Yesterday I posted the final chapter of a series I wrote about my experience taking care of my wife's father and uncle. The series ran 16 chapters and was titled "Shaving With Connie Francis." 

     Following are a few thoughts about the experience that didn't seem to fit into any of the chapters.

      Healing: My wife and I took The Boys in and tended to them for 18 months before I took time off work to deal with an injured left foot and then decided to let go the caregiver who had worked for us for three years. It was a great relief to wake up and be at work. The care of The Boys for a time was easy, but around the clock. Someone had to be there, but that someone wasn't exactly working all the time.

     A friend recommended a book by Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity." Among Ms. Cameron's many suggestions is the practice of Morning Pages. Wake up and write three pages longhand about whatever you please. The idea is that our creativity is often stifled by ego cops, who guard our mouths and our pens, least we say or write something stupid. So we write knowing no one will read the pages. Be free. Let words flow. Any words. Do not correct spellings or punctuation and never scratch anything out. Just fill pages. And so I started writing for the first time since I washed out of the newspaper business decades ago. (Reagan had just been elected.) I had a few stories to tell and wanted to use this opportunity to start writing again. Soon enough I started sketching the boys feeding my dogs when they thought I wasn't looking, and saw a great deal of humor in our situation. I did morning pages four or so days a week and loved it.

   As my experience with Mike and Jerry progressed I began to see stories and violated Ms. Cameron's teaching by sketching scenes and ideas which I most definitely hoped someone would read. But I was writing again and this was good.

     Full time work: Soon enough, sadly, my duties as caregiver increased as Mike took one turn for the worse after another. I wrote less and was soon drawn fully into the world of caregiver, on duty 24-seven, sleeping in spurts. The Boys died in August and I fell into a mild depression for four to six weeks. Three family members had died within four weeks, and two of those deaths were unexpected. Sometime in mid-October I pulled out the eight or ten weeks of morning pages I had written beginning in February. 

     Another injury: I should have gone back to work full-time at this point. But in the course of vigorous therapy stretching my left foot and walking on orthopedic inserts, the cuboid bone popped out of its joint in the outside of the foot. My return to work was delayed and I started writing stories. I work driving a truck, making 80 deliveries a day for a bottled water company near Chicago. I am scheduled to return to work March 16. There has been a lot of back and forth with the insurer regarding the injury, as one might expect.  But I am fortunate to work for a large and progressive employer. They provide long-term disability insurance if the employee pays for short-term coverage. Hence, my injury hasn't cost them a dime and taking care of Mike and Jerry didn't cost me a dime. (Not exactly true. I get paid two thirds of my average earnings.) And the arrangement keeps employees out of the Workers Comp system. If you have ever been there, you  know this is good.

     Open Salon:  I had written several chapters of the story and felt I needed more feedback than I got from beleaguered family members. So I took the plunge and began writing on Open Salon. The idea that someone was going to actually read this stuff made me a much better writer. I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote before hitting "publish."

     It was worth it. The responses touched me in ways I can't describe. Some had been in the situation, others are heading there and are worried. Other just like to write and said, "Hey, this is pretty good." I had been tapping away in a cave for months and suddenly had found "the others" out there in cyberspace.  They cheered me on and held my hand throughout. A remarkable community.

     A few sent private messages to the effect that I should consider not publishing here, that the stories were good enough to be sold and might not be if they were out there for free. I considered their well-intentioned missives. But the difference in quality between what I had written alone and what I wrote here is undeniable. Open Salon made me write better, proving again that nothing much good grows in the dark.

     I knew a little while ago that I was going to be back at full-time work soon. I decided that I had to wrap up the story. I couldn't bear to add this to the list of things I am going to do someday. Now that it is done, I will endeavor to find it another home. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

     Bruuuuuce!:  As we made Jerry's arrangements I was bummed to discover Jerry's funeral would be on the day of a Springsteen concert. Would it be too tacky to have the wake, then skip a day because we had tickets to a show? We would hold both wakes in our home, catered. About 50 people showed. Here's one of the many reasons I love my wife. When I suggested we couldn't go, she was decisive.

     "Fuck that! We're going. The dagos know where the booze is and they know how to lock a door when they leave."

     So like newlyweds sneaking out of the reception, we drove ninety minutes to Milwaukee. Harley-Davidson throws a bash on the beach every five years and Springsteen headlined the event. We stood in a field about a half-mile from the stage for four hours and took in the Boss and the breeze and the beautiful music, tinged with the desperate hope that the country was on the verge of better things. I've seen him maybe ten times. It never gets old to me. He had lost one of his musicians not long ago, keyboard player Danny Federici. Beauty and love and death and I let it wash over me, tired and numb and ridiculously happy.

     Jerry's gotta pee: Unlike Mike, Jerry had never worn a catheter until he was in the hospital about two weeks before he died. I explained the catheter when he tried to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.

     "Okay, let me have it," he said.

     Apparently he assumed the job was to pee into a container. I drew back the covers and showed him the tube reaching  out of his penis. I traced it's path over the side of the bed, where I assured him, there was a bag to contain everything.

     ""Okay. Let me have it."

     Again I drew back the covers, showed him the tube and assured him it was okay, just let it go and everything will be fine.

      "But how am I gonna get it in the bag if the bag is way over there? Just give it to me."

     Again, I drew back the covers....

     This happened a lot.  

      Vox populi: The people have spoken. Several of my non-series posts rank higher than anything in the series. The later chapters, 14 and 15, rank fourth and fifth among my posts in the Highest Rated rankings. This may be good for me since I may gain a wider audience now that the series is over. The editors seem to agree. I have five EP's to show for my non-series writing. The editors gave EP's to two chapters in the series, One and Three. I could swear the writing got better as the series progressed, but what do I know? Interestingly, the Most Read piece in the series, Chapter One, was also the lowest rated. I assume readers enjoying the later chapters decided to start at Chapter One and got through Chapter Two, also high on the Most Read ranking, before deciding this sucks or dude this is way too long for a blog post or perhaps their thumbs were tired from rating those other chapters. Not that I concern myself with such things.

     An ethical issue: A few chapters into the story I found myself in a pickle. The Boys had been dead for a while before I started posting the series Dec. 1. While  I wrote in past tense, I certainly gave the impression the adventures were ongoing, happening now, that I was still doing this.  An author may write in any tense which suits him. But in an interactive forum like OS I had written myself into a conundrum. I got many comments about my situation along the lines of "How do you do this every day?" Or more commonly, "How do you do this and spend so much time writing?" I wrote a chapter explaining the situation and continuing the narrative and it just sat there flat, dull and lifeless. It was incongruous with the previous chapters. In short, it sucked. I would have to blow it up and start over. I chose to go forward and skirt the issue as delicately as possible. Say someone sent me a recipe for pudding they gave their Gramma, in the hope The Boys would enjoy it. I would respond by saying, "The Boys have always loved pudding. You are very kind to think of them." True, no? But still, that sucked. At some point I began sending Private Messages to readers when I felt to do otherwise would be a betrayal beneath even my meager standards.

     In my defense, I simply didn't want to give away the end of the story. After Chapter Three or Four, I always assumed I was a week or two from being done. It seemed like each chapter I  wanted to write required a chapter to set a scene. And on and on it went.

     If I handled this poorly, sincere apologies.

      The estate: If you become executor of an estate, particularly one involving property and multiple heirs, you are volunteering for a ton of work. My wife handled the affairs for both The Boys and has done a remarkable job. Jerry owned the house at 704 Elm Place. The trust is still in the process of being dissolved. Lots of paperwork and lawyers and meetings after work. Her family is relatively sane and no one has sued anyone, but the process of communicating every development and its possible ramification is grating. The only thing worse would be to trust someone else to handle it.

     Cleaning up: The smartest thing we did, after the Springsteen concert, was to clear the room immediately. Charities come by and pick up all unused latex gloves, Depends, commodes, wheelchairs, canes and the rest of it. Bedding is trashed. Hospice workers make sure unused morphine is dumped. I steamed the carpets and we went out the following week and bought our first matching set of furniture, couches, tables and a rug that really ties the room together. We added a hi-def TV for Christmas. There are no visible reminders the room was a Hospice Ward for two years, except in one of the corners. There sit two pair of shoes, one from each of The Boys. A wise husband doesn't insist upon rational explanations or actions from his spouse. He knows when to let it go. She'll get rid of them when she's ready.