August 24: "Obituaries," Coma, Clyde

I have a confession:  I never thought I would live as long as I have.

When I was 13 years old, I ended up in a coma in the hospital.  My blood sugar was close to 1000.  The nurses and doctors had trouble even starting an IV on me.  While my mother and father were in the waiting room, they heard one nurse say to another nurse, "We have a kid in ICU, and I don't think he's going to make it."  

I wish I could relate some amazing near-death story about a bright light and angels and having French fries with Jesus at McDonald's.  Can't do that.  Here is what I remember:  being really, really sick at home, falling asleep on the couch in the living room, then waking up about a day-and-a-half later in the hospital.  I was lucky.  Really lucky.

Since that time, I've had several more brushes with death over the years.  ER visits.  Ambulances at my house.  Paramedics working on me in my bedroom.  Seizures.  No tunnels of light or dead relatives telling me, "It's not your time."  But I am on a first name basis with Death.  If you're wondering, his name is Clyde.

Billy Collins checks to see if he is still alive . . .

Obituaries

by: Billy Collins

These are no pages for the young,
who are better off in one another's arms,

nor for those who just need to know
about the price of gold,
or a hurricane that is ripping up the Keys.

But eventually you may join
the crowd who turn here first to see
who has fallen in the night,
who has left a shape of air walking in their place.

Here is where the final cards are shown,
the age, the cause, the plaque of deeds,
and sometimes an odd scrap of news-
that she collected sugar bowls,
that he played solitaire without any clothes.

And all the survivors huddle at the end
under the roof of a paragraph
as if they had sidestepped the flame of death.

What better way to place a thin black frame
around the things of the morning-
the hand-painted cup,
the hemispheres of a cut orange,
the slant of sunlight on the table?

And sometimes a most peculiar pair turns up,
strange roommates lying there
side by side upon the page-
Arthur Godfrey next to Man Ray,
Ken Kesey by the side of Dale Evans.

It is enough to bring to mind an ark of death,
not the couples of the animal kingdom,
but rather pairs of men and women
ascending the gangplank two by two,

surgeon and model,
balloonist and metalworker,
an archaeologist and an authority on pain.

Arm in arm, they get on board
then join the others leaning on the rails,
all saved at last from the awful flood of life-

so many of them every day
there would have to be many arks,
an armada to ferry the dead
over the heavy waters that roll beyond the world,

and many Noahs too,
bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant up there at every prow.

I don't haunt the obituary section of my local newspaper.  I have noticed, however, that a lot of people closer to my age are shuffling off this mortal coil, as my friend Bill Shakespeare once said.  Do I still think I will be having a close encounter with Clyde soon?  I don't know.  But I have made it a lot longer than I expected when I was a teenager.

Saint Marty does hope to live long enough to see the first woman President of the United States.  That at least gives him a few months.

July 18: "Building with Its Face Blown Off," Modem and Router, Lucky

Billy Collins writes about war . . . 

Building with Its Face Blown Off

by: Billy Collins

How suddenly the private

is revealed in a bombed-out city,

how the blue and white striped wallpaper

of a second story bedroom is now

exposed to the lightly falling snow

as if the room had answered the explosion

wearing only its striped pajamas.

Some neighbors and soldiers

poke around in the rubble below

and stare up at the hanging staircase,

the portrait of a grandfather,

a door dangling from a single hinge.

And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed

by its uncovered ochre walls,

the twisted mess of its plumbing,

the sink sinking to its knees,

the ripped shower curtain,

the torn goldfish trailing bubbles.

It's like a dollhouse view

as if a child on its knees could reach in

and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.

Or it might be a room on a stage

in a play with no characters,

no dialogue or audience,

no beginning, middle, and end--

just the broken furniture in the street,

a shoe among the cinder blocks,

a light snow still falling

on a distant steeple, and people

crossing a bridge that still stands.

And beyond that--crows in tree,

the statue of a leader on a horse,

and clouds that look like smoke,

and even farther on, in another country

on a blanket under a shade tree,

a man pouring wine into two glasses

and a woman sliding out

the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper

filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.

No, I'm not going to write about Ukraine or Gaza tonight, although Collins' poem lends itself well to these topics.  There are innocent people dying all over the world due to the ravages of war.  Thousands of them.  Men, women, children.  Young and old.  War doesn't discriminate.

Meanwhile, in my first world existence, I had to hang around my house this morning for the cable guy to show up.  (Can I call him the cable guy if I don't have cable anymore?)  My router and modem decided to become enemies at around 11:30 last night, and I was up until 2 a.m. trying to fix them.  I wasn't successful, so I called for help from a technician.  

When he showed up about two hours late, said technician poked around a little bit.  Tested all of my devices.  Replaced my modem.  Reset my router.  Got me back in business.  First world problem, I know, but it was pretty annoying.

Tonight, I hosted an online open mic.  Only two other people showed up, and one of them was my wife.  Despite the scarcity of attendees, it was a really good evening of sharing and revealing with people I love and care about.

Speaking of which, my niece and son had a down day at home, since I had to work.  I didn't force them to hike up a mountain or push them off a cliff into Lake Superior or make them go hunt Bigfoot.  One of my son's friends came over in the evening to hang out with them.  Abby is an artist, so she took some time to sketch and draw today.

The world is such a strange place.  While I'm going about my little life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, other people are fighting for their lives against bombs and bullets.  The United States is fractured by politics, and my house is filled with laughter and love and creativity.

Saint Marty sometimes forgets how lucky he is.

April 20: Marley's Face, Knocker, Reflections

...And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change:  not a knocker, but Marley's face.

Marley's face.  It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.  It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look:  with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead.  The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless.  That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than part of its own expression.

Anybody familiar with A Christmas Carol, in movie or book form, is familiar with this moment.  Scrooge, unlocking the door to his house, has his first encounter with the ghost of Jacob Marley.  The knocker on the door becomes the head of Scrooge's dead partner.  Dickens' description is enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck, especially if you're reading the book late at night or early in the morning, as I usually am.

Most days, I think , everybody is chased by ghosts from the past.  The ghosts don't even necessarily have to be the ghosts of deceased persons.  For example, this morning, I've been haunted by my pastor friend who moved to a downstate church about three years ago.  I still see him about once or twice a year.  We speak on the phone every couple of weeks.  He's still in my life, in a distant way.  However, today, he seems really close to me, his face in front of my face, his voice in my ears.  Don't know why.  He's one of my best friends.  I miss him terribly.  But, usually, he's not quite so...present in my daily existence.

On my computer at work, I have a photo collage of my kids as a screen saver.  It cycles through about 30 or 40 pictures of my son and daughter.  In some of the pictures, my children are  two years younger than they are now. That might not seem like a big difference if you're my age (between 30 and dead), but for kids, those two years are dog years--the equivalent of like 14 years.  My son is no longer the chubby baby in some of the photos, and my daughter has transformed from a goofy nine-year-old into a gorgeous pre-teenager.  It's a little depressing staring at their ghosts, reflecting on how much they have changed.

Then again, I'm not the same person I was two years ago.  I'm older, hopefully a little wiser.  I've had some difficult moments.  I've had some joyous moments.  I get tired a lot earlier.  I stay at home a lot more.  I'm different.  The person I was two years ago is a ghost.

Some of the ghosts I have in my life are pleasant, give me comfort.  I like looking at the pictures of my kids on my computer at work.  Some of the ghosts are distracting, full of longing for missing friends.  I will probably call my pastor friend some time today.  And some of the ghosts remind me how much I have learned in my life.  I love my wife.  I love my kids.  I am lucky.

Saint Marty is a haunted man.

Knock, knock!