Category Archives: friends

friends, funeral, weather

I’m Back

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I got back from playing corporate spouse last night. More on that later.

Just before I left, I learned of the death of my life long friend G’s mother. (G was my wing man when I first went out with L and one of the groomsmen in our wedding, amidst other things.) Since G and I have been friends since 4th grade almost 45 years ago, it also meant that I spent a lot of time at his house and around his mom as we grew up. In any case, her funeral was this morning and I got back in time to attend and then spend time with G and family.

The service was interesting because, rather than the usual sorrow and loss, there was a great sense of relief that Shirley (G’s mom) had passed on to better things. She suffered from aggressive Alzheimer’s and had reached the point where she no longer even remembered how to feed herself. As G’s sister, who had cared for Shirley at her home for the last several years said, “I lost my mother years ago, I just followed my nurse’s training and took care a body that reminded me of her.” So it was a bittersweet affair. We all had memories of the person who was Shirley, but had already gone through the loss of that person.

The burial was at one of the local rural cemeteries.  Of course it was already 95 degrees and the sun was blazing on the treeless prairie around the cemetery at the time. Then there was a lunch at the Masonic Lodge for family and friends. (Shirley was a 50 year member of Eastern Star.) It was there that I got a chance to do some visiting up with G. On top of the death of his mother, tomorrow he finds out if he still has a job. He is an engineer on the NASA booster project that has been used as a political football of recent months. Think positive thoughts for him.

Good night for now.

friends, mother's day, weather

A Rambling Post to Prevent Three Short Ones

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Earlier in the week, I got a phone call out of the blue from someone I hadn’t spoken to or thought of since high school some 38 years ago. It took me a moment to get over the shock, but then we visited for a bit and he got around to the real point of the call – he was trying to locate a mutual third acquaintance from high school since he had decided to resume an earlier career in photography and the mutual friend was a professional photographer and cameraman. I had to disappoint and tell him that the last time I had visited with our mutual acquaintance was 20 years ago. At that time he was a camera man for CNN and we were both based in LA, but I hadn’t heard much from him since leaving LA.

Saturday was the mother-daughter lunch at the church, so L and MIL had a good time here while I toiled away getting the packets for tonight’s board meeting done. Then in the afternoon our friend came over to visit and them take us out to supper. G, the friend, was in town for the sad task of assisting his brother and sister arrange hospice care for their mother. It is sad; their mother has reached the point where she recognizes none of the kids and is in that petulant imaginary baby stage of advanced dementia. G and I have known and hung out with each other since grade school, more than 45 years ago. So we know each others moms well – we spent many a supper eating at each others house and driving G’s older sister crazy as kids. Now we have both lost our fathers and are a part of what my cohort calls the fatherless generation since we are at the age where most of our fathers are gone. Before too long we will become the parent-less generation as our mothers reach that event horizon. It is sad to contemplate.

Anyway, G and L and I spent the time visiting and enjoying catching up with each other. G lives in the south now, working as an engineer. We see each other once or twice a year. His older brother retired from the IRS and moved back here to the childhood home several years ago and his sister has lived here all her life, so in addition to visiting his mom, he comes back to see his siblings and along the way we get a chance to visit. It is amusing how clearly I remember our first meeting in fifth grade – I still see that same youngster in my minds eye when I think of G – even though we are now both grizzled oldsters with white beards and a lot less hair. And we still  remember doing stupid things together back then that would result in long-term hospitalization now. It’s always good to be reminded of the time when you were fearless and invincible. {*grin*} Heck, G was my wingman and chauffeur the night L and I first went out and he was a groomsman in our wedding. He just can’t escape us!

For Mother’s Day, we had both mom and MIL over for lunch. The day was beautiful, in the 70’s and calm. So after the guests departed home, L and I and Molly went for walk in the park followed by a relaxing nap (See, I told you we were oldsters!). In any case, as the evening wore on, the winds came up and blew hard enough to move the patio furniture about and knock over the basketball hoop, etc. Generally a miserably windy evening with the howling and rattling windows. Made L grouchy and Molly needy. What a combo.

This morning the wind was gone, but L and Molly had to squeeze out the back door to move the furniture out of the way so they could fully open the door. I got the task of setting the basketball hoop back up since L cannot lift it. And of course we had to clean up the bird nests and eggs and little hatchlings blown out of th trees and killed by the wind. The wind made me curious so I looked at the weather forecast for the week. Wednesday is forecast to reach a high in the low 40s and snow! So much for spring. Of course it is supposed to be back into the mid-70s by Saturday. I just love Colorado weather!

Enough for now. Time to enjoy the grey drear before it starts heading for the cold and rain and snow.

acquaintances, age, friends

Friends and Acquaintances

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One of the interesting things about getting older is that the range of friends and acquaintances keeps expanding. It gives one a wider perspective on the world as the range grows, probably making it possible to be a better friend as time marches on.

When I was in my twenties, so were most of my friends. There were some exceptions, mostly professors and business colleagues. But when it came time to have people over for dinner or otherwise socialize, the group was mostly of a similar age.

As the decade of my thirties passed, the range widened. I now had friends in their twenties and some as old as {*gasp*} their forties. People in their fifties were part of a strange and outre world that just barely intersected my social life. (Or who threw the really good business parties!)

Needless to say the range of friends continued to blossom through the decades. Now that I am in my fifties, I have friends that range from their twenties to their nineties. And I find I like the breadth of view points that brings to my life. It also makes me wonder what kind of an idiot I was in my younger years not to intentionally seek out friendships with those of dissimilar ages at that time.

How about you? Have you found your circle of friendship ranging further afield as you have matured (Sounds so much better than aged, doesn’t it?)?

I’ll leave you with this picture of a few friends sharing a good laugh a few years ago.  I am the only non-octogenarian in the picture. From left to right: myself, a well-know rancher and conservationist, and the person least constrained by social convention I know (and also the most likely to make any party memorable).

friends, medical students, random, trackball, weather

Random Thoughts For A Friday

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Today was one of those days full of random thoughts that lead nowhere but are too good not to blog about. Thus, you get to suffer right along with me.

Random Thoughts For a Friday

I was reading a Dave Berry column and was struck by the aptness of his discription of much current music: “it sounds like angry men clubbing a yak to death with electric guitars.” Beyond the fact that Dave Berry is one of my favorite humor columnists, the way he captures the true gut level feeling of things is great. Besides, who else has the entry to their web site feature the quote “If you leave this web site, I will kill this defenseless toilet.”

My trackball is nearing the end of its life. This one has lasted five years and through several computers, so I guess i shouldn’t complain. Trackballs are getting harder to find in the size and variation I like, but I dread the idea of going back to the three button + spin wheel mouse. Once you get used to having 7 buttons and a spin wheel plus the trackball, you really hate to go back. Not to mention it lets one avoid certain variants of carpal tunnel syndrome. Maybe I can cobble together one working one from the 5 or 6 carcasses I have stored around here. Twenty years of mousing technology encapsulated via the broken remnants. (I am a pack rat. I knew you’d never guess that.)

It was windy here for the third straight day. 30 mph with occasional gusts up to 70 mph for days on end gets annoying, a bit like the Santa Ana wind when we lived in LA. In any case, the wind killed off going to nursery for some plants and other such oddities. (Mom is still in the wheel chair and decided that using the handicapped van in the wind was not her idea of fun. Since she was the plant picker outer, no need for me to go if she didn’t.)

I had an odd call from the CU Medical school this afternoon. They are bringing a group of medical students out here for a program and called to ask me to set aside an afternoon to speak to the students. I suspect it is for their rural medicine rotation, so it should be interesting to talk to the students. I figure I’ll find out more in the coming weeks. Be interesting to see how the medical students differ from the pre-med students I used to teach college physics to long ago.

The Son left a really strange telephone message last night. I assume it was an incident of butt dialing while he and his house-mates celebrated their last day together for this year. Not often you get a non-butt dial at 2:25 am, hence the diagnosis of butt dial. We’ll have to see if he remembers the call this weekend. (I stored the message away for use in future embarrassments.)

A good friend called and invited L and I over for Italian sausage and an evening of fine conversation, but it was too late when I got home and retrieved the message. L has client meetings in the mountains for the weekend, so it would have just been the trio of me, myself, and I that could have attended. Given that the friend cooks really good sausage and brats, it would have been tasty. Oh well.

enemies, friends, high school

High School Friends

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(This is for Mama Kat’s Writers challenge)

I am still friends with my high school friends. In my case that is easy because I only had three friends and one dedicated enemy in high school. Mainly that was because I was an a**hole and brainiac nerd who was also bigger than everyone else.  Not a combination conducive to the formation of friendships.

The three friends are my lovely wife L (yes we met in high school – it’s a story for another time), S who became my friend late in senior year and is still a friend today, and G who has been my friend since grade school. All are still friends today and I carry on email conversations with S and occasionally G. L you hear about here from time to time.

S now lives in Montana, but we still see each other at least once a year. I have to wonder if that face to face visiting tradition will continue. His mother died last year and that was his last relative here in the area. S is a special friend because we came at things from diametrically opposite views, but still respected the others view. Our friendship really began with “Fiddler on the Roof” where I was stage manager and he starred as Tevye. He was also the only other National Merit Scholar in my high school class. Our relationship may now degenerate into a Christmas card and occasional email. It’ll be interesting to see.

G now lives in Alabama and is back here at least a couple of times a year. We keep in touch and I suspect he will always be around since his sister and brother both live in the area. His dad died a year or so ago and his mom has Alzheimers that is getting worse. L and G talk about it since L’s dad died of alzheimers and so we have been through some of the issues and emotions. G and I went through life as a Mutt and Jeff pair. I’m 6’5″ and 300 lbs+ and have been since high school. G is about 5’4″ and in high school might have made it to 120 lbs. We were in school together from fourth grade on, were Boy Scouts together, … We were there to tease each other about our first crushes and our first dates and …

It is more interesting to talk a bit about my dedicated enemy from high school, T. T and I went from apathy to dislike to outright hate over the course of high school. I attribute much of that to the effects of T’s growing alcohol addiction. Of course I didn’t have a clue about the alcoholism at the time. The relationship reached its nadir when I almost killed him one day our sophomore year.

T and some friends were teasing and riding me all through biology class that day. We we seated alphabetically by last name and they were behind me. We didn’t get along well before this day, but it was more the normal nerd / alcohol crowd disjunct than anything personal. It takes a lot to make me mad, but this day they succeeded. When the bell ending the class rang, I was determined to have a word with all three of them. Unfortunately, I had T by one arm when the other two decided to try to get around me and out of the room. Without even thinking about it, I tossed T across the room as I reached to stop the other two. Even more unfortunately, there was nothing to slow T down as he flew through the air, broke the glass, and proceeded out of the second story window. I was immediately sorry. T. went to the hospital and got some stitches, but thankfully had nothing broken. T and I were dedicated enemies from that point on, at least on T’s part. I just felt bad that I had let anything make me lose control like that. It was interesting that I had enough of a halo (top of class, football player, national merit scholar, vice president of the Colorado Wyoming Junior Academy of Science, etc.) that nary a word was ever said by the school administration about the whole affair. Which just made me feel even guiltier.

Fast forward about 20 years. L and I at a New Year’s Eve party shortly after moving back here from LA. T is there as the designated driver for a different group. So T and I are sitting at the bar sipping club soda and begin to talk. I tell T how bad I still felt about the incident from long ago. He laughs and says not to feel bad, he deserved that and more. We forgave each other and talked. T pointed out that he had hit bottom and has now been clean and sober for 7 years. To make a long story short we become friends over the next year and have remained so now more than 15 years later. When T’s son wasn’t going to attend college, it was me that convinced him he could and should do it. When my son was having issues with life and needed to find out if he was mature enough to live on his own and go off to college early, it was T’s basement he lived in. T and I are friends. Sometimes enemies can become friends, and high school enemies have the advantage of sharing a very formative time in our lives.

Enough for tonight!