agreed to meet with us at 10 AM to a feast of donuts, fresh bagels, cream cheese, jams, jellies, coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and fruit. 

I related what I knew of Jean's wishes: that she be cremated and possibly buried at the new mausoleum at Lakeview cemetery. Together we selected a reputable funeral home [Brown-Forward] and started discussing the memorial service. Emily and Carolyn would work on flowers and the order of the service and Jean's favorite hymns. Peter, Nat, and I wanted to speak. Andy and Emily would play some music.

As they were leaving, John Lentz pulled up about 11. John is a thin, energetic man in his early forties who was selected to be our minister because of his dynamic leadership and intelligence. He had come to express his regrets and to gather some ideas for memorial remarks and to set a date. We settled on Wednesday night at 7 PM. He agreed that would be no problem. He talked a little of what we might say but left the ground wide open since we would meet again before the service. Andy had spent some time checking on Jean's insurances. Confident we were in good shape for what we could afford we hauled off to Brown-Forward about 1PM. 

I was drained emotionally and defensive with offensive humor. I couldn't take Judy Forward's questions seriously. After all, I had a two-day jump on everybody else. I had been grieving. I knew Jean wanted to be cremated. But you just can't be cremated. You have to wear something. And you have to be in a container to be cremated. Then they sweep your cinders into an urn. [What they didn't tell us was that the bones don't burn and have to be ground up in a kind of Cuisinart-shredder.] We looked at 145 different urns one might buy--every thing from humidors to cuspidors with jewelry boxes in between. 

Ultimately we selected a rosewood box that I said looked like "Honey, I shrunk the casket."Almost everybody got on me for that. Andy chided I should watch not to say something I'll regret. Well, we hadn't discussed containers and most urns do not look like dignified resting places. Cookie cans were more up Jean's alley. And they talked us out of dispersal: for one, Jean never mentioned it, and two, Peter wanted some place "to go see Mom." Nobody was in the mood for my stating that "Watching grass grow over a patch or staring at a marble door ranked as 'seeing Mom'." Remember, I said, this is not Jean; this is Jean's ashes. Even her cold and clammy soon-to-decay remains was not Jean. The only place for the believer to go was to prayer. I was no Egyptian. I needed no mummy to last the eons. 

Dear Aunt Mildred, 

Today is the 15th of October and I still haven't finished. I shall send you what I have written so far including the service, eulogies, minister's remarks and the obituary. 

Love,

Jim

Telling Mildred: Reminiscence of an Untimely Death, Part II

October 28, 1967, 3:45 PM

September 24, 2001

[Cleveland Heights OH]

Dear Aunt Mildred,

[Anoka MN]

Sorry to break it off like that but I had to pull an all-nighter to complete my work for church. 

That Sunday, August 5, Jean had a variety of visitors who had heard Peter's prayer request in church earlier that morning. My sister-in-law Ilona and her daughter Jennifer, who actually has an apartment on the campus-hospital grounds, came to see her while I was back home obtaining copies of her living will and durable power of attorney. 

It was during their visit that a team of doctors came through and began talking about Jean's case to each other as if neither Jean nor her visitors were in the room. Jean found this most troubling as they dropped the bombshell about her condition being terminal and inoperable. Jennifer, despite her twenty-two years and a college graduate in biology, became very upset.  She had simply expected to see her Aunt Jean who was sick, not dying. 

The doctors behaved like asses to be sure but Andy told me the one who actually let out the news was under the impression Jean had already been told by her own physician earlier that day. He was, Andy assured me, the surgeon who would be operating on Jean if it ever came to that, and, Andy assured me again, that while he was not Doctor Tact, he was indeed the best surgeon for the job. 

Of course it would never come to that. Jean was a Class III risk for anesthesia: with her hampered breath, her diabetes, the impossibility of her lying on her back and getting sufficient oxygen, she would likely fail from the stress of surgery. 

On my way back to the hospital I encountered a car whose driver wanted me to pull over. It turned out to be some women friends of Jean from church who told me they had heard Peter say Jean was in the hospital. They wanted to visit if she were up to it. They had no idea how seriously ill she was, they only remembered that Peter had been in the hospital several weeks earlier and we seemed to be having very bad luck. I told them they could come Monday morning since Jean was so ill and might want to stop visitations soon. They were dumbstruck. Jean couldn't be that sick. They had just seen her recently and she was fine. I told them a lot had changed in just two days.

When I came back Jennifer and Ilona had left and Jean filled me in on the doctors' gaffe. She was shocked both that the doctor would behave so badly and that Jennifer had reacted so strangely and leave. Jean would be sleeping for short periods after the morphine kicked in and roused as it wore off, the discomfort returning. As she slept I tried to read a book but had great difficulty concentrating as the extreme seriousness came to settle on me. 

The days of this time were generally bright with sunshine and blue skies. Outside was humid but inside the hospital air conditioning kept things comfortable. I could very easily fall asleep since I stayed in the room through the night despite being frequently awakened when nurses came to perform tests or take blood samples. And of course there was also the need to move Jean from one side to the other or help her to the bathroom and back. By now she was attached to a traveling intravenous tower and her oxygen had to be disconnected and reattached as she went to the bathroom. 

She was producing an ever-diminishing output of urine and had no bowel movements since entering the hospital. Since she hadn't eaten anything, that was to be expected. Tommy Thomas, a retired Presbyterian minister, who had joined our church and with whose family we became friends, had visited Jean several times since our regular pastor was away on vacation with his wife's family in Minneapolis, and left a small book of prayers. 

I asked her if she wanted to pray and she seemed to nod affirmatively. I started out saying something about not wanting to lose this woman on whom so many depended and broke into tears for the first and only time that week, and sobbed loudly, my insides aching from my toes to my head. Jean cried a little too and shortly fell asleep. 

When she woke next we discussed the visitor situation and concluded she really didn't want anybody to visit--she was too uncomfortable, too drugged, and plainly too sick. Visitors made her feel worse rather than better. I explained about talking to Nan and Joyce, the two ladies who stopped my car, and saying they could come Monday morning. I said I would call the church and tell them to discourage visitors if people asked.

We had just rented Andy's and Emily's rooms to new students whom Jean had met a month earlier when she was considerably better when the leases were signed. Now  they were moving in and couldn't believe she had become so ill so fast. Ms Park, a medical technician from Korea came to see Jean and she broke into tears after visiting briefly. Like Jennifer Ms. Park came to the hospital thinking she would see someone only ill rather than dying. She tried her best to urge us to be positive and think only the best things. She was sweet but shocked. 

All Monday we waited for more news about the nature of the "anomalous cells" that had been found in the sample of the ascitic fluid. The results did not come in that Monday. The swelling continued. Jean was kind of up for the visit with Joyce and Nan, not "up" physically, but she was conscious and responsive and confessed to them her fear of death. The ladies were shaken to see her so swollen, so drugged, and struggling for air. They left soon after. Later that evening Ann Williams, Jean's diabetic consultant, came to visit and Jean said it would be ok since they had been so close. Ann would stay while I ran home to get some house duties done. They spoke only a little; Ann stayed by her side saying a comforting word when Jean would waken. 

Andy and I decided there was no more point in waiting to let Emily and Nat know that Jean was so seriously ill. We had spoken to each of them by phone the day she'd been admitted, but the question now was when to tell them to come home. I called each and told them to call Mom in the hospital room that same night, and not wait another day to return to Cleveland. 

We did not see Peter all that Monday and we were fearful that he was greatly distressed by the turn of events. Deaths seemed to affect him more than the rest of us. There was enough to do besides worry about Peter though. Jean who had appeared exhausted when she first entered the hospital looked even more drained in appearance now. The shifting of her body in the night, which had been every hour or so, grew shorter to every twenty minutes. 

She began to complain she was terribly thirsty and very warm. All the ice chips she took by mouth and the intravenous fluids were still collecting in the tumors and throwing her electrolytes off. The essential imbalance of salts and water in her body was jacking up her blood pressure to dangerous levels. She could easily stroke. They took her off all intravenous fluids to get the blood pressure to reasonable levels. For a while it worked. However she was cold and clammy to the touch and was constantly thirsty for water which never reduced her feeling of burning up. 

Nat and Emily called Monday night and spoke very briefly with Jean--I think Emily got twenty seconds and Nat about ten. Andy, who had been working an acting internship in orthopedics at UH all those days, would drop by whenever he was between classes or in the area. I suspected he knew more than he could tell us. I thought he'd rather let the physicians in charge do the telling. 

What I had gleaned here and there was that Jean's problem with her back could have been early signs of ovarian cancer and that medical students knew this as a classic feature of the syndrome. Had Andy known about this all along? What a burden! When I asked him he would defer to the doctors in charge and say, "We really don't know anything for sure yet; wait until the lab results come in."

Monday night was a bad one but compared to Tuesday it was a dream. Jean began to talk as I helped her on on her trips to the bathroom. "I'm really dying?" she asked, I think hoping I would tell her everything would be all right. "You're dying," I answered. "This isn't just a very bad dream?" she went on. "Am I going to wake up and my back will not hurt and this giant belly shrink?" The question hurt. Everything hurt. She was turning blue and the night nurse would frequently check her blood oxygen levels. She boosted the flow on the nasal oxygen tubes a couple notches. We'd move her from side to side in the bed more frequently and varied it with trips to her chair or to the bathroom. 

Tuesday the results came in. Ultrasound scans had found a large unidentified mass in her abdomen. The cells' category: adenocarcinoma. This removed whatever doubt remained. I had talked to John Roisum [her brother] on Sunday and advised him of all the possibilities and we left it that he would fly up once notified that Jean had died since that seemed so certain. Nat said he could come home by Greyhound and would be here Wednesday evening. Emily said her flight might have her in town before supper on Wednesday. 

People started calling the house to get information. I wrote e-mails to a group of people from church to relay status messages which we had set up when Peter was so sick. Friends forwarded the messages across the country. Soon old friends from our adoption work in the '70s were sending us e-mail inquiries about Jean. No one could believe anyone could die from cancer this fast. 

Sorry, Mildred, I got things a little confused there. When I checked my notes I realized Jean's first parascentesis was Saturday not Friday as I first wrote. Tuesday was the second parascentesis during which they removed the larger amount of fluid--the 1.25 liters. Jean felt great relief as they took it. She asked them to go in again and take more until she was back to normal. But by supper she had regained all that she had lost. 

Peter finally showed up with his girl friend Rita so I ran home to duties: review mail, feed the doggies (we had assumed care of some friends' dog while they were on vacation before things went south). John Lentz, the pastor of our church, called and he spoke to Jean only a few seconds. 

She was in a fog of drugs and barely recalled what he said. She hallucinated. She answered questions inappropriately. She was ponderous now beyond belief. It took two nurses and me to move her from one side to the other or to get her from the chair to the bed. Nurses at her head and feet, I lifted her bottom as we struggled to get her into bed. She winked at me and slyly said, "You'd do anything to grab my ass." 

She told the rounds doctor she was George Bush when he asked her name. Her speech became harder and harder to understand--as if she were calling through a tunnel and her lips couldn't form the words that started in her brain. We played a guessing game of what she wanted. I couldn't keep up with every request. I remember waking up when the room lights were on. The nurses were doing something with Jean. I couldn't get up to help I was so tired. 

We had been waiting for Dr. Thompson, Jean's personal physician, to accompany the morning rounds doctors and speak to her but for some reason he did not appear. We dealt with doctors and nurses all so busy but there was little to learn. Jean had so much trouble speaking and breathing I just read and watched her try to sleep in between the punctures and probes. Andy came by a while so I took the opportunity to go home for fresh clothes. When I came back that afternoon they were preparing her for a special test to determine whether a blood clot was impairing her lung function. I accompanied her to the Nuclear Medicine Lab, Room 900, in the basement of the hospital. She was blue. She gasped for air. She wanted a drink of water. Below I have added what I wrote in an e-mail to friends later that night:

"Fortunately I accompanied her down to the lab. She would have had to lie flat in the device for twenty minutes and couldn't assume any position that would let her breathe. She begged to let her sit upright while the staff debated her ability to undergo the exam. She asked for some water which a tech gave her. Her hand couldn't hold it and it spilled over her gown and the sliding table on which she sat.

"While I reached around her neck to tie a fresh dry gown at her back, I squeezed her lightly and said, 'I love you.' Her arms were around my neck and as she returned the squeeze I heard her answer, 'I love you too.' When I looked up from the knot her head had slumped to the side and her eyes stared outward unblinking. 

"The tech yelled, 'Mrs. Manista! Mrs. Manista! Wake up! Wake up!' Another nurse ran for a doctor who tried to rouse her and seconds later called a code (cardiac arrest--assemble teams) and commanded a crash cart. The room quickly filled with equipment and staff. The exam chief guided me to a waiting room from which I had Andy paged to tell him that his mom had coded."

I glanced at my watch as in something of a stupor I sat down in the waiting room--it was 1:58 PM. I realized finally I had to page Andy so I went to the nearest office and called. He rang back and I told him the code was for Jean. He began running down to the lab from wherever he was with all the other techs streaming into the Nuclear Medicine area. As soon as I saw him I told him he could go in as he was a medical student but they wanted me to wait outside. He went in, stayed only a minute, and came out again to sit near me. Medical people were still coming in from everywhere. 

Andy sank to the floor on his haunches and beat his forehead with his fists--he could not help. The inevitable had finally happened and now there was really nothing anybody could do. All of his medical training and he couldn't change what happened. 

**************

We waited what seemed like forever. Eventually he came up from the floor and sat next to me. We hugged each other and sobbed. I asked him if he knew what happened. He said no but speculated that Jean was likely to throw a blood clot either to her lungs or to her heart. It was about two thirty when they emerged and said they had restored her pulse and put her on a ventilator. They told us they would move her to the medical-surgical Intensive Care Unit where we could see her next. Andy knew that being without a pulse for over twenty minutes was an extremely bad event. 

I think we then went up to the ICU waiting room and decided it was time to notify Jean's brother John. Nat and Emily were already on their way. Andy left a message for Peter at his work that he should leave as soon as he could and come to the hospital. People started to show up. First were the nurses who had taken care of Jean at Lakeside 40 (the same floor where Peter had been taken for his kidney problem weeks before). They were very upset. As soon as the decision was made to take her to the ICU an aide went in to bag up all her belongings, flowers, cards, personal items (as if she'd be using her toothbrush again) and brought it to us in the waiting area. 

Peter came directly to the ICU and found the nurses cleaning Jean up from the code efforts. Somehow he had missed the section where he had to sign in first. The nurses told him to leave and go to the ICU waiting area. At that point we were being told we could go in to see Jean and we met Peter at the doorway and showed him where we had situated to gather as a family. 

By the time Andy and I got to Jean the nurses had finished. She was breathing with the regularity that only the ventilator could provide. Peaks on the oscilloscope were marching in unison. Her heart rate varied along with her blood pressure. The tube from the ventilator was joined to a tracheal tube and blocked open only one side of her mouth. There was no brain activity they said but we addressed her as Jean or Mom and spoke to her gently as if she could actually hear us. 

Rita was to pick up Emily from the airport. The two stopped first at Lakeside and were told that Jean had been moved to ICU. Meanwhile I really had nothing to do and, irritated that I had left my coffee mug back at Lakeside, I walked over there only to find the room had been cleared of all Jean's stuff which they sent over in sacks. I asked at the central floor desk if anyone had found my cup. Not either time, they answered. Apparently after Jean had left the room, they placed another patient there. After half an hour he also had been taken to ICU. So the room was cleaned again. The nurses we met in ICU had not come just to see Jean but the other patient also.

When we notified the church the secretary informed us that a committee had been set up to bring food in for us that night for supper. Someone left it with a neighbor as we stayed at the hospital until 7 PM the ICU's regular closing time. Of course, if you wanted, family could still get in there any time of day or night, but they might ask you to wait on doctors' or nurses' procedures. 

Andrew called John Roisum from the waiting room to tell him what had happened. He said he understood all that had occurred and told us to call him again when Jean finally failed. He would then make arrangements to fly in. Emily and Rita picked up Nat at the bus station. After his visit we all went home to get beds set up for Nat and Emily and to catch up with all the phone calls and e-mail. 

Bill and Kris Fay and their daughter Katy, friends from church, had early on asked us to sit their beautiful golden retriever Betsie while they took their customary upper Michigan family vacation. We took her in days before Jean was admitted. Besides being beautiful, Betsie was an active, playful dog who thought nothing of crawling into bed and sleeping right next to you with her long lower jaw stretched across your throat so you could feel each other's pulse and breathe in unison. She stayed with me the whole night. 

Sam tolerated her but wouldn't play with her. Sam chased only sticks; Betsie chased both balls and Sam but took no interest in sticks. But they did eat each other's food. So while I walked them whenever I was home, I hadn't slept there in six nights. I was looking forward to a comfy bed and a cuddly dog. Everybody knew what lay ahead--the decision of when to take Jean off the supports. Instead of talking about that we all just tried to get some rest. 

Sorry I can't finish this letter right now. 

Love, 

Jim