Tag: Death

Dear (You):

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 3 Comments

I wrote this long-handed while sitting in “The Olde Crapper,”
the oldest pub in Stow-on-the-Wold.

Typed, it remains identical except for the
“dopplestick” Altbier’s splay of creamy foam
due to the barmaid’s negligence and naiveté
of noteworthy Alt-style ales and their
distinctive yet dreadful character:

the infamously delicate and fragile froth
which collapses quicker than a slit souffle!

10 May, 2014

Dear (You):

Not writing to you doesn’t imply not thinking of you or your gracious patience since 3 February, 2014. That was the date of my last post which required wringing the writer’s dishcloth to honor the writer’s vow: To write no matter.”1-handwrittenletter2

Marcea, an insightful, honest, and very good friend (38 years) proposed “If writing is a catharsis, then I strongly suggest shifting your focus to gain perspective. If you force posts they’ll be “a whole lotta negativity” which no one wants to read.” And she was right. I spent months trying to frame what I went through, but everything devolved into a pity party or my selfishness or that I’m an unforgiving asshole. Then my partner mentioned an interview between Katie Couric and Hillary Clinton about forgiveness which ignited an epiphany underscoring families and catastrophic illnesses:

  1. Families take care of each other unconditionally, absent of remuneration, mea culpa’s, or thank-you’s;
  2. Family business is no one else’s business;
  3. Do your best and ignore failure. Indecision and regret stymies timely action;
  4. It’s their life and they’ve entrusted (not burdened) you to execute their wishes;
  5. Overlook your life which can wait. Focus on their life and prepare for remarks about death;
  6. Skirt your visceral, sentimental and selfish hope that life is too precious to be cavalier;
  7. You love, accept, honor, and respect their free will rationale about their life or death;
  8. There’s nothing, nothing more important in the whole wide world as this; and
  9. Be strong even though your heart is breaking.1-death2

Many thanks to my partner (of 30 years) who lifted the burden of impossible tasks (cleaning out his house, and negotiating with lenders); my best friend Scott who travelled with me and discussed diagnoses and added a degree of levity.

And especially to Marcea who gambled friendship for honesty.

I could not have navigated the maze alone, and I am truly blessed by being their partner and friend.

P,S, I have several drafts for new posts “in the oven.” Keep an eye out for them.

On Being the Black Sheep

~ Harlan Didrickson

It’s been five weeks since the death of my older (by two tiny years) brother, Richard.

aa-driptowelsOne mid-afternoon as I was visiting him in the ICU he easily slid into a nap. So I closed my eyes amidst a midafternoon’s bath of sunshine, until the first reel of a daydream began: It focused on a man-in-mourning transfixed! He watched as the Life Miracle slowly dripped from him like he was hung yet unwrung towels that became lighter and lighter as water continued to drain. A voiceover added that water is movement, and movement is fundamentally incapable of staying anywhere for long, especially where it: 1) Isn’t valued; and, 2) Isn’t wanted. I awoke startled, seeing a nurse tending to Richard. In hindsight the man in my daydream was me and I was there to observe dying, to witness the broken pipe my brother had become, and in his case, disinterested in repair, hopeless in patches, and instead, quit. Autocratically, decidedly, and determinedly.

Is autonomously dying rightful? If so, it’s hidden down deep in the fine print that no one reads except those searching for any way out like a trapped diver short of oxygen?

Clearly Richard found his karmic precedent and pursued his resignation with silent bravery and resolve. I’ve been told by childhood acquaintances who have remained in Milwaukee that they’ve overheard self-promoted clucking of crassly ignorant and insensitive hens quoting St. Peter himself, “Richard did not simply give up: The mere thought is preposterous and queerly unorthodox for a son as dedicated to his mother’s care. Give up? Just, quit? Not Richard . . . but that baby brother, the one that went to college . . . For eight years . . . then wouldn’t come home to his dying mother; oh no, had to live . . . in . . . Chicago with his pal . . . No, it’s something I’d expect from him, from the Black Sheep of that family. “aa-blksheep

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