A Sure (and welcome) Sign of Spring

A sure sign of spring appeared today.

No, it wasn't a robin or a crocus or daylight savings time. 

It wasn't the sound of a college baseball game being played over the radio or the sign advertising the Lenten Fish Frys at the neighborhood Catholic Church.

It wasn't the long lines at the car wash or the fact that it's spring break for the schools this week.

It is 8 bags and containers of grasses, vines and other material from the spring yard and garden clean-up, that will be placed out near the street and that will surely have the garbage men muttering under their breath on Wednesday morning.

Yes, the spring garden clean-up began this weekend and I for one, really needed it this year. It wasn't that our winter was harsher than usual. In fact, it was a relatively moderate winter considering what the folks in the northeast have endured. 

But the last couple of weeks have taken me on a roller coaster of emotions brought on by straddling the space between life and death once again. It culminated yesterday morning as I was on my way to my regular Saturday morning meeting when I drove by the Starbucks on 72nd and Dodge and thought of, or more accurately, looked for Al. Over the years, it was almost common to see Al in the drive-thru lane procuring a coveted cup of coffee.

About a month ago, my friend Al who had been battling lung cancer for about 9 months, left the hospital to spend the last of his days in his home.  I made the trip down to his home outside of Omaha 4 days before he passed to see him one last time. I spent about a half hour with him, mostly just listening as he was feeling the effects of the morphine and other medications. However, when my time came to leave, he looked up at me I as stood over him and said, "Well, what do you say when over 20 years of friendship is coming to an end?"  "I say thank you for the gift of your friendship, I love you, and I hope to see you again." And with that, I kissed him on his forehead as I held his hand, then turned and walked out of the room. 

4 days later the e-mail from Al's wife, Michaela,  came telling us that he had passed away peacefully earlier that evening. Later the next day when we spoke, she asked me if I would be willing to speak at Al's service. Of course I said I would.

Georgette and I were scheduled to fly to Florida the following morning to care for our 3 grandchildren while their parents went on a short cruise, but she went without me and I re-booked my ticket to leave early the  morning after Al's funeral. I spent part of the next 2 days preparing my words to honor Al, and on Friday afternoon, in front of a packed chapel full of family and friends, paid tribute to my friend, Al. It was hard, but deeply meaningful, especially when so many of his friends and family told me how much it meant to them.

The next morning I flew to Florida for 2 days where the weather was warm and the company was good. When I returned to Omaha, I was greeted with cold and snow. The following weekend, we went to Kansas City to  care for our 2 granddaughters while their Mom and Dad were at the hospital for the birth of their 3rd daughter, Lane. And when Lane came home several days later, I got to hold her for almost a half an hour before I headed north to get back to work while Georgette stayed for a couple of more days. 

The roller coaster of life and death was about over when I drove by the Starbucks yesterday morning and looked for Al, remembering how many times I would see him there, also on his way to the same place I was headed. And maybe for the first time since I left the funeral home that evening, I felt a small amount of acceptance that he was gone. Gone but not forgotten.

Saying goodbye to a friend and welcoming a grandchild to the world. Funerals and births. Coming and going. Plans that change. Life goes on.

So with the weather forecast for the next 10 days in the high 50's & 60's,  it was time to get to work. Garden and yard clean-up...my soul sure needed it.

I can't explain why, but working outside in the garden, in the sunlight, seemed to be just what I needed. A welcome and tangible sign of hope, of renewal, of the cycle of life. 

I'm not sure the garbage man will see it that way when they load the bags and containers on Wednesday morning, but then again, maybe they will. A sign of spring for them perhaps, but just not as welcome as the sign I saw.

 Welcome or not, the signs of spring are here.

A Small and Connected World

My Connectedness Map. The numbers circled in red

link to the events listed below in chronological order

 The world just got smaller for me. Not surprising since I'm one of the those people who is drawn to finding or making a connection with nearly everyone I meet. But a series of events occurred recently that affirmed my conviction that we are all connected.

I'm going to take you on a journey of connections and intersections that begins 33 years ago and slowly begins to weave into a tapestry of people, situations and meaning. After you've read this story and viewed the map, you tell me if you think it is just a coincidence or if there is something else going on here.

The journey begins back in Lincoln, NE, where my wife Georgette intersected with a woman named Elinor Kerrey, a professor at the University of Nebraska. And the journey continued last week when I intersected with Elinor's son, Bob Kerrey, at a fitness center in Omaha.  Here is the sequence of connections and intersections that occurred between 1973 and 2015.

 

1. 1973- Georgette meets Elinor Kerrey when she becomes Elinor's graduate assistant at the University of Nebraska. Elinor has 5 children and becomes a mentor and major influence in Georgette's life. Among Elinor's children are Jessie, Bob and Nancy. Georgette helps out at Nancy's wedding and meets the family. She also obtains several recipes from Elinor, a Food and Nutrition professor, that remain in her recipe box to this day. Georgette considers Elinor Kerrey as one of the most influential women in her life.

2.  1985- Bob Kerrey and Dean Rasmussen open a fitness center in Lincoln. Dean is married to Bob's sister, Jessie. They open a 2nd center in Omaha in 1990 which is named Prairie Life Fitness and eventually build 8 more facilities in 3 states. Bob  was a Navy Seal in Vietnam, received the Medal of Honor in 1970 and  served as the Governor of Nebraska from 1983-87.

3. 1991- Charles McClendon and Justine Rudiger are inducted into the National Honor Society and graduate from Bryan High School in Omaha. They go on to attend the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and share an apartment during part of their time in college.

Charles, first row, second from the right.
Justin, back row, third from the right.

4. 1994- I'm living in Omaha and I read an article in the paper written by now US Senator, Bob Kerrey, eulogizing his friend, Lewis Puller, Jr., who committed suicide in May of 1994. Puller and Bob Kerrey became friends while recovering from their battle wounds at the Navy Hospital in Philadelphia. Puller later won an Pulitzer prize for his autobiography "Fortunate Son". I lost a brother-in-law to suicide late in 1993 and was touched by Sen. Kerrey's words as he wrote of his friend. I write the senator a letter thanking him for his tribute and several weeks later I receive a very thoughtful hand-written letter on the official stationary of Śen. Kerry. I still have the letter.

5. 1995- I finish my Master's degree and take a job in Lincoln where I meet and begin a relationship with Georgette. In the course of getting to know each her, she shares her story of Elinor Kerrey's influence on her life back in the 70's and I eat the first of many recipes that came from the kitchen of Elinor Kerrey.

6. 1999- I take a job at the Gallup Organization, based in Lincoln, where I meet Charles McClendon during my last interview. Charles and I become good friends and colleagues and work together for the next 12 years.

7. 2003- Georgette and I move to Omaha when Gallup relocates their headquarters to the riverfront.  The home we purchase just happens to be located a couple of blocks north of Bryan High School. When we sit outside on on our deck, we look across a slight valley  directly at Bryan High School.

8. 2005- I begin mentoring at Bryan High School, something I still continue to this day. I  discover the National Honor Society photo on a wall in the commons area of the school and see Charles McClendon, my friend and co-worker, in the first row of the picture. I laugh.

9. 2007-I teach a leadership seminar at Gallup in Omaha that includes some of the leaders from Prairie Life Fitness, including Jennifer Rasmussen, daughter of Jessie Rasmussen and granddaughter of Elinor Kerrey. We connect and I share with her the story of her grandmother's influence in Georgette's life. She, like Georgette, has fond memories of Elinor.

10. 2014- I join Prairie Life Fitness Center in May and sign-up for personal training. My trainer, randomly assigned to me, is Justin Rudiger, who has been a trainer there for 16 years. We discover that we are both connected to Charles McClendon and have a connection to Bryan High School. The next time I am at Bryan for mentoring, I notice Justin in the back row of the National Honor Society photo, along with Charles. I take a picture of it with my I-phone and taunt Justin with it the next time I see him. While working out one morning, I also notice Justin training a couple who I think are Jessie and Dean Rasmussen (Dean being one of the owners of the company) so I  ask him about it. Yep, he is the personal trainer for the owner and his wife. I asked him to introduce me to Jessie when the time is right.

11. 2015- One morning while at the gym, I see Justin working with Jessie and introduce myself to her. I share Georgette's appreciation of her mother, Elinor, and the contribution she made to her life.  She seems appreciative of  hearing that and thanks me for taking the time to share that with her.

12. Last week while at the gym, I'm warming up by running around the track. As I circle the gym, I see Jessie working  out with Justin and give her a friendly wave. Later on, I see her talking to a man I  don't recognize at first, but then on a another lap, I recognize the man as her brother, Bob Kerrey.  When the time seems right, I approach Mr. Kerrey and introduce myself to him. I share the connection about his mother and Georgette, how much of an influence she was on her, and about the recipes. He tells me that he took organic chemistry from her and that she almost flunked him. I thank him for writing back to me in 1994- that I'm sure he got a lot of mail as a U.S. Senator, but he assured me that if the letter was handwritten, he wrote it himself. We have a 5 minute exchange about politics, the high suicide rate of our veterans and then I go back to running my laps. One more connection made.

I'm not surprised how genuine and down to earth Bob Kerrey was. He's lived an incredible life-Navy Seal, Congressional Medal of Honor and Purple Heart medals, governor and US Senator, served on the 9/11 Commission and as President of the New School in NYC. But standing there in the fitness center, we were just two guys sharing stories and making the world a smaller and more connected place.

So there you have it, a web of connections that spans the course of 33 years. To me, that is no coincidence. But I'm not sure if I'm ready to assign it to some sort of fate or destiny either. I do see it as a remarkable series of intersections especially when I consider that one of the common threads are the roles that the people played in each other's lives--difference makers, encouragers, friends, supporters, talented contributors to the world we all shared.

Whether this map is compete or will continue to evolve is not clear to me and remains to be seen. 

What is very clear to me is that it is indeed a small and very wonderfully connected world.

Move over, Thomas Edison.

I'm practicing dictating on my new iPhone 6. I'm wondering if it will be possible to develop some fluency using this technology. As a person who talks much more fluently than I think, expressing myself by manually writing or typing has always been a challenge for me.

It might have something to do with the fact that I'm a lousy typist.

Both of my parents were excellent typists--Dad was a Linotype operator and Mom could type faster than anyone I ever knew. In spite of that, I never took a typing class in high school.  I guess I thought I didn't need it. Besides my school schedule was packed full with band, orchestra, drama, all those artsy-fartsy subjects. Since I didn't even have time for a study hall there certainly wasn't any time for a typing class.

For much  of my life since college I've been able to get by without being a very good typist. As a band director, I got paid to rehearse music ensembles. As a counselor I got paid to listen and offer advice. As a seminar leader and consultant, I got paid to stand in front of groups and facilitate learning. Most of my jobs required little, if any, need for typing skills. And even when they did, I could get by with a two-finger, hunt and peck method.

But when I started blogging a couple of years ago, my inadequate typing skills came back to haunt me. Even if I had a really good idea for a blog story, the process of sitting down and typing it out taxed me rather than energized me. I had this fantasy that if I could just say what I was thinking and it would magically appear on the paper or screen then I would want to write, or should I say, speak more.

This last weekend my fantasy became a reality.

When I upgraded my iPhone this past weekend to the iPhone 6 and was reading up on the features of the phone, I discovered the dictation feature. It got me to thinking about my writing and if I could dictate in a coherent enough fashion to produce something that was halfway readable.

So what you're reading right now are words that are actually being typed out on my phone as I speak. I'm going to try a little experiment in the next several weeks. I'm going to try to write several blog posts by using the dictation feature on my iPhone instead of typing feature. My hope would be that I could become fluent enough about using this dictation feature that I might "write" more often and what I write will sound very close to what I speak.

So far my little experiment has shown me that there is a need to go back and edit, redo, tweak, tinker with, or otherwise fine-tune the words that are appearing on the screen. But in the short time that I've been experimenting, I've actually gotten a little better at it.

Wow, think about it. I could become prolific. The next John Grisham or Jon Katz. You'll see me driving on the freeway on my way home from work talking to myself as I come up with my next novel or short story or blog post. Or you'll  see me talking to myself while having my lunch at Whole Foods as I dictate the next piece of creative work in between bites of my salad bar.

There is the possibility that I'll get tired of hearing my own voice or that having to dictate accurately enough so that this piece of technology can get my words right may detract from my voice, my writers voice, that is. I may end up sounding like that robot on the television show "Lost in Space."

I just turned 62 and so far I've never tired of my own voice. As for my writers voice, I'd like to think that I write as I think or as I speak. Time will tell.

In the meantime, this will be kind of fun. And it will give people something to talk about. "What the heck is going on in the office next-door. Sounds like he's talking to himself again." I might end up getting an early retirement offer after all. 

Or a referral to the employee assistance program.

Wish me luck. And stay tuned.

Writer's note: Approx. 90% of the above post was dictated. The other 10% was manually typed or edited.

Going Home

"Home is where you always return,

no matter how long you've been gone."

I was sitting in another hospital room with my friend Al last week as doctors and nurses and aides came in and out, temporarily interrupting our conversation. It was during those moments that I allowed myself to take a different look at the surroundings...a maze of machines and wires, tubes, bags, a white board with names and numbers-- things I didn't understand.

What I did understand was that my dear friend was very sick and that he wasn't getting better.

It's been a tough road for Al recently. He got through his first big rounds of chemotherapy last summer without a lot of complications but has been experiencing significant challenges with breathing and fluid build-up around his right lung. The last 90 days have been a series of  trips in and out of the ICU and Critical Care as he and his doctors have wrestled with the effects of the cancer.

Mercifully, he was able to be home at Thanksgiving and Christmas and was also able to be present and active during the annual holiday open house he and his wife, Michaela host annually. Georgette and I joined them for dinner and a movie in November as well.

But January has been hard, really hard.

It wasn't that long ago, last May in fact, when after our weekly Saturday morning breakfast, Al mentioned he was going in for a bronchoscopy, that there a mass on his right lung.

It wasn't that long ago that we sat in his hospital room and talked of doing a bike ride next spring, down in Louisiana where the terrain is flat and the rides are only 40 miles a day.

It wasn't that long ago that we were all hoping for a couple of more years,  a couple more diner and movie nights, a couple of more springtimes.

I was there at his home shortly after Christmas when he shared with me that their daughter was pregnant and that they were going to be grandparents for the first time. I saw the tears in his eyes as he told me how excited they were and I felt the uncertainty that surrounded their joy.

So as I sat there just a few days ago and visited with Al, I could tell that something had changed. We had a few private moments where the conversation went beyond the events of the day to the reality of his future. He just wanted to go home.

Then the e-mail from Michaela that arrived a day ago letting all of us know that he was going to be transported by ambulance on Friday, to their home in the small Iowa town just outside on Omaha where he wants to spend the time he has left with family and friends.  I felt a deep sadness reading that note, telling me what I was afraid of hearing, that the fight was nearly over. And part of me said a prayer of gratitude that he will get to go home, to the place he loves, to be with the people he loves and who love him back.

I hope to see him again, maybe this weekend. I have a few things I want to say, things I think he knows, yet things I want to say just one more time.

My dear friend Al is going home and for that, I am truly grateful.

Illusions

Illusions

What do you do
when the things you can talk about
become less and less?

When we pretend
that what we can't talk about
 isn't really happening,
or doesn't really matter,
or it isn't really real.

What do you do
when the superficial trumps the significant,
when the mundane crowds out the relevant,
or the easy replaces the meaningful?

When it is easier to talk about others
than to others.

When getting through the moments
replaces savoring the moments.

What do you do
when you start to become invisible
or irrelevant
or optional?

When they are moving on without you
and you begin to wonder
 if you ever really mattered much at all.

What do you do,
besides what you already know
when what you know no longer works
the way it used to?

To be invisible
or irrevelant
or optional
is not a state that I have known,
or so I thought.

I find myself wondering
 if who I thought I was
and who I mattered to
was more of an illusion
that I ever could have imagined.

 Do we slowly cease
to matter,
to be heard, to be seen?

Do we slowly become invisible
irrelevant and
optional?

Was it just an illusion
all along?

Living in Limbo

I feel like I'm in living in limbo. If you don't know what limbo is, here's what the dictionary says:

an unknown intermediate place or condition between two extremes: in limbo

I first heard the term limbo when I attended Catholic grade school back in the early 60's. The nuns told us to pray for the souls of unbaptized  babies who were in limbo- because if they got enough prayers sent their way, their souls  got elevated to heaven. So in my mind, limbo was kind of a holding zone between heaven and hell where you waited around for your ticket to get punched, but until it did, you simply had to wait it out. It was better than hell but it certainly wasn't heaven. It was.....limbo.

And it was all very confusing to me.

"Sister Agnes Michael, can they play monopoly in limbo?" 

"No Daniel, they don't have board games in limbo"

"Then what do they do all day?"

"They wait until someone like you prays for their soul and when they get enough prayers, they get to go to heaven."

"So how many prayers do they need?"

"Is your math homework done, Daniel? If it is, I'd suggest you say some prayers. If it isn't, then get back to work."

I'm attributing some of my limbo feelings to the month of January because if there was ever a limbo-month, it would be January. After New Years Day, there isn't another major holiday until Valentines Day ( which we all know is a holiday that can make perfectly happy people feel miserable). There's not much else to anticipate in January other than the Super Bowl and this year it is being played on Feb. 1st. So there's just not much to look forward to in January other than waiting around.....a lot of limbo.

And then there's the weather. In spite of it being over 50 degrees the last 4 days here, January is usually cold, dark and gray. Even if we get a spurt of better than average weather, you don't want to get your hopes up because technically we still have 2 months of winter-limbo get through. Mother Nature could blast us with a foot of snow and sub-zero temps all the way into March. Best to keep the gloves, heavy coat and sweaters ready and hold off on the flip-flops and shorts for a while yet. 

I'm also suffering from a good case of job-limbo. While my newly retired spouse (NRS) is settling in to her next stage of life, I'm back at work everyday for the immediate future. My earliest possible retirement date is too far off to be close, but close enough that I can see it peering over the horizon. I've got nothing significant left to accomplish but I've still got work to do. I've been told the time will fly by faster than I realize but  there have been days when the seconds last minutes and the minutes last hours. 

Speaking of retirement, I had a couple of Ward Cleaver moments last week when I got home from work and my NRS had our dinner prepared and the table set as I walked in the door. I was ready to don a black suit and tie and retreat to the den to read the paper and give fatherly counsel to Wally and the Beaver.  This is not a bad thing, mind you, just a different thing. I suspect that we will be doing the limbo quite a bit as we both adjust to the changes going on in our lives.  Like not getting over-envious when I got a text from her this afternoon that was sent while she was taking Grace for a walk on this unseasonable January day. She might not have been doing the limbo, but I certainly was.

I have to admit that patience, focus and  "living in the here and now" have never been strengths of mine. I'm excited about the next stage of life and what it has to offer and I am ready to close the book on the 40 plus years of going to work everyday. But I have to wait a while longer and that gives me limbo angst which can best be summarized by adapting a quote from the end of "When Harry Met Sally" that goes like this: 

"When you finally figure out how you want to spend the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

I hope none of you reading this are taking my plight very seriously, if at all, because I'm not. I know better.  My version of limbo is nothing compared to what my dear friend Al is going through. I visited him several times in the hospital this past week as he was back in the ICU to deal with some setbacks related to the lung cancer he is battling. Time can't go slow enough for Al, I suspect, and if you are the praying type, please pray for him not for me. I can wait.  

In the meantime, if there aren't any board games in limbo, maybe there are some others things I can do while in limbo:

A. Set a goal to go a whole day and not say the word retirement out loud.

B. Get the seed catalogs out and start to plan the garden for this spring.

C. Get some real work done.

D. Try to listen every one of the 15,000 plus songs I have in my ITunes collection.

E. Start taking Limbo lessons, the Chubby Checker version.

Who knows, I might learn to like this whole Limbo thing after all.

My Challenge for the New Year

Our New Year's Day supper.

I woke up early on New Year's Day and headed off to the gym to beat the rush of those who had "start working out" on their New Years's resolution lists while my wife and beagle slumbered away in their cozy beds.  And by the time the day was done I had enjoyed a wonderful breakfast that was followed up with a prime rib, asparagus, and twice baked potato supper,  all lovingly prepared by my aforementioned newly retired spouse.

In between I lounged on the couch and watched a lot of football and took Grace, the beagle, for an hour long walk.

It was a good New Year's Day.

But it was back to work on Friday because unlike the aforementioned newly retired wife and never employed beagle, I still have a job for the time being. Which really means for the rest of 2015 and then some. 

So while I've never been one for New Years' resolutions, I do have a New Year's challenge that I need to put out there with the hopes that by doing so, I will be more committed to making an honest attempt to meet this challenge. So here's my challenge:

Keep going to work everyday without whining and feeling sorry for myself and make an attempt to do what I'm paid to do even though I really don't want to go to work anymore and really do feel sorry for myself and want to whine about it, at least for a bit.

Our plan (a plan that could be changed) is that I will work for a while longer having just turned 62.

Here's why:

• Georgette just retired last week and has signed up for Medicare so she doesn't have to work for health insurance benefits, but I still do.

• The experts say one person in a marriage should retire at a time to make the transition less dramatic. So she's going first...fair enough.

• We are going to try to live on my salary and her Social Security before we both collect Social Security and start to tap into our personal savings.That will be an adjustment, I suspect. In the meantime, I'm still funding my 401K.

So you see, those are all very practical reasons for me to still be working a full-time career job.

However, practical is sometimes over-rated. Especially at this stage of life when you have fewer days ahead of you than more. So here are the impractical, but very personal reasons I'd like to retire sooner than later:

• I've been faithfully and responsibly going to work every day, full time since I graduated from college. I've had a great run and for the most part,  have always enjoyed my work. But I'm tired. And I want to do other things that having a full time, Monday to Friday job, simply put, gets in the way of.

• We are both in excellent health and would like to take advantage of that while we can by traveling, relaxing and just living our lives to the fullest, without the rigors of the Mon-Fri, 8-5 grind.

• Sticking another year or two of $$ into a 401k isn't going to help me sleep better at night or change my day. At some point, enough will have to be enough and we'll make it work. The same goes for squeezing another 8% out of Social Security by delaying benefits another year or two.

• And while I've been willing to get up at 5 am on workdays to get to the gym, I'd much rather get up at say 6:30 and get there at 8, when the whole place is cleared out. Then come home and have a nice breakfast on the garden patio at mid-morning. Then take Grace for a walk, have a nap, go putz in the garden some more or work my part-time job at the grocery store or whatever.

• I want to put more space in between the events of the day and I want the events to be about savoring instead of doing.

My time will come and I agreed to this plan. It is the practical and responsible thing to do. 2015 will be a year of transitions and adjustments and anticipation, in that order. My challenge is to gracefully walk through it.

In the meantime, spring is just around the corner. Catchers and pitchers report in just 7 weeks. We have another grandchild arriving in March. The days are getting longer and before we know it, the leaves will be falling and there will be eggnog for sale at the Safeway in Estes Park in holiday-themed containers....in the first week of October.

Available at the Safeway in Estes
Park, CO the first week of October.

And I don't want to miss a minute of it wishing I was somewhere else.