Vaccinate Vaccinate Vaccinate

Kaliah Dailyn Holly Jeffery

Yesterday a high school friend's niece lost a 26-day-old baby to whooping cough. It's tragic, heartbreaking, and needn't have happened.

Infants can't be immunized for Pertussis -- and all it takes is one cough from an infected unimmunized person and that baby's got the fight of their short little life ahead of them.

I have friends who don't believe in immunizing -- and for unscientific, not very convincing reasons. Quite honestly, they make me furious, and I'm someone who usually tries to respect personal choices. But this life-ending bacterial disease could be wiped out -- like small pox has been (at least in the wild) -- if people wouldn't be so selfish or ignorant. When they choose not to vaccinate their of-age child, they run the risk of ending another life. Wow.

I'm posting this in memory of little Kaliah Jeffery, and thinking of her heartbroken young parents today.

My friend's family is trying to raise money for the grieving parents, and I just found out I can send money to an account to help them pay her medical expenses. I'll be doing that today. Here's the info if you'd like to help, too:

A Wells Fargo account has been opened.

Kash for Kaliah
Routing number: 125008547
account number: 2171652304

You can directly deposit ANY funds from your own bank to Wells Fargo or Wachovia Banks all around the country, or just directly go to the branch.

-Anjie

Class Writing Prompt Gets Personal -- Warning: This Ends with an Obituary

Today I subbed for my friend Beth. I met with her Writing 115 class and started by reading them "The Masked Marvel's Last Toe-hold" by Richard Selzer.

It's a narrative essay depicting Dr. Richard Selzer's experience of amputating former wrestler Elihu Koontz's legs. It's an excellent story of power and the loss or exchange of it, of shifted roles, of love and compassion. It's one of my favorite essays ever and Beth's students analyzed it beautifully.

They analyzed for structure, use of details, language, repetition, and thesis.

Then I asked them to write. I asked them to take risks they might not usually take, but were inspired to by Selzer's piece. I asked them to think about their details, possible repetitions, the use of memories. Here's what we came up with as a prompt: Describe someone you knew in their prime and where they are now.

After 20 minutes of writing, here are some of the essay topics students wrote about:

*One man wrote about the uncle he adored throughout childhood. He wrote of following his uncle around as he fixed cars, played guitar, drew cartoons. He wrote of how his uncle joined the Air Force and came back in his uniform. The writer was a teenager by then, but still followed him around admiring every aspect of him. Then his uncle was diagnosed with cancer and ultimately succumbed to it. This writer tried not to show emotion as he shared his writing, but his words showed it. When he finished, he told me he'd be saving that piece of writing, as he's never written it out before.

*Another writer took another approach. She wrote about "The High School Slut," which we all laughed about. However, what she wrote was poignant. She wrote that this girl had had two babies in high school, one at 15 and one at 17. A medical emergency led to the removal of her uterus at age 20, though, and the "slut" realized she never would have had those children had she not had babies in her teens. She became grateful. In turn, she's now a grandmother of 12 and is a happy, solid family woman, and is one of the writer's dearest friends.

Those are just a couple examples.

I love how good writing inspires us to go deep, to push ourselves beyond what we would normally sit down to focus on in writing.

I wrote along with them. I didn't know this prompt was going to lead me to write about this, but it did. It's rough; it could use better details and imagery; it could show more and tell less. But I'll share it anyway. It makes me quite sad.

***

My friend Kevin S. killed himself last week. This has brought me great sadness.

In high school, Kevin was this vibrant, chatty, smiling, busy person. He used to ski with his pals and tease my friend Tracy that she was the only skier he knew who wore perfume and hair spray on the slopes. He also used to hug everybody. In fact, every time he came over to my house, my step-dad would say, "Why's that guy always hugging you?" We used to laugh about this, but the truth was it was fabulous to get hugs from Kevin. There was no threatening undercurrent of a sexual come-on. Really, it was just that Kevin had a lot of love to share and his hugs meant he really liked you. I don't think it got any simpler than that.

After high school, Kevin went on to college at WWU as did a lot of his high school friends. There, he kept close tabs on all his friends, bicycling, skiing, going to the movies, arranging crazy group events like In-N-Out runs to California or U2 concerts in Canada. He even drummed up The Rosebud Society, a weekly poetry-reading event by candlelight on his living room floor.

After Kevin and all his friends eventually graduated from college, he continued to live an interesting life. He bicycled across America. He took a long-awaited trip to Ireland with his mother, who was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. He got a job as a high school math teacher.

Somewhere in there, though, he started to isolate himself from friends and family and colleagues. For the next ten years, I hear he essentially stayed in his basement, stepping out rarely. It's said he used his computer round the clock, but without any interactions with his old friends. Old friends saw him occasionally. Mick and I even saw him 5 years ago right before we left for San Francisco and dental school. Kevin crawled out of his cave briefly, overweight and quieter, to join us in a little barbecue. We'd hoped his re-surfacing had meant he'd be engaging in a physical social life again. But that didn't happen.

A few weeks ago, some of his other good pals stopped by to see him. They said Kevin was obese, pizza boxes lay strewn everywhere, and his ankles and feet were ashen gray. One friend says, "I'm a counselor. Why didn't I see what was coming?"

Later that month, news spread over the phone and Facebook that Kevin S. was dead. I learned he had taken his own life.

You should've seen all the posts of sadness, of sweet memories, of mourning the loss of a person so special to so many.

In the aftermath of such news, I can't help but reflect on the joy and zest Kevin held for life in the years I was close to him. I can't help but wonder why he cut himself off from his friends and chose to live in seclusion. But I am sure intuitively that the mere fact that he lived in solitude in a basement meant he was no longer giving out hugs -- and that alone might have just made his heart shrivel up and ache to be done with it all.

Rest in peace, Kevin. Rosebud...

Goodbye, #22

Last night my old friend Larry from high school left me a message to call him. Larry's wife is sick and due to have a kidney transplant, so I was worried he might have bad news.

He had bad news, but it wasn't about Tammy. It was about Brian Drugge (pronounced "druggy").

Turns out, Brian Drugge died of colon cancer this week. He was 39.

Brian was this really quiet, really amazing athlete who went to our high school. He was short, like 5'5", and was thick and swift-footed and easy-going. He started on varsity teams for baseball and football - and he always wore the number 22.

He had this noticeable sweet adoration from his teammates, and I don't think I ever heard a bad word about him. From anyone.

It was so hard to hear that Larry, perhaps like a lot of Brian's old buddies, was so sad that he didn't even know Brian was suffering. "Why didn't I know?" Larry asks during our phone call. "Why didn't he tell any of us, so we could..." Larry couldn't finish.

"So you could show him you cared?" I venture.

Larry's quiet. "Yeah..."

The other thing that makes me sad is knowing how colon cancer ravages the body. Brian's death reminds me of my dad's 52-year-old bird frame, all elbows and knuckles and teeth, after colon cancer ravaged his 6'3" body.

Brian was so compact and broad and muscular. I picture him reduced to that smallness and stillness and think it's just so contrary to what most of us ever knew him to be. I can't shake that image from my head.

He's survived by parents, siblings, a wife, 3 daughters. That's heartbreaking, too.

Rest in Peace, Brian Drugge. Even those of us far away still think of you fondly.

*
Friends, if you have anything to add, please share. (Karen?)

In Memory of Ruth

Ruth Scott was one of those members you can't miss. She was older than many of us at the Writing Mamas, somewhere in her seventies, and she spoke energetically and with wisdom. She also spoke often. That's the part that sometimes created detours in our meetings that slightly infuriated me (yes, I'll admit that) -- but usually her stories and insights were memorable for all of us. She was real and thoughtful and had depth of perspective that was special.

Occasionally, she commented on the Writing Mamas' blog site. One of my favorite comments ever came from her. I had written that I couldn't stop crying for the multi-layered losses a high school friend had endured, reflecting on how fiercely we pray not to lose those closest to us. Ruth commented:

I find it amazing that anyone is brave enough to have a child, to love another, as loss is always a possibility. Yet without the risk what is life. I know everyone has a sorrow. I go out everyday trying to not add a burden to anyone as I know they may already be overburdened. We are all interconnected in everyway. Beware that fear of losing someone can cause anxiety and over-protection and this too can be destructive. Ruth Scott

She had loved, lost, risked, gained, and survived - and had powerful thoughts on how to meet our challenges.

Ruth died last week, unexpectedly, quietly, in her sleep, after spending the holidays with all of her children and all of her grandchildren.

Here's her essay, which The Marin Independent Journal published yesterday at the request of The Writing Mamas.

Read it. You'll catch a glimpse of what we all loved about her, and what we will dearly miss.

***

HOW IT IS: FIRST TIMES CAN'T QUITE COMPARE WITH LAST TIMES
By Ruth Scott


At 39, I had cancer.

During the week before surgery, I was walking down the street in Mill Valley holding the hands of my 4-year-old daughter, Ann, and my 7-year-old daughter, Alison.

In their other hands they each held an ice cream cone. I remember extreme awareness of my surroundings as I thought to myself, "If this is all there is, then I am blessed." At that moment I saw every leaf on the tree before me as individual, unique and important, yet interconnected to the whole. I've never forgotten that moment. I later heard someone describe a similar feeling that they had experienced with psychedelic, acid-type drugs.

I could understand why they would want to have this experience again. Life with cancer had given me a blessing. I felt centered, free to be in the moment.

Twenty years later I had my second cancer. One of my thinking processes at these times was to accept death, and try to learn its lessons. I wrote, "Thoughts of death bring sweet return, when from them more of life we've learned."

If you do not live, you have little use for this lesson, but there is always the chance that you will have time to practice what you have learned. I admit that I have learned many more things than I have been able to put into practice. I believe it was Goethe who wrote, "A seeker of truth is a student of death."

I believe this is true.

I created a game, a habit, of looking at or experiencing things as if it were "for the last time." We go through life learning new things, doing them for the first time. First we learn to see. Our eyes do not focus so vision must be practiced and learned, and it really is exciting if only we could remember. You can watch a child take his first step and see the joy and excitement it brings. We may record his first spoken word.

There is a different excitement and joy that comes from doing things and seeing things for the last time. There is a sense of appreciation and thankfulness, a gratitude for having the experience that a "first" cannot compete with.

To watch my grandchild take her first step is magnified and appreciated for perhaps I will never again experience that moment when a child launches herself into the bipedal upright stance. I savor the moment as I do all the times in the last few years that I have skied down the perfect slope on a clear winter day for the last time.

This summer I jumped off a cliff on Long Lake below Mt. Elwell, again, for the last time. The height scares the grandchildren; the cold of the lake challenges me, but it's there and the "last time" makes it seem easier, not so cold. "I won't have to do this again," I say, and I jump. My grandchildren may return at 75 and remember, saying, "Well, Grandmom did it, so can I."

Perhaps, I'll inspire from the grave what I could not inspire in life.

I climb again to my favorite pine that grows high on a rock over Big Bear Lake. It is alone, and one cannot see any soil around its trunk, only rock. Year after year this pine is still there, facing winter storms, the cold and the weight of wind and snow, and still it survives, bonsai, and beautiful. I come back every year for the "last time" receiving comfort and strength. "If you can make it, I can make it," I say to this tree, my friend and inspiration.

I can walk through Mill Valley for the last time and it's amazing what I see and review and I am renewed. It is enough to have had each experience and if it is the last of the last times I am fortunate to have appreciated each moment in time.

First times you can only have once; last times you can experience over and over again.

***

Click here to read more of her writings.

TODAY I REALLY MISS MY DAD

It's been sixteen years this week since my dad died of colon cancer. When I reflect on what this means, I almost can't breathe -- for reasons like: wow, sixteen is the number of years it took before I got my drivers license or had my first date, or that sixteen is just Dane times two, or that it's been sixteen years since I last saw him skeletal, wretching and pale, crying that he'd never see me get married or meet his grandchildren.

Not all thoughts are so harsh, though. If I reach out and grasp some of the memories floating around in my brain, I think of things like sailing on his 32-foot sailboat in the Puget Sound with him when I was seven -- he bought my cousin and me matching blue t-shirts with fuzzy white lettering on the front that said DECK TOAD because we couldn't sit still on the boat; I think of that same sailboat charred beyond repair when arsonists lit it up a year or so later after he'd restored all the teak wood beautifully (the newspapers wrote it up as arson possibly as a direct link to his role as a sheriff's deputy).

I think of swimming with him at one of his girlfriends' houses (he had many girlfriends, much to my dismay), but we just got crazy doing dives and splashes, he made his normally flat, short hair stand on end and posed for the camera with me with a wild look in his eyes, and he let me put a red bandana around my head and wear his 70s glasses for another goofy pose.


I think of years and years of camping with him, pitching our tents up alongside a river, playing Acey-Deucey, Backgammon, Fish and War while swatting mosquitos, later fishing or catching crawdaddies to sizzle in butter. We went through a lot of different vehicles along the way, the old light blue soft-top (I think) Range Rover, the red VW station wagon, a couple of Ford Broncos.


Top music favs: one summer it was Rocky IIIs "Eye of the Tiger," which we saw together and loved -- he let me play it over and over for miles of open highway. I also remember Fleetwood Mac, the album with a ponytailed guy with his foot up on a chair. And I'll never ever in a million years forget "Ghostriders in the Sky," played over and over, because whenever it came to the part where the old cowboy "heard one call his name" my dad would yell, "Hey, Anjie!" and I'd barely be able to contain myself.

When he died, I didn't get much of his stuff, but I did get a box of photos and small mementos and even some poems he wrote. As his daughter, it was very moving to find what he'd kept of mine -- besides the photos, there were school programs, team certificates, and cards I'd made for him.

And among the photos, his sense of humor was captured. He had a wicked streak that I appreciate even more now that I'm an adult. But just in case you missed it up above, here's a bit of his legacy that I'm so glad has lasted.

I sure miss this guy.

William Lewis Seewer
b. June 4, 1941
d. October 28, 1992

R.I.P., Daddy-o.

Gramps died at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning. His service is Saturday in Yakima; I'll stay at Soapstone but I'll be thinking of him and the rest of his/our family in Washington, California, and, of course, Texas. Peace.

A Loving Act

Gramps is dying. My mom called last night to give me the most recent news. After months of dramatic decline, her father is back in the hospital and it now looks as if he’ll never return to the life he once knew.

My Gram, after 65 years of marriage, has had to make a heartbreaking decision: “I hope you’re not going to hate me,” she whispers to my mom on the phone. Gramps is back in the hospital with a lung infection after his food has been going down the wrong passageway, and, given the other complications of his health, the only way to sustain him now would be to use a feeding tube, and that doubles him up with more pain. “I’ve decided he should not have the tube,” Gram says, her voice breaking.

My mother’s been thinking about Gramps’ suffering for months now. “This is a loving act, Mom,” she chokes out. “You’re honoring his life.”

Thankfully, my mother’s siblings agree. Besides, this is in keeping with Gramps’ living will – that no extreme measures be taken to keep him alive should his body start to shut down. Like this.

She’s honoring the life of the family man, the soldier, the salesman, the farmer, the roofer (even into his eighties, much to Gram’s chagrin). She's honoring the life of the boy who was forced to leave home at twelve to live on the banks of the Salmon River, the man who could tell stories as long and meandering as that river.

So, tomorrow I fly two states away and return the next day, hopefully with my goodbyes rightly said. I bring with me images of a tire swing in the carport, whittling on the porch with our pocket knives, and waiting for fish to bite in a little boat in the middle of a lake on a black night.

I also bring knowledge of a body now weaker, morphine for pain, and an uncharacteristic inability to speak. Because Gramps, after all, is dying.

DREAM VISIT

A friend of mine is writing a book about the ways the dead or dying connect with the living. She's collecting real experiences and asked my writing group if anyone had an experience to tell her about. This is the email I just sent her. It's definitely in free-write/condensed form, and the contents may be a bit sappy for some, but I decided to post it anyway.

***

My dad died of colon cancer 5 days before my 22nd birthday. Ours was a strained, disappointed relationship for years even though we were pretty crazy about each other (he and my mom divorced when I was 3 and I hadn't lived with him since then, but I ALWAYS missed him, which was a lot of the disappointment part).

He told me he had cancer in May of '92, just before I was supposed to head to Alaska for my first summer as a driver/tour guide. He wouldn't let me stay home to care for him because he said I needed to experience our Last Frontier (he was a wild cowboy sheriff type) -- and he said he wasn't all that bad. I left reluctantly and kept in touch with occasional letters and phone calls, usually gushing about how exciting my life was. He was happy/receptive and didn't let on much about his condition. I had no idea how heroic or self-sacrificing he was being.

When I came home that October he called me and said he needed to see me. I went to his ranch where I was horribly, painfully surprised: he was this retching, retched skeleton of a man -- a 100 pound fragment of the 6'4" healthy father I'd always known -- and nobody had told me the truth about his condition. We had our awful, awkward bawling (last) words and embraces; I left numb and scared and sad and furious with myself for spending my summer in such oblivion when I could've been spending that time caring for and loving my dad, mending things with him. He died a week later, which, somehow I also hadn't really expected. I wasn't even there for that, which I also regretted.

That back story seems significant to understanding, then, the tremendous peace and warmth I felt the week after his memorial service, when I had an incredibly vivid dream: one morning I woke up feeling like I'd spent the entire night in his (healthy) presence -- I heard his laughter, felt his hand on my head, listened to him say how proud he was of me and how much he loved me. We'd spent the whole night just talking and visiting. When I woke up, I felt like we'd lovingly sent each other off on our separate journeys, sure of what we'd meant to each other, like everything was ok even though it had all gone so very weirdly. I simply laid in bed for an hour or so after that dream/visit, feeling what it had felt like to be with him, but sensing that feeling his presence was fleeting too.