Something to Say

When do we say goodbye for the last time?

A great deal has happened in 2010 that inspires me to try to collate the fragments of ideas I have about life.  The loss of my father, a friend being diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, other losses and challenges to people in my life.  So much, I haven’t known where to start or what to say.  This is the first topic that I’ve been able to wrap my brain around.

It has now been about four months since a dear friend was diagnosed with brain cancer.  My friend, her family and their situation has been an integral part of our lives for that time.  In one way we’ve been fortunate enough to provide assistance is in giving her friends and family visiting from out of town a bed to sleep in.  When I say fortunate I mean it in a very real sense, both in the sense that our situation affords us the ability to do that and in the fortune of the wonderful people we’ve had the chance to meet.

After spending a long day with my friend, one such guest came back to our house very distraught as she felt she had just said goodbye for the last time.  I really was at a loss for how to comfort someone who has felt a very tangible loss while in that no man’s land between having some control of a situation and none at the same time.  You see, my guest is a photojournalist who may be on assignment in Dubai one day and earthquake ravaged Haiti the next. Where she will be a month from now may be well out of her control as she explained, “saying ‘no’ means you may not get the call the next time”.  Not good for a freelance photographer.

So, I didn’t have anything particularly helpful to say. But I listened and we talked.  Maybe that helped.  I hope so.

But it did get me thinking.

One of the other events of 2010 occurred, about a week after my friend’s diagnosis, was my father’s death.  This was quite sudden and unexpected.  The last time I had a chance to say goodbye was about four hours before he died.  I was at the hospital with my friends husband, her children, my wife and others.  My dad called to see how she was doing.  He had been a caregiver for my step mom for a number of years and understood that situation, the feelings and the tough decisions that get made.  When I said goodbye I was more concerned with the potential loss of my friend than my father.  It seemed reasonable given the situation and the excellent checkup he had just two days prior.

Getting back to the photojournalist. It would be easier if I just used names, wouldn’t it?  Anyway, her story is even more pertinent than you might think.  She came very close to dying herself about 8 years ago in a bus accident in a a remote part of Laos.  The bus was hit by a logging truck on a narrow road.  Her recovery began with a villager picking glass out of her, sewing her up without anesthesia and an 8 hour trip in the bed of a pickup to a hospital.  It finished months and months later.  This is her life.

So, why is it that she doesn’t realize that EVERY TIME she says goodbye it could be the last?

While I had no extraordinary reason to expect that call with my father would be our last, I now realize I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t be.  The universe is a dispassionate place with no regard for your pre-conceived notions of mortality, fairness or importance.

Why is it that we don’t all realize that EVERY TIME we say goodbye it might be the last?

It seems to me it was a skewed perspective to lead my guest to think that particular goodbye had greater significance than all the previous, or that my last goodbye with my dad had any less.  You just don’t know and it may just be messed up that we don’t think this way.

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” — (Anonymous proverb, Sometimes attributed to Dr Seuss)

This is a quickie to try to get back into the blog habit.

Dr. Poul Thorsen, a Danish scientist who authored a large study on vaccine safety is being investigated by Danish polish for a $2 million shortfall in grant money received from the CDC.

There are the facts of the case.

From that, RFK jr drew the conclusion that this is part of a conspiracy by the CDC and Thorsen to cover up the link between Thiomerisol and Autism.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/central-figure-in-cdc-vac_b_494303.html

The article doesn’t make any sense.  It is saying that Thorsen claimed that Autism cases grew in number due to the removal of Thiomerisol?

“This new law and the opening of a clinic dedicated to autism treatment in Copenhagen accounted for the sudden rise in reported cases rather than, as Thorsen seemed to suggest, the removal of mercury from vaccines.”

Also, if it was a big fraud sponsored by the CDC, why would the CDC have been the ones to detect and advertise the misdoings?

“The discovery of Thorsen’s fraud came as the result of an investigation by Aarhus University and CDC which discovered that Thorsen had falsified documents and, in violation of university rules, was accepting salaries from both the Danish university and Emory University in Atlanta — near CDC headquarters”

The stage at Harman Hall in Washington, D.C. was graced by a towering presence last night (10/29/2009).  Sir Ian McKellan performed a one man show to benefit the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington D.C. and it was brilliant.

Sir Ian strode to the stage from the back of the theater, much as the President does for a state of the union, to rapturous applause and many, many smiles.  As things calmed down, he began by saying that Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, could we recount them.  People yelled from the audience the names of the plays, as he ticked them off  McKellan would tell an anecdote of an experience or some comment on the characters of the play.  Establishing a personal connection with the audience, Sir Ian assured that we would be right there with him as he proceeded through almost two hours of “something he’s trying for the first time”.

There’s an expression I’m sure we’ve all heard, “He could read from the phone book and I would be enraptured”.  Or something like that.

In those two hours McKellan took us through his life by anecdote, poem, scene, jingle, children’s song, dirty limerick  and even an entry from Roget’s Thesaurus.  He engaged the audience with humor and pathos.  We never thought we were incidental to what he was doing on stage, as you might for a play, we felt like this was very much a conversation even if it was a very one-sided conversation.

[Did you know that McKellan is the last actor alive to have been the first to perform one of Shakespeare's characters?   The play, Sir Thomas Moore, was written by Anthony Munday but three pages of the single manuscript that survive are written in Shakespeare's hand.  So, he is credited with some part of it, at least.  Since it was censored in Elizabethan times, it went unperformed until 1964 with Sir Ian in the title role.]

I’m trying to piece together all the individual pieces he performed like Sonnet 59 (which he performed as one side of an emotional telephone conversation which segued into the spoken lyrics of ‘Hard Days Night’, Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2.. I particularly enjoyed a poem written by his favorite poet which was meant to be part of a play.

At the end of the evening, he invited anyone in the audience who wished to join him on stage for a little acting exercise.   Being in the balcony, I hesistated, STUPID STUPID!! for by the time I made it down to the floor the ushers were turning people away.  Each person clambering onto the stage was greeted by Sir Ian with a warm handshake and a smile.  He gathered his group of new protege’s on stage with him at the center to give his instructions.  The group spread out across the stage and as he began to speak, the players fell dead to the stage.

Each and every one of them could now state, quite truthfully, that they once performed on stage with the great Ian McKellan.

There is so much I would like to etch perfectly on the fabric of my mind, but that is not the way of things for me.  I’ll carry away some pictures, and fragments will resurrect at times, but I’ll not be there again.  This was an evening I’ll carry with me in my person, if not perfectly in memory then in feeling.

He, only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’

– William Shakespeare, (Julius Caesar)