I'm officially swamped. I have no free time until September. Since April I've been in one show, and I've had two lighting designs. From now until September, I am in four shows, and have five lighting designs as well. I love doing theater, but I might have bitten off more than I can chew this summer.
Life is one thousand one way streets all leading to the same destination, and we have no map, no idea how long the drive is, and no idea what time we'll arrive. All we can do is choose what route, and what speed we take to get there.
Happy Earth Day! Let's get the earth trashed!
I kid.
It's a little known fact, but the original Earth Day, was originally celebrated on April 20th but the had to change it because the hippies kept getting confused about which holiday they were celebrating. "Hey man. Are we supposed to plant a tree, or smoke a tree today?" True story.
It seems like it's been raining all April. I think it's beginning to clear.
I kid.
It's a little known fact, but the original Earth Day, was originally celebrated on April 20th but the had to change it because the hippies kept getting confused about which holiday they were celebrating. "Hey man. Are we supposed to plant a tree, or smoke a tree today?" True story.
It seems like it's been raining all April. I think it's beginning to clear.
I wish Father Time and Mother Nature would get back together, because I'm tired of this crazy weather.
It's been two weeks since my father passed away. One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was how strange the weather was on the day he died. It was sunny and warm in the morning, then that afternoon a cold front passed through bringing colder temperatures, stormy weather and even a little thunder. It was really a big change. I like to imagine that the cold front came in a swept him up in it's travel across the land. Perhaps he's still there riding the crest of that cold front from state to state. The thought makes me strangely happy.
The visitation was two Saturdays ago. It felt good to see how many people knew and cared for my dad. He touched a lot of people. My family held it together well. The saddest part for me was seeing the urn which held his ashes. My dad was cremated. A strange side note: The funeral director used a strange term for the ashes, he called them "cremains", like a contraction of "cremated remains". I'm not sure if this is a technical term used in the business, but it struck me as a bit odd, almost as a joke. Anyway back to the story, there was a small wooden box, about 1'x1' which held the "cremains" of my father, and I thought how interesting it was that there was once this 5'10" , 175lb man who now occupied about a cubic foot of space. "To what base uses we may return, Horatio!" Also the music which my sister picked out for the visitation made me choke up a little. They were all songs he loved, but were also appropriate for the somber mood. Willie Nelson, Leonard Cohen, Mozart, my dad had an eclectic taste in music.
The service was nice. It was held at the graveside on Sunday. I found it curious that my mom chose to buy a plot for my dad and her, even though she wants to be cremated as well. Why bury a box with ashes? I guess it gives people somewhere to go, and they get their own little monument that lets the world know they were once here. It was a really nice day, sunny and pleasant. The minister was from Hospice and even though she didn't know him well, she delivered a nice eulogy. She talked about the love he had for his family and friends, urging us to keep his memory with us always. I read a piece from Hamlet. My sister wrote a narrative about one of her fond memories of him from childhood. My girlfriend Rae sung a few songs. Then the Fire Department honor guard did a little ceremony for him, which included a ringing of a bell seven times, which represented when a fireman's "shift" was over. It was touching.
I'm doing alright. I think people are a little puzzled about how well I'm taking it. They want to help me. What many people don't know, or understand is that I did my mourning over that year and a half in which he was sick. Now that he has passed away, I can let all that stress and grief go, because I know he isn't hurting anymore. I thank people for their concern, but I'm not going to break down and cry on their shoulder. I am glad they are there though if I ever needed to.
Another interesting observation is that all the sympathy cards are green. I guess it's a soothing color, and is good for somber occasions.
What I'm afraid of most is that I'll forget him. I know that's a ridiculous notion, but I'm afraid that now he's gone I'll somehow think of him less and less as the days go by. I'm afraid someday I'll realize that I haven't thought about him for a day, then a week, then a month, then a year. I hope that doesn't happen. Perhaps when another cold frond passes quickly through, I can take cover and think of my dad up there riding it.
The visitation was two Saturdays ago. It felt good to see how many people knew and cared for my dad. He touched a lot of people. My family held it together well. The saddest part for me was seeing the urn which held his ashes. My dad was cremated. A strange side note: The funeral director used a strange term for the ashes, he called them "cremains", like a contraction of "cremated remains". I'm not sure if this is a technical term used in the business, but it struck me as a bit odd, almost as a joke. Anyway back to the story, there was a small wooden box, about 1'x1' which held the "cremains" of my father, and I thought how interesting it was that there was once this 5'10" , 175lb man who now occupied about a cubic foot of space. "To what base uses we may return, Horatio!" Also the music which my sister picked out for the visitation made me choke up a little. They were all songs he loved, but were also appropriate for the somber mood. Willie Nelson, Leonard Cohen, Mozart, my dad had an eclectic taste in music.
The service was nice. It was held at the graveside on Sunday. I found it curious that my mom chose to buy a plot for my dad and her, even though she wants to be cremated as well. Why bury a box with ashes? I guess it gives people somewhere to go, and they get their own little monument that lets the world know they were once here. It was a really nice day, sunny and pleasant. The minister was from Hospice and even though she didn't know him well, she delivered a nice eulogy. She talked about the love he had for his family and friends, urging us to keep his memory with us always. I read a piece from Hamlet. My sister wrote a narrative about one of her fond memories of him from childhood. My girlfriend Rae sung a few songs. Then the Fire Department honor guard did a little ceremony for him, which included a ringing of a bell seven times, which represented when a fireman's "shift" was over. It was touching.
I'm doing alright. I think people are a little puzzled about how well I'm taking it. They want to help me. What many people don't know, or understand is that I did my mourning over that year and a half in which he was sick. Now that he has passed away, I can let all that stress and grief go, because I know he isn't hurting anymore. I thank people for their concern, but I'm not going to break down and cry on their shoulder. I am glad they are there though if I ever needed to.
Another interesting observation is that all the sympathy cards are green. I guess it's a soothing color, and is good for somber occasions.
What I'm afraid of most is that I'll forget him. I know that's a ridiculous notion, but I'm afraid that now he's gone I'll somehow think of him less and less as the days go by. I'm afraid someday I'll realize that I haven't thought about him for a day, then a week, then a month, then a year. I hope that doesn't happen. Perhaps when another cold frond passes quickly through, I can take cover and think of my dad up there riding it.
He hated the thought that people were missing out on things because of him. He was ready, and it was time. I like to think it was quick. I like to think it was simple, precise, and graceful, more graceful than anything he did in his life. He liked simplicity. He liked precision. He liked keeping to himself, and not rocking the boat. I think he managed to do it. He was always very methodical about things. He would get sick, he would vomit, and then he was better. He did it numerous times. Sadly his last years of sickness wasn’t so easy to get over. His final day was like that. He expelled life like he would his stomach. I think he's better off now. I just hope he wasn't scared. I hope he had piece of mind.
I wasn't there when my father died. I was working. I think he would have rather had me keep working anyway. So I don't know if it was any of those aforementioned things. It was sudden, that is true. Well as sudden as anything you've been expecting for a year and a half can be anyway. My dad had been on a steady decline for almost two years now. We had to put him in a nursing home after he suffered a fall in August 2007. My mom wasn't able to take care of him. At first there was hope he'd pull through, that he'd be the same jovial fellow he was before. As the months passed by it grew more obvious that he wasn't making progress. We all came to the realization that he'd never leave that place alive. It was just a matter of when. Wednesday they told us to bring Hospice in to help his quality of life in those final months. Thursday, before they even had a chance to begin helping him, he expired. His final meal as it would turn out was ice cream his favorite. Because of his diabetes he hadn’t had that for a long time. I’m happy when I think of it.
You could tell he didn't like it at the nursing home. He would try to put on a personable mask for you. Try to make you think he was okay there, but underneath the outward face, somewhere behind those big kind brown eyes you could see the pain, and depression. He was sinking into a sea of immobility and dementia. He could barely hold a conversation towards the end. You'd ask him a question and maybe after a few labored minutes you might get a semi-lucid answer. Most of the time however you’d either get a half complete sentence, or lingering silence. Seeing him confined to either his wheelchair or bed foe the last months was the hardest part. His muscles contracted and became as stiff as wood. He couldn't move anything. They had to get a lift to move him from his bed to his wheelchair. It devastated me every time he asked for help to get him to the bathroom, knowing there was no way I could do it, having to tell him that he had to go in his undergarment. It must have been so hard for someone who had been so independent for a long time.
I guess that's why seeing him there in the bed, relaxed and motionless, was easier that I thought it would be. He was the most relaxed I've seen him in a long time. He looked good, not great, but better than he had. He looked very similar to the way he would sleep, relaxed, peaceful, and with his mouth partially opened. Strangely it was comforting. I always thought that would be the hardest thing to take. I remember as a kid watching him sleep, and thinking about the day when I'd see there before me but without the snoring, without the wisp of air in and out, without the warmth, without life. Actually seeing him there in that state while surreal strangely wasn't that difficult to take.
My dad was the first one I ran to when I discovered my own mortality. I remember it well. I was watching the 1984 summer Olympics, I must have been about ten. I think I was watching the high dive, when all of a sudden that overwhelming sensation washed over me; someday I was not going to be here, someday I was going to die. I had what I realize now was an anxiety attack. I couldn't breathe, and I was terrified. I ran screaming outside to my Dad who was working on the yard. I kept saying, "I'm going to die. I'm going to die." He finally calmed me down and said that it wasn't going to happen for a very long time. He told me to focus on the right now, and assured me that people in my family live a very long life. Well not long enough. My dad never made it to the advanced age of my grandparents, but 72 years is nothing to be sad about. It was a long life filled with many stories, jokes, and adventures.
Secretly I actually had wished for a while that this day would come. I know it sounds harsh, but I couldn't stand seeing him like that. As much as I loved him, every wish, thought, prayer I had was about how I wish his pain would end. When they actually came true, painful as it was, it was more comforting than anything.
The visitation is tonight, the service is tomorrow. Here is the obituary. I know someday down the road it will hit me. A great wave of anxiety, fear and sorrow, may wash over me like that wave of 1984, and I will have to face it alone this time, but for now I'm okay.
I wasn't there when my father died. I was working. I think he would have rather had me keep working anyway. So I don't know if it was any of those aforementioned things. It was sudden, that is true. Well as sudden as anything you've been expecting for a year and a half can be anyway. My dad had been on a steady decline for almost two years now. We had to put him in a nursing home after he suffered a fall in August 2007. My mom wasn't able to take care of him. At first there was hope he'd pull through, that he'd be the same jovial fellow he was before. As the months passed by it grew more obvious that he wasn't making progress. We all came to the realization that he'd never leave that place alive. It was just a matter of when. Wednesday they told us to bring Hospice in to help his quality of life in those final months. Thursday, before they even had a chance to begin helping him, he expired. His final meal as it would turn out was ice cream his favorite. Because of his diabetes he hadn’t had that for a long time. I’m happy when I think of it.
You could tell he didn't like it at the nursing home. He would try to put on a personable mask for you. Try to make you think he was okay there, but underneath the outward face, somewhere behind those big kind brown eyes you could see the pain, and depression. He was sinking into a sea of immobility and dementia. He could barely hold a conversation towards the end. You'd ask him a question and maybe after a few labored minutes you might get a semi-lucid answer. Most of the time however you’d either get a half complete sentence, or lingering silence. Seeing him confined to either his wheelchair or bed foe the last months was the hardest part. His muscles contracted and became as stiff as wood. He couldn't move anything. They had to get a lift to move him from his bed to his wheelchair. It devastated me every time he asked for help to get him to the bathroom, knowing there was no way I could do it, having to tell him that he had to go in his undergarment. It must have been so hard for someone who had been so independent for a long time.
I guess that's why seeing him there in the bed, relaxed and motionless, was easier that I thought it would be. He was the most relaxed I've seen him in a long time. He looked good, not great, but better than he had. He looked very similar to the way he would sleep, relaxed, peaceful, and with his mouth partially opened. Strangely it was comforting. I always thought that would be the hardest thing to take. I remember as a kid watching him sleep, and thinking about the day when I'd see there before me but without the snoring, without the wisp of air in and out, without the warmth, without life. Actually seeing him there in that state while surreal strangely wasn't that difficult to take.
My dad was the first one I ran to when I discovered my own mortality. I remember it well. I was watching the 1984 summer Olympics, I must have been about ten. I think I was watching the high dive, when all of a sudden that overwhelming sensation washed over me; someday I was not going to be here, someday I was going to die. I had what I realize now was an anxiety attack. I couldn't breathe, and I was terrified. I ran screaming outside to my Dad who was working on the yard. I kept saying, "I'm going to die. I'm going to die." He finally calmed me down and said that it wasn't going to happen for a very long time. He told me to focus on the right now, and assured me that people in my family live a very long life. Well not long enough. My dad never made it to the advanced age of my grandparents, but 72 years is nothing to be sad about. It was a long life filled with many stories, jokes, and adventures.
Secretly I actually had wished for a while that this day would come. I know it sounds harsh, but I couldn't stand seeing him like that. As much as I loved him, every wish, thought, prayer I had was about how I wish his pain would end. When they actually came true, painful as it was, it was more comforting than anything.
The visitation is tonight, the service is tomorrow. Here is the obituary. I know someday down the road it will hit me. A great wave of anxiety, fear and sorrow, may wash over me like that wave of 1984, and I will have to face it alone this time, but for now I'm okay.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET
Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
HAMLET
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
KING CLAUDIUS
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd: whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
'This must be so.'
My father died yesterday. It's sad, but it was the best thing. More on it later.
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET
Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
HAMLET
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
KING CLAUDIUS
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd: whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
'This must be so.'
My father died yesterday. It's sad, but it was the best thing. More on it later.
An associate of a friend of mine referred to me as the boy who never smiles. Although it seems like a rather mean thing to say, in actuality it is a pretty astute observance.
Titus closed last Sunday. I've never had a more plague-ridden show. It seemed like everyday there was a new catastrophe. In addition to the aforementioned problems: the main character badly hurting his knee, the show getting snowed out the first Sunday; last week one of the other actors developed a really serious health problem and couldn't do the remainder or the run. We have no understudies, so I had to scramble to find someone who could perform the remaining shows. Fortunately one of our regular summer actors, who is a literature professor at a nearby college, agreed to help out. He had to do it with a script in hand. We got through it, although it wasn't the way I would have liked to see the show done. Naturally all the stress and exhaustion of the past few weeks finally caught up with the cast, and nearly every one of us had developed a cold by the final performance. Still we soldiered on as any respectable theater troupe should do. That show literally beat us down. I think we were all somewhat glad to see it close.
Now it's time to get caught up on all the things I've been neglecting...
...like eating.
Titus closed last Sunday. I've never had a more plague-ridden show. It seemed like everyday there was a new catastrophe. In addition to the aforementioned problems: the main character badly hurting his knee, the show getting snowed out the first Sunday; last week one of the other actors developed a really serious health problem and couldn't do the remainder or the run. We have no understudies, so I had to scramble to find someone who could perform the remaining shows. Fortunately one of our regular summer actors, who is a literature professor at a nearby college, agreed to help out. He had to do it with a script in hand. We got through it, although it wasn't the way I would have liked to see the show done. Naturally all the stress and exhaustion of the past few weeks finally caught up with the cast, and nearly every one of us had developed a cold by the final performance. Still we soldiered on as any respectable theater troupe should do. That show literally beat us down. I think we were all somewhat glad to see it close.
Now it's time to get caught up on all the things I've been neglecting...
...like eating.
