Michael,

Today is the nicest one we’ve had all week. On Mon it was foggy, on Tues it rained, on Wed it was smoggy, cloudy and hot, on Thurs it was beastly hot and as humid as a Hungarian steam bath. But today we have a clear blue sky, pleasantly warm temperatures, and light breezes.

For some reason they left the doors open at the conference center yesterday, and it got uncomfortably hot and humid in the poster session area. Every 20 min or so I had to retreat to one of the speakers rooms, which were highly AC’ed, to cool off before going back to my post. By the side of my poster I left a little sheet to request a preprint, and when I came in this morning I found that Dr Asai, who I had met in Japan last year, had added her name to the list. Nice to get some positive feedback.

This morning as I was walking along the main street towards the conference rooms, a young Beijinger asked me what time it was. I showed him my watch (9:00 am) and said that back home it was 9:00 pm.) Then he asked if I liked Beijing (what could I say, but that I liked it, though if he had asked me yesterday in the sauna weather, I might have mumbled something else. Then he said he wanted to practice his English with me. He asked where I was from, and I had to explain where Maryland was. He said he also wants to learn French, because he thought that was the 2nd most important language in the world. (Interesting. The French would say so too.) He remarked that foreigners seemed to walk so fast he couldn’t keep up with them. And I said that I was in no hurry, because my meeting didn’t start for 30 minutes. He wanted to know where the meeting was, and I said the Beijing Information Technology School, right behind that building, so he said goodbye and walked on. His English was actually better than our 2nd tour guide!

–rakkity

Diane, Matthew and Brian boarded flight 5807 lifting off from Dress Memorial in Evansville at 10:09 a.m.. I waved goodbye and drove back to my father’s house. I had a huge list of to-do’s before the to-do’s birthed new to-do’s. The first, a drive to the elder law attorney where my father signed his Living Will, his Last Will and Testament, and a document that would empower Brian to make medical decisions should my father lose his capacity to do so. From there we drove to the First Federal Bank to transfer funds to Mack’s Fifth Third Bank checking account. Chunky important stuff, mostly done.

Tomorrow I’ll probate my mother’s will and retrieve a death certificate to enable banks to release joint funds. The last task, before I return home, paying for Helen’s end of life expenses.

Tired, I returned to Jeff and Karen’s to make the last two calls of the day. The first to Diane and the second to Adam. As I moseyed outside in the dark, cell phone in hand, ozone at peak levels, heat rising from the pavement, I saw my bent and weary father shuffling past. A lonely and sad figure to be sure.

“Would you like company?”

“If you wish.”

The Ruthenburg’s live four short blocks from my father’s. I’m not much of a walker and I assumed we’d cut back towards Bellemeade, but instead, we walked away, past the local library towards Washington Street. Whenever I’d suggest an about face, Mack would forge ahead. I believe he needed help sleeping.

“What is Peter going to do?” he asked.

“He’ll head back to Hawaii Saturday, but he may be moving back here for awhile.”

“Is that a smart move?”

“Peter’s teaching English to Japanese residents and he’s making money, so I’d say, yes.”

“How long was he in Hawaii? Ten, twenty years?”

“Eighteen.”

“That’s a long time to pull up and leave. And Joan and Paul?”

“I don’t know about them. But I want to tell you what I did today. I dropped in on both shifts at the hospice center. I thanked them for their care of Helen.”

“Who did you talk to?”

“Mary Ann on evenings. I called her Jersey Girl because she’s from somewhere near Newark. And Rebecca from nights. I wanted to see Darcy who works days but she was on vacation. Tomorrow I’ll go to Patchwork Central to ask them to mail me a list of donors. I’ll write the thank you notes, with help from Jeff and Karen, who’ll make the personal connections to Helen.”

“That’s a good thing to do. Very good.”

We walked on until I noticed my father trailing farther behind. I slowed, but he slowed some more, and then he placed his hand on his chest where all the heat and humidity had come to rest.

“Do you need to sit down?”

“I can’t catch my breath.”

I helped him down onto a terraced curb. We weren’t sitting in the street but just behind the sidewalk. There were no other pedestrians.

“My chest hurts, and right here (he moved his right hand up and down his left arm) it hurts like you wouldn’t believe.”

When I was a boy I had a reputation for never complaining. After I dropped a heavy barbell on my head, at fourteen, my parents were much more worried about my complaints than the blood streaming down the side of my neck. “Like you wouldn’t believe” focused my attention.

“I can tell you exactly what this is, Mack. There are few things I’m as certain about as this. Do you want to hear?”

“Go ‘head,” he said as he stood up ready to move on. I looked around for the nearest return street and open stores where I might get help.

“You’re having classic angina symptoms. Or even heart attack symptoms. Do you want me to describe exactly what’s happening?”

“My heart can’t keep up?”

“Not what I was going to say, but, yes. Your heart isn’t keeping up.”

My father seemed to catch his breath, and I thought I should sit him down and run back for my truck, but I couldn’t leave him alone. The rhythmic sounds of crickets behind us clashed with the roar of cars and busses. I was nervous, but not overly so. Peter had described similar symptoms while he was walking with my father.

“There’s medication that will treat your pain. If you were younger, you’d have surgery, but this medicine reallly works. Faster than an aspirin for a headache.”

“How much is it? About twenty-five dollars a pill?”

“I’m not sure that would be my first concern, but, no, it’s been around forever and I suspect it’s quite cheap.

We walked another block, finally away from the busy lighted street and into the dark. Mack stopped and fumbled for another place to sit. I helped him down onto a chipped concrete stoop leading to a side porch.

“I can hardly breathe,” he said, and then began throwing up. You can’t get more textbook than this, and I drifted back twenty-five years to the woman I’d walked away from at Emerson Hospital. As a Respiratory Therapist I’d set-up her oxygen after her transfer from the Cardiac Care Unit. She arrested after I walked out of her room.

“Look, I could call an ambulance. Anyone else would. I should call an ambulance. But let me try Jeff first.”

I walked back to the corner to pin point where we were. I thought I’m going to lose my father less than a week after my mother. I imagined my cell phone call to Diane, “I went for a stroll with Mack and now he’s dead at my feet.” I also pondered, somewhere in my now-fatalistic psyche, that this would be alright – if it happened soon. If he arrested five or ten minutes from now, I’d have to stand up to withering questions from my family. I looked back to see Mack belching and covering his mouth as stomach fluid spilled past his hands. I called my friend, Jeff, for help but only heard the faint, “Please leave us a message.” “Jeff, pick up. Jeff, it’s me and it’s important, please pick up. I know I sound like you when you call home, just waiting around for an answer, but please pick up.” I didn’t want to alarm him by describing what was happening so I blabbed on, waiting. I hung up and called back five times in a row, letting the phone ring but hanging up before the answering machine kicked in. Finally I called 911.

“Emergency services.”

“I’m Michael Miller and I’m on the corner of Grand and Washington. I’m with my father who is ninety-two and he’s having classic angina or heart attack symptoms. Chest pain, shortness of breath and severe pain down his left arm. Plus he’s throwing up.”

“Is he cold and clammy?”

“No, he’s not diaphoretic.”

“How’s his skin color?”

“I can’t tell; it’s dark out. He’s standing up again, let me ask him how he’s doing.”

“It doesn’t matter, there’s an ambulance on the way now.”

I could hear the sirens in the distance and I hung up.

“Mack, there’s an ambulance coming.”

“What?” He looked panicked and angry. “Can’t you cancel it?”

“It’s too late, but once they get here we can send them on their way. I’d prefer they check you out.”

I waved my arms as paramedics Joe and Courtney jumped out of the ambulance.

I described my father’s symptoms and what he’d said about his heart not keeping up. I also told them his wife died last week, but that he was embarrassed and wanted them to leave. I said, “My father is from Kansas,” as if that would explain it all.

After I apologized to Joe, “He can die walking around the block but not on my shift,” we shooed them away. My father and I resumed our impossibly long walk back to Bellemeade. He chattered on about how the city blocks are half as long in one direction as in the other, about the dead tree in the park and why it hadn’t been cut down, but nothing more about his heart. We finally arrived at his house and he said, “You walked me to my house; how about if I walk you to yours?”

“How about if you don’t?” I said. “And how about next time we take a shorter walk?”

Michael,

Here I am in intriguing Beijing, after an exhausting flight across the Pacific. Luckily I had a window seat and good companians–an Aussie couple named Carole & Dan Walker, recent immigrants to California. Dan was wearing a Hawaiian style shirt with California icons (lawn mowers, barbeques, etc). He watched all 4 of the in-flightmovies, one of which was Eight Below, the only one I watched. Dan tried to shield Carole’s eyes during the scene where an Antarctic leopard seal tries to bite one of the plucky dogs.

I’m finding the staff in my hotel are eager to please, but few know any more English than I do Chinese. However, everyone I’ve met is unbelievably polite. This afternoon when I was trying to find my way from the city bus stop to the Friendship Hotel, an energetic little woman on the street man-handled my suitcase up the stairs of the passenger street overpass, then down the other side, all while I was trying unsuccessfully to wrest it away from her with one hand, while I rolled my carry-on bag with my other. Then this powerful lady hailed a taxi and told the driver where to take me. All I could do was smile and say Xiexie (thanks)!

-rakkity

PS:
I’m finding that Google can’t be reached from here. I can’t even go to Google mail. Have the Chinese embargoed all of the Google sites?

“We landed at Queen ‘Alia International Airport. It was early evening (and Monday, I later figured out, rather than Sunday, like when we took off). We deplaned, passing signs in Arabic and English. A man awaited us with a sign reading ‘King’s Academy’. We gathered, and another man collected our passports. As I gave him mine, I told him that I would like him to get me a multiple-entry visa. ”

(Blogmeister’s note: Comforting words for his mom, I’m sure.)

Read more.

“We landed at Queen ‘Alia International Airport. It was early evening (and Monday, I later figured out, rather than Sunday, like when we took off). We deplaned, passing signs in Arabic and English. A man awaited us with a sign reading ‘King’s Academy’. We gathered, and another man collected our passports. As I gave him mine, I told him that I would like him to get me a multiple-entry visa. ”

(Blogmeister’s note: Comforting words for his mom, I’m sure.)

Read more.

This umpteen foot rig (from my side of the pumps I had trouble getting it all in one frame) pulled into the service plaza as I was leaving. If you can’t read it, the name of the boat with twin engine Mercs is “Moisture Missle.” One would assume the owner to be a brawny, hairy chested, gold-chained knuckle-dragger, but, no, he looked like me.

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Alrighty, then, surely accompanying him are his buds from the local Plough and Stars? Guess again

On my way to Evansvile, I stopped in Columbus (thanks for the directions, Dan) to see another one of Eric Grohe’s creations. Many more photos to follow, but none with audience participation.

1170 miles
17.5 hours
No meal stops
One hour in Columbus

My mother told me that when she was four her father and a friend of his were outside arguing. I don’t remember the man’s name or what the spat was about , but the friend, in jest, raised his fist in a threatening manner. As men do. Helen Virginia O’Connell promptly picked up a rake and said, “I’m Hennie Bo Jennie Ocono and if you hit my father I’ll hit you.”

Hennie Bo Jennie put her rake down yesterday at noon.

My mother told me that when she was four her father and a friend of his were outside arguing. I don’t remember the man’s name or what the spat was about , but the friend, in jest, raised his fist in a threatening manner. As men do. Helen Virginia O’Connell promptly picked up a rake and said, “I’m Hennie Bo Jennie Ocono and if you hit my father I’ll hit you.”

Hennie Bo Jennie put her rake down yesterday at noon.

This morning I dragged myself out of bed and down the stairs (picture me pulling myself by one leg, kerplump, kerplump hitting each step), turned on my coffee water and tried to turn on my computer. Nothing happened. All my monitor lights were off which meant a fuse had been blown.

I then remembered Matt saying last night, “I pulled the chain on the light in the basement and I got a very bad shock,” so I dragged myself down yet another flight of steps to the electrical panel in the basement. Sure enough, Matthew’s shock has been strong enough to blow a fuse. I thought My son is cut from the same cloth as I am. As his grandfather is. He gets electrocuted and simply goes to bed.

I assume Matthew is reaching for coins in his pocket, but I like this photo because it looks like he’s gettin’ down with violin man.

Click here. (Yes, there is sound.)

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**************

Cambry plays Chopin.