Harold Haubrich died on March 2, 2010.  It wasn’t a surprise other than that he lasted a few more days than we expected.  He had made his own decision to discontinue the dialysis that had shored up the work of his failing kidneys.  The doctors told him that he could expect to die 3-5 days after the last round of dialysis.  He was at peace with his decision because even with that treatment, he had been growing steadily weaker over the last year and was unable to perform any of the daily functions of living on his own.  For the sake of his dignity, I won’t describe all of the things that he needed help with, but suffice it to say that his quality of life was fading fast.

He made the decision because the day before he started vomiting blood, and the doctor did a preliminary exam only to realize that in order to determine the cause, extensive testing would be necessary, and then the remedy would quite probably be exhaustive and exhausting.  He decided that with all that he had been through over the last year that it just wouldn’t be worth the trouble to extend a life so far diminished.

Dad had lived a full life and was a relatively happy man, so his was a decision based on his exhaustion rather than a lack of desire to live.  He was tired and he wanted to move on to whatever is next.  When we asked him what he thought was next after death, he answered “I don’t know.”  I don’t know, either, Dad.  The local Lutheran minister apparently knows and described it all to Dad.  He told Dad about reuniting with my mother, dead since 2007.  After the Lutheran minister left following such words of comfort, my sister asked Dad if he now knew what was about to happen after death. He repeated to her the words, “I don’t know.”

Harold Haubrich

In Dad’s last remaining years, he returned to a Catholic Church from which he had lapsed.  I asked him why, and he told me that after he had a heart attack and some bypass surgeries he decided that he wanted to get back to church “just in case.”  I don’t know that Dad was all that serious about his faith in his religion or whether he was just playing at Pascal’s Wager.  He had made close friends with the local priest while they were both recovering from heart attacks in the same hospital.

I am not going to deal with my own grief here at losing my father.  I realize that everybody hurts, and that grief is a process of dealing with loss.  While I feel the pain, I don’t write about it well.  I would rather explain why I am also joyful at his time.

We are the lucky ones, we who have lived.  From Richard Dawkins’ “To live at all is miracle enough:”

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

Dad and I shared this planet for nearly fifty years.  That is worthy of a celebration in and of itself.  He taught me how to bait a hook with minnows, he taught me how to check the oil, he taught me how to pee standing up, he taught me how to aim a rifle at a pop can, he taught me how to paint a house, he taught me how to balance a checkbook, he taught me how to cook oatmeal, he taught me how to laugh so hard I cried, he taught me how to take a head of wheat and roll it in my hands to shed the husks and then chew it until it turned to gum, he taught me how to use a blade of grass to whistle, and he taught me how to deal with crises with an even temper.

We shared this planet for fifty years.  We lived through cold below freezing, and we lived through heat and mosquitoes.  We saw Mexico together.  He gave me rides on his motorcycle and let me drive his Jeep when I was far too young. He let me know that Bob Dylan is just a poet and not a singer and wondered why people spend good money on records and tapes when FM radio is just fine and free.

His time on this planet as Harold Haubrich is over, but there is more to the story. Nothing ends, matter never disappears.  It changes form and life makes way for more life.  Yes, his body is preserved with embalming chemicals and is sealed in a coffin in a vault to avoid decomposition and a return to the elements. It is only temporary, and in a few thousand years, his body will finally be returned to nature, broken down by bacteria. The molecules and atoms that were him will be returned to the earth from which they originated.

We, all of us, are materially connected to the planet on which we live.  We eat, drink, breathe and metabolize the substances that make us and turn them into the proteins that build our cells and organs, but we are still mostly carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen even now and long after we have died those elements will continue.  Dad died and made a little room for another person to eat, drink, breathe and metabolize and in a few years I will die and do the same thing.  My ashes will be scooped into an urn and placed in a mausoleum for a few years and eventually will all return to the earth.  We never go away, even long after death.  The C, H, N and O2 that make us are remnant elements of a supernova that burst some 7 billion years ago because we are “starstuff.” He is still here, and always will be.

I am sad, because I miss my father.  I miss my mother. It is difficult to be an “orphan” because I don’t have their counsel any longer. I don’t have Mom to call and tell about the way things are going with the kids, and I don’t have Dad to call and talk about spring training and to speculate on who the Twins will use as a closer for 2010.

People ask me how I am doing after his death, but I feel awkward because I don’t feel like crying (often).  If I admit that I am not having a particularly rough time with it, will they think that I am cold-hearted?  Will they wonder whether I didn’t love him, or think I had a rough relationship with him?  I am not necessarily responding in a way that people expect me to. I am not forlorn and I am not rending my garments.

I am happy when I think of how wonderful he was to be with, how sly his humor was, how fair he was in dealing with people and how I was one of his (nine) favorite kids.  I am happy that he taught me how to be a loving and kind father to my own kids.  I am happy that he was there for me when I needed help financially.  I am happy that he was there for me when I told him about each of my kids being born.  I am happy when I think of all the people who genuinely liked him.

I am doing okay. Thank you for asking.

Hey, Dad.  You were one of the good ones.

To continue: If you ever have to go to the emergency room, don’t forget to bring a book. It will distract you from Larry King in the waiting room and all the people he has on to yell at each other about Sarah Palin. It will give you something to do besides worry as you wait in the examination room and feel the blood flow out of you. It will keep you company as you stay awake all through the night waiting for someone who can fix you.

Make it a long book.

To explain: A couple weeks after my surgery, I was ready to go back to work. I was done with the antibiotics and my digestion was back to normal. I was adjusted to the new migraine medication and not likely to pass out. I was no longer sleeping all the time. I almost felt like me again.

I spent the weekend with friends out of town. I stayed out of the hot tub because I was experiencing a little light bleeding, but nothing that hadn’t happened after my punch biopsy. It had almost completely stopped by Saturday night. Sunday afternoon, I carried our cooler out to the car.

When we stopped for dinner, I noticed that I was bleeding again. Luckily, I was still living in the land of constant sanitary pads. This bleeding was heavier than anything I’d experienced yet, so when we got home, I checked online for advice on bleeding after a conization. “Contact your doctor immediately if you experience heavy bleeding.” Only, by their definition, I wasn’t. Just moderate bleeding.

Still, I promised Ben I’d monitor the situation, and I stayed home from work the next day to do just that. By late afternoon, the flow was tapering off again. I’d been moving as little as possible all day, and I was bored. I was frustrated with still being home without being able to do anything to get us ready for hosting Thanksgiving.

So I swept the stairs. That was when the bleeding really started. Because I swept the stairs. In hindsight, I’m perfectly willing to admit that doing that instead of staying in bed was stupid, but it isn’t hard work. Just, apparently, the wrong work.

I lay back down. Ben was almost due home, early because we were supposed to go out to dinner before PZ’s debate. He could take me wherever I needed to go without us incurring ambulance charges.

I got back up and took a quick shower. If I was going to spend time in the hospital being uncomfortable, which it was increasingly looking like I was, I at least wanted to be clean. Drip…drip…drip. Then back to bed.

I debated sending the email about dinner. I didn’t want to worry anyone, but suddenly not showing up to an event for which I’d chosen the restaurant wasn’t going to reassure people either. “Um, we may not make it tonight. Depends on whether I stop bleeding by the time Ben gets home.”

Remarkably, I did. Well, I went back to moderate bleeding. No more passing 2-3 inch clots. Just some blood. A manageable amount of blood. An amount of blood that wasn’t going to stop me from seeing people I hadn’t seen in a month or more during my health-related exile.

It was a mistake but a worthwhile one. Good friends, good conversation, good fake Mexican food. I was sorry I couldn’t have a margarita, but my virgin daiquiri was tasty.

Bumpy car rides, though, aren’t good for bleeding ladies. There’s some cognitive dissonance in laughing at something really funny and feeling it bring a small gush of blood. I told Ben when our food came that we’d be heading to the doctor when we were done.

We did. We stopped at the house on the way to pick up books and, it turned out, a change of clothes. Then it was off to the emergency room to wait.

That’s what most of the night was–waiting. Well, waiting and being hooked up to monitors to make sure I wasn’t going to die if they kept me waiting some more. The rest was the four cautery procedures and the ironic blood draw, to make sure I had platelets, I assume.

First came the silver nitrate, a long matchstick from which I strangely felt heat but no pain. It was smaller than the spots from which I was bleeding, so it didn’t help. I just bled around it. Oh, yes, I was apparently bleeding from multiple spots–gushers, according to the very funny nurse practitioner. (This is the woman who walked in and said, “Hey! You’re bleeding!” I only wish I’d been quick enough to respond, “Do you think I should see someone about that?”)

The second procedure wasn’t really cautery. It was application of ferric subsulfate, a styptic, which is what had stopped the bleeding after my punch biopsies. It was great, perfect, instant. Stopped the bleeding immediately…and for about three hours afterward, during which time I’d gone home but not fallen asleep. I told Ben to go back to sleep when he dropped me off at the emergency room for the second time. I at least got to lie down, and I wanted someone to be rested when I was done and needed to get home.

I have no idea what they tried for the third procedure. It was five in the morning and whatever it was didn’t work. I only really remember that everything hurt by this time. Being swabbed repeatedly with cotton in order to clean up enough that the doctor can see is not really a natural function of the cervix. It just isn’t made for it. Oh, and that the earnest, shy orderly had to clean blood off the floor afterward.

After this, they brought the electric cautery machine down from the operating room. This was the same machine that had done the surgery. It would have been the same doctor, too, except he was already scheduled for surgery first thing in the morning. One of his partners came in to use it instead.

I think she told me that she thought my cone biopsy had come back clean of cancer. Just high-grade displasia. She wasn’t sure and I don’t remember that well. It was now 7:30 or so.

This time I got Versed and fentanyl. I didn’t get enough, though. There’s something truly weird about a doctor asking you how much drugs you think you’ll need. I had no idea. I’d never done this before. Asking, “More?” each time they hurt you is not an optimal solution. At least it was over quickly, or it was once I gritted my teeth and stopped asking for more drugs. And for my writer friends: Cautery smells very much but not perfectly like burning hair.

The good news is that Vicodin doesn’t make me sick the way I thought it had after the original surgery. The bad news is that I needed to find out in way I hadn’t after the surgery. The mixed news is that between my niece and me at Thanksgiving, we determined that what’s happening is that the Vicodin makes us susceptible to motion sickness. No playing video games on narcotics and only very cautious car rides.

The other bad news is that I’ve been afraid to sneeze since then. This hasn’t stopped me from sneezing, just freaks me out every time, even though it hasn’t led to bleeding. Lifting has, however, particularly lifting something right in front of me. So I didn’t get to move the table for Thanksgiving, and I still haven’t gotten to do the kind of housecleaning I want to do. Groceries require assistance.

Two weeks after the ER trip, I had another bleed, another major one with big, black, ugly clots. For this one, I was out of town again, again preparing to go back to work on Monday. This one stopped itself, though, as I was debating between an ER on a Saturday night and waiting until Sunday morning. It was nothing like the close to two pints I estimated I lost on the first bleed, but it was still terrifying.

Then there’s this weekend, which has been the period from hell. Late, which isn’t surprising after the stress of the last…oh, I’ve lost track. Savage PMS and dysmenorrhoea severe enough that ibuprofen can’t cut it and I find myself breathing funny sometimes from the pain unless I go back to the narcotics. Again, not surprising, given my enforced inactivity and the abuse my cervix has seen recently. Just not any fun.

So I’m still here. I’m still healing. It’s just turned into a much longer road than expected and one that sometimes requires pretty much everything I’ve got. I’ll see you all on the other end, I promise, and hopefully soon.

Oh, except the Pap smear came back abnormal and here’s the number for a gynecological clinic and tell them “CIN 2-3″ when you call to make the appointment for a colposcopy.

So you look that up, and you see “moderate to severe” and “carcinoma in situ.” You take a little bit to let that sink in and try to remember there were other words there as well, like “regression,” and as you’re doing that, the phone rings again. This time, you find out that you need to make a change in your health insurance data so your clinic can make the referral so whatever happens next is paid for.

You do that and discover that the change won’t go into effect for just over a week. And then you wait, distracting yourself but not really forgetting. Sometimes, you look everything up again so you don’t forget that “slow” and “regression” really are in there. Somewhere in there, you have a birthday. Oh, yes, and you remember to tell the other person who needs to know, but you don’t really want to worry anyone else unnecessarily.

Once the referral is made (“I set it up for three appointments between now and the end of the year. If you need more, just let me know and I’ll change it to whatever you need.”) and you grab the first available appointment, you go back to waiting. You tell another person, almost as practice.

Your concentration is shot all to hell, but you don’t think you’re doing too badly. Then it’s the day before the appointment and you wonder how much the tension has contributed to the migraines of the past two days. You wonder how much it’s added to the difficulty in writing anything of substance for the last several days. You tell another friend who isn’t asleep yet either.

Then you’re at the doctor’s office and clumsy and not very good at following directions, and you don’t know whether it’s because of lack of sleep or stress or stress making for poor sleep. And you try not to laugh at the doctor, whom you’ve just told you’ve been married for twelve years and that your husband has a vasectomy, when he asks you whether you plan to have children, because really, it’s better that he ask. You’re not laughing at all when he, who’s seen your lab results, mentions that it’s much easier to think about treatment options when he’s not dealing with a 21-year-old who still wants kids.

Then you’re on the table, with a paper lap robe because you don’t watch the needles go in for your shots either, and you hear the word, “extensive.” You admire the way the door opens without exposing you to the hallway when the doctor calls for some help with doing multiple biopsies. Then you try to go away for a little while. You remember laughing when your reading said that something called a “punch biopsy” shouldn’t hurt, since even a Pap hurts, but it isn’t very funny just then.

You can feel the blood as the doctor moves from the one biopsy at “three” to the two at “six” and the one at “nine,” and you understand what “extensive” really means. When he calls for more cotton balls in that “hurry” voice, you wonder whether it’s just that the trouble with getting the biopsy tool to release one of the samples means you’re bleeding longer than he expected you to. You know, after all, about cancer growing extra blood vessels.

There’s some fuss with a coagulant. Then it’s done, and the doctor hands you the largest sanitary pad you’ve ever seen. He says to make an appointment for next Tuesday or Wednesday to discuss the biopsy results and the next steps. “Actually, make it Tuesday afternoon.”

And you get down and look back at the blood and note that it will require a bit more cleanup than just changing the paper and pad on the table. You haven’t been able to move without getting some of it on you, so you wipe it off with a tissue and throw that in the biohazard bin with everything else the doctor threw in there, noting that everything else is very red but not really caring.

Dressed, you walk back down the hall, dazed a little with the impersonal, helpful violence that’s just been done to you. You remember now that someone online suggested taking ibuprofen before the appointment and wish you’d remembered earlier. Nothing seems to have changed for any of the nurses you walk past.

You make the new appointment and leave the clinic. You’re right next to the elevator, but there are chairs just beyond that. You sit in one of those.

Nothing about this appointment has been good news. Much of it has been scary and painful. Wishing that an HPV vaccine had been available when you were young, you compress some small fraction of your situation into a Tweet and ask your friends to please get their kids vaccinated.

You spare a moment to displace a bit of your unhappiness into hate for a surgeon who’s “not yet entirely sold on the HPV vaccine” because “most women undergo yearly Pap smears, which can achieve more or less the same end of decreasing death from cervical cancer.” You think, uncharitably, about how compliant patients under anesthesia are. And you wonder whether you somehow deserve this because you went a few years between doctors after a couple of years of frequent visits to get a few health issues sorted out. Should reveling in feeling good be punished by this sort of anxiety? Do you have to be “most women” before it’s worthwhile to decrease your chances of death too?

Then you go to work, hoping to distract yourself. It doesn’t take long to figure out it won’t work. The pain, even after ibuprofen, is a constant reminder. You find yourself wishing you’d opted for the propranolol again for the migraines instead of trying the Prozac this time around. Being insensitive to all the adrenaline you can’t do anything with would be lovely right about now.

You give in and bug a friend who can take some time off during the day, even if he shouldn’t, to come take you to lunch and distract you. He obliges and does an excellent job of it, and by the time you get home, you’re feeling much more calm. Then you do more research, wanting to know what it is you’ll only hear half of if the doctor should say, “cancer,” in a week’s time. It gives you information but no perspective. Survival rates don’t really mean anything when you don’t really know anything.

You throw information out into the ether again, this time with some funny in it to make it easier for everyone to cope. You bless Facebook for being the kind of place where, even when people don’t know what to say, they say something. You bless the people who reach out in other, sometimes less convenient ways. You bless your friends who’ve been through similar things for saying so and making you feel less alone. You bless the doctor friend who does know what to say in response to you saying you don’t know anything but have reasons to be worried.

Then you’ve done what you can do, but you don’t know what to do next. You don’t make any plans, because no matter what will happen, it will involve more of that helpful violence and you don’t know what you’ll be able to do. So you concentrate on healing, not that you’ll make any difference.

You try not to mind that the reminders are always there: the pain, the shedding clots, the sharply metallic coppery smell of blood that is different than the smell of normal monthly “bleeding.” You try not to let yourself get too self-centered, both because it isn’t fair to others and because you’re not very entertaining just now. You try not to veer too sharply toward either despair or complacency. You don’t do any of these well, but they’re all you can really do. So you keep trying.

And then you wait.

It’s a cubicle life, my life, 160 hours per month.  I work in a huge building for a major bank in Minnesota.  (Yes, we received a ton of TARP money.)  I take phone calls eight hours a day, helping small businesses balance credit, demand deposit accounts and overdrafts.  I handle their credit complaints, their complaints of excess fees, their ludicrous charge that we are just trying to make money.  Hello?  We are a business, you know.  The only odd thing is that businesses would expect that we aren’t in this to make money.

A portion of my job is to refer customers to products that will make their banking life simpler, and we are expected to get the customer to say “yes, I will sign up” on at least 15% of the calls.  I know that doesn’t sound like much, but considering that we only talk to decision-makers on half the calls, the percentage success required now is 30%.  Also consider that on a large portion of the calls, people are just calling in to get their balances, last 10 transactions and then end the call.  They don’t want to chat, they are in a hurry, they have their own customers waiting, and they don’t want to take extra time to listen to a sales pitch.  Finally, many of the customers are stressed by the current business climate.

So, yes, it can be a stressful job.  Working in a cubicle in a steel and glass and concrete box with weak coffee.

Our breaks are regimented.  They are preset, and I get two 15 minute and 1 half-hour breaks per day.  I am a smoker.  On those breaks I go outside.  I go outside not only to smoke, but to get out of the box for a few minutes and decompress from a spate of calls from rude customers and nice customers alike.  I go outside to network and chat with coworkers. In fact, most of my friends from work are fellow smokers, because with staggered breaks and differing schedules and the otherwise lack of a common meeting place, the smoking area is the rare opportunity we have to socialize.

Prairie Grass

I also go outside because of the unusual landscaping at our building.  It is a strange blend of carefully manicured lawn and garden mixed with unmown native prairie grass.  The building and the landscaping include large parking lots mixed in with natural drainage and what otherwise would be considered weeds in an urban landscape.  In this case, it was designed to slow the flow of water towards the river.

The lakes in the Twin Cities and suburbs have been overrun by plants and algae from runoff.  I lived until a few years ago near Lake Phalen in St. Paul.  The water in Lake Phalen is clear for about two weeks in April before it blooms and turns green.  Lake weed harvesters roll through two to three times a summer to clear it temporarily, but it quickly chokes up again.

A main source of excess nutrients comes in runoff from the lawns and gardens of the East Side, as people keep their grass short and green with watering and excess fertilizer.  The rich nitrogen that gives the houses their exterior “carpet” of short, neatly trimmed grass, combined with sprinkler water runs off into the curb then to the storm sewers and finally down to the lakes and rivers.  Lake Phalen’s biota is the recipient of the added nutrients.

I used to bike around the lake frequently when I lived over there, and from June through September the lake water was uninviting.  Ramsey County started a plan to ameliorate the overland runoff several years ago.  The County Soil and Water Conservation District replaced the grasses around the edge of the lake with natural prairie wildflowers and the sorts of grasses that root deep into the sandy soil and absorb nutrients coming in through runoff.  This has ameliorated the situation somewhat but hasn’t fixed it.

It can’t be completely fixed, and the problem can’t be solved as long as residents insist on turning their yards into living carpets made of grasses not originally bred for the Minnesota climate.  Ramsey County has also instituted advisory grants to assist homeowners in turning their lawns back to plants designed to grow in our climate and will advise people on how to landscape to make attractive, more natural gardens.

The wetlands that are being fought for by conservationists have a purpose beyond providing breeding grounds for ducks, frogs and mosquitoes.  They absorb runoff. A factor in the in the flooding of the Red River Valley is the rapid flow of water from plowed fields into ditches and drainoff towards the River.  The reeds and grasses in wetlands soak up the melting snow when they can and slow the flow towards the river.

In Ramsey County, conservationists recognize a similar principle even with a differing effect.  Deep roots and reedy plants slow runoff.

Surrounding the box where I work, there is a mix of wetland, prairie grass and manicured carpet.  Even if the building I call my home for 160 hours per month is unattractive, the landscaping is inviting.  I like to go outside and envision myself living in an urban prairie.  While it is making a small, if valuable contribution to slowing the over-nutrification of Shoreview’s 17 lakes, it is also providing me with a brief oasis before I head back to my desk, slap on the headphones and start repeating “Good morning and thank you for calling (x bank).  How can I help you?”

The Cartwrights

Bonanza was a long-running television series on Sunday nights in the 1960′s and the early 1970′s.  The main character was a widower who was raising three sons, and as they grew into men they pretty much stayed on the ranch near Virginia City, NV.  The oldest son was played by Pernell Roberts (“Adam”), the middle son by Dan Blocker (“Hoss”) and the youngest by that long-haired, hippie dreamboat, Michael Landon (“Little Joe”).  Lorne Greene was the forsaken father of the three (“Ben.”)

Out of the more than 400 episodes, one scene in one show has stuck with me most of my life because of one line I had never understood until recently.  One of the boys found some squatters in the horse barn.  They were a family who had fallen on hard times and were on their way to California to make their fortune, but had no money for the trip, apparently.  So they camped out in barns and sheds along the way, hoping each time to leave early in the morning before they were found by the landowners.

I can’t remember which character–Hoss, Ben, Little Joe or Adam–found them in the horse barn.  In keeping with the characters’ traits, though, we can surmise that it was Hoss. Hoss finds them in the horse barn, because they couldn’t leave early enough.  One of the children had a high fever and couldn’t travel.  Hoss figured out what was going on, and after some initial suspicion, invited them into the ranch house for some real food and to take care of the sick child.

The father, rather than being grateful, got angry and says “We don’t accept charity, Mister.”

I didn’t understand that response.  Part of my confusion was that they had trespassed without permission, and so they had effectively taken charity without permission.  I didn’t know why they felt justified in finding shelter in someone’s stable, but when there was a freely given offer of better care for themselves and their children, they were insulted.  Their pride was at stake, and Hoss saw right through this.  Rather than escalate their hurt feelings at not being able to take care of their children, Hoss reminded them of Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goeth before a fall.”  He then reminded them that the child was not going to get better without care, so if they took charity it was okay.  It was taking care of their kids, after all.

Spoiler Alert!

In short, the episode ended with everything turning out fine: the people were upstanding, kid got well, they headed on to California with a new appreciation for humanity.

Last Sunday was a hard day for me.  I had lost my wallet on Saturday, as it fell out of the pocket of my jeans.  The pocket has had a hole in it for some time, but I liked the jeans’ style so I wore them often and reminded myself to use the left pocket for my wallet every time I put it away after taking it out.  I forgot after my last stop on Saturday evening, and slipped it into the wrong pocket.  I didn’t realize until nearly an hour later that I had lost it and went to the last store at which I had used it to see if someone had, by chance, turned it in.  I retraced all the paths between there and here and to no avail.  No one had turned it in, and it wasn’t on the ground anywhere.

I was despondent, because on top of all the other monetary issues I am facing right now, I was facing the very real prospect of identity theft, and unauthorized usage of my credit cards.  I also needed to replace my driver’s license and health insurance cards, etc. Things were looking so bleak for me after a year of more downs than ups that for the first time, I actually thought it was about time that I took advantage of the fact that I am past the suicide exclusion clause of my life insurance plan.

Life doesn’t give us do-overs.  I can’t go back to that fatal decision to drop out of college, a decision that I still think is about the dumbest decision I have ever made. [Note: Sentence excised. MH] I was faced on that Sunday with the fact that I was likely to be homeless within a month or two, unable to continue to stretch my debts and rent any longer.  I would have to give up my car as an involuntary repo, find someplace to rent like a room downtown in a flophouse, all the while trying to maintain my relationship with my kids and trying to occasionally send their mother some money to help support them.  I couldn’t see myself having the strength to do it without losing my will to live.

It was a bad day, and try as I could to stay strong in front of my daughter, I let slip what was ailing my mind.  Of course she didn’t know what to do or say about it, but having a caretaker personality she did her best to try to comfort me.  The thing is that my despair is not a result of any sort of organic depression. (I’ve been to psychologists and they all concurred that I may have problems but nothing that can be diagnosed as a medical depression.)  It’s money and my mishandlings that have been weighing me down.  The sad part is  that I work for a bank, right?

I had sent an e-mail to Greg and Stephanie that I just couldn’t bring myself to write a post for Quiche Moraine for my regular Monday contribution, and felt like I had let them down. But as much as I tried I just couldn’t finish the piece I had in the hopper.  I couldn’t concentrate.

It was then that I received an e-mail from someone who reads my blog.

“How would you feel about accepting some money?”

I responded, “At one time my pride would have directed me to beg off and say, ‘Thank you for the offer, but I can’t accept charity.’  In this case, I am in a position that doesn’t give me the opportunity to stand on pride.”  And I can’t, honestly.  If it were just me, and if no one else depended on me, then I would be in a position to refuse.  If not for those who depend on me to provide health insurance, etc., I could have declined a generous offer.

The second response came back. “I will send you $n tomorrow.”  When I saw how much she was sending, I was floored, because I could never have expected that amount from anyone.  Seriously.  It was far more than I had even dreamed she might offer.

She only asked that if I felt the need to repay it in five years to do so, and that I keep her updated on how things are going.  That was all she wanted.  True to her word, the check arrived last week.  When I sent her a gushing e-mail of thanks, I promised to thank her in a post here at Quiche Moraine and so, I write.

She asked to remain anonymous.  I will happily accede to her request, and I also ask that people not speculate in the comments.

What This Does for Me

While my problems are not solved, I am back in control.  I have decisions to make on how to use these funds, but I am able to properly breathe and proactively make these decisions. I am no longer on my back heels, trying to hang on by my fingernails. I now feel free to mix metaphors with impunity.

I am not sure what I am going to decide about the car situation, whether to continue to make a payment on the new car or to replace the engine on another car.  A second piece to the financial puzzle may help me make that decision, but I am now not having to make it until the end of September, and by that time, I will be in an even better position to decide.

Most importantly, and this is the reason that I am incredibly grateful to my benefactor, the fleeting temptation to take my own life is completely gone.  I can see my way out of where I have been and I don’t have to consider that option any longer.

Thank you.  Pride can be a hard thing to swallow whenever offered charity, but it tastes better than a bullet.

When I first started blogging, nearly five years ago, my main purpose was to show how smart I am and what a good writer I am.  I knew almost nothing about blogging.  My blog had too much “white space,” then it became too “busy.” When I showed what I was writing to people, they concentrated on the aesthetics rather than the content. I kept on writing, trying to make it a daily habit so I could get the practice and then start promoting my writing.  I figured that if I could only keep practicing, eventually I would become a solid enough writer that people would take notice (money and fame would follow, of course).

This was in 2004, and I was mostly writing about the events leading up to what I had hoped would be the selection of a Democrat to be president of the United States.  When that didn’t happen (despite my best efforts to fix America), I shifted my focus to write about my experiences growing up in a small town.  I reconnected with old friends who googled their names to find themselves in a blog post about Hallock.

Eventually, I became bored with the premise and branched out toward writing about atheism, science and other topics and finally started to get notice from people I respected.  My proudest moment was covering an event with Greg Laden, Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet at the Bell Museum.  Greg linked to my article, as did PZ.  (PZ said that my explanation of the issue was written more clearly than what he had been trying to say.)  I had gained attention for photoshopping a hydra with an LOLCnidarian caption (with links and references to my post from Dr. Todd Oakley, who was the principal author of the article I was describing).

So as my blog traffic built, I seized the opportunity and signed up for an AdSense account.  I was sure that I would be soon making an extra hundred bucks or so per month.  The clicks were slowly but surely building, but even after a year of that, I had not earned enough for the $100 minimum payout that Google sets as its threshold. (I suspect this is why they are so rich. They earn on small bloggers without ever paying out.  Nice business model.)

In the meantime, I have been working in the cubicle world.  This is frustrating for a man my age, because I had hoped that by this time in my life, I would have accomplished many of my long-term goals.  I haven’t even come close.  In fact, since my divorce, I have found myself falling farther and farther behind and seeing a future as a Wal-Mart greeter in the days when I should instead be playing with my grandchildren or traveling to the weird and cool places I have read about and seen on TV.

I have been dropping hints here and there in my blogging of the desperation I have been feeling, but as they are only hints, I haven ‘t been able to get out what my real issues are. And I don’t feel free to discuss the knots in my stomach over the internets.

Before I started real blogging, I had a LiveJournal account, but since there were people I sort of knew there, I still held back.  The issue wasn’t confidentiality, which is of course impossible on the internet even for the most obscure and seldom-visited blogs.  The issue has been that I’ve needed a confidante, and I just don’t have one right now.

Yes, I have friends with whom I can spend time and talk about issues; sometimes even in great depth.  I have friends I can ask for advice on some issues, but I don’t feel comfortable talking about the issues that are burning inside of me.  I don’t know who I can “trust” at this time.  Most of the people that I know now have their own busy lives and their own issues.  It’s a tough time for a lot of people and I sometimes feel like I am just one of six billion people who are facing the cold, hard reality of a “socially darwinian” world.

I asked someone recently for some time just to talk about my issues.  This is someone I used to confide in quite regularly, until she became involved with someone. When I asked for her ear, as in the old days, she passed me off to someone else.  While I like that person, I have not developed the relationship with him that I want to have in order to share what I need to share.  I felt a bit betrayed that she passed me off, but I could understand the reason that she gave me.

I don’t have the person that I need right now.  So, what does that have to do with blogging?

Yes, sometimes I can let out hints of what I am going through, but just as much as I am a writer, I am also a reader.  I can’t read through blogs on which people expose too much of themselves.  Such posts remind me of my own struggles a bit too much, and without personal contact to be able to reach out to that person and at least touch him or her to let them know that they aren’t alone, I get frustrated.

My frustration grows when I see a donation page for a cause that I would really like to give to in order to help someone else out.  The best I can do for them is blog about their troubles and hope that my readers follow through and give a bit.  I just get frustrated seeing other people struggling and not being able to help them.  Because of this, I can’t use this blog or my own home blog to write about what I am going through.  I also don’t want people to pity me, which is the likely  result of a self-pitying post.

No, I need a confidante with whom I can sit down, face to face, and talk.  I need someone who will hold me, or at least touch me, while either confirming that I am on the right path out of where I am or helping me find alternatives.  Yes, I am doing something right now about my situation and it has the doubly good effect of helping other people at the same time.  My new project is not going to fix my financials for a few months, and I have some pressing needs that are pushing me right now.  If I have made a bad decision to go with this new project, I am hosed and not sure where to go after that.  I have to make it work.

In the meantime, during this struggle, I just need someone with whom I can express my doubts and fears so that I don’t carry them with me all day. These days I can only let them chew on my insides like so many caterpillars munching away.  They’re  getting ready to  cocoon and become the butterflies that flutter in people’s stomachs.  I have done some things in the last few weeks that are ethically questionable, and I have justified them, yet still I feel the need to confess them and until I do, my insides are twisted.

I am writing this for a good reason, but before I get to that I would like to explain what this not about.  I am not looking for a volunteer to come and let me cry on their shoulder.  I am not seeking funds from anybody and this is not a “donation” call.  I am not writing this so you will feel sorry for me.

Blog writing is more personal than journalism, because journalists need to separate themselves from their subjects.  They need to be detached so they can more objectively report what is going on.  Rarely do we get to see the person behind the journalist.  If you read most of the posts here at Quiche Moraine, you will find some very personal revelations mixed in here by our main writers and our guest writers.  In between our restaurant reviews, our commemorations, the news summaries, stories and just plain revelations on the writing and editing process you will find the people behind the writing.

When we express some of our pain from past experiences, intermixed with excitement, look for the brush strokes that each of us uses to express ourselves in our separate posts.  When Greg or Stephanie edit my posts, they don’t remove my brush strokes.  In those brush strokes, I often reveal either unwittingly or purposely what I am dealing with and it is often my only way of getting certain things out, if only obliquely, because I don’t have someone close that I trust these days.

If I am hidng things about myself, I am hiding them in plain sight so that you as a reader can recognize that you are not alone in your struggles and doubts.  It may not fix my problems, and knowing this about us it may not fix yours.  Perhaps, though, it can help you to breathe just a little bit easier.