February 8: Amazingly Good at His Job, F-Bombs, A Mask

Back to the reception committee on the planet Damogran . . .

It consisted in large part of the engineers and researchers who had built the Heart of Gold--mostly humanoid, but here and there were a few reptiloid atomineers, two or three green sylphlike maximegalacticians, an octopoid physucturalist or two and Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a superinteligent shade of the color blue).  All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multicolored ceremonial lab coats:  the Hooloovoo had been temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism for the occasion.

There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them.  Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained, twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his neck.  (An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wore.)  It might not even have made much difference to them if they'd known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually wielded:  none at all.  Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.

The crowd gasped, dazzled by sun and seamanship, as the presidential speedboat zipped round the headland into the bay.  It flashed and shone as it came skating over the sea in wide skidding turns.

In fact, it didn't need to touch the water at all, because it was supported on a hazy cushion of ionized atoms, but just for effect it was fitted with thin finblades which could be lowered into the water.  They slashed sheets of water hissing into the air, curved deep gashes in the sea which swayed crazily and sank back foaming in the boat's wake as it careered across the bay.

Zaphod loved effect:  it was what he was best at. 

Yes, some people thrive on attention.  Crave it, even.  Zaphod certainly does.  That's his job:  to distract.  He wields no actual power as President of the Galaxy.  Instead, he zooms around in boats and dazzles onlookers.  That's what everyone expects.  A show.

In a strange way, I think I'm a lot like Zaphod.  I put on a good show, in the classroom, at work.  I fool people into thinking that I'm always positive and happy and funny.  It can be exhausting, especially at the end of a week where being happy and positive has been difficult.  Sitting here, at my kitchen table, pounding away on this keyboard, I'm feeling . . . tired.

I know that, come Monday, people are going to expect me to rally my spirits, move on with the task at hand:  closing the place where I've worked for over 20 years.  I have to admit that I've been dropping a lot of f-bombs today, as in "I f---ing hate this place" and "F--- the whole healthcare system in this country" and "I just don't plain f---ing care anymore."  That's just an f-sampling.  If I were to make a full f-list, it would be quite long and extensive.

I guess I feel as though I've labored at a job for close to half my life, and it's going to be erased in the space of three weeks.  The powers-that-be don't get that.  It's just a liquidation, an entry in a computer that will be deleted to them.  They don't have to see the people they're affecting.  Don't have to look into their eyes and tell them they don't matter.  It's easy for CEOs and CFOs and CMOs (basically all the ass-Os that exist) to make life-changing decisions and then go home to their beautiful lives and cars and dinners and vacations and tax exemptions.

I know the stages of grief.  I know that I'm stuck in anger right now.  Drove to the cemetery after working today, sat in my car, looked at the snow piled on top of my sister's stone, and cried for quite a while.  The few long-time readers of this blog know I have a problem when change is thrust upon me.  It takes me a while to process it.  A long while.

Tonight, my wife and I are going out to dinner.  I plan to have a few drinks. (maybe more than a few).  Had a hard time keeping on my happy/positive mask at work today.  When I got home, I set that mask aside, along with my patience, calm, and sense of humor.

Saint Marty is not a pleasant person to be around at the moment.



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Octrober 28: Wife's Funeral, Backs on God, Stages of Grief

Billy had to miss his wife's funeral because he was still so sick.  He was conscious, though, while Valencia was being put into the ground in Ilium.  Billy hadn't said much since regaining consciousness, hadn't responded very elaborately to the news of Valencia's death and Robert's coming home from the war and so on--so it was generally believed that he was a vegetable.  There was talk of performing an operation on him later, one which might improve the circulation of blood to his brain.

Actually, Billy's outward listlessness was a screen.  The listlessness concealed a mind which was fizzing and flashing thrillingly.  It was preparing letters and lectures about the flying saucers, the negligibility of death, and the true nature of time.

Billy isn't too upset about the death of his wife, Valencia, because he knew it was coming.  He also knows that, because of the "true nature of time," he will soon see her alive and well again.  Will make love to her on their wedding night.  Will give her a beautiful ring on their wedding anniversary.  Will say "I do" to her again.  Her funeral is not the end.  Billy will see her again, because time is not a straight line.  It's an M. C. Escher painting, curving back into itself, one hand drawing another hand drawing a hand.

I wish that my concept of time was more like Billy's.  That would make loss much easier.  However, I am stuck in chronology, as is almost every human being, except, maybe, schizophrenics and saints.  So, when a person dies, it's a permanent thing.  Now, if you are a follower of any major religion, death is simply a transition into something, hopefully, better.  More joyful.  Free of the pain and troubles of everyday life.

Two of my sisters have turned their backs on God and religion because of my other sister's death.  They say they are angry at God for letting it happen.  So, they don't want to have anything to do with Him.  Of course, this is just an excuse to not deal with their grief in any way.  They are looking for someone to blame, and God has pretty big shoulders to carry that burden.

Of course, it's a lot easier to blame God for the bad things that happen in life than to accept any responsibility for them.  I'm not saying that my two angry sisters are to blame for our sister's death.  They're not.  My sister died of lymphoma of the brain.  But my sisters are compounding their anger and sadness by not seeking any kind of peace with what happened.  They are stuck in stages three and four of grief (Anger/Bargaining and Depression/Loneliness).  They cling to these emotions like they're some kind of life preserver.  They're drowning.  Happy in their misery.

They are sad, angry, lost people right now.  I hope, some day, that they can somehow return some light into their lives.  Right now, however, they have big, God-sized holes that they're trying to fill with pain, grief, and fury.  It's not working for them, but they don't see it.

Today, Saint Marty is thankful for having hope in his life.

June 7: Put Their Weapons Down, Anger and Bargaining, Choices

Now the head Englishman came into the hospital to check on Billy.  He was an infantry colonel captured at Dunkirk.  It was he who had given Billy morphine.  There wasn't a real doctor in the compound, so the doctoring was up to him.  "How's the patient?" he asked Derby.

"Dead to the world."

"But not actually dead."

"No."

"How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."

Derby now came to lugubrious attention.

"No--no--please--as you were.  With only two men for each officer, and all the men sick, I think we can do without the usual pageantry between officers and men."

Derby remained standing.  "You seem older than the rest," said the colonel.

Derby told him he was forty-five, which was two years older than the colonel.  The colonel said that the other Americans had all shaved now, that Billy and Derby were the only two still with beards.  And he said, "You know--we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves.  We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies.  When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock.  'My God, my God--' I said to myself.  'It's the Children's Crusade.'"

The colonel asked old Derby how he had been captured, and Derby told a tale of being in a clump of trees with about a hundred other frightened soldiers.  The battle had been going on for five days.  The hundred had been driven into the trees by tanks.

Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don't want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more.  Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives and needles and razorblades.  Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.

A lot of people were being wounded or killed.  So it goes.

Then the shelling stopped, and a hidden German with a loudspeaker told the Americans to put their weapons down and come out of the woods with their hands on the top of their heads, or the shelling would start again.  It wouldn't stop until everybody in there was dead.

So the Americans put their weapons down, and they came out of the woods with their hands on top of their heads, because they wanted to go on living, if they possibly could.

The American soldiers--babies, as the colonel calls them--have a choice.  They can either live as prisoners of war or die as casualties of war.  Neither choice is very appealing.  Like most political elections, it's a matter of the lesser of two evils.  There is a good possibility that, once they surrender, the Americans will be killed by the Germans anyway.  But, if they come out of the woods with their hands on top of their heads, the Americans have the hope of survival.  They go with hope.

My brother returned from the Grand Rapids hospital on Saturday night, and he's currently staying at my parents' house.  He is wearing a vest which monitors his heart rate and, if any problems arise, will administer shocks to restart his heart.  He is also toting around a pump which supplies medication to combat his congestive heart failure.  In other words, he's doing better, but he is greatly limited in what he can do.

I think my brother is having a difficult time with his situation.  This is a guy who likes being alone.  In fact, I would say that he needs to be alone.  At the moment, this kind of independence is not really realistic for him.  He's a very sick man, and he needs to be looked after.  And he hates it.

In the little time that I've been able to be around him, he's been argumentative and bullying.  He picks fights for the sake of picking fights.  He's looking for excuses to run away, be by himself, even if he knows that it might kill him.  It's a combination of two stages of grief--anger and bargaining, I think.  Anger's winning at the moment.

My brother is a grown man.  He's no baby.  He can make his own choices and live with their consequences.  A lot of people have gone to great lengths to keep him alive.  Now it's up to him whether he wants to continue with his treatment properly.  If he stays angry and belligerent, he will shorten his life even more, I think.  Stress can kill healthy people, and my brother is not healthy.

I love him.  I want him to take care of himself.  But, sometimes, he's kind of an asshole.  That's the way he's always been, and he's too old to change.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for possibility and choices.