A Year and a Day

While the time is off a bit, hear me out.

It's been a year since my father fell while walking down the hall. He was having trouble breathing and eating. He was recovering from throat cancer, but how do you recover from that? His throat had been scorched raw...his teeth removed and his saliva glands incinerated. He survived the cancer but I would never call the life he was forced to live recovered. It was survival.

Pure and simple.

We, my brother and I, watched the man we grew up loving, fearing and respecting erode in front of our eyes. Piece by piece were removed from this man as payment for the life he chose to lead. The cigarettes and the alcohol you currently enjoy are adding up right now. I promise you this. I've seen the payment they demand upclose and in person. I'm not about to sit on a soapbox and decry the dangers of excess. You keep on smoking and drinking, as will I. Just understand the nature of your transaction. You are exchanging the now for tomorrow. You are enacting the free will that makes us intrinsically human and for that, I can't fault you. Just as I couldn't bring myself to tell my father, several years removed from cancer treatment to stop smoking and drinking.

He would have told me to mind my own goddamn business had I brought it up, and he would have been right in doing so. Still, it is a source of regret on my part that I wasn't more emphatic in my protest.

On Aug 31 of last year...after he had fallen several times and was having trouble even breathing, he agreed to go to the hospital. The doctor at the VA Emergency Room told me and my mother that my father would be dead in a week. He thought he was being optimistic in this prediction. He honestly didn't think my father would last the night.

I told his doctor what every son believes in his heart. "You don't know my father. He is a fighter." He laughed the safe amusement of a doctor who knows better. But I was sincere. My father WAS a fighter. After they drained his lung of the fluid build up and replenished his fluids (His inability to swallow for weeks had limited his eating and drinking. He was dehydrated and malnourished) the fighter emerged. My father, whom this doctor of medicine had honestly thought would be dead in days was healthy and ready to go home. Until the test results returned. My fathers cancer had returned and in a more aggressive form than before. It was incurable...inoperable and they again told me and my family that my father would be dead in a week.

"You don't know my dad." I said again. This time they were right. The cancer took a little longer than a week. It took 3 months to be precise...but it claimed my father. The stress of staying by his bedside for these months also claimed my mother, only days before he passed. I thanked the doctors at the VA for their exemplary service and care and buried both my parents days after my birthday.

This marked the end of my life as I knew it. I struggle to find the words to describe how this affcted me. A year ago today, I was hot, I was tired, but I was whole...I was happy. Times were tough but I knew I would make it through because of my family. The future was a window I watched play out life's daily performance while I sat comfortably distanced.

Nine months ago, I discovered the meaning of the word numb. I have been without feeling since that day. It is as if a piece of my soul was buried alongside my parents in that cemetary. I have smiled since then. I have cried as well. I have been visited by my parents almost nightly in my dreams. Sometimes these are plesant and provide me with a sense of peace. Other times... Well other times they simply aren't. In the last 9 months I would guess that I have seen my parents die at least 200 times in my dreams and I fear that is an optimistic number.

I wake at 3am with the same feeling of despair smothering me as I felt when the doctor at Methodist Hospital told me my mother was dead. My body is usually soaked in my own sweat. It is not a feeling I have shared with anyone. But I know what it is and I know why I write this now. I share this with you anonymous people now as a catharsis. I will continue to dream of my parents. I will continue to revulse in horror at my memory of performing CPR on my already dead mother and I will continue to see with utter clarity in my mind's eye the withered body of my father as we said goodbye. I will also know that their spirits were gone from those lifeless bodies and the pain they endured without complaint whisked away by the embrace of Old Man Death. I don't hate Old Man Death, mind you. his is a necessary task. Without his service, suffering and pain would be the norm.

But as much as I miss my parents and want them back, I understand. I get it. Time has softened the blow a bit. The dreams still come with regularity. They will for some time to come. I can live with this. It's the alternative that would hurt more. My father continuing to suffer. My mother continuing to wear herself to the bone standing her vigil. That's what I find unacceptable. That's what the lesson of the last year has taught me.

If you had said to me a year and a day ago that my parents would both still be alive today, I would have taken that as a good thing. But having seen what I have...having endured what I have...How could that be a good thing? Today is the first day in this entire time that I can say without feeling in the least bit bad about it that I am happy that my parents are gone. I can say this because their pain ended. The next step in their lives began. THIS...I envy. I can't wait to see them again and ask them how things have been. I bet they have some pretty damned awesome stories to tell.

God is a practical joker at heart

It isn't lost on me, this dark side of yours.
You take from me everything I love. My love, my living, my home, etc.
This action from you is focused. Dedicated.
Your aim has been true. You have hit your target.
I have fallen into depths which I could never fathom.
Well, I couldn't fathom prior.

But you slipped, God.

You fell short of your goal to destroy that which you have created here.
In chipping away from me, you have left the important parts whole.
You have gotten soft, God...I see this now.

In taking from me all that is important, you have held a card or two in that deck and JUST like the blackjack table that wants you to stay a while longer, you are pulling out those cards now.

You gave me a World Series. My father approved.

You gave me a NBA Finals. He would have liked that as well.

You gave me a comic book convention and showed me the way to make myself stand apart. My mother smiled on me that day.

But HERE, I have to draw the line.

1992.
Ray, Jay, Trey, Chris and I play Sega Genesis. Our favorite game is NHL Hockey. We have nights that we play this simple game for double digit hours. We all picked our favorite teams, we remained loyal throughout all the itterations of this game. Jay loved his Blackhawks. Ray loved his Devils. Trey stuck with the Dallas Stars. I was torn between two teams. But only these two teams. Regardless of their rankings, I stuck by these teams like they were family.

Boston Bruins (The team I have loved since seeing that a man can truly fly)
Vancouver Canucks (The team that showed me that the true path to greatness is the marraige of skill and heart.

Now, in your infinte jest, you have delivered upon me this quandry. When given everything you ask for, how do you decide what is important?
Do I root for the Canucks? They are so talented.
Do I root for the Bruins? Pop taught me the game watching them on ESPN at Uncle Joe's house.

The Bruins have defined me for a great portion of my life. Ray Bourque broke my heart just as he did the city of Bostons when he jumped ship and became a traitor. I often imagine I am the goalie that stopped that shot Bobby Orr gained infamy on.
But I still get goosebumps thinking of Pavel Bure streaking in on a defenseless goalie.

You are trying to buy my allegiance, God. I can see this with the wisdom you yourself have granted me. In other words I am not fooled. I see the conciliatory nature of your gift and I refuse to accept it. I choose here and now.

I stand behind the Bruins, God.

Do Your Worst.

Favorite All Time Mom Moment

We all have one. For some it's getting that perfect present for Christmas. For others it's having your first really bad boo boo taken care of.
For me, it's art related. I'm certain this comes as little shock to anyone.
I was going to Sunset High School and my art teacher had picked me as the best artist of my school to join similar artists at a DISD sponsored Artist Guild thingy. We met every wednesday at a park rec center and focused on ne aspect of art each time, broadening our scopes. It allowed us to meet like minded people and talk shop. I enjoyed the Hell out of it.

My Art Teacher (Mrs Woods) and I never saw eye to eye. Ever. To this DAY she is still the only art teacher to ever fail me. She saw me helping another student in class and hauled me to the hall for a 20 minute lecture on condecension. We just didn't like each other.

The finale of the Youth Artist's Guild was a gallery showing of our collected best work at City Hall with ALL of Dallas' dignitaries present. The Mayor, teh council, all the leading business people and various reporters and followers. It was a Who's Who of 1987 Dallas. I had submitted a fairly complex painting of a single cloud that garnered a lot of attention. I was not the best artist in this bunch by far. But my cloud painting took everyone off guard. They were expecting a bob when I gave them a weave. A LOT of folks gathered around my painting and were talking to me about it. The Mayor was asking me questions...one of Dallas' premier Black Artists, Arthello Beck was complimenting me on my use of some of the techniques that he taught me when it happened. Mrs Woods walked up to my mother, standing behind me beaming in the adoration of over 20 of Dallas' finest and said in her OUTSIDE Voice, "Mrs Wilbanks? Your Son Has A Potty Mouth!" This stunned everyone present except for mom. She looked at my teacher and laid into her with such...words fail me here. Leave it to say that afterwards, Mrs Woods need have no doubt where I got my Potty Mouth from, be it in this life or the next.

Never been prouder of my Mom.

Happy Mother's Day Mom.
--rog--

So Here's your pound of flesh...

How does it taste?
Does it erase t he memory of your loved ones burning?
Does it replace theimages in YOUR head of people jumping from the towers to their death?
All I see when I think of Osama Bin Ladin are flames and twisted metal. Burning bodies and smoking wreckage. Screaming bystanders and gape-jawwed outsiders. Which are you?
Did YOU die in the flames?
Did YOU jump to your death as I watched?
Did your family or friend roast alive as they waited for some unknown rescuer doomed to his OWN death?
I ask you this as a friend who has felt all of these...where does your satisfaction come from today?
Do you roll out in the streets today to celebrate?
Do you burn candles today in tHANKS?
Do you drink a toast?
How does this make you feel?
I ask you this plainly as I am able. How does us killing another man make you feel?
Do you feel like running the streets as they do in Iran?
As they do in Pakistan?
As they do in Saudi Arabia?
Does our pound of flesh make you feel whole?
This is a very simple question. Does OUR act of savagery make us as a nation better or does it simply make us whole and replace a piece that was missing?
Think of this as you tap the keg and call for a national day of celebration.
We just executed a man. How are we different from them?
It's a simple question.

My Badass Dream

I get these from time to time.  They play out as movies.  I never get to star in them, though I think that would be way cooler.
I always spectate and kind of nudge the action along where I feel it needs to go...like a director.
This one was unique in that it actually features a comic book character of mine in what I think is one of the best action scenes (though you may disagree) I have done yet.

I woke at the very end so alas...it goes no farther.

On Nightmares...

Last night I had nightmares. We all get them, so that in and of itself is nothing worthy of note. I don’t get them that often though. When one does rear its ugly head, I deal with it using techniques I read in Omni Magazine back in the 80’s. That article dealt with something called “Lucid Dreaming” . The thesis of the article was that you can ‘wake up’ in your dream and take control of your environment. Picture the Holodeck from Star Trek. Now imagine that room responding to your thoughts. That article helped arm me against nightmares so that I can usually diffuse them before they get out of hand.
Lastnight, however, the nightmares were different. Or maybe they were the same and I’m just realizing something unique about the nature of nightmares. They came in bunches. Were it not for the storm that was raging outside and waking me up about every 45 minutes to an hour, there is a good chance I sleep through them all and remember nothing.
But remember them I did. I won’t repeat them here. My Demons are well documented. How I deal with them is for me and me alone.

I sensed something going on in my head that night. There was a feeling that came over me when the dream turned the nightmare corner. There was a sensation of ooze. Of a fog that coated the ground. It crept into the dream and carried in its wake the nightmare. It was a peculiar sensation, like theme music marking the entrance of the hero. This signal harbored dark intent. It wanted to scare me. I wanted to scare me.
I have studied just enough about dreams to understand that they are my inner mind’s way of dealing with the issues in my life. In so much as they seek to prepare me mentally to deal with emotions like love, hate and fear. Akin to dipping a toe in the water. But the takeaway from this night was the feeling that some outside force was intruding. I looked down in my dreams as an oily film flowed in from the outside edges, creeping across the floor and recognized it from the previous dreams I had awoken in the middle of. It felt Alien. It felt like it had bad intentions.
The ancient Greeks had a name for the creator of nightmares, EPIALES. They associated his intrusion into the dream as a “feverish chill”. I got the impression that this was an orchestrated assault, and that it wanted a pound of flesh…or the dreamland equivalent of that.
The feeling was as real and familiar as that of any other dream. When I saw this murky crust seeping in, it was telling me to prepare myself. To be on my guard. It was after this introduction that the fun started. Every time.

Enter the fog, cue the guilt nightmare.
Enter the fog, cue the poverty nightmare.
Enter the fog, cue the nightmare I get murdered in.
Enter the fog, cue my dead mother.

It was clockwork. By the end of the night in my dreams, I would see this fog and cue myself to wake up in t he dream. This didn’t prevent the horrible images that were coming my way from being any less graphic, but it did prepare me for them mentally and emotionally.

I feel like I have come face to face with the enemy here. He has tipped his hand.

He picked a stormy night to spill his ooze across my mindscape hoping to frighten me but I don’t frighten much these days. I startle…just like normal people, but I don’t tremble in fear.

The Artist Died

While working today, where I called an art gallery, I was told that they were no longer in business because the artist they represented had died.  I was saddened to hear this.  I've been walking in lockstep with death for far too long now.  But this time something odd happened.  While typing in my notes from the call, I typed the following:
"The Artist"  and stopped.  I couldn't type the last part.  Those 4 letters..."died" would not come.  I sat there for an eternity looking at the computer motionless.  I was frozen in action but not in thought.  My mind raced at a million miles an hour as I sat still.
I began to think about what would happen to MY work when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil.
I have very few completed work.  Most of my Magnum Opusi, Opuses, Opus' (however the hell you pluralize opus) are incomplete.  I have told no one how my many stories will end.  Not out of fear of them spoiling the ending, rather because I want everyone to get the same reaction and Wow factor reading it only after I edit that story for a final time.
I sat there and looked at those two words, "The Artist" and wondered why I had capitalised the word Artist.   My brows crinkled and I got some fleeting thought that I did this out of honor.  But this wasn't true.  I was typing my own obituary.  I capitalised that word because to me...the word Artist is a proper noun.
After what felt like 2-3 minutes, I finally typed the last four letters.   Died.
That's when I became self conscious.  I began to think my coworkers were looking at me.  I wondered what they would say if they knew my story.  These folks I now work with have no clue about the last year of my life and the living Hell it has been. I won't tell them.  I'm not even certain I'll be around them long enough for that to matter...and besides.  I'm fucking sick of talking about it and getting the same reaction every time.   To them, I was just sitting there zoning out.  To me, however, I was in a state of panic.
I felt like a failure for not having finished my stories.  I felt like I was losing this race I'm on with the reaper too fast.  And make no mistake, kid.  We're ALL on that race and it's a rigged contest.  We'll never win.  The best we can hope for is to accomplish something that lives on after we die.  As an Artist, I have that power, but what have I left behind to date aside from a handful of poorly cared for paintings and a filing cabinet full of stories that you will all love if I ever finish them.  You want to know what it was like during 260BC? Got that one.  You want to live life in the trenches of WWI France?  Got that.  You want an existential analogy on the merits of good and evil set in Purgatory?  I got that one too.  But they are all in folders.  Incomplete sketches, the lot of them.
If the reaper were to claim me tonight in my sleep, what would happen to them?  Would I be able to trust my family to treat them with the respect they demand?  Would they be placed in hands that could do better than mine?  or would they simply be placed in a large crate and buried in teh earth alongside me?
As I looked at the words "The Artist died...." having just grated my own soul thinking about what would happen to my work when I kick off, I remembered the reason I typed those words.  I thought about the Artist I had called about. He died in his 70's.  He had some pretty good art.  He lived a good life and died with many, many friends.  In the greater scheme of things I would say he won at life. 
I felt guilty for bemoaning my far off demise (fingers crossed) when this man had in fact beaten me to it.  But then the arrogant bastard in me stood up and said "Your work is more important than his, Roger.  Your work will bring feeling to people in a way he never could with just those paintings."  My arrogant side is pretty adamant about things like this.  I agreed in this case.  There may be someone 10 years from now who reads my Suicide Story and it changes his life.  Perhaps someone will meet Eugene, My hitman with a past and not make the same mistakes he made.  I am so much more these days than an Artist.  That's not arrogance talking, it's fact.  As a Writer (yes, I capitalise THAT one as well) I have an aspect he didn't have.  That doesn't make his loss lesser.  It doesn't make my contribution greater.  I just think I have more work to get done.  And hopefully, someone will get out of that work something that will help them.  Wishful thinking, I know.  Odds are I'll die as anonymous as I lived.  With only you generous few there cheering me on as I ride the lightning.  But I like to think I am meant for greater things.  As Browning said, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp...or else what is a Heaven for?"