Frank is Emptiness

June 24th, 2018

Kenosha is not an interesting town, not even in the best of circumstances. At 3:00 in the morning, it is utterly desolate. Karin and I were parked in the nearly empty juror’s parking lot at the county jail. We were waiting for somebody we loved to walk out the back door. This particular door is drab and grey, and it is the only door through which inmates are released. If a person did not know it was there, it would never be noticed. Perhaps it is meant to be that way. The release door at the Carson County Detention Center in Las Vegas is just the same. These doors are like wormholes that discharge beings from another world.

We came to the jail with two things: a fully charged cell phone for our inmate, and her beloved border collie. I walked around the darkened parking lot with the dog while we waited. Karin sat back in the car, and said a rosary. I could see the clock at Metra station at the end of the street. The hands moved so slowly.

The only activity while we waiting was from the cops working third shift. I half expected that one of them would come over to our car and ask what we were doing there. Nobody gave us a second glance. Apparently, this ungodly hour was the standard release time for Kenosha County. Why? I have no idea. I suspect there is no good reason for the police to release people at 3:00 AM. They do it simply because they can. 

Another car pulled into the lot. It was a white Lincoln. A young black woman got out and looked around. She seemed confused. Finally, she asked me if the grey door was the correct door for picking up her brother. I told her it was. It was oddly comforting that she was there too. Misery loves company.

I sat down on the curb. The dog sat down next to me. I listened to the birds and watched the wind rustle through the leaves of the trees. I had time to think, and to remember.

I remembered a year ago, when I had been busted for engaging in civil disobedience at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas. I spent the day in custody at the CCDC. They finally got tired of me there, and I was released, along with about a dozen other guys, at about 9:00 PM. I remembered the one-way exit door. It was the strangest feeling to leave the dim confines of the jail, and then suddenly be under the glaring neon lights of the Golden Nugget Casino.

I was fortunate that night. One of the other peace activists was waiting in his car to take myself and a couple other troublemakers away from that depressing place. Marcus Pegasus whisked us to a Salvadoran restaurant for hot food and cold beer. It is a joy to have somebody there when you get out of the slammer. Jail is scary. A friend who is there for you is a great comfort.

I remembered that at least one person who was released with me was a homeless guy, or at least he appeared to be. He had nobody there for him that night. He had nobody to care for him. He had no meal waiting for him. He had no place to stay that night.

That haunts me.

At  3:30 AM, our loved one came through the door. The dog ran up to her. They both got into the car.

We drove home.

 

June 21st, 2018

The church is almost exactly seven miles from our house. Karin and I usually go there for daily Mass. We drive together to St. Rita, and sometimes I choose to walk home. The church is at the northern edge of Racine and our home sits near the southern border of Oak Creek. In between Racine and Oak Creek lies the village of Caledonia. Caledonia is semi-rural with small farms, isolated sub-divisions, and working class bars.

Highway 32 connects our home with St. Rita. If I walk back to our house, I follow Hwy 32 part of the way. The rest of my journey follows a nearby bicycle path. The bike path is paralleled by a railroad spur to the west and high tension wires on the east. Both the railroad tracks and the power lines run directly north to the Oak Creek power plant. Quite often trains consisting of scores of coal cars rest on the railroad siding. These trains can extend for one mile, and sometimes two. The cars are fully loaded, and they are all destined to empty out at the power plant, where the fires never cease. The power lines quietly hum and crackle as I walk alongside them. I am generally alone on the bike path, my feet crunching on the crushed limestone that covers the trail.

As I walk north, I can see the twin stacks of the power plant in the distance. The plant dominates everything in the area. The stacks can be seen billowing out steam from five miles away. When I get to within two miles of the power plant, all the land between Hwy 32 and Lake Michigan belongs to We Energies. The electric utility has its own little empire on the eastern edge of Caledonia and Oak Creek. Coming from the south, I can see a mountain of coal sitting near the plant. The black pile is higher than the surrounding buildings. However, it is only visible from certain angles, because We Energies has massive berms built along Hwy 32. The berms block anybody from seeing the power plant, except for the stacks that rise up above everything else like the towers from The Lord of the Rings.

A portion of the bike path comes very close to the highway. There used to be homes on the western side of the road, across from the power plant’s property. Most of those are gone. We Energies has gradually and relentlessly bought up the land to the west of the road. The purchased homes are systematically razed to the ground. Grass and scrawny tress are planted over the former home sites. It is nearly impossible to tell that people actually lived next to We Energies.

There is an exception. One house remains directly across from the power plant. It is poorly maintained, and the property is studded with large hand-painted signs. These signs have been there at least for ten tears. The power plant had a major expansion back in 2008. Some of us opposed this, but that was the year of the Great Recession. We Energies trumpeted the message that the expansion would bring new jobs. The economy at that time was scary , so the politicians from local the municipalities cut deals with the utility. Money changed hands. In 2009 the coal-fired plant doubled in size.

The signs are scrawled with messages like: “We Can’t Breath, Sleep, Live”, or “Corporate Corrupt Collusion Continues”, and “Coaledonia”. Nobody reads the signs, except for me. The posted speed limit on Hwy 32 is 45 mph. Few people do less than sixty. They go by too fast to see the signs, and they probably wouldn’t be interested in them anyway. I always see the signs. I stop my walk and I read them. Somehow, they fascinate me. They are both inspiring and pathetic. The signs cannot change the fact that the power plant is there, and it will not go away. However, the signs stand in silent protest. They will be there until the day that We Energies buys up that land. They will stand until both they and the old house are torn down by corporate greed.

I don’t mind power plants. I like electricity as much as the next person. However, there are other ways to produce energy. There are cleaner ways to do it. There are smarter ways to do it.

Karin and I have an apple tree in our backyard. Every year it produces a crop of Golden Delicious apples. Every year the apples are stained with black spots.

Where do the spots come from?

June 19th, 2018

She was looking at possible jail time. That is never good. It was especially not good for this individual because that also put her at risk for deportation. The woman had come to America to escape the gang violence in Honduras. She may have been legal when she got here, but probably not any more.

This woman has not had an easy time of it since she came to the United States. Her partner was arrested for an offense, and then detained by I.C.E. agents. It is likely that she won’t see him again. The woman has a three-month-old boy, and she is the only parent available to care for him. The woman is currently jobless and homeless. She ran afoul of our state’s driving laws, and that put her in danger of losing her child, and anything she has in this world.

I drove the woman and her baby to her mandatory appointments. I also took another Honduran woman (maybe her sister?) along for the ride. The sister had her five-year-old daughter in tow. The woman needed to speak with her public defender in the morning. I picked the four of them up on the south side of Milwaukee, and we went out to Elkhorn, a tiny town in a distant county, in which the office of her lawyer was located.

The ride took almost an hour. We were all a bit nervous. It was unclear that the woman  would be making the ride back home. Our conversation was limited. I speak almost no Spanish, and my passengers knew the same amount of English. The sister had an app on her phone that would translate English to Spanish and vice versa. It was a crude sort of tool. The app allowed us to understand each other in only a very basic sort of way. I think that at times it caused more confusion than anything else.

We arrived at the attorney’s office around 10:00 AM. We were there early, but the public defender was able to see the woman almost immediately. She left her baby in the care of her sister. After a while, I sat on the floor next to the child’s carrier. The boy had dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark complexion. His name was Taylor. The little boy looked up at my sixty-year-old face with curiosity. I leaned close to him, and he tugged on my long, tangled beard. Maybe it was the first one he had ever seen.

The boy grew restless in the absence of his mother. I picked him up and held him in my arms. I used to carry my kids like that many years ago. We went outside the office into the sunshine and the humid heat. Taylor was fascinated by the world around us. He looked at the sky and the clouds. He looked at the trees and the flowers. He listened intently to the sound of the traffic. He had that spontaneous sense of wonder that children have, and adults don’t. This is his new world, and his country. Taylor is an American by birth. He was starting life without a father, and was in danger of losing his mother. I held him close.

The woman’s meeting with her lawyer was brief. When she was done, I realized that we had four hours to kill before her court appearance at the Justice Center in Elkhorn. It was pointless to go back to Milwaukee, so I suggested that we all go to a local park/museum. We drove to the outdoor museum. It was rather large, and it had numerous displays of life in Wisconsin back in the 1800’s. There were people at the different sites who demonstrated old crafts and skills. We visited a blacksmith shop and a farm. Nobody there spoke Spanish, so we made extensive use of the sister’s phone app. After looking around for a while, we had lunch at the museum. Then we took a slow drive to the court house.

We arrived at the early at the court house. We were waiting for a number of other people to accompany the woman to her court appearance. She was not going in there alone. A group was coming at the behest of the New Sanctuary Movement to escort this woman in and out of the court house. We were concerned that she would be detained by I.C.E. She was worried about it too.

At a previous court date, the woman’s lawyer had remarked that it was extremely unlikely that she would be detained by immigration agents. He commented that only 1% of defendants were ever arrested by I.C.E. Statistically, that may be true. On the other hand, just last week, while I was escorting another undocumented person, agents clad in polo shirts and khakis grabbed some guy in a different court house. Overall, the rate of detention may only be 1%, but for that poor bastard it was 100%. We were not taking chances with this young woman.

It used to be, until recently, that escorting an undocumented person to court was a fairly simple process. I would drive the person to court. Go inside with him or her. They completed their legal  affairs, and we left. Things are scarier now. People disappear. It is no longer sufficient for a an undocumented person to be accompanied by just one individual. Now we need to provide an entourage. It seems crazy, but that is where we are at.

About fifteen minutes before show time, we had gathered a gaggle of people outside the court house. One woman brought along signs protesting the treatment of immigrants. I told her to take the signs back to her car. We were not there demonstrate against government policy. We were there to get this woman in and out of this building without incident. The idea was to quietly and quickly take care of business. We did not want to draw any unnecessary attention to ourselves.

Everybody in the group had a job. Several people were designated as huggers. They stuck close to the Honduran woman, and essentially provided her with a human cocoon. A person was assigned to document any attempted arrest. Two trained people were responsible for interacting with the police and/or I.C.E. agents, if necessary. There were two people chosen to be lookouts inside the court house. One person was on the lookout for I.C.E. outside of the building. I was the wheel man. I was going to drive the getaway car.

If I.C.E. really wanted this woman, would we have been able to stop them? No. We could only make things complicated and uncomfortable for them. I.C.E. does not like publicity. I.C.E. likes things simple and silent.

I waited outside after the woman and her friends and family entered the court house. The air was thick. There was a cold front moving in. Grey, swirling clouds were on the horizon, and they slowly came nearer. I stood outside of my car and watched the sky. The clouds were low and became increasingly darker. The world turned black.

I got a signal from the lookout that the court appearance was over, and everybody was coming out. By this time the storm had broken, and it was pouring rain. I sat in the car as the wind whipped the rain across the parking lot. It took a bit longer than expected for the Hondurans to arrive at the door. The woman had to set up a payment plan for her fine. That always takes a while.

I was okay with waiting. The important thing was that woman had avoided jail time. Jail time and deportation go together. If she only got probation and a fine, she was in good shape. She would be safe for a while.

The woman also had to stop and give the State a DNA sample (mouth swab). That took a few more minutes. I would have preferred to have been on our way. Every minute at the court house is another minute for somebody to screw with you. The goal is to get things done, and then get far away.

We drove back to Milwaukee in the rain. The tension was gone. Everybody could take a deep breath and then exhale.

I dropped the woman and her family off at their house.

The woman looked intently at me and said, “Gracias, gracias, Frank.”

“Da nada.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 15th, 2018

I thought that I was going to read to the kids. Most Friday afternoons I drive from our home in Oak Creek to the south side of Milwaukee to visit the Syrian family. They live in the heart of the Latino district. A taco truck does a thriving business just down the street from their house. I sincerely doubt that the members of the family have ever purchased anything from that vendor. I don’t think that he makes anything that qualifies as halal.

I found a parking space on Scott Street across from their home. Being as it was a warm, sunny afternoon, I expected to see several of the children outside playing, fighting, and doing normal kid activities. The only child from the family that was out of the house was one of the youngest sons, Muhamed. He was playing on a makeshift swing, along with a little friend. Muhamed waved to me as I got out of my car, and yelled, “Frank!”

I waved back, and crossed the busy street. I don’t know Muhamed’s age. I would guess that he is five or so. Muhamed was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, but his friend was wearing a shirt and tie. I didn’t catch the friend’s name. He looked like he was of south Asian descent, maybe Pakistani. They had been taking turns on the swing, but now Muhamed was excited to see me.

Muhamed turned his freckled face up toward me and smiled.

“You come inside!” he said. Then he grasped my hand with his own, and led me to their front door.

We came to the door and one of Muhamed’s older brothers, Ibrahim, answered it. He was wearing a suit and tie. Through the door, I could see that the house was filled with people, mostly excited children. My mind couldn’t quite grasp what was going on. There was so much talking and laughing.

Eid al-Fitr.

It was the celebration of the end of Ramadan. Of course. The Muslims count days like the Jews do: from sunset to sunset. Eid began yesterday after sunset, and now the party was in full swing. The house was packed. In the dining room, the table was overflowing with food: stuffed grape leaves, salads, fruit, candy, cookies, and baklava. There was water and lemonade to drink.

Even if the family has been celebrating on their own, the house would have been full. After all, there are eleven children. There were also guests. Some of the people were like me, local folks who came to assist the kids with schoolwork, or people who just wanted to help this refugee family.

Except for Ibrahim, the seven boys in the family were all dressed casually. The four girls were all dressed in their finest. Maybe that is just what girls do.

The mother, Um Hussein, encouraged (nay, commanded me) to eat and drink. I did.

There was a man who I had met once or twice before. He told me to eat, and I asked his name again. He said it was Turki. I spoke with Turki, who I thought was a family friend. I asked if he has kids. He gave me a perplexed look, and said,

“I have seven sons and four girls. This is my family.”

I think I blushed. If I didn’t, I should have. I felt like an idiot. Of course, he was their father. He was almost always working when I came to visit, so somehow I never connected him to his kids. He pulled out a chair and asked me to sit down.

I stood. I guess that was impolite, but I was restless. Partly, it was due to all the noise and chaos. I don’t handle that well. Also, the celebration reminded me of parties when I was a little boy. I grew up in an old house just like the Syrian home. I had six younger brothers. We had family get-togethers just like this gathering, except that at ours beer and wine flowed freely. I half-remembered the old celebrations, and I felt a pang of sadness. My family is scattered, and those days are gone.

After a while, I felt the need to go. I went up to Turki. He stood and he wanted to give me his seat. I told him that I was leaving.

I took his hand in both of mine, and said, “You have a good family.”

He smiled and thanked me.

I walked through the front door and on to the porch.  Um Hussein was out there with several of the children.

She looked at me severely, as always, and said, “I am happy you come.”

She paused and asked, “You happy that you come?”

I said, “Yes.”

She smiled just a bit. “Good.”

I saw Muhamed kneeling on the sidewalk, eating a Tootsie Roll. I knelt down next to him, and told him goodbye.

He said, “You come next Friday?!”

“Yes.”

“We read?”

“Yes.”

He smiled at me. “Good”.

I waved to the kids and said, “Ma’asalaama.”

They replied the same way and waved back. Nizar shouted, “Goodbye, Frank!”

I got into the car. I drove off.

As I stopped in the traffic on 16th Street, I could almost still feel Muhamed’s little hand in mine.

 

 

 

 

June 13th, 2018

Court rooms are like emergency rooms: nobody really wants to be in either of those places. A person is in a court room because they have to be there. On Monday I escorted two undocumented men to a court room, because they had to be there. I have done this sort of thing before, and it has been generally uneventful. This time it was very eventful.

Usually, when I write about people, I do not use pseudonyms. In this essay I will. Because of the things that occurred at the courthouse, my paranoia is quite high. I do not want to endanger the persons that I am trying to help. So, three individuals will be referred to by names that are not their own. I don’t like to do this, but it seems to be necessary.

Jose is middle-aged. He is a painter at a company in one of the exurbs of Milwaukee. Because southeastern Wisconsin has little or no public transportation, Jose has to drive a long distance from his home to his workplace. Because the government of Wisconsin is run by reactionary cretins, a person who is undocumented unable to get a drivers license. Jose is undocumented. Therefore, he can’t get a license, and he drives to work without one. Due to the law of probabilities, Jose eventually gets caught by the cops while driving without a license. Then he gets arrested and has to go to court. Then he meets me.

I had met Jose several weeks ago. I have taken him and his son, Jose Jr., to the court twice already, prior to this most recent visit. Jose speaks a minimal amount of English. Sadly, I speak the same amount of Spanish (un poquito). Jose’s son serves as his interpreter in most cases. Jose Jr. is a very intelligent young man. He is going to college and he is working a job. He has ambitions of becoming a lawyer. In particular, he wants to be an immigration lawyer. His heart is in it. He would do well.

The elder Jose is in a bit of trouble. The judge has identified him as a repeat offender with regards to driving without a license. That’s no good. That means he is potentially looking at jail time. Jail time for an undocumented person is an open invitation for I.C.E. to come and take him away. The immigrant in question is no longer a moving target. That is bad. Seriously bad.

Anyway, on Monday, I took Jose times two to the court. I also took another person, Marcos, with me. Marcos was going for his first court appearance. He had pretty much the same scenario. Marcos had been driving without a license. Almost all the Latinos that appeared in that courtroom were there for the same offense.

The court in this particular county only has a Spanish interpreter there on one afternoon every month. Economically, for the county it makes sense. There is an unintended consequence to this arrangement. What happens is that all the undocumented persons show up in that court room at the same time each month. This makes it very convenient for I.C.E. agents to find their prey. I do not believe that the local enforcement officers at this court work together with I.C.E. However, these cops don’t impede the I.C.E. agents either. The sheriff deputies in the courthouse are consistently courteous and helpful. They just turn a blind eye to the activities of the immigration enforcers.

I sat in the court room with Jose and Marcos. After having done this sort of thing for a while, I have become aware that there are always the “usual suspects” in the room (I am thinking of the quote from Claude Rains in the movie Casablanca). Certain people always show up, at least for that hearing. I always see the judge, the bailiff, the court stenographers, the lawyers, and the defendants. The defendants are all Latino. Everybody else is white.

Not this time. There were two guys in this court room who did not belong in the picture. They sat in the back row, staring silently at the judge. The two men wore polo shirts and khakis. They were big guys, kind of buff. They had file folders in their hands. They didn’t speak to anyone, not even each other.

I lost interest in the two strangers. I focused on Jose when he went up to bat with his attorney. Jose pleaded “not guilty”. That was a smart move. That gives him and his lawyer more time to cut a deal with the State. I know other people who have done the same thing. Jose needs to avoid jail time. A fine and/or probation would be okay. His next appearance will be his opportunity to make his bid.

The judge released Jose on bond. He needed to get fingerprints before he could leave the premises. Jose and son went out of the court room to talk to his attorney. I followed them. I asked Jose squared if they wanted me to go with them for the fingerprinting. They said yes. I was a bit concerned about leaving Marcos alone in the court room, but I can’t bi-locate. I chose to go with the Jose’s.

The location for getting fingerprints is in the same space as the visiting area for the county jail. I have been in a county jail, so I am always a bit edgy when I go near one. Initially, we couldn’t find the office for the fingerprinting. The office had darkened windows and there no sign even indicating that it was an office. It was only after Jose Jr. rang a buzzer that somebody told us where we needed to be.  The process for fingerprinting was mercifully quick, seeing as they already had Jose Sr.’s prints on file from the time of his arrest.

We all returned to the court room. Marcos and his lawyer were just finishing up when we arrived. Marcos had pleaded guilty. The judge gave him a $25 fine, plus the court costs. The court costs were expensive. The fine was kind of an after thought. Once the judge pronounced sentence, Marcos had to give a DNA sample to the State of Wisconsin. That is a mouth swab. He had to do that before leaving the building.

We all went out to the lobby of the courthouse to find somebody to do the DNA sample. Marcos and two of his family members were there, along with Jose times two, and myself. There were people coming and going. I was concentrating on keeping track of Marcos. A deputy was typing up the paperwork for the DNA sample.

Then the senior Jose smiled at me and motioned me to the exit. He said,

“Hey, you come outside with me? We talk?”

I followed him through the exit.

He pointed to the parking lot. The two guys in polo shirts were getting into an unmarked Suburban with no rear windows.

Jose said, “They I.C.E. They take some guy. Just now.”

Apparently, the two undercover agents snatched some poor bastard as he entered the court house. I had never even noticed. Jose had. So had his son. The agents had moved swiftly and silently, and everybody else had just gone about their business.

Jose and I stood in the doorway until the Suburban drove away.

Jose asked, “We go to your car? We wait there?”

He got into my Toyota. I was worried about Marcos. I was about to leave to check on him, but Jose said,

“You stay with me here? Yes?”

Of course, yes. We both sat in my car, and I sweated out the minutes until I saw Marcos and Jose Jr. come out of the court house. They got into the car, and we left promptly.

Later that day, I spoke with my son, Stefan, about the whole ordeal. Stefan has a Latina girlfriend, and he has often worked with Mexican welders.

Stefan said drily, “Those I.C.E. guys, those are some shady fuckers.”

He went on, “They are just American KGB. Can you imagine being an I.C.E. agent, and going home to your family? Your kid asks you, ‘What did you do today, Dad?’, and you answer, ‘I was a shady fucker all day.’ Shit.”

Stefan shook his head.

“Shady fuckers.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 14th, 2018

Recently, I had the same letter printed in the Chicago Tribune, the Capitol Times, and the Racine Journal Times. Trifecta.

The article is as follows:

 

June 10th, 2018

I sometimes meet people who are outraged by almost everything: limited access to birth control, attacks on LBGTQ rights, lack of action on climate change, white privilege, prejudice against immigrants, militarism, school shootings, ad infinitum. These individuals seem to have an unlimited capacity for righteous anger. They also seem to be convinced that everyone else should be as incensed as they are.

The people I mentioned in the preceding paragraph would probably qualify as liberals. There is a population on the right that serves as a mirror image. I think of those who rail against every aspect of secular humanism. It is difficult to know what they are for, but it obvious what they oppose. They know what they want to fight. It is unclear as to what they want to create.

I am suspicious of people who want to participate in every fight. I don’t see that is desirable to do so. I don’t see how it even possible to do so. It seems that some folks sign on to an entire agenda without ever considering what aspects are good and which are bad. They become total team players. Unconscious team players.

I don’t subscribe to any particular political agenda, mostly because I don’t have the stamina to do that. I only have so much time. I only have so much energy. I can’t be passionate about everything. However, I can be passionate about some things.

What am I passionate about? I care about veterans. I care about immigrants. I care about ex-prisoners. Why? I care about them because I know them.

I have a son who is an Iraqi War vet. He was in combat. He has PTSD. He suffers. I care about him, and by extension, I care about the welfare of other veterans.

My wife is an immigrant from Germany. My youngest son is in love with an immigrant from Peru. I lived overseas for three years. I understand the struggles of immigrants and foreigners. I care about them. To some extent, I have been in their shoes.

I love a young person who will soon be released from jail. Through her, I have come to know more about the criminal justice system than I ever wanted to know. I am aware of the fears and pain that ex-prisoners experience. I care about this young person I know, and I care about people who are like her.

In short, I have skin in the game.

I have focused my passion in areas that are important to me in a way that is up close and personal. Issues with vets and immigrants and ex-prisoners are real to me. None of this is theoretical. I am involved with these issues because I live with them every day.

I have chosen my battles.

Choose yours.

 

 

 

June 8th, 2018

“He blew his mind out in a car.” John Lennon, from the song A Day in the Life

Today is Marc’s birthday. He was (is) a brother of mine, eleven years my junior. He’s been gone for over twenty years. He died in a car wreck when he was only twenty-eight. He slammed his Mazda into a bridge abutment, and he flew through the windshield. I believe that he died instantly. He left behind a young wife and two little girls.

Time is a funny thing. Twenty years can feel like forever, or it can feel like nothing at all. As I sit here typing, twenty years gone by feel like only yesterday. I can still see Marc’s face. I can still hear his voice in my head. I can still remember shaking his hand and saying goodbye to him for the last time in 1997.

They say that time heals all wounds. That’s not true. Not really. Memories fade, and that is probably a blessing. However, the sting of death lingers. That feeling of loss never completely disappears. Perhaps that is as it should be. We only grieve for the people that we love. If we hurt, it is because we love.

In an odd way, Marc’s life paralleled my own. He was intelligent and ambitious, as I was. He wanted to get far away from home, as I did. Marc settled in Texas. I was all over the map. He tested military life, as I did. Marc was smarter than I was, in that he quit the military early. I was a slow learner, and I stuck around the Army for ten years. Both Marc and I married foreigners. He married a Texan, and I married a German. Despite the gap in our ages, we had similar interests and similar goals. I felt very close to Marc.

Marc was a complicated person. I suspect that every person is complicated, but with Marc it seemed more obvious. Marc was very religious, intensely Catholic. He was an excellent bass guitarist. He and his wife, Shawn, played in a Christian punk band. Marc could be very loving and generous. He was also insanely competitive, and he suffered from OCD. Actually, the people near him suffered more from his OCD than he did. Marc was athletic, and he could also sit for hours playing old school video games (e.g. Missile Command).  He had a twisted and infectious sense of humor. He could be both humble and vain about his looks. Marc was a bundle of contradictions. In short, he was completely human.

There is a temptation for me to wonder what Marc would have been if he had lived. That train of thought never leaves the station. I can’t know what might have been. I don’t want to know. I do know that his life has left a trace. He made things happen. He set things into motion.

Marc’s daughters, Maire and Roise, are grown up now. Both of them have their own children. In some ways they resemble Marc, which seems to be natural, but is also a bit eerie. Stefan, our son, was Marc’s godson. Stefan has many of Marc’s attributes, which seems strange, since they barely had time to know each other. For instance, both Marc and Stefan love fast motorcycles. I don’t know why that is: is it heredity, or karma, or simply my over-active imagination?

Our oldest son, Hans, lives in Texas, as Marc did. Hans would not be there now, if not for Marc. Marc opened a pathway there. Hans followed it. Our family has connections down south that would never have existed without Marc. We can thank him or blame him. In any case, he is responsible.

Marc’s gravestone in lies in the Catholic cemetery in Bryan, Texas. His body lies beneath that marker. I’m not entirely sure where his soul is. At this moment in time, I believe that he is close to me.

Marc loved watching Wallace and Gromit. Today would be a good day for me to watch that too. Maybe have some cheese with the movie.

 

 

June 5th, 2018

“Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.”

from Paulo Coehlo, author of The Alchemist

Karrin and I sat with Jane in the Daily Dose coffee shop. It was very early on a Friday morning. Karin and I showed up right when the cafe opened at 6:00 AM. Jane arrived shortly after we did. Jane is a busy woman. She is attending classes at a seminary, she is helping to run a sober living house, and she is working with people in recovery. We were having coffee together at an ungodly early hour, because that was the only hour that Jane had available.

Karin and I wanted to talk to Jane about a girl. We care about a young woman who is currently in jail. She will be released in a couple weeks and her future has a lot of question marks. She does not know where she will live, how she will get health care, what she will have for transportation, or how she will find a job. (I don’t know either.) This young woman calls us when these questions become overwhelming. When she phones us, she usually starts by saying,

“I’m feeling really anxious!”

Understandable. After a few minutes the anxiety seems to diminish for this young woman. Her voice becomes calmer, and she sounds a bit more relaxed. Generally, we can’t completely answer any of her questions, or solve any of her problems. Somehow, just talking about things ease her mind, at least for a little while. Somehow, it helps for her to know that we are at least trying to help.

Jane talked to us about her experiences with anxiety. She mentioned that, at one point in her life, she self-medicated in order to make the fear go away. I am very familiar with that technique. It is a short term solution that creates long term problems. Jane explained that eventually she learned to deal with the tension and the uncertainty. There are problems that simply cannot be fixed, at least not right away. Jane told us that she became aware of her feelings, and she found that she could handle being uncomfortable with a situation. She could exist in that moment. She didn’t like it, but she could accept it.

I understand that anxiety and frustration. I have spent almost all of my adult life as a problem-solver and a trouble-shooter. I’m good at it. I am not good at situations that unsolvable for me, especially situations that involve people I love. I spin my mental wheels, and I can almost smell the clutch burning inside my head. Even fixing a problem only brings temporary relief. There is always another riddle to solve. There is never a time when everything feels okay.

So, what to do? That depends on the individual. To reduce my anxiety I sometimes meditate, or take the dog for a really long walk. Jane helps other people, and that gives  her a different perspective on her own issues. Some folks pray. Karin knits or spins yarn on her wheel. Some people play a musical instrument. Some people paint or draw. Some people write, like I am doing right now. Finding a effective method is all trial and error. A certain program may work for a particular person, but be absolutely useless to somebody else. Learning to handle anxiety is a lifelong process, a unique process.

We live in a scary world. It’s hard to trust. It’s hard to have faith. It’s hard to keep going.

We’re all anxious.

 

 

 

 

 

June 3rd, 2018

Today is my younger brother’s birthday. Chuck would have been fifty-eight today.

Chuck died in October of 2009. I think the official cause of death was a heart attack. Chuck had extremely high blood pressure, but he refused to take his meds. Instead, he drank all the time. I don’t think that he wanted to live. The last fifteen years of his life were like a slow motion suicide. It was an endless series of close calls, and visits to the emergency room.

It wasn’t always like that. When Chuck was young, he was athletic and smart. He was a brave man, sometimes recklessly so. He was funny and goofy and crazy as hell. He was bold and adventurous, and almost always at odds with our father. After a bitter argument, our dad threw Chuck out of the house. Chuck found a job, found a wife, and started a family…all on his own. Chuck was a self-made man.

Things fell apart. Chuck’s drinking tore up his family. He lost everything that he loved. I think that destroyed him. He never recovered from the divorce. He and our father never really reconciled. Chuck couldn’t fix what was broken, and eventually he stopped trying.

I have always felt guilty about Chuck’s death. I often kept him at arm’s length. I guess I was scared or ashamed or just clueless. Was I a good brother to him? I doubt it.

I know people who would say that Chuck’s life was a tragic waste. I don’t agree with that. Something is only a waste if nobody learns from the experience. I learned from Chuck’s experience. I learned that I cannot save anyone. I can be present and supportive. I can love them. However, I cannot save somebody who does not want to be saved.

I also learned that I have to love somebody as they are, not as I wish they would be. I often wished that Chuck wasn’t so angry, so bitter, or so depressed. I wanted him to be somebody besides the man who I knew. Because of that, I missed the chance to love my brother as he was. I often rejected the man who was standing there in front of me, because I wanted so badly to see somebody else.

Do these lessons matter? Yes, they do. History repeats itself. Now I have to love another person who in some ways resembles my brother. Now I can see that I have to do things differently. Chuck taught me to love differently. Whether he knew it or not, Chuck taught me to see the others in a new light, and to accept them as they are.

Happy birthday, Brother. It’s a beautiful day outside. Maybe be we should sit on the porch and enjoy it together.