10/08 1ere semaine/ 1st week

Est-ce que la terre est ronde a 45 000 pieds?
A priori, vu la photo du haut, il faut croire que non. Peut-etre faut-il encore monter dans les 80 000 pieds pour voir le ciel plus noir encore.
A 92 000 pieds, l'espace commence, et nous pourrions obtenir notre diplome de la NASA.
Vu que les avions d'affaire ne vont meme pas aussi haut que le Concorde, on se contentera de nos 13 000 metres, ce qui vaut sans doute aussi bien, en cas de decompression rapide. Il faut vite sauter sur le masque a oxygene!

Nuit passe a Minden, Nevada, la mecca du vol a voile Americain, voire du monde, puisque je connaissais deja depuis la France. Beaucoup de record d'altitude, puisque bien place au pied de la Sierra Nevada, proche du lac Tahoe, ce qui veut dire que ma fois, j'irai bien passe mes vacances dans le coin, a faire du planeur comme le Discus ou LS4 que l'on peut louer pour la semaine.
Affaire a suivre avec la famille un ete ou comme d'habitude, il fera chaud a Phoenix.

Comme prevu, et non sans tristesse, nous avons appris le deces de la mere de Katherine. Voila une dame , qui pourtant etant ma belle mere, etait bien sympathique. Nous sommes triste de savoir que Florence aura perdu ainsi une grand-mere qui l'aimait tant, si tot dans sa vie, et elle ne connaitra donc pas le plaisir de passer du temps avec les "vieux".
Je laisse Kate raconter sa semaine...

My Mom died this week. She was just shy of 71 years of age. She died just shy of seven years after being diagnosed with late stage ovarian cancer. Ironically, she was originally diagnosed on Halloween. She went in for what was perceived as back problems, a possible slipped disc or such. Upon an ultrasound they found a plethora of masses and, the next morning, was given the grave news which altered the remainder of her life.

My Mom had a hard life from square one. She was born into a Italian/Sicilian blue-collar, working class family in Chicago. Her father, in fact, at one point sold fruit from a cart, having not more than a third grade education, unable to read or write even his own name. Her mother, though very smart and resourceful, was never able to come by a formal education and helped the family survive by working for the then Ma Bell as an operator, working six days a week, 12 hours a day, for over forty years.

Her Mom had to work, as her Dad couldn't amass enough money for them to survive, especially since he had a long term love affair with the "ponies," as they say, going down to Arlington Park and betting away paycheck after paycheck after paycheck for well over ten years.

As her Mom worked in a time when nearly none did, there were no resources to help care for the children, my Mom, her sister and younger brother. So the kids were left alone, to fend for themselves, day after day, while their Mom often didn't come home to well past midnight.

My Mom said she was always so overwhelmed taking care of her baby brother, who was five years her junior. She, herself, just a small child, was often overwhelmed by fears of every sound and movement, not knowing who or what may be lurking outside their modest home. She said it developed in her and her sister a sense of dread, fear and worry that never left them, even to her dying day.

She loved her mother very much, and although her mother herself had, I believe, twelve sisters living nearby, none could provide a source of support through the lonely hours, as they themselves had their own problems - no transportation, no money, abusive husbands, drinking problems, etc.

My Mom always had a penchance for art and was even able to take art classes at the local insitute when just a child of nine, her skills lending her entrance. Unfortunately, the family didn't have means to allow her to follow her gifts, and they were left abandoned over the years as she took up employment as a bookkeeper to help make ends meet. However, Mom did arrange for herself a singular trip to New York as a teenager, the simple end of which was to visit the museums and galleries. During said trip she bought a statue of Carl Sandburg. As she herself said, she spent a minor fortune on it, money she had saved up working. Her mother thought it to be money poorly spent. But to my Mom, it was a corner stone example of a world she sorely sought to be a part of, sourly knowing that it was something that could never be.

As a newly teen, she met her to-be husband, my Dad. They would become acquantances then friends in school and, after school, would become involved. While dating, my Dad joined the Army and shipped out to Greenland for a two year stay while my Mom stayed on in Chicago. They eventually married and started a family, despite my mother having sent my Dad a "Dear John" letter while away in Greendland, which she apparently later rescinded.

As proof of their undying love, my parents had the first three of their to-be four children within the first three years of their marriage. In order to rise into success in his newly joined company, my Dad would constantly shift working locations, which involved long hours away from home and, eventually, continually moving the family from location to location. This meant my Mom had no infrastructure of support as she worked to raise the first three kids. This meant she was alone, not only without family but often without a husband standing nearby to lend support.

Then, eventually, they had me and, shortly thereafter, she returned to working. She would work for the next twenty-some years, while moving her family again and again.

A few years after retiring she would be diagnosed and spend the next seven years in and out of hospitals and chemo treatments, often confined to bed. After her first and only cancer surgery she would nearly die, dwindling into a slight shadow of herself, with dozens of different drugs throbbing through her body, failed tube feeding, and spending weeks and weeks into a non-communicative stuppour where we would beg her just to get her to drink water. There were the endless hours and days where my Dad and I shared shift at the hospital at her one of many, many stays, his taking the day shift while I took the evening shift after work, our being in a constant panic wondering if today was "it."

I remember a happy day after so many long, quiet weeks where she actually became lucid enough to have a conversation. It was ironic, because some family members would become bitter that I had not "put Mom on the phone" when they would call again and again to speak to her, apparently refusing to believe when we said she was "unavailable." During these long days and weeks sitting vigil and fielding phone calls from distant relatives, I would sit and write in a journal, writing of these moments in time. I remember one long night watching her heart monitor race to a pulse of over 160 in a sleeping state, my begging staff to respond while they dismissed the issue until I kept pushing the point, as her heart rate kept rising, rising, and rising, fearful that her heart would literally explode. It was moments like these they made my Dad and I ever fearful to never leave her side while at the hospital, our confidence in staff shattered again and again while such mistakes kept being made.

During one such, they gave her a medication which literally had her standing up and clawing at us while on top of her hospital bed. We would beg staff to reduce the medication load. Sometimes they would listen. Sometimes not.

And I remember during more lucid times her hiding her stash of chocolate and candies in a plastic bag under her hospital mattress while on a totally fat free diet post-surgery, it serving as a means of emotional support, a small proof of life being worth living.

And so, here, on this day in 2008 life continues. Bread goes stale and must be replaced. TV shows are watched and judged. Someone just ran a red light. Another is bitching that life sucks because their job just isn't paying enough. And another family is losing their beloved, having their family member diagnosed, or is playing out their last day, unbeknownst to themselves, before that fateful moment when they, too, will be told that fateful news - cancer, or when their life will be taken swiftly by accident or disfavor.

Nothing has happened here which has not happened a million times before to persons better and worse, to lives richer or poorer. And this story will continue to play out until all of eternity has withered and died.

All that remains is that we, here, are left to count and measure the value of being and to, in our stumblings, provide meaning to this thing, this creature called life.

And all I will do, here and now, is call out to you, like a town crier of times past, to not go gentle into that goodnight, to not rest in your position, to dare to make your measure be without end in the heart of another.

There is no more time left, good people. The clock has ticked its final tick. The hand has struck and will strike no more. Where are you? What of you?

Where is your measure?

We shall all come to dust. We shall all come to not as the centuries past. You have only one question to be asked. Have you done right by life? Have you payed her hommage? Have you gasped at the sunrise, howled at the moon? Has you been enraptured with the soft eyes and sweetness of a dear love, whether man, woman, or child? And have you loved, given love, bestowed love that would carry another through and past the gates of Hell?

Are you worthy of remembrance? Of recollection of times past?

'Tis time to make your mark. It shall not necessarily be a large one, a loud one, one known to many or even a few. But it must, pray tell, be an honest one, a true one, as could carry a soul from here to the end of their eternity.

'Tis time, dear souls, 'tis time. Rise up to give life meaning beyond the mundane that we all paint over it to escape our own fears of our ineptitude, shortcomings, and failures. Do not fall prey to the sound and fury we all muster through in our day to day, signifying nothing- taxes, politics, purchases and money.

Do not go gentle into that goodnight. Rage, rage against the dying of the light....

Do not go gentle into nothingness, meaninglessness. Rage, rage against the dying of life.

Out.