lessons learned #3: the forgotten topic

Earlier, I'd listed some of the topics I wanted to talk about, but I forgot to include a rather crucial one: power. So while it's on my mind, let's talk about it.

By "power," I mean electricity for various high- and low-tech devices on the route. Flashlights need power, for example, and so do smart phones. In fact, smart phones require a lot of power: battery technology hasn't had a chance to catch up with the amount of electricity a typical smart phone consumes. Even when I use my own Droid X in a very limited manner, I still need to charge it by the end of any given 24-hour period. It's greedier than my old BlackBerry was, and that's going to be a problem when I'm in the middle of a 25-mile schlep, out in the boonies.

During the 2008 walk, I brought along with me a solar-powered cell phone charger that I had purchased from REI. It proved to be worthless. There were days, especially in the high desert, where I had plenty of sun and plenty of time on the road to absorb crazy amounts of solar energy, but the device failed to perform. At best-- and this was after an entire day of charging-- the device produced only about a minute or two of power for the BlackBerry. I'm not blaming REI for this; REI sells a wide range of products from all sorts of manufacturers; most will be good, but some will inevitably be duds. This solar charger just happened to be one of the worst of the products I had bought. I don't know whether the charger itself was defective or whether solar chargers in general are simply not worth the purchase cost, but my intuition, based on my experience, is that such chargers are inherently problematic.

The first warning sign, I now know, is that the literature and commentary on solar chargers is wildly varied in its assessment of their performance. Some people love solar chargers; others hate them. I finally understand what that means: for your own safety, stay far away from any product about which no clearly positive opinion has emerged. Compare the user/expert comments about solar chargers to, say, comments about Nalgene water bottles, which are almost universally loved. (Later on, however, I'll talk about one of the problems with those bottles.)

Anyone who's listened even partially to the debates over solar power knows that solar energy has distinct disadvantages. One of them, perhaps the biggest disadvantage of them all, is the inconsistent availability of sunlight. All it takes is a few clouds to reduce the performance of a solar cell. Coupled with that problem is the second-biggest disadvantage: the solar cell itself is a delicate, finicky piece of technology. Tiny scratches and even a small amount of dust can cut down on a cell's ability to absorb sunlight. Add this to the first problem, and you've already got a product of dubious worth, especially out on the road.

But there's more. As I was walking, I also learned of a third disadvantage: angle of exposure. In the best of all possible worlds, a solar cell should absorb sunlight that's striking its surface at a clean 90-degree angle. This angle can't be guaranteed, however, when the cell is sitting atop your backpack, bouncing along while you walk. The sun itself prevents one from keeping an ideal angle of exposure, because its position in the sky is constantly changing. The likelihood of enjoying optimal angle of exposure while walking is practically zero.

Finally, there's the problem of energy storage: even as the solar energy's being absorbed, it's draining steadily out of the cell. By the time you flop down at the end of seven hours' walking and try to charge your cell phone, you aren't enjoying the benefit of every single possible watt: much of the electricity has disappeared while you were walking.

My view of solar cells for hiking, then, is quite negative. Unless you're willing to spend money on a ridiculously huge welcome mat of solar cells, I don't see how any modest-sized device can possibly power something like a Droid X, day after day, on the road.

So what are the alternatives if we assume that (1) I'll be needing and using a cell phone on a regular basis, and (2) I'll be walking long stretches without the benefit of an electric socket or a car charger?

My first thought is to go with a hand-cranked charger this time around. These types of chargers generally work for flashlights, but many (or even most) of the newer ones also work for cell phones. The problem, of course, is that they're very labor-intensive and provide only a few minutes' power after all that effort (see here, for example). In other words, hand-cranked chargers are really meant for emergencies, not as a day-by-day resource for a Droid X's electricity needs.

A better alternative, at least for a cell phone, might be a kinetic charger, i.e., a device that takes advantage of the body's natural motions to generate small but steady amounts of electricity over time. The concept has been incarnated various ways; one company, nPower, makes a peg-like device that's supposed to sit upright in the pocket of one's backpack; the walker's up-and-down motion is what generates power. The nPower PEG device ("PEG" stands for "personal energy generator") supposedly produces "about a minute of iPhone 3G talk time from 10 minutes of walking, or one minute of MP3 playback from one minute of walking." To me, that's plenty, especially after walking all day long.

My two concerns about kinetic chargers (see more charger ideas here) are their cost and their durability. Because so much of this tech is new and hasn't been embraced by the public at large, I can't imagine that it would be cheap. Sure enough, it turns out that the nPower PEG is a whopping $150. I also need to know how well such a device can endure variations in temperature and humidity, how well it can withstand being stored inside the confines of a backpack, or how well it might survive an accidental drop of 3 or 4 feet onto asphalt. Could I walk past a waterfall, get soaked, and still rely on the device? Could I use it in the rain, several days in a row? How well would it survive extreme cold, or 110 degrees in the high desert? These are all important questions. In principle, at least, kinetic chargers strike me as the way to go if I'm planning to take my smart phone with me (and why wouldn't I, given how useful it is?), but I have a ton of questions about them, practically speaking.

I'm not as concerned about the power needs of a flashlight. It was, in my experience last time around, very rare for me to be stumbling about at night with a flashlight. These days, there are so many tiny, economical alternatives to the traditional camper's flashlight that I have no worries about my possible nocturnal lighting needs. Still, when my thoughts turn back to that hand-cranked charger, I can't help thinking that a 2-in-one device would be a smarter purchase than a single-purpose device.

Meanwhile, the smart phone is a huge concern. The Droid X is a power sink, and I'm not sure a hand-cranked device, even if used three or four times a day during a 20- or 25-mile walk, would provide enough power for me to do much more than send brief tweets as opposed to blogging at any length. The nPower PEG, on the other hand, keeps your cell phone's battery "topped off" all day long, or so the claim goes. I'd love to road-test one of these devices before buying it. Maybe I should do some research into whether that's possible. If it is, you might be in for some very interesting blogging.


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topics I'll be covering soon

Along with the question of establishing a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, I'll be writing about the following lessons learned:

1. the importance of water (what works and doesn't work for filtration/sterilization, etc.)
2. hotels/motels only as a last resort
3. clothing (and the whole notion of traveling light)
4. tents versus bivy sacks (and how not to lose your damn tent)
5. traffic, narrow road shoulders, and me
6. weight, conditioning, and knees
7. shoes, blisters, and weather
8. food, drink, peeing, and pooping while on the road
9. protection from the sun, wind, rain, and cold
10. whether REI is just for elites/snobs with money


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thank you, Charles!

My buddy Charles gets his own special thank-you post because he and his wife braved the Byzantine Korean financial system in order to wire me my own cash. I had to send my banking materials to him via international post-- not the safest thing to do-- so that Charles could use my ATM card (useless to me here in the States) to extract my cash and wire the sum to me. He got a good exchange rate, and nearly $1500 will be plopping into my account later this week, minus my bank's stupid "receiving fee." That shouldn't amount to more than $10 or $15, though. As long as I have at least $1400 in there, I'll be a happy camper. That's $1400 more than I thought I had.

Thanks again, man.


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lessons learned #2: planning

A plan doesn't have to be long and complicated, but there needs to be one if one's project is to appear comprehensible to oneself and to others. I heard, once, about a Western lady who was a Buddhist nun, who decided to do her own transcontinental walk. Her plan: just walk, and trust that the world would provide. While simple in the extreme, such a plan at least had the virtue of coherence.

For those of us with more complex objectives in mind, our planning has to incorporate the same level of clear-eyed coherence. The more detailed the objective, the more rigorous the planning.

I mentioned, in my previous post, how I had approached route planning at the beginning of my walk. This approach ended up falling largely by the wayside, especially after Portland, but even before I had hit Portland, I found myself either staying at cheap motels, or camping, or staying at people's residences. The whole notion of moving from religious establishment to religious establishment had gone out the window by Mile 200. I consider that evidence of bad planning.

A plan that entails interactions with other people needs to consider the intricacies of human psychology. This might not be as true in a military situation, which operates according to very clear chains of command and has little tolerance for individual tastes and scruples, but for the rest of us civvies, working together is often a process that involves a great deal of empathy, perceptivity, patience, and effort-- especially those latter two qualities. My idea of appearing at a church doorstep and saying, "Hi! I'd like to stay here for a day or so, talk over religion with you, then have you find another religious establishment to send me to!" was probably doomed to failure by its very nature: I hadn't really taken human psychology into account. People aren't always at their best when they face the unexpected, and my foisting myself on the unprepared was, I think, a case of very poor judgment on my part.

Better, then, to alert people to what you're doing well in advance, so that they have time to prepare for you. For me, and for this second attempt at a trans-American walk, this means setting up a definite route and making doubly sure that the people who will help me out can reliably help me. If I intrude on their vacation time, for example, things might get hairy. If I choose flaky helpers who promise much but deliver little, that can also be problematic. Many people have generous intentions; fewer people have the strength of character to follow through with those intentions. Finding that smaller, more selective crowd is one of my tasks for this walk.

There's large-scale planning and there's small-scale planning. Both are important. For my walk, large-scale planning will mean fleshing out the overall route as I connect the dots between cities. Small-scale planning will have to happen in tandem with this; the details of how I get from A to B are just as important as the larger mission of determining the locations of A and B.

This is where social networking comes in. I didn't make the best use of Facebook when I was on it, but I refuse to return to it given its security problems and its host of completely irrelevant doodads. Almost everything that can be done on Facebook can be done on a blog: the posting of pictures, the writing of short or long updates, etc. Just about anything else can be done through Twitter, which I've come to respect as a very stripped-down way to send word out in real time. Both blogging and tweeting can be done on any current smart phone, and I've got one of those, baby.

Acquiring loyal followers on Twitter, then, is a major priority. Without that instantaneous (and wonderfully decentralized) grapevine, much that should happen won't happen. Route planning will occur more quickly with followers who can chime in with immediate feedback, and I can also use Twitter much more easily than I can use a blog to update my location (and, possibly, my survival needs, should I find myself out in the heat with no water, as happened once in the high desert in 2008).

Along with the gross and fine aspects of route planning, there's the question of where to stay. My cash reserves during the 2008 walk, which included quite a bit of donated money from friends and interested parties, were depleted rather quickly because I chose not to opt for illegal rest stops, e.g., sleeping on someone's farmland or in a wooded area of uncertain ownership. This is, partly, what led me to stop at so many motels along the way, especially during the middle 350 miles in 2008: I hadn't arranged to be housed at anyone's residence, and I didn't want to knock on doors and impose. Planning to stay at specific places, this time around, will alleviate much of that financial burden. If I'm not at someone's house (or sleeping in someone's van or chase car!), I'll be camping-- preferably legally.

I'm not too worried about certain other aspects of the walk, such as weather. By choosing a southerly route, I hope to avoid serious snow in the winter and dangerous phenomena like tornadoes. I learned, last time around, that one can trudge quite a long distance in even the most miserable of conditions (rain and cold are the worst when combined), and that blisters, when they occur, can simply be "walked through" without major incident. Your feet can and will toughen up when exposed to such constant pounding.

What does worry me, however, is my knees. I injured myself in a fall early in the 2008 walk, somewhere around Mile 200. That means I walked nearly 400 miles with a steadily worsening knee, and that injury, though largely healed, hasn't healed completely. Some of this problem can be alleviated by losing weight before I start the walk; some of it can be alleviated by having a chase car (or several chase cars, each for a different stretch of the walk), so that I don't need to wear a heavy backpack.* Another alternative would be to jury-rig a set of wheels so that my pack could be pulled along like a cart (with a hands-free harness so I could swing my arms) during those times when I didn't feel like wearing it on my shoulders and hips.

Before I drift into a full digression, though, let me pull back and say that I've learned the value and necessity of good, detailed planning. Stepping out into the wilderness on a wing and a prayer is possible, maybe even coherent, but once your mission acquires more specific parameters, the need for thorough, detailed planning imposes itself. There's no way around it, and no way to succeed without it.

---

*I remember one person asking why my backpack was so heavy. It's because I had so much stuff to carry-- not just clothing and camping equipment, but also maps and various paraphernalia. Above all, there was the water I needed: in the high desert, I was consuming easily more than a gallon a day, just to stay hydrated. As someone who sweats a lot, I know how easy it is to fall into a thirsty state.


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how my Twitter feed should look

The left edge of the black bar represents the left edge of my monitor:

Ideally, the above is what should greet you when you visit the Twitter feed for my walk blog. Every time I look up ways to design one's own Twitter background, I see over and over that "Twitter left-justifies background images." If that's the case, then there's no reason an image should be cut off on the left side by the left edge of one's monitor. Alas, I've had reports to the contrary from friends who've checked my Twitter feed, so I'm beginning to think that the Twitter gurus are either lying or deluded. It'd be nice if Twitter introduced scalable backgrounds; that would solve the problem right there.




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lessons learned #1: focus

So I'm thinking about restarting my trans-American walk. The first time around, my purpose was to explore American religious diversity, and to do so by visiting various houses of worship and meditation to talk with the folks about their attitudes toward religious diversity (see my ten religious questions). Instead of planning my route in advance, I had thought it would be interesting to visit a place, and then have that community send me onward to the next place. To my mind, this would have been a way to build relationships among disparate religious communities: for example, a Sikh gurdwara could have sent me off to a Buddhist temple, which could have sent me over to a Catholic church twenty miles away, which could have sent me to a synagogue the next town over, etc. In reality, though, this didn't happen, and part of the reason was that these communities didn't seem all that interested in connecting with each other. Getting people to make those connections sometimes felt a bit like pulling teeth. This may not have been their fault, though; I may have been using the wrong approach.

So the walk took a slow, meandering path as a result. I had also chosen to break eastward after I'd reached Portland, which meant stepping away from most of the religious diversity of the west coast. Some of my friends and helpers began to question why I had chosen the route I had, and where, exactly, the focus of my walk lay. If it was truly to explore religious diversity, they said, then shouldn't I have been following the west coast down through California, precisely to be able to meet all those Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, adherents of native American religion, etc.? By cutting suddenly eastward at Portland, Oregon (I had started in White Rock, British Columbia), and setting off into the high desert, wasn't I refocusing the walk on just getting across the country? It seemed to many that I hadn't really defined my project well enough, and that I was, in a sense, walking at cross-purposes to myself.

I think, in retrospect, that the criticisms had merit. The walk needed more focus. Although the exploration of religious diversity through the prism of my short list of questions wasn't a bad approach, I had paired that approach up with a very poor notion of route planning.

This time around, then, I want to make clear from the outset that this walk is to raise awareness about glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), and to raise funds for GBM research. I want a percentage of those funds to go directly to the Parks family, whose acquaintance I made a short while ago, and in whose lives I have become somewhat involved. The walk has other goals as well, but those goals have a more private relevance-- things like self-improvement, the restoration of a sense of purpose and meaning to my life, the feeling of accomplishing One Big Thing before I die, etc. Those private goals depend on the public act of walking across the country.

In my next post, I want to talk about the lessons I learned regarding planning.


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renewal

In the late 1970s, fantasy novelist Stephen R. Donaldson wrote the following dirge, sung by a character in a novel after that character had lost both of his parents:

Death reaps the beauty of the world--
bundles old crops to hasten new.
Be still, heart:
hold peace.
Growing is better than decay:
I hear the blade which severs life from life.
Be still, peace:
hold heart.
Death is passing on--
the making way of life and time for life.
Hate dying and killing, not death.
Be still, heart:
make no expostulation.
Hold peace and grief
and be still.

I come back to this poem now and again. It's been that way ever since Mom's death. Over a year has passed since she left us, and the wounds haven't healed. Part of the reason has to do with events that occurred after Mom died-- events that have prevented grief and healing from proceeding at their proper, natural pace. A member of our family chose to be selfish, and to lie for months about his selfish behavior, and about his cowardly betrayal of Mom's memory. The rest of us no longer speak to this family member, and he has, thus far, chosen to do nothing to repair the damage he's done, despite knowing what he needs to do to make amends. Forgiveness isn't the issue here: love and trust are. Forgiveness is easy, but if you can't trust someone, you can't love them, and never let anyone tell you differently. For now, I'll let you speculate as to who this family member is (many of you already know, since I've spoken with you or emailed you about this disaster); perhaps later on, much later on, I'll provide more details. Right now, what matters is that we're all moving on with our lives and coping as we can.

Mom died last January 6th. Later in 2010, I finished my part in the ongoing effort to renovate Mom's house, an effort she never saw come to fruition. Over the course of several months, I slowly but surely organized, packed up, and brought to the attic the enormous mountain of possessions that had lain in piles in our basement/family room. In the fall, I moved out of the northern Virginia area to a place that's greener and that offers a bit more peace and quiet-- something I felt I needed after Mom's death and the bitter aftermath. I got a job with ETS as a TOEFL essay rater, but after two decent months of work, the job petered out, and I found myself struggling to pay the rent. I've been helped by my brothers David and Sean, as well as by my best buddy Mike; all of them have contributed time and money to keep me afloat, and I can't thank them enough.

Just a couple weeks ago, I became a tutor at a special center that caters to young people from grade school through grad school. I was grateful to get the job, which promises me plenty of steady, stable work, unlike ETS. What I do now is also far less boring, and that's a plus: rating TOEFL essays was mind-numbing work.

So I'm doing what I can to get financially back on my feet. As always, I have a mountain of scholastic debt, not to mention bills that need paying, but I'm lucky not to have a single penny of credit card debt to my name.

To be sure, life after Mom hasn't merely been about righting the fiscal ship. I've also had the chance to make the acquaintance of the Parks family over the past month or so: Marissa Parks, a young and happy 24, was recently diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the same type of brain cancer that took the lives of my mother and, more famously, Senator Ted Kennedy. I learned about Marissa and her GBM from the strangest of sources: an article at Cracked.com. The author of that humorous piece is a friend of Marissa's, and he linked to her blog. I left a long comment on her blog offering some advice about GBM treatment, and thus began a correspondence that has expanded to include Marissa's intrepid father, Brad. Marissa tells me she doesn't want pity, but her energy and optimism have instilled in me a desire to help her and her family out in some way, as well as to honor my mother's memory and to reach out to other victims of GBM. To that end, I've finally come around to the idea of returning to my trans-American walk. This time, though, the purpose won't be to explore American religious diversity: it'll be to raise consciousness about this deadly form of brain cancer, and to raise money for GBM research.

The upshot: Kevin's Walk is starting again, with the same goal of going from sea to shining sea. Over the coming days and weeks, I'll be writing more about what this means in terms of training, fundraising, route planning, and all the rest. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!


ADDENDUM: Check out the Kevin's Walk Twitter feed here.


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epilogue

First Easter without Mom.

I went to sleep early on Saturday night, and woke up early this morning, around 5:30AM, so as to go perform my own little sunrise ceremony. I was counting on Fort Hunt Park being open by 6:30 (sunrise was closer to 6:50), and as it turned out, the park was quite open. Not only that, but as I drove past the entrance, I saw that one parking lot was already full of worshippers who had taken over the park's main pavilion-- even lighting its large stone hearth-- for an Easter sunrise service.

I wasn't interested in that service, or even in that parking lot. Instead, I drove down to one of the parking lots at which we used to stop so that Mom could get out and have a walk. We took Mom walking as often as we could during her illness; she'd had good days and bad days, depending on the state of her brain: too much intracranial edema meant that she would stumble and fall, leaving it up to us, usually two of us, to catch her in time.

Today's dawn was quiet. I got out of the car, stared around at the slowly lightening park, and began to walk the route we normally took with Mom. My hand reached out to grasp her now-invisible hand, and for a moment I was able to conjure Mom up, and feel what it was like to walk slowly across the asphalt with her at my side. There were brief tears, but this morning wasn't as bad as several weeks ago, when I came back to this park for the first time since Mom's death. On that day, I started walking and suddenly stopped: Mom's absence was heartbreakingly palpable. Instead of walking, I found myself leaning against the pillar of one of the smaller pavilions, sobbing at the cruel pain of memory, and it wasn't until I'd finished crying that I was able to pull myself together and walk our familiar path.

This morning, as I noted, the tears were brief. I walked one path, drove the car around the perimeter road a bit, parked at our other traditional parking lot, and walked that second path as well. Together, the two paths were about three-quarters of a mile in length: the measure of a cancer-ridden life.

When I finished the second walk, I bypassed the car and sat myself on a picnic table sheltered by a pavilion, facing the rising sun. The pavilion's heavy wooden structure, and the way in which it framed the sun, evoked the ambience of a temple. I sat ch'am-seon (zazen) for a hundred slow breaths, and right as I expelled my hundredth breath, I suddenly heard the sound of singing from the Christian group across the way. I smiled; it was one of those happy coincidences that might lead the more superstitious among us to see the work of Providence.

I'm not a literal theist; haven't been for years. I don't believe in Providence, or a literal resurrection, or miracles, or the power of prayer. As far as I'm concerned, what happened to Mom was unfair, and made no ultimate sense. If there is a God, then Mom's brain cancer was evidence of God's cruelty, not his majesty or mercy. Her cancer, glioblastoma multiforme, has an unknown cause and no known cure: it arose through unfathomable but natural means, and Mom died a death that was the natural consequence of such a cancer's progression. No one recovers from GBM, and Mom's cancer was even more aggressive than most GBM cases are. We did what we could for nearly nine months, struggling to keep her as comfortable as possible, all the while knowing that she would eventually die. I spent some of that time hoping that she might be made well enough to live to 70; that was a vain hope. Some of Mom's friends and relatives persisted in denial, thinking that somehow she might benefit from a cure. I suppose it's only natural to cling to hope, but hope often clouds one's perception of reality.

We now begin the long trudge past a series of temporal milestones. Today marks our first Easter without Mom. Two days from now, Dad endures his first wedding anniversary without his wife; it would have been their 43rd. On May 4th, we face Mom's birthday; she would have been 67. By modern American standards, 67 is still young. My aunt in Texas, Mom's big sister and her senior by twelve years, has repeatedly lamented the injustice of Mom's passing away first. I'd rather that both Mom and my aunt lived forever, but I understand the spirit of my aunt's lament. Mom's death wasn't part of some ridiculous cosmic plan or "salvation history"; it simply happened, and it was senseless, tragic, and ignoble. And yes: it was unfair.

Combatting that senselessness, tragedy, and ignobility is our duty: the duty of those who remain. Mom would want to know that her three sons were living happy and fulfilling lives, that her husband was enjoying retirement and a measure of inner peace. It's up to us to be true to what Mom would have wanted, and her memory must now serve as our guide. I don't believe in souls or the afterlife, but I think there's a meaningful sense in which Mom continues to be with us. Her existence created ripples that affected everyone around her-- family, friends, coworkers, and relatives. Those ripples will continue outward, changing form, but always supplying a loving impetus to our nobler thoughts and actions.

In the meantime, though, Mom's loss is still fresh in our hearts. We miss her. Desperately.

A few minutes after Mom died on January 6, we each took a moment to say something to her before leaving the ICU. I don't know what Dad or my brothers said, but for my part, I told Mom that I loved her, and that she shouldn't worry: we'd be all right. It's up to us, now, not to let those words become a lie.

I love you, Mom. I love you.


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unfinished business: blog not as dormant as predicted

I had said, earlier, that the previous post was to be the next-to-last post for this blog, because I would be writing an epilogue and then leaving it at that. However, I began to realize that doing so would have meant breaking several promises. One promise, from early in this blog's existence, stands out: the promised transcription of several recorded dialogues that occurred during my 600-mile trek across the Pacific Northwest in 2008. For one reason or another, I've been unable to sit down for a straight block of time to work on transcription. During the first few months I was back home from the walk, the main reason was renovation: the house was being torn up and rebuilt, which made lengthy sessions on the computer difficult. From the spring of 2009 onward, I was more preoccupied by Mom's cancer than by any need to finish those transcriptions, and while I did write some lengthy blog posts during that time, they were all, in some way, about Mom.

But now I'm at a point that I foresaw during Mom's illness: Mom is gone and I suddenly find myself with plenty of free time. Here's the plan, then: I'll write my epilogue, but at the end of the epilogue, I'll append updates that pertain only to transcribed dialogues. The dialogues themselves will be backdated so as to be filed away in the murky depths of the blog archives, i.e., the epilogue will remain the blog's final post. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, I strongly recommend that you peruse my sidebar (many folks who visit blogs never bother looking at sidebars, which is a shame). Near the top is a section titled "Interactions," which contains links to records of some of the encounters I had during my walk. Those exchanges ought to give you, Dear Reader, an idea of what's coming.

So the basic imperative remains: stop by every once in a while, and check to see whether I've added new links to my epilogue, once it's written. No definite timeline; I don't plan to box myself in with more promises I might not be able to keep.

As always: thank you.


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slide shows

As it turns out, Flickr isn't all that friendly if you're trying to make a huge slide show. The site only allows 200 photos to be visible if you have only the free account; to be able to see more photos, you have to pay for the upgrade to a "professional" account, at which point you have nearly unlimited storage capacity. This is no different from what Photobucket does, and since I already have Photobucket as my image upload service, I see no reason to start paying for an expanded Flickr service.

So instead of using Flickr, I'm using Photobucket as the base for all my slides. What follows is pretty much the same slide show that was running during the memorial reception. A few major differences, though:

1. It appears that I'm unable to control the time intervals at which the slides change.


2. This presentation contains a few extra pictures, but not a significant number. I'd guess that there are probably fewer than ten extra shots here.

3. The slides cannot be larger than 640 x 480 pixels.

4. As a result, all the slides you see have been drastically reduced in size.

5. Each Photobucket slide show has a limit of 100 slides, which means I've had to break up the "2000s" chapter into smaller sections. The final chapter, which covers Mom's cancer, originally had 103 slides in it. To meet the slide limit requirement, I simply subtracted 3 slides instead of creating yet another slide show.

6. The slide shows all appear below, and they will all run at the same time.

Without further ado, then--

Mom in the 1960s and 1970s:













Mom in the 1980s:













Mom in the 1990s:













Mom in the 2000s, before her cancer (3 slide shows due to the number of slides):





































And finally, Mom during the cancer period (4/16/09 - 1/6/10):














All that remains for this blog is the epilogue-- my coda after writing for nine months about life at the end of Mom's life. I can't say when I'll write it. Maybe tomorrow, maybe six months from now, maybe 5 years from now. Whether the epilogue will be long or short, sentimental or humorous, prose or poetry-- I have no idea. So check back every now and again. You've come this far.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your readership.


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reflections on last Saturday's memorial

It's been a week since Mom's memorial service, which is, I suppose, a long enough delay. I've been meaning to write this entry since last Saturday, but haven't felt much desire to do anything, let alone write another post. The memorial marked a crescendo of sorts; the week before it was one long buildup to the ceremony itself. By "ceremony," I suppose I mean both the service and the reception that followed. Each event was, after all, part of a larger, ritualistic whole.

Our family had been to the church for a few hours the previous day (Friday, January 15) to consult with Pastor Jeri and Pastor Kim about the nitty-gritty details of the ceremony to come. Quite unsurprisingly, we discovered that we were in the best of hands: Jeri was ready to finalize and print out the church bulletins, and ladies were already bustling about the Christian Education Building, setting up the reception area. There was little to do on Friday but set up easels, position Mom's picture at the front of the sanctuary, drop the guest ledger and 3-ring binder in their respective places, and make sure the digital projector was working. My PowerPoint slide show wasn't finished on Friday afternoon; I would end up spending the entire night working on it. I had been laboring over it all week, but in accordance with Murphy's Law, work managed to pile up at the very end, despite the head start. In such cases, when I face a massive time crunch, sleep is the first thing to go. That's been true for me since college.

On Saturday, I arrived at church around 8:30AM after only an hour and a half of sleep. The slide show was finished, but I had sacrificed several dozen pictures from both the 1990s and the 2000s. Some of those pictures had been given to us by different friends-- folks who had probably hoped to see their contributions displayed in some form or other. Despite the omissions, quite a few of the digital pictures did make it into the slide presentation, but none were shown on the easels. Still, the slide show chapter devoted to the 1990s was severely truncated. I simply didn't have time to finish.

Pastor Jeri had already set up her computer for my use in the CE Building. All I had to do was plug in my thumb drive, access the slide show, then start it running. I had set the show to change pictures at five-second intervals, and had also programmed the entire sequence to loop over and over again. With well over 300 pictures in the tribute, the slide show was about 30 minutes long. I stood for a few minutes and watched images of Mom from the 1960s and 70s; when the show rolled into the 1980s, I left the CE Building and went back to the sanctuary, where there wasn't much for me to do.

Several other folks arrived early: my father and brothers, my Texan relatives, Mrs. Kopf-Perry and her two children, and Sean's friend William McDaniel, who was to play piano during the service. Mrs. Kopf-Perry performed the mike check while I moved to the back of the sanctuary, near the narthex; she sounded loud and clear to me. I hugged my cousins and uncle and several aunts; most of them had flown in from Texas on Friday, and our family, because we were so busy, hadn't even had the chance to see them when they arrived. At first, despite the huge number of empty pews, no one would sit down, but eventually people wandered forward and took their seats in the second and third rows, which had been reserved for family.

Time seemed, somehow, both to crawl and rush simultaneously: molasses and water. It wasn't long before the organist was up in the balcony, playing the prelude while people filed into the church. I'm not the type to constantly turn around to see who's there, but because I've been a member of this church since the fifth grade, I was conscious of the building's dimensions and acoustics, and could feel the sanctuary filling behind me while the clergy took their places in front of me. By 10AM, the church was nearly full.

The organist came down to the front and gave us an excellent rendition of two of the pieces we had chosen: "This is My Father's World" and "Clair de Lune." Music was, I think, one of the most memorable aspects of Mom's service.

Mom's service. The thought was still a strange one, even though I knew she was dead. All this was for Mom. There was her picture on the altar; there was her image, printed on every church bulletin. There were her friends and relatives-- all the people who loved her. You might counter that funerals are for the living; I agree, but such ceremonies have the dead as their reason for being. Mom's memorial. Mentally, I was shaking my head, even as the service rolled on.

The eulogies given by Mrs. Kopf-Perry, Mrs. Burns, and Mrs. Burns's daughter Beth, were touching tributes to my mother. All three speakers emphasized Mom's caring nature, her concern for others, and her kindness.

Then it was up to us guys-- three of us, not four-- to speak. Sean had already chosen to speak through his music, and he did so brilliantly throughout the service. The Babadjanian piece was a trio for piano, violin, and cello; we're thankful not just to Sean and his friend William, but also to Regino Madrid, who did a masterful job on violin. Later in the service, the Rachmaninoff piece was played only by Sean and William. It, too, was just the sort of music that Mom had loved.

I was the first family member to stand at the lectern. The walk up to the stage felt more as if I were floating; the service had taken on a surreal cast, not because I was nervous, but because-- after nine months of telling everyone around me to be realistic-- part of me still couldn't accept that I was about to deliver a eulogy for Mom. I managed to get through my notes without too much trouble, but I think I went way overtime: the original plan had been for me to speak only five minutes.

David went next. I remember being curious about what he would say, since none of us had shared our eulogy ideas with anyone else in the family. As it turned out, David delivered a eulogy that was both touching and humorous; it was a fitting tribute to Mom. Dad came next, and he, too, uttered words of love and laughter. I don't know how funerary speeches go in other cultures; I don't know whether levity is kosher outside of the modern Western context, but personally, I was glad that we three guys were each able to evoke our love for Mom in ways that provoked a smile and a chuckle. None of it was meant in disrespect. And Sean's music was the wordless paean that capped it all off.

I was thankful for Pastor Jeri's sermon, which emphasized familial love-- a theme that resonates with all human beings, but which would have caught the attention of the Koreans in attendance, for they all would have been thinking about the concept of hyo (Chn. hsiao, filial piety), a Chinese term whose meaning, in the Confucian context, refers to the bonds of love and duty that link the generations. I don't know whether people realize how much Jeri, in addition to her other duties, suffered alongside us, often coming at least once a week to see Mom wherever she was-- at home, in the ER, in the ICU. This was a feat of devotion and commitment unmatched by almost anyone else. As far as I'm concerned, Jeri can come in and out of our house whenever she likes, even if it's just to crash on our couch or in a spare bed for a few minutes before she moves on to the next thing on her never-ending to-do list. I can say, about many of the people who came to see Mom, that our family can never pay them back for their kindness, but this goes doubly for Pastor Jeri.

The service ended with "Arirang"-- surprise, surprise. But the music, however stereotypically Korean it might be, felt as right as breathing in this context. Our family crossed the distance between the sanctuary and the CE Building in an uneven line; some of us hung back while others of us marched right on over. We saw the round and rectangular tables, all now laden with food, and we took our places in the building's main hall, in front of the stage, waiting for the congregation to file in for the reception.

What followed was a blizzard of handshakes, hugs, and tears. Not my tears, nor those of my father or brothers: we smiled, we greeted, we talked; we ended up hearing the same questions and saying the same things over and over. People congratulated us on a beautiful service, complimented our speaking ability and our composure, asked us what we would be doing next. "Where do you go from here?" wasn't a question I felt ready to answer on that day; even now, a week later, I find it hard to peer into my own future. But I suppose it's natural for people to wonder what the next step is. If the moment of death is a threshold, then of course people want to know what lies on the other side-- not merely for the dead, but for those who survive the dead.

We were all impressed by the sheer number of people who came on Mom's behalf. Not only were Mom's Korean friends in attendance, but also a ton of friends and coworkers from her old job at the National Association of Letter Carriers. People we hadn't seen in years also came to see us, and along with my childhood friends, I had the chance to meet two blogging buddies (one of whom I'd met before-- apologies for not recognizing you right away, Jason!).

I don't know whether Mom would have been proud or mortified. She would never have wanted such fanfare for herself, but she was gregarious enough to enjoy a good party. Whether a memorial reception qualifies as "a good party" is debatable, but I saw folks talking and laughing and eating. Mom would have enjoyed that.

Somehow, our family-- Dad, my brothers, my aunts and my uncle, my cousins, and me-- all got through it. The line took about two hours to peter out, and when it finally did, I allowed myself to turn around and look up at the wall on which the slide show of Mom's life was playing. I watched each moment appear and fade: fleeting glimpses of a beautiful, smiling Mom throughout the decades. And even though my mind knew that existence is marked by impermanence, my heart tugged in a different direction, and keened for Mom. The images weren't her.

I finally cried then, and while the tears were streaming down my cheeks, Dad found me, and for the first time in nine months, we allowed each other a vision of our private pain. When we looked into each other's eyes, we saw the same sad embers burning there, the same desolation radiating from both our hearts. We were Mom's 24/7 caregivers, and now she was gone. Dad cried, too, his face showing more naked anguish than I had ever seen. We had, all of us in the family, experienced an amputation of the soul. My aunt was right: none of this was fair. I have no idea whether anyone saw me and my father gripping each other in a desperate hug; earlier on, many people in the reception line seemed to think that we guys had all "held it together" or "been stoic" during the service. Perhaps we had, but if those people were secretly thinking that we weren't outwardly sad enough, they were wrong. No structure, however large, could contain our grief-- not a church, not the entire world.

But the tears were, in their own small way, therapeutic. The reception was essentially over by 3PM, and a desultory cleanup operation was already under way when I silenced the slide show, collected my thumb drive, and helped folks to package food and recover unused plates, cups, and napkins. I spoke with my relatives a bit, and with my buddy Sam, who kindly hung around with his mother and sister. I can't remember much of what anyone said. Perhaps it's best just to remember the mood, which was one of fellowship and conviviality. A few more hugs, a few more words and waves and bows, and the day was over.

Our thanks go out to the people who came for the memorial service, to those who helped with all the preparation, and to those who helped with the cleanup. We also need to thank the Washington Korean Women's Society for their enormous financial donation to our family-- this being over and above the many visits, food deliveries, cards, and letters we've received from society members (many-- if not most-- of whom are Mom's personal friends), not to mention from everyone else.

My father is busy writing thank-you cards to everyone he can think of. He's a better man than I am; personally, I'm content to leave matters with this public thank-you. Dad's old-school, though, so many of you will be receiving a small card from him in the mail.

I haven't forgotten my promise to link to an online slide show featuring the pictures shown at the memorial. That is, in fact, my very next project: file size reduction and slide show assembly. After that, despite the fact that the house still needs renovation work, Dad and I are going to take time off to do our separate things. Dad says he wants to go to Texas to see our relatives there; I'm planning to find a spot where it's completely silent, and just hang there for a week or two. The quiet might do my troubled heart some good.


PS: To all the people who, during the reception, thanked me for having written this blog, I say: You're welcome. It served the practical purpose of keeping people informed, and also allowed me to vent my frustrations (at least partially; much remains unblogged, but can be found in private emails to various friends). Although I've been extremely disappointed in the number of people who couldn't be bothered to keep up with Mom's news, on January 16 I learned just how many people didn't fit that description. So even as I'm saying "You're welcome," I offer my humble thanks in return to all those dedicated readers-- especially the ones who have stuck with the blog from the beginning.

PPS: Along with the above-promised slide show, I'll be writing an epilogue of sorts. I can't say when that will happen, but when it does, it'll be this blog's final entry. Comments will remain open, though I'll still be vetting them before allowing them to see the light of day (as always, please see the comments policy for details).

A big, massive hug to you all.


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glimpses of the memorial service

For his birthday, we took Dad out for dinner at Maggiano's, one of the better Italian restaurant chains in the northern Virginia area. We all ended up stuffing ourselves silly, and most of us had trouble sleeping until near dawn. Maggiano's, with its enormous portions, provided just the sort of vulgar excess we needed, I think: a chance to introduce some levity and enjoyment into a time of tears and quiet suffering.

Dad's birthday was this past Sunday, January 17, the day after Mom's memorial service. I'd like to write about how that day went, but for the moment, I'm going to leave you some glimpses of the ceremony-- glimpses in the form of the church program and some notes about the scriptural choices I'd made on behalf of the family.

The memorial service was a massive group effort. Many people from the church community and from Mom's Korean society helped prepare the food and refreshments at the reception; I created the PowerPoint slide show and drafted the overall liturgy, basing it squarely on the memorial liturgy for another family in our church. That template had been provided by Pastor Jeri. Almost everyone in the family contributed music selections to our liturgy; Debussy's "Clair de Lune" was my choice, while Dad chose the hymns "This is My Father's World" and "I Danced in the Morning." We all agreed on "Arirang" for the postlude; Sean picked the hymn "In the Bleak Midwinter" and carefully chose his Babadjanian and Rachmaninoff pieces, which he knew Mom had loved. I designed the program's cover, but it was Pastor Jeri who took it upon herself to review and finalize the program's overall format. Flowers came to us from all corners, and during both the service and the reception that followed, we were touched to see so many attendees-- probably well over two hundred. The photos people saw at the reception had been primarily gathered by Dad, but many had also been mailed or emailed to us by various friends. I sorted the pictures into decades, but David and Dad were the ones who painstakingly assembled the large display panels of Mom's life.

So: for purposes of remembrance, I'm placing some memorial-related materials in this blog post for you to peruse. As always, comments are welcome.

We begin with a look at the program cover:

Below: page 1 of the program.



Here's a YouTube clip of the Debussy piece. I tried to find a clip of the Babadjanian piece online, but I'm not sure such a clip exists anywhere other than in iTunes, where it must be purchased. That's a shame: it's a beautiful piece.

Below is page 2 of the program.



Our thanks to Mrs. Kopf-Perry, Mrs. Burns, and Mrs. Burns's daughter Beth for sharing their thoughts about and feelings for Mom.

Here's a YouTube clip of the Rachmaninoff piece that Sean and William played.

Below is page 3 of the program. People are still welcome to make donations to the American Cancer Society in Mom's name.



Mom's bio (the death date should actually read January 6, 2010, as can be found in the bio's text):





Instead of preparing a formal speech for my eulogy, I simply cobbled together some notes and spoke from them:



Below is a compilation of the scriptural passages that we had chosen to be read during the memorial service. My comments, which I'd submitted to Pastor Jeri along with the draft of the liturgy, are in italics.

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Isaiah 40:28-31
NB: This “wings of eagles” passage seems somehow apropos.

John 1:1-5^NRSV (to be read responsively)

In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
And the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
And the darkness has not overcome it.

NB: I chose the above passage for what it says about Christ-nature, which unites creative love, light, and life. I also made, somewhat presumptuously, one verb tense change: the original NRSV text says, “...the darkness did not overcome it.” This struck me as a jarring clash of verb tenses.

Genesis 32:24-29^NRSV

NB: I chose this passage, in which Jacob wrestles with an angel or with God, because of what it says about the nature of the relationship between humanity and the divine. Wrestling isn’t quite the same notion as struggle; the latter seems to imply a bit more desperation, whereas wrestling can be contentious in a variety of ways-- not always unfriendly, either. Jacob’s contest is an example of a rough but friendly encounter: in the end, he is deliberately hurt by his adversary, but he receives a blessing and is confronted with mystery when his demand to hear the wrestler’s name is rebuffed.

Our own encounter with the Nameless can often be like that: painful, rewarding, and not easy to categorize. Also of note in this passage is Jacob’s chutzpah in asking for the blessing and for the wrestler’s name. I was always impressed by a passage in a book called Comparative Religious Ethics that notes that one of Judaism’s major contributions to world religion was chutzpah-- in this case, a sort of cosmic audacity in the face of the Ultimate [cf. Job for another example]. Koreans know all about chutzpah, and Mom was no different from the rest of her people in that regard. She spoke her mind, she wanted the best out of life for her family, and she wasn’t shy about being demanding. The difference between her and Jacob, though, is that she would never have asked a blessing for herself.

Psalm 23^KJV (read in unison)

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8^NRSV

Matthew 6:25-29, 34^NRSV

NB: This is the section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus evokes nature to remind us of the need for a present-oriented mindset. I chose this in part for personal reasons, not least of which is that I consider it a “bridge passage” in Christian-Buddhist dialogue. Buddhism is highly empirical and present-oriented; its focus is on mindfulness and compassion, which Buddhists see as two sides of the same coin. Nothing is stopping Christians from looking at life that way, either. Jesus is saying, “Look around you, and note how nature just is. That should be sufficient as you consider your troubles.”

I also chose this passage because of what it says about Mom’s heart. Even though she was often a consummate worrier, she also kept her head and responded to situations as they presented themselves. In Korean Zen, this is called “following your situation.” People who fail to follow their situation, who fail to look around them, get mired in all sorts of unnecessary, human-generated silliness-- problems caused by the desperate churning of their own minds. In her roles as Korean women’s society president and board member, Mom was often the calming influence on more heated personalities, putting out fires often caused by volatile combinations of pride and misunderstanding.

Jesus never explicitly said, “Just breathe, y’all,” but in asking us to consider the birds or the flowers, he was calling us to be silent and observant: to pay attention to the world, to turn outward, away from our own egos. The simple act of turning outward, of following our situation, is often enough to begin to introduce peace into the world. It’s the first step on the path of love. Which leads us to the second, and unsurprising, scripture selection...

1 Corinthians 13

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I've published the above material here to offer a taste of what Mom's memorial service was like to those who weren't able to attend it. I also wanted to give those who did attend a chance to relive, for a moment, the ceremony they experienced-- and to afford them something of an insider's perspective re: rationales for scripture choices, eulogy notes, etc. I haven't asked Dad or David for permission to publish their eulogies, which is why they don't appear here as well.


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joyeux anniversaire, Papa!

The Ducoulombier family has sent along this e-card for my father on the occasion of his 68th birthday.

Top: Héloïse (second daughter, third child)
Middle: Timothé (second son, fourth child) and Véronique (Domi's wife)
Bottom: Dominique (my bud since 1986), Joséphine (eldest daughter, first child) and Augustin (first son, second child)

Got all that? There'll be a quiz later.

Our family would also like to thank the Higdon family and Mount Vernon Presbyterian church both for the birthday cake and for the round of "Happy Birthday" singing today. As one lady said to Dad, "Happy twenty-first!"

UPDATE: I was either half-asleep or at Maggiano's with Dad and my brothers when it happened, but it seems my buddy Mike gathered his family together and sang "Happy Birthday" into the phone for Dad. He heard the voice mail. Thanks, Mike and family.


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a quick update

The memorial service went about as well as could be expected. I'm operating on only an hour and a half of sleep right now, so I'll write more in detail tomorrow or Monday, when I'm more awake and alert. Tomorrow, as you'll recall, is Dad's birthday. Like Muhammad Ali, who is the exact same age (give or take a few hours), Dad will turn 68.


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tomorrow

Most or all of us guys will be at the church around 8AM tomorrow, even though the service starts at 10. I've heard that a Korean contingent will be arriving with finger food around 9:30 (so that they can set up in time for the reception, which will occur immediately after the memorial service). Members of the congregation are also bringing food, so in true Presbyterian fashion, no one will be going hungry.

We've been busy all day today. Sean practiced at home, went into DC to pick up the violinist, and had an 8:30PM rehearsal at the church. He won't be speaking; his music will speak for him. David's writing his eulogy, and has been out on various errands, including picking up his suit from the tailor's. I had to do that as well; the tailor told me today that he saw the news about Mom in a local Korean-language paper. Perhaps he'll show up at the memorial service tomorrow morning.

Dad and I are each toiling away-- Dad on his eulogy, and I on my albatross, the PowerPoint presentation. At some point, I'm probably going to have to throw in the towel and declare the job finished, whether it actually is or not. The amount of scanning we've done (I had a huge amount of help from David) is larger than any scanning task I've done before. It's been complicated by the fact that, at 300dpi, the images show dust motes all over them, which has forced me to spend long minutes using Photoshop to clean up every single picture. Minutes easily snowball into hours. On top of all that, I still haven't gotten beyond two paragraphs on my own eulogy, and am thinking that, since I'll be speaking for only five minutes, I might just carry some notes up to the lectern with me. I've started and deleted the eulogy text too many times to count, so perhaps this is a hint that I need to stop holding on to the notion of a scripted talk.

We're all tired and stressed, but we're chugging away. As you might imagine, we're just looking for Saturday to be over. I don't mean that as a slight to anyone-- certainly not to our relatives, who have all taken the trouble to come up from Texas for a single night and morning; nor to Mom's many friends, who will be attending the memorial service; nor to the hardworking people who have been helping us put the service together. I guess I'm just saying that we guys are all exhausted, sad, and just hoping for a bit of a breather.

The very next day, Sunday the 17th, is Dad's birthday. We'll likely be treating him to a nice meal somewhere in town; I can only imagine that, for Dad, occasions like birthdays and anniversaries shouldn't be celebrated alone. At the very least, we sons should do our best to offer him our presence and companionship. We did it for Mom; we can and should do it for Dad, too.


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merci, mes enfants!

My French brother Dominique sent me these lovely drawings from his kids, who created these for us after he told them about my family situation.

What amazing kids. Merci à vous tous, les enfants. Vous ne vous rendez peut-être pas compte combien votre geste m'a touché. Je suis ému.


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Flickr photos: a hitch

I had wanted to put photos up on Flickr before I made the PowerPoint slide presentation, but we've got a major problem: Flickr is free, but has a 100MB storage limit. Because it would have taken me far too long to reduce file sizes on the hundreds of files we have, I've been using un-reduced photos for the PowerPoint slide show. This shouldn't be a problem for what we're doing at the church, but with several gigabytes' worth of photos (and my thanks to those who mailed, emailed, or handed pictures to us), there's simply no way I can upload everything to Flickr without a massive campaign of file size reduction.

I'm sorry, but that can't happen in the time I have left before the memorial service, so please expect the Flickr slide show to occur a few days after Saturday.

Thanks and sorry.


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quick update

We'll be visiting the church tomorrow (Friday) afternoon at 2PM, armed with all manner of things to set up for the memorial service. Our thanks to the church staff and congregation for their past and future help in making this service go smoothly. A lot of people are working behind the scenes; I can't give them all credit here, but They Know Who They Are.

Thank you. And see you Saturday.


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slowly but surely

We're meeting with Pastor Jeri on Wednesday to discuss matters related to the upcoming memorial service. I've turned in (1) my draft of the liturgy (with plenty of red-font annotation), (2) my Photoshop design for the church program's front cover, (3) a two-page bio about Mom, and (4) a photo to go along with the bio. I've also been working on organizing all the photos of Mom for the pictorial tribute, and am at a point where I can begin my massive scanning project. This promises to take more than a day, even if I scan several pictures at once, and there's still a great deal of photo editing and manipulation to do (e.g., photos that have been scanned together will need to be cut into separate individual shots; labels will need to be applied to give credit to the people who have contributed pictures to the tribute; red-eye corrections need to be done, etc.).

I'm doing my best to respect my original idea: the division of the photos into decades (see the bottom of this post for details). However, I can't promise that all the photos truly belong to a given decade. As it turns out, we have a pile of un-stamped pictures showing clothing and hairstyles that could well be interpreted as era-straddling, making it hard to assign them a proper time period. I also have no plans to order the photos within each decade, i.e., a photo from 1999 might appear well before a photo from 1993, and a photo from September 2002 might appear before a photo from May 2002. I'm pretty sure that people viewing the tribute will forgive this peccadillo.

There's plenty more to do, but it's being done, slowly but surely. David has bought a suit and is having it tailored (I urgently need to do likewise). He's also going to help me arrange physical displays of Mom's photos for the lo-tech aspect of the photo tribute. Sean, who instead of speaking will be performing some of Mom's favorite classical pieces during the service, is working through the nitty-gritty of recruiting fellow instrumentalists. Along with all the funerary paperwork (and the regular paperwork that comes with having a house), Dad's doing some necessary grocery shopping today, and will be devoting himself to the cleaning of the house this entire week. He, David, and I also need to write our eulogies-- a task I hope to begin tonight.

Far from being a time of rest and meditation, things have been hectic here. And despite all the activity, the whole affair seems to feel hollow at its center, as if, somehow, Mom should be here to help us organize everything. Just the other day, I was struck by the weird feeling that we had left Mom stranded somewhere, and were supposed to pick her up. I guess this is an improvement over what I'd been feeling the day Mom died. On that day, I wondered why my heart was still beating. It didn't seem fair, somehow, for the world to continue without her.

See you Saturday, I hope.


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odds and ends

[Reminder: see this post for information about the memorial service for Mom. I'm assuming that, if you're savvy enough to be online, you're savvy enough to use MapQuest or Google Maps to get directions to the church. There's no reason to phone the church (or us) for directions. Both aforementioned websites are extremely easy to use. Thank you for understanding.]

Sometime around the end of January, this blog will go dormant, its purpose having been fulfilled. It had originally been about my walk across America, but it became a chronicle of something far more important: the decline and death of my mother due to glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and most aggressive form of brain cancer there is, and a cancer for which there still exists no cure.

There's very little left to write about as regards Mom's story; we stand in the aftermath of her passing. For now, our family's focus is on getting through the memorial service more or less in one piece, emotionally speaking. I did most of my sobbing on the day Mom died, and have cried a few times since then, but we are all, slowly but surely, picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off, and doing our best to climb out of the wreckage of the past nine months.

Nine months. The time it takes to gestate a baby. It's still hard to believe that Mom is gone, but there we are-- those are the facts. Mom stepped through one door, and soon we'll step through another: the gateway to the rest of our lives. Here's hoping for brighter horizons.

You may have noted that I haven't described the events of Wednesday, the day Mom passed away. That was a deliberate choice. I did, in fact, tearfully type out a detailed report of Mom's death a day later; that part of the story might appear in the book version of this sad tale, but for now, I'm keeping it private. You, Dear Reader, don't really need to know what I saw and felt that day. Not yet, anyway.

Mom's been gone a little more than three days. Dad's been on the phone with various people, and today he received a visit from the funeral home providing cremation services. I've been working on several things at once: the format for the memorial service liturgy, Mom's bio for the church bulletin, her eulogy, and the biggest project of all: the compilation and finalization of a pictorial tribute to Mom. I'm hoping to send Pastor Jeri a draft of the liturgy format tonight; I also want to send her the finished bio, if possible. As Dad reminded me, we've got a lot of housecleaning to do since we're sure to have guests over the weekend. Relatives will be flying in from Texas; I'm not sure how many (if any) will be staying at our house, and how many will be rooming with our relatives in the area, or at local hotels. David and Sean are already sleeping at our house, but we're all willing to give up beds for house guests. To be discussed, I imagine.

It's been a bright, sunny day. Another day without Mom. I feel no self-pity about my own situation-- no sense of "woe is me." Instead I'm sad, profoundly sad, that Mom doesn't have the chance to see today's sun, or enjoy the way Sean's dog Maqz has been bounding happily around the house. I suppose this empty feeling will be with us for a while.

Ah, yes, before I forget: once the pictorial tribute is done (which should happen in the next few days), it will first appear on Flickr.com. This blog will provide a link to it.


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