Death of an Old Vyking: Requiem

THE DAY THE CACTUS DIED: It is the last week in March 2010, I am in the front yard digging in the dirt, tearing out my ten foot tall large frozen cactus which did not survive the winter of 2009-10.  What a gooey mess.I am so with Gaynelle and David.  I am chopping and remembering the good times sailing the rivers and bay of Virginia. I am crying for days long gone. Gaynelle’s voice rings in my ears with “Don’t be so melodramatic. You cry all the time, so crying is not special with you.” So I told her I would fly to Tulsa and just stay with her.  She said, “I don’t need one more miserable person around here.” She took a breath and added, “I am miserable, David is miserable, and here we are in this small hospital. Small hospitals are friendlier.” In spite of everything, I know that they are where they should be at this time.  It has to be, because no one could have thought this up on purpose.

So the sailing Vyking and his Valkyrie now find themselves on the rolling prairie seas of Oklahoma: “Livin’ on Tulsa Time”.

In my memory of them, they have always been a part of each other and always there for the other with all the same ins and outs that free thinking modern couples have.  They lived life to the limit and then some.  They, together, have always been there for the other guy.  I see them as together because I have never know them any other way. 

Each of us has a story to tell.  There was day in 1982, I was one of those other ones that they reached out to and offered a hand up to a better life.  All of you have stories to tell and all the stories are worth the telling.

The Vyking closed the log book on his life and his story:

Set the Mainsul: Made way for Valhalla.

We stand on the shores of life, wave goodbye and say, “Well done, David, well done.  Farewell, my friend, farewell.”

We humans all stand at a bedside and wait with baited breath to hear the last words of dying.  We seek not for them, but for ourselves, some message to be told us from the Other Side that we could take hold of and walk away with courage and insight for all the trials and sorrows to come.

David’s words were three sentences spread out over the last two days.

David looked at Gaynelle and said,“We had a good run, didn’t we.”A strong verbal gift to the one left behind.Later he exclaimed with a strong voice, “I’m glad I did it. I learned a lot!” What? Who? We do not know.  We only know he was pleased.Then the last and strongest of all, “Son Of A Bitch!”  The rattle of the last breath leaving always leaves the rest of us with questions. Who or What Did He See? Gaynelle quietly smiles her quirky smile, “I think he saw his mother!”

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THE IDES OF MARCH 2010

 Wow!!! I do not think I have ever missed a month of writing at least something. If I don’t jump in quickly,  I will totally miss both The Ides and The Winds Of March.  SOOOO!

Texas March Wind caught me unprepared yesterday at the gas pump.

I opened up the car-door to begin the process of filling the tank.  The wind pinned me between the door and the pump.  The Buick door had become a sailing Spinnaker.  The car, now in park position, actually moved.   I managed to complete the job of filling up the tank and shoving myself back into the car still against the wind.

Still working on the IDES.    

On my personal Ides of March 2002 my long lost sweetheart and I signed our belated (by 42 years) marriage certificate in Richmond Virginia.  My thought was ‘what a significant Greek day to be signing an agreement like this one.’

Paul and I smiled at each other: nothing can go wrong at the forum today.

At age sixty two even if something did go wrong there would not be enough time left in our lives for it to hurt anyone for very long.  So we walked out of the courthouse and went to purchase rings and rent tuxedoes to attest to our signed certificate.  I took Paul’s name, because in 1958-9 that is what we would have done.  There were no hyphens in the ’50s.  Two days later we stood before a home designed alter complete with a prayer kneeling cloth and a priest, who, with prior authority, had moved The James River north so he could officiate the wedding ceremony in his newly expanded Episcopal jurisdiction.  After the ceremony, Father Boston Lackey moved The James back down south to the original flow charted path. We all laughed and called him Moses. We wrote our names and the date into the mid 17th Century edition of The Marriage Book.  Eighty plus good folks, friends and family milled around, ate well, shot the potato cannon at the pine trees, listened to Dr. Schlobaum’s excellent piano with flute and snare-drum and violin with two extra singers and pianist to finish out the band.  It was a St. Patrick’s Day Sunday Bash talked about for many a month afterwards.

That was eight years ago, and that makes April our first whole month of NEW BEGINNINGS.  It takes eight years to settle into each other. I see we are now over half way through April.  We both turn seventy; Paul in March and April for me.

What happened after that day in Richmond, Virginia is another story altogether.  The dream and the reality often do not meet at the end of the road in harmony.

But: That is another story.

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Karma & Friendship

The Listener:  everybody needs one in their life.  Someone other than their own internal thought train.  Then a true new thought pattern comes to light.  This is true HELP.

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