I’ve posted a lot in the past about my dying father: blind, both legs amputated above the knee, on kidney dialysis, eating via a stomach tube, etc. That was an accurate picture, but it wasn’t the only picture. It is also not the picture I have in my mind’s eye when I think of my father. At least, not usually.

My father – my REAL father – the father who was intact, before the diabetes devoured him, was tall, and strong, and hilarious. He was handsome – Hollywood handsome. He liked new experiences. He liked to travel. He sang. He cracked terrible jokes. He read voraciously.  He was smart – really, really smart. He would have liked to have gone to college, but it wasn’t possible.  Instead, he sent four kids through college, and continued to work day after day in a factory “so we would never have to.”  He tried hard, and he did the best he could with what he had.

Dad wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. He and all of his brothers and their father before them were quick-tempered and easy to, as Mom used to say, “set off.” My Other Sister and I had a daddy who was playful and laughing. My two younger siblings had a daddy who was cranky and yelling. Dad’s illness began long before anybody realized it, including himself, and the personality changes were just brushed aside as part of the aging process or, possibly, his true colors. Nobody actually said “true colors, ” but we all thought it.

It wasn’t until both of dad’s legs had been amputated and he was blind and bedridden and too weak to feed himself or turn over, that we all realized that the diabetes had begun to affect his mind long before it took his body.

He stayed at home and Mom took care of him. I don’t think she went anywhere for three or four years, except her hasty runs to the grocery and drugstores while Dad was at dialysis.

As I said, he was a fantastic father to his older children. With the younger kids, his various illnesses had started to affect him, and things in the house were different. Some of it wasn’t his fault, and some of it was. In this way, he was no different from any of us. Whatever may have crossed his mind from time to time, he never entertained the thought of leaving his family. I’m sure he was tempted to, as who isn’t? In fact, we KNOW he was tempted, but he had made a promise and he kept it. In my parents’ home, promises meant something.

On Father’s Day, I will think of my father with love and a few head-shakings and a lot of forgiveness and smiling. And, a few things that I haven’t forgiven yet.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. I knew all along that mean yelling daddy wasn’t really you.

In the picture, you see my father before he was struck down. That is my brother’s motorcycle, but Dad liked to take it around town of a late afternoon.

So did I, in fact. Please don’t tell Mom.

(I add to this post a little bit every Father’s Day.  If some of it seems familiar, thank you for being a loyal reader!)

Way over in Connecticut, one of Fairfield University’s most beloved professors of all time has died.

Those of you who are into the political scene may remember John Orman as the man who challenged Senator Joseph Lieberman for the 2006 Democratic Senate nomination. Others may remember John as the author of numerous books about politics, music, poetry, pop culture. . . . his play Helen Keller Speaks was performed only last March.

Those who knew John personally knew much, much more.

We knew that John did stand-up comedy, and played basketball. He entered rap contests. We knew he had a penchant for Coca Cola. We knew that he was hilarious, and kind, and generous. We knew that he loved his wife and children above all else in his life. We knew that he was a loyal friend, a faithful husband, a loving father, an excellent teacher, an astute politician, a gifted writer, and a fantastic conversationalist, and much, much more.  John was interested in everything and everyone.  He always made me feel that whatever I said was important.  He made me feel that I was important.  He had this effect on everyone, young and old.

John’s wife Irene is one of my dearest friends. We’ve loved each other over the miles for over thirty years. Our daughters were college roommates. I could go for years without seeing Irene, and then when we did, nothing had changed. Nothing ever will. Irene will always and forever be dearer to me than words could ever convey. I’m not all that good at saying such things, so I hope you read this, Irene dear.

This shabby excuse of “I’m not all that good at saying such things” is one that we all need to rid ourselves of, and not tomorrow, either. Now. Tomorrow might be too late for someone we love.

You can find John all over the internet. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.  Here.  Here. Here.  Here.  Here. Here.  Here. Here.  And, one of my favorites, here.

My memories of John are not political in any way.  I will remember John as a friend.

We’ve been friends since we were young.  That’s a long time, my dears.

Most of the pictures I’ve seen in the many, many memorials have been recent.  Therefore, let me share with you some of MY memories of John.  This is and will always be the way I remember him.

Summer of 1978 – we were packing up John and Irene’s trailer in Orleans, Indiana because he had finished his PhD and had gotten a new job at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

Same hot summer July day.  Our babies were just a few weeks old – the babies who were, a “few” years later, college roommates at Indiana University.  This picture has been on my Flickr account for years, and above it I wrote, “John Orman, one of the nicest people I’ve ever known.”  True, that. Always and forever, true.

Irene and me, in my front yard, a few weeks previous to the above pictures.  See how nicely mown the grass is?  I did that.  I was overdue and frantic to GET THAT BABY OUT.  It worked.  Just a few hours later, I had the baby.  A week after that, Irene had hers.

Our babies.  BEFORE they were college roommates.

This is how I remember John Orman.  I know he was a great professor, a strong and positive mentor to his students, a shining political star, a widely-read author, etc., but to me, John Orman was a friend.

A good, true, awesome friend.

I love you, Irene.  Call me.

1.  Why does every packaged food item contain so much sodium?  It’s ridiculous!  Even the supposedly “diet” or “healthy” stuff is loaded full of salt.  I’m serious; why IS that? It’s really difficult – and in most cases, it’s IMPOSSIBLE – to find salt-free processed food.  Did the salt industry make a deal with somebody?  What’s going on?

2.  I love fresh flowers, and any house is more like a home with fresh flowers.  Would someone please explain this fact to my cats, so they’ll stop tipping over the vases and using my flowers as salad?

3.  It was in the seventies yesterday, and it’s in the thirties today.  What’s going on?  Oh wait, I live in Indiana.  ‘Nuff said.

4.  I have a fantastic birthday present for my Tumorless Sister, but if she doesn’t get down here soon to lay claim to it, I’m going to play with it, myself.  (Happy Birthday, Tumorless.)

5.  Looking at all these old photographs strewn over my living room carpet, I am struck anew by the mind-blowing fact that people I’ve known only as older adults had a LIFE before that!  They used to be young and hot, and they had fun!  I know, I know, we all used to be young and hot and we all had fun, but, but, this is different.  It’s DIFFERENT!  How it’s different, I have no idea, but it’s different.  If I allow myself to think otherwise, I might blow some brain cells out my ears. Do my kids think this way about me?  Because, you know, there was once a time when I was young, and hot, and interesting. . . .  Honest.  There was!

6.  I’m still angry over all the salt in everything.

7.  My mother-in -law’s purse is in my dining room, right where she used to put it when she sat up to the table.  Every time I notice it, I instinctively look around for her.  I need to move it somewhere else, but I don’t feel that I have any business touching it.    Eventually, I know.

8.  I love scented candles.

9.  Everything hanging on my walls is crooked.  I think it’s because we like to crank the volume to eleven.  It’s either that, or the New Madrid Fault.

10.  The older I get, the more precious my family becomes, and the more I wish we could all get together frequently, instead of just at holidays and funerals.  I wish we weren’t all so busy.

1.  I haven’t picked the ten thousand pictures we’re going through, off the living room floor yet.  We’re still looking at them.  Plus, we’re expecting family to come down any day now and look through them with us.

2.  I haven’t sent out any “Thank you for your sympathy” cards yet, but I’ve got them all ready.  I am usually quite a stickler about thank -you cards, but I just can’t seem to get going on these.  No, online thanks will not do.  People who go out of their way for us, in any aspect of life, deserve something they can hold in their hands, even if they really couldn’t care less.  Why do I do it, then, if it doesn’t matter to them?  I do it because it matters to me.

3.  Whenever my children come down, I like to have a humongous peanut butter Rice Krispie treat awaiting them.  The peanut butter not only makes the treats tastier; it also turns them into breakfast really nutritious snacks.  Today was no exception; the treat was still warm when the kids arrived, and they took the leftovers back with them.  I do not put my peanut butter Rice Krispie treats in a pan, however.  I just spread them out on a big piece of waxed paper.  Why dirty a pan when the kids are just going to dive into that Rice Krispie treat like a couple of starving wild animals?  On a piece of waxed paper, it’s easier to tear off a hunk.  More fun, too.

4.  I haven’t put my midterm grades on Blackboard yet.  When I first tried, I couldn’t get in, and now I’m not motivated.  I’ll do it tomorrow.  I know my students want to know their standing, and I will let them know in the morning, by which I mean, around noon.  I’m on Spring Break now.

5.  I’m coming down with a terrible cold, but I haven’t actually come down with it yet.  I seldom actually come down with anything, but I occasionally try.  I think I’d feel better if I actually GOT something, rather than just be GETTING it.

6.  Those of you who have seen my bathroom know how classic and subdued it is.  I brought home some new wall art for it yesterday, but I haven’t put it up yet.  I’m not sure I know how.  Item:  the new wall art does not sing, dance, chirp,  or talk.  In fact, it’s kind of, well, ordinary.  Imagine.

7.  I haven’t stopped missing Michele Agnew yet.

8.  I still haven’t accepted the fact that last year’s BlogHer is over, even while I’m already counting down until this year’s BlogHer!  July isn’t all that far away, you know, and I’m going to be a Mic Jockey this summer!  To say that I absolutely CAN’T WAIT would be an understatement.  I love you, BlogHer!

9.  I haven’t run my sweeper for over a week.  How can I, with all those photographs spread out all over the floor?

10.  I h aven’t made Rice Krispie treats with real Rice Krispies in years.  Today’s batch was made with generic marshmallows and Kroger Crispy Rice, and NOBODY could tell the difference.  Why buy that expensive name brand stuff when the store brand is three dollars cheaper and tastes exactly the same?  (Item:  be persnickety about those store brands.  I’ve tried some that weren’t fit to eat, but most store brands seem to be pretty much exactly the same as the ritzy stuff.)  (Experiment!)

1.  Spring FORWARD; fall BACK.  I’ve changed a few clocks that I look at regularly, but elsewhere in the house?  Not yet.  Also, I’m too lazy I’m too short to reach most of the wall clocks, so they don’t need to be sprung forward at all because they never fell back last autumn.    Except, of course, for the clocks I couldn’t reach LAST year to change, which means those clocks were correct until now, but will be wrong until next “time.”  How many clocks are in this house?  Search me.  Once I have to remove my shoes to count anything, I lose interest, and my kids were involved in so many activities when they were in school, I was genuinely paranoid about the time. My children are grown up now, but the clocks and the obsession about time remain. It might be a lot worse, you know. At least I’m not a drunk or a kleptomaniac; I just HAVE TO KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS, and every wall in my house has learned to cater to that.

2.  Oh Hoss, my dear, darling Hoss.  Gene Maudlin died yesterday, and I haven’t quite really realized it yet.  I never will.  The Blogosphere will never be the same.  You’ll be greatly missed, Hoss.  Your pithy posts and comments made me happy, and your emails always made me feel important, and well, like SOMEBODY.  You were one who made a big, big difference.   Readers, Please go and read my dear friend Vicki’s beautiful tribute to this lovely, lovely man.

3.  I’ve been Freecycling “stuff” like mad, but I’m not finished yet.  I’ve cleaned out three houses after a death now, and I will NOT put my kids through this kind of a mess when I go.  The Christmas “stuff” alone will be excavation enough; the rest of house is going to be EASY!!!!  Well, easiER, anyway.

4.  I haven’t graded a single essay this weekend, and I don’t even care.  Nyahh. I’ll get them done during the students’ midterm exams this week.  I know they’re greatly looking forward to them.  I mean, who wouldn’t be? 

5.  I still have my entire wedding set of dinnerware:  Woolworth’s best!  Not a piece is broken.  I will keep it forever.  However, I also have about eight other complete unbroken sets of dinnerware.  Most of it has to go.  I haven’t figured out which to give away and which to keep yet, though.  It’s all sentimental in some way.  That’s my biggest housekeeping problem; everything reminds me of someone precious.  There’s not a tasteful, Good Housekeeping thing in my entire home, but everything in it is connected to something or someone else.  That’s how I like to live, my dears.  However, one must be a LITTLE bit practical, and almost everything a few things simply must go.   Come on over.  Bring boxes.  I suppose that if we were a notoriously “breaky” family, I wouldn’t still have all this “stuff,” but the fact is, even when the children were small, we were all careful people and seldom broke any dishes.  Ever. 

6.  I haven’t taken the cats to the vet for their spring tonics and flea drops yet.  We’re still paying for my husband’s bypass of last fall, and now we have to somehow pay for a funeral.  Life can really suckerpunch a fella, huh.  Sorry, kitties, tell the fleas to stand by.

7.  Please don’t suggest that we sell all of this “stuff” instead of giving it away.  I know we could, but I also remember how it was to need some of these things and not be able to buy them.  I would much rather see them go to nice people who need them and who will USE them for their families, than to supply some dealer with stuff for a store shelf, so he/she can make a buck.   I’m also seeing some genuine gratitude over it, not that I need to SEE that, but it makes me feel even more sure that I’m doing it right.  I haven’t regretted this yet.

8.  I haven’t made a will yet, or checked on my life insurance lately, but I intend to, and soon.  PLEASE don’t any of you die without life insurance!  

9.  Heavy windstorm warnings.  Severe thunderstorm warnings.  Temperature in the seventies.  Crocuses blooming.  Trees budding.  This time last week, the temp was in the single digits.  Next week: rumors of snow.  Welcome to southern Indiana.  I haven’t put away the heavy coats yet, nor have I gotten out any summer clothing, even though most of the people we saw in town today looked as if they were heading to the beach.  Gun-jumpers, that’s what I say.

10.  I intended to make corn bread to go with the black bean soup tonight, but I forgot.  I’ll have some for tomorrow’s leftovers, though.  Item:  the black bean soup is for my husband; I wouldn’t touch that smelly stuff with a ten-foot-pole.    He, on the other hand, loves it.  Well, he can have it.  All of it!    I’d tell you what it reminds me of, but my mother raised me with better manners than that.  Well, she tried her best, anyhow.

1.  It’s so curious: one can resist tears and “behave” very well in the hardest hours of grief.  but then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips form a drawer. . . and everything collapses.  –Collette

2.  Sorrow you can hold, however desolating, if nobody speaks to you.  If they speak, you break down.  –Bede Jarrett

3.  While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates.  You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.  –Samuel Johnson

4.  Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.  –Shakespeare

5.  Man, when he does not grieve, hardly exists.  –Antonia Porchia

6.  Even hundredfold grief is divisible by love.  –Jareb Teague

7.  Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect.  The wisest know nothing.  –Ralph Waldo Emerson

8.  No one can keep his griefs in their prime; they use themselves up.  –E.M. Cioran

9.  We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.  –Kenji Miyazawa

10.  Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.  –from The Wonder Years

11.  If you’re going through hell, keep going.  –Winston Churchill (This is one of my favorite quotes!)

12.  The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost.  –Arthur Schopenhauer

13.  There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.  –Lou Reed

14.  Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.  –Dan Rather

15.  You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.  –Jan Glidewell

16.  There are things that we don’t want to happen but have to accept, things we don’t want to know but have to learn, and people we can’t live without but have to let go. –Unknown

17.  Loss is nothing but change, and change is Nature’s delight.  –Marcus Aurelius

18.  In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.  –Robert Ingersoll

19.  Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.  –Jacques Prevert

20.  The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.  –Henry Maudsley

21.  There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.  –Aeschylus

22.  We have to believe that even the briefest of human connections can heal.  Otherwise, life is unbearable.  –Agate Nesaule

23.  Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.  — Amelia Burr

24.  If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.  –Anne Bradstreet

25.  There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course.  Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word “happy” would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.  –Carl Jung

26.  As only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll live through the night.  –Dorothy Parker

27.  There’s no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow.  –Edith Wharton

28.  When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.  The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.  –Henri Nouwen

29.  The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.  Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?  –Kahlil Gibran

30.  History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.  –Maya Angelou

31.  The pain passes, but the beauty remains.  –Pierre Auguste Renoir

32.  In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:  it goes on.  –Robert Frost

33.  . . . joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you. . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.  –Kahlil Gibran

34.  Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now.  You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.  –Talmud

35.  Poetry is about the grief.  Politics is about the grievance.  –Robert Frost

36.  Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons.  –Blaise Pascal

37.  Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.  –William Faulkner

38.  Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.  –Unknown

39.  There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be.  –Leon Blov

40.  Memory is a man’s real possession.  In nothing else is he rich; in nothing else is he poor.  –Alexander Smith

41.  Memories can be sad, but sometimes they can also save you.  –Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka, and Toshihiro Kawabata

42.  The fear of death follows from the fear of life.  A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.  –Mark Twain

43.  People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive.  It is as though they were traveling abroad.  –Marcel Proust

44.  No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.  –Euripides

45.  I shall not die of a cold.  I shall die of having lived.  –Willa Cather

46.  Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation.   For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.  –Albert Einstein

47.  Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.  –Erik H. Erikson

48.  We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future.  It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.  –Marcel Proust

49.  We understand Death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one we love.  –Madame de Staal

50.  The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive – perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.  –Mignon McLaughlin