And now for one last session at the dining room table .... I am, finally, going to kill off my very long-held ICCFA email address in a few hours. It will be weird, because I have been “joeb” - @iccfa.com and @icfa.org before that - for almost 15 years. This event is what actually occasioned writing this last blog post. An email address really becomes a marker of identity in the modern age. For those of you who want to stay in touch and don't already know: I do write elsewhere on the Web. Unfortunately, I can't really link to any of that stuff because it is at best irrelevant and often inappropriate, sometimes wildly so, for this corporate forum; but if you do a search on my name you will find you can hardly swing a dead cat on the Internet without hitting something I've spouted off ridiculously about.

When I began working here I was a far bigger idiot than one might expect at 29 years old. This sad fact can probably be traced to developmental issues such as having my first beer at the age of 10 - I recall my grandmother telling my parents “he has to learn to hold his liquor someday” and let me just say, America in 1970: Was this a great country or what? Anyway, as far as I can tell I got hired on the basis of my body of work as a “freelance writer” which, I believe, will be included in the 2012 edition of Roget's as an accepted synonym for “waiter.” Quite fortunately, I also had a hobby of working with those newfangled devices known as “desktop computers” of which the first one had recently landed in the association's offices. Always having a keen survival instinct, I quickly figured out the practical definition of “indispensability” with regard to the office environment. I can recall my first boss here telling me “no one is indispensable” and thinking to myself “except for the only guy who knows how everything works.” Twenty-one years later, after numerous downsizings, I am here to tell you I was right.

One potential career option is “writer” and Joe is shown here brushing up on the finer points of that lifestyle.

But, alas, that which ensures survival does not always bring us happiness. Becoming Mr. Fixit had its downsides, such as the many occasions I was greeted with “I know you don't want to hear this first thing in the morning, but ...” and then being told what was broken. If you, the reader, can only take away one lesson from my entire career with this association, let it be that, by definition, the phrase “I know you don't want to hear this first thing in the morning” should never be spoken out loud. The reason is that if you actually happen to “know” there is a certain fact that someone indeed does not “want to hear” upon arrival at the office, then you should not state that fact because all it will accomplish is to make the person wonder about your entering the afterlife sooner rather than later. If the network is down, for instance, all you need to say is “the network is down” or, if you are in the mood for embellishment, you can say “You know what really sucks about today? The network is down.” This will put everyone on the same page and eliminate the need for metaphysical contemplation before the first cup of coffee.

Even though I once fancied myself a man of letters, technology has played a pivotal role in the various phases of my life. I am sure many of you could say the same thing. For example, just this morning I realized I had lost my copy of The Everlasting Man, which annoyed the heck out of me because I have something like 50,000 books here and the prospect of re-purchasing one I already supposedly own does not enchant me. Within two minutes, though, I found there is a text version on the Internet which I downloaded to my Blackberry and can now read while standing in line at the supermarket. How unbelievably cool is that? From irritated to pleased in 120 seconds or less: If the machines indeed are destined to control us, then I for one welcome our new mechanical overlords.

I would recount all the things I have learned since I started working for ACA/ICFA/ICCFA, but the list would be so long that you would stop reading as soon as you saw the size of it; so it would be more efficient to simply note the things I already knew in January of 1990, and you can surmise that everything else came during this job. When I got hired here, I knew:

• how to cook, drive and read;
• how to write sentences using unnecessary words one does not quite know the meaning of;
• that “bodily function” jokes truly are not funny;
• that one could wear bright blue socks and a red tie to a business meeting;
• that standing at a podium in a room full of people evokes the exact same emotional reaction as standing in front of a firing squad; and
• that one should never mix romance with one's place of employment.

Obviously, to develop fully as a professional I needed to unlearn certain things and learn a whole bunch of others, although I am proud to say my sense of humor has not changed one iota over the years.

The one in the middle had just celebrated her third birthday when Joe had his first interview with the ACA.

A downside of extreme tenure is that the number of people I would want to thank publicly is too large to thank publicly. I can't list all the friends because there are so many. From the committees to the conference programs and all of you whom I've met at the events … just reminiscing about the office holders would be a long post in itself. Although 21 years is considered a single generation in people years it is actually precisely three generations in association years. (There is a metaphor in there somewhere but I am not going to dig it out because you never know where those things are going to lead.) Entire waves of leadership at all levels have come and gone.

I do need to make a few short acknowledgements for some recent events and some in the distant past. My friend Nancy Lohman compiled the most incredible collection of letters to me from people all around our industry. It is one of the highlights of my time here but also of my life in general. Paul Elvig spent hours pulling photographs from his extensive personal catalogue and getting them printed off, and Ernie Heffner and Mark Krause spread the word about the project and helped collect the submissions. The book was handed to me right before the Christmas break and I still can't get over it. Thanks to all of you who were involved. In the coming months I will be in touch with those I have not corresponded with already.

ICCFA President Kevin Daniels has handled this entire situation better than I could have possibly scripted it. For all of the business elements of the separation it has been friendly and without drama, and personally Kevin has been wonderful. I deeply appreciate that my career here was able to end with such a fond farewell, including the Board resolution and magazine coverage.

Those with whom we stand when staring oblivion in the face are those with whom the bonds will never be broken. We've been through some changes in this association over the past 10-15 years, many of them hard. We've been to the edge of the abyss and back more than once. Major programs had to be resuscitated. That we were able to revive the Sales Conference and the Convention is a testament to the creativity and intelligence of our committee members and leaders, and also a tribute to a group of paid staff who stayed engaged and were willing to go beyond their comfort zones to make something new happen.

Discussions at association conferences were often of an intensive and strategic nature.

Laboring for survival is noble but also pretty thankless in the grand scheme of things. So to my fellow employees let me say thank you once again. I especially want to mention those who worked closely with me on so many projects over the past decade: Nadira, Linda B., Sheila, Karen and Susan. You all deserve more credit and certainly more money. You all made the toughest times manageable. Of course, I also need to thank my brother-in-arms, Bob Fells, for his friendship and collegiality. When the “power-sharing” arrangement was proposed to us that morning almost eleven years ago, the entire discussion of how it would work began and concluded that same morning. We went forward and never looked back, and never had a single dispute over who calls which particular shots. Not one single impasse, stand-off or need for outside adjudication.

Last photo from the last event - a good group to remember it all by.

Going back a little further, I must acknowledge and thank my original mentor here, Steve Morgan. It would be hard to find two people with more different personality types than Steve and I, but we shared an abiding concern for the welfare of the association and a keen interest in the practical steps required to bring a project from conception to fruition. During the relatively brief time we worked together he taught me more about how the organization functions than I would have figured out for myself. And in case you were wondering if the fact that I worked here for almost 14 years after Steve left makes me feel old, the answer would be “yes.”

During a lunch of chipotle duck confit along the San Antonio Riverwalk, the so-called “mallard incident” occurred. Visibly shaken, Joe returned to the hotel and stated simply “things will be different now.”

Regrets? Of course I have regrets. There have been management issues over the years that could have been handled better. Isn't it interesting how certain basic rules like “honesty is the best policy,” which at times seem to scream out to be bent in the business environment - for the greater good, of course - turn out to be so very, simply, true, after some situation that you cleverly tried to “finesse” comes back and bites you in the backside? There were times when a few frank, though hurtful, words at the outset could have eliminated so much confusion and futzing around later on. Then there were stretches of time where I should have paid more attention to the activity around me than to my tasks at hand: We had good people leave because of my tunnel vision and had the opposite, equally negative thing happen for the same reason. My first few hires were stupendously lucky, giving me a false sense of security which would be revealed in time.

There are a few pieces of unfinished business that still bugged me when I decided to leave. This Web site, for one. Don't get me wrong: There is a lot to like about iccfa.com and it was an honor to have my own blog hosted in the same general vicinity as that of my friend Todd Van Beck, who truly is a master of this medium (and I don't mean just in our industry, but in the entire blogging universe). But I was never able to get this site further than 70 percent completed in terms of functionality, and less than 50 percent in total content, before reality intruded, we had to cut expenses and it was time to switch hats once again. That was a disappointment. Yet in the grand scheme of things and the global economic meltdown who among us can claim to be above the shared sacrifice and privation?

To my countrymen, I say: You're welcome.

After much pleading with the leadership, he was permitted to lounge around the accounting office for several hours each day.

Now that things seem to be turning around financially, there should come a time when the staff can dedicate resources to strategic expansion of the association's Web presence. All kidding aside, that is going to be a key part of the future, even in this industry.

Some people have been asking me if I know what I will be doing next. The short answer is “no” because I need to take a few weeks off to get the full unemployment experience. There is, after all, more to life than money. Then, as my checking account balance starts to dip, I expect my perspective will shift ever so slightly toward recognizing the hypothetical importance of money, followed by reaching that inevitable point of desperation when I realize that “there is more to life than money” only for “those who have a lot of money.”

I have to navigate a number of possible career path forks, including in this industry vs. outside the industry; executive management vs. a more specific focus like marketing, IT or communications; accounting/finance management vs. lying down in a pile of broken glass; and possibly even self-employment if I can think of an appropriate niche. I have done, literally, every single job at this association except for government relations, which is one thing I have done a lot of in my personal life as a certified troublemaker, so I do have firm ideas about what constitutes good work in non-profit management, and what merits punishment according to the Code of Hammurabi. But I will do some reading and writing to get my head clear and decide what comes next.

The most amazing aspect of working for this organization has been the sheer amount of labor people are willing to perform to move everything forward. In my final address to the staff I compared it to the adage that according to the laws of physics a bumblebee supposedly should not be able to fly. With an employee count that has fluctuated between 12 and 18 (with my absence, currently at 13), the association should not be able to accomplish all that it does. What makes it happen are a number of extremely bright and dedicated volunteers, and employees willing to leave blood on the tracks for modest compensation. Because of the effort needed to put on an association program it has been my philosophy “why bother doing it if you are not going to change your audience's lives?” Those on the front lines can look at what they do with ICCFA and know that it makes a positive difference in the world. That is the sole reason so many of us stayed involved for so long.

Changing the world, one miniature Snickers bar at a time.

I consider so many of you lifelong friends and I know we'll be seeing each other again, albeit not working side by side on the association's business. The plus side of finality is it freezes the picture so we can see the whole piece. Having become something of a student of the ICCFA's history, I have enormous respect for the work and ideas of the previous century; in this stage comprised of the last two decades we, together, continued the progress and expanded the concept. The memories carry me from Indianapolis to Orlando to Cincinnati, from Denver to San Antonio, from Dallas to New Orleans to Las Vegas, from San Diego to Houston, from Marrakesh to Maui, from Greeley to Memphis, from Pittsburgh to Key West, from College Park to Cleopatra's Barge and from Falls Church to Sterling. I treasure it all and I will miss all of you.

Dear Leader has been most beneficent to us. Dear Leader has our gratitude, always.

The Blust Bros. were our sainted local undertakers when I was growing up in Southwestern Iowa.  The two brothers had operated the funeral home since their father, who had started in funeral home in 1871 had died in 1916.  In the 1960s the Blust Bros. were still doing our funerals, and on top of this they operated our local furniture store, and on top of that they operated the only ambulance service for a 30 mile radius.

Today when I say in conversation that I operated a ambulance service, and that many funeral homes across this country also operated ambulance services, people look at me like I have carrots growing out of my eye balls.  Then of course the utterly predictable, but utterly stupid remark is made concerning the “glaring” conflict of interest of the undertaker running the ambulance service – everybody except me has a great laugh at this idea.  These days I am so damned tired of explaining the history of the funeral home ambulance service that when this junk happens I usually just order another drink or maybe several.

However funeral homes did indeed operate ambulance services, and the truth is most funeral directors took the ambulance service very seriously even though it was a constant operational headache for which most funeral directors never got paid.

Today people innocently project the sophisticated notions of “emergency medical technicians” and the even more impressive “Para-medic” training and expertise to their vision of the funeral home ambulance services and this is totally understandable.  However during the period when funeral homes were operating ambulance services, the idea of specially trained professionals, let alone the idea of moving hospitals on wheels as we see today, were thoughts and visions that were relegated to the science fiction books and thinking.

In my own ambulance career, looking back the basic approach to funeral home ambulance services came, in my opinion, down to two facts:  first was let’s load and go, and second was the idea that fast speed to the hospital equaled patient care.  Yes to be sure we had oxygen tanks, we had Ace bandages, and we had Timmon splints, and I remember the most impressive piece of equipment was the “Ricco” aspirator.  We did the best we could with what we had, and the truth is the funeral home ambulance service worked well and certainly provided a much needed service to the community for a very long time, but if anybody held a card in “Advanced First Aid” they were at the top of the ambulance training system.

The Packard Ambulance
The Blust Bros. had a great 1949 Packard Ambulance sitting in their garage, and folks, it was not a combination (hearse and ambulance).  This was an honest to God, fully equipped ambulance (equipped for that time).  The vehicle  had a huge cherry red light on top, and a great big Federal “Q” siren prominently attached to the front of the vehicle.  The Blust Bros. had a cot, they had several towels, they had a pan you could vomit in, they had splints, they had oxygen, they had bandages and with no hesitation they very boldly advertised in our local newspaper that they offered “TWENTY FOUR HOUR EMERGENCY AMBULANCE SERVICE – FULLY EQUIPPED.”

Everybody in town was mighty impressed and proud of this Packard vehicle.  Even the ambulances we would see in Omaha could not compare in sheer size and sound to the Blust Bros. ambulance.

The Blust Bros. ambulance was not just a vehicle; it was, looking back, a moving signal to the good people in our little town that something had happened to somebody in our town that needed our community's attention, and more importantly, it required our attentive gossip.  And if our little town was anything, it was mighty skilled at the noble art of gossiping.

Here is a typical Blust Bros. ambulance call.  Usually when no funerals were going on, the Blust Bros. could be found laying down carpet, delivering a refrigerator, or setting up a bedroom set in a home.  In fact, the brothers had signs for the furniture store or the funeral home, some of which would read “Closed, got a funeral today”, or “Laying carpet at _______ if you need us come get us.”

There were no pagers, no beepers, certainly no cell phones, and in our little town the idea of an answering service was as remote a concept as, say, the idea that we could put a man on the moon.  The Blust Bros. communication system was simply this:  If you needed the Blust Bros. and if they were not at the funeral home or at the furniture or at their own homes, you had to go find them.  That was the way it was, and no one in town thought any different.

No question about it, when we heard the Blust Bros. siren most everything in town stopped.  Everybody went to their windows or front porches and would wait to see the Blust Bros. fly past our midst with the red light flashing, the siren blasting, and Henry Blust at the wheel going like a bat out of hell.  Then the gossip would begin in earnest.  “Who was it?” “Could it be. . . .” you know that “so-and-so is doing poorly.”  A wonderful system of community chatter would start and it was all stimulated to community life by two old undertakers flying past us in a 1949 Packard ambulance.
 
Today I am impressed and of the opinion that the Blust Bros. really loved their siren, because they used it every chance they got, and with tremendous bravado would crank that sound up to fever pitch and then just let it rip, moving through our streets and byways with terribly impressive speed.  All I could think of when I saw that old Packard ambulance was that was what I wanted to do went I grew up – and folks, my dream did indeed come true.

Today of course the Blust Bros. ambulance simply pales in comparison with the high tech skills and vehicles that we expect as basic, standard care.  The Blust Bros., however, possessed something with their 1949 Packard ambulance that I suspect might well be absent in today’s high tech world of emergency medical care – our people in our town knew these two men and we trusted them.

The care the Blust Bros. were able to offer the sick and injured certainly would not measure up to the impressive standards of care today, but the Blust Bros. possessed an aura and a panache about them running that old ambulance such that when our people saw these two ancient, hard-of-hearing brothers show up, we all looked at each other with the look of affirmation that “all will be well, the Blust Bros. are here.”  Looking back, I believe that was a priceless connection that we had with our local undertakers – “all will be well.”

If an injured person was screaming in pain at the top of their lungs, it didn’t make any difference to the Blust Bros. not because they were insensitive but because they couldn’t hear the screams, they couldn’t hear anything at all, ever.  But all Henry Blust had to do was to look at someone or a gathered group in our town and say the magic words “Don’t worry about this; we will take care of it” and we all went home feeling better, even if the poor injured soul expired.

If someone died in the Blust Bros. care no one ever thought to level blame at the two brothers, and suing our beloved Blust Bros. was unconscionable, and we all knew that when someone died on the way to the hospital in a couple of days the Blust Bros. furniture store would be closed because Henry and Nob Blust would be entrusted with doing the person’s funeral.

All of this was possible because, as I said in another blog, we just liked the Blust Bros.  Liking is a powerful motivator for all kinds of human behavior.  Liking, I believe, is still a real goal in life, and it seems evident that it is still one of the key parts of being effective in the art and skill of being a good funeral professional.  Being well liked is a good thing. 

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.  God bless the good ole’ Blust Bros. TVB

I was a terrible student in school, well anyway in elementary, junior high and high school.  Terms like middle school, pre-school had not yet been invented when I was attempting to get out, and I mean precisely that, “get out” of the school system in Iowa.

I was a horrible student; my teachers save for two despised me.  In fact I was so terrible that they, the teachers and my parents (me not included of course) used to have meetings about me, and I can assure the reader that the content and conclusions of those meetings (while I was not an eyewitness) were NOT GOOD.  In fact the guidance counselor in my school in Iowa assured my poor parents that I would never ever get into let alone get through Mortuary College.  The prophecy of the “academic experts” was not without substance and evidence, for when I graduated from high school (a questionable exercise at best) I ranked 71^st out of a class of 72 students.  The student who graduated beneath me at rank 72 was institutionalized the next year at the Iowa State Asylum in southwestern Iowa.  He and I were academic buddies, we studied together.

I always wanted to be a funeral director, and let me assure the reader not many people supported that life goal, in fact I was made sport of many times in and out of school.  I could not wait to get out.  So in time off to Omaha I went, and by fortuitous chance landed a job at the old Heafey & Heafey Mortuaries.

Then I got the nutty idea that I was going to attend Mortuary College in Boston.  Iowa to Boston—what?  Once again I was dubbed “nuts and inferior in the noodle,” and so off to Beantown I went resplendent with my Midwestern accent, nerdy dress, naïve to the world, and excited and worried and scared as hell.  

Talk about Moxey.  I had never been to Boston in my life, I made all the arrangements for my job and school over the phone, I never saw the mortuary college, and I never saw or personally interviewed for my funeral home job.  I basically slid into Boston, emotionally scared, financially vulnerable, insecure about failure, lonely and lacking any confidence that I would successfully navigate the mortuary college curriculum.  My taxi ride from the airport to Winthrop was basically a tour of East Boston at night, for the taxi cab driver knew he had a greenhorn and just ran up the fare. I was clueless about such city stunts.

Looking back I am amazed that I was so much in denial of how risky my psyche and self-esteem were to bite off such a chunk of life.  But bite off I did.

I remember the first attempt to make it from my funeral home apartment (more like a single room) to the Mortuary College, which was then located at Kenmore Square in the Back Bay of Boston.  It was about a seven mile trip, which in the end took about 45 minutes on foot, bus and subway.  No car, no money.

I successfully arrived at the subway station via a bus in East Boston, I successfully made it to Government Center on the train, but instead of walking upstairs to the next platform I walked across the same Blue line platform and took the outbound train right back to where I started at Orient Heights.  I felt sick.

Finally the first day of Mortuary College started and I was late for orientation because I got confused again on the train.  I was 35 minutes late.  I was frazzled, I was embarrassed, and I thought to myself “I will never ever get out of Boston successfully – I am doomed.  I will fail at this.  It is true I am a failure, I know I am because my father told me all the time.”  Yes, I self talked "Boston will be a disaster," like most of the other educational experiences I had tried.  But now I was 800 miles away from home.  I was stuck in Boston with no money, and I had flown to Boston from Omaha on a one way ticket.

As I was standing in the wings waiting for the orientation to take a break, I felt horrible and in utter despair.  I thought I needed to get out of the New England Institute right then and there and quickly find a part time job washing automobiles or something and make enough cash to get back to Iowa.  But then I thought what would be my father’s reaction if I slid back into Iowa once again a miserable failure.  After all, he predicted that I would not make it.

While I was lost in my chronic low self-esteem self private conversations, a man walked up to me, smiled, held out his hand and said “Hi, my name is Edgar Jackson.”  I damned near fainted, because he, the Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson, was the primary reason why I selected the New England Institute as the place to go to Mortuary College.  I had read everything the man had ever written concerning funeral service and grief psychology.  I knew in my young totally insecure and wacky 20-year-old mind that Dr. Jackson knew his stuff.  He had already captivated me just by what he wrote, and now he was standing right next to me, with a kind gentle smile, a terribly warm handshake, and such deep insightful eyes.  I knew right then that no matter what happened, I was at the right place, even though I was still haunted by the thought that many people thought I was out of my mind to travel one-way to Boston.

The orientation started up again, and I mumbled something to Dr. Jackson, I don’t remember what I said, but I remember thinking it was stupid, and started off to take my seat, but as I left Dr. Jackson looked at me and smiled saying “Todd, watch out for the subways in Boston, they can be tricky.”  How did he know?

This first meeting began a long-term and extremely fruitful relationship between the good doctor and me, the loser from Iowa.

Looking back at the years I spent in Boston as a student, I can recount every conversation I had with Dr. Jackson.  It was Dr. Jackson who convinced me that I could be a good student, it was Dr. Jackson who convinced me (I knew it in my heart, but not my brain) that funeral service is a noble and honorable profession and I should not let others get me down because of they own anxieties and misunderstandings.  It was Dr. Jackson who first planted the seed that I just might be effective as an educator, and that I should try writing.  It was Dr. Jackson, who when I lost my funeral home, walked me through the valley of shame and healing and told me a thousand times that I was a decent person, and that losing a business in the big picture of life was survivable—he was right.  It was Dr. Jackson who listened to me when I felt misunderstood and unappreciated.  Dr. Jackson changed my life.

I remember the first academic quarter that I was at the New England Institute, the school sent my parents a letter.  When the letter arrived, even before he opened it, my father announced to my mother shaking the envelope in the air, “You see, I told you they’ve kicked him out already.”  When the NEI letter was opened it announced that I had made the Dean’s list.  This incident broke my heart, and I went to see my mentor and now friend, Dr. Jackson.

He sat in the NEI office listening to my heartache saying nothing.  When I had exhausted myself I looked at me and said, “Todd, life is not easy or fair.  Seems that your father has his own troubles, but those troubles need not be yours.  Yes this hurts, and yes children long and want to be appreciated and accepted by their fathers, and mothers.  But in your instance this might take time, and it might never happen.  The question is what will you do with this possibility?  Remember not to expect too much from people, or you will always be disappointed.”

The clouds temporarily lifted, but Dr. Jackson was right, stuff like that happened again and again throughout my life, and not just with my father.  

As I look back those words rang through my head as I drove to visit my son who is in drug rehabilitation.  To this day that conversation has become one of the most important communications I have ever had.

Dr. Jackson has now been dead many years, and except when I present at the Dodge Seminars, I rarely ever have a conversation about him, but the Dodge family knew him extremely well also, so we rehash Dr. Jackson stories, which always warms my heart.

His wisdom, his insights, his kindness, his spirituality, his legacy certainly changed my life, and while this old undertaker still messes up royally, still makes monumental blunders, still misses many important life points, still feels many times like the slow boy in the class, I have to say that my life experiences with Dr. Jackson have been pure tonic for my troubled and terribly imperfect soul throughout the years.

I wish that all the young funeral directors in the world might have had him (or somebody like him) as a professor in Mortuary College, and today I wish that every young funeral director in the world would be required to read his writings.  Without question the Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson was one of the best friends funeral service has ever had, and without question the Rev. Dr. Edgar N. Jackson helped salvage a once young funeral director’s very soul.

Attending Mortuary College at the old New England Institute of Anatomy, Sanitary Science, Embalming and Funeral Directing ended up being one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.

Thank you, Dr. Jackson, your memory lives on, and I am still trying to labor in the vineyard as I know you would expect me to do.

Oh, by the way, on August 31, 19 __, no brag just fact, I graduated “With High Honor” which put me in the top 10% of the class at the New England Institute. So much for academic experts' prophecy of failure and doom.  My father was proud I guess, but certainly stunned, I know.  

TVB

I knew it would start happening and last week the reality of my prediction about life started to take shape.  I knew that in time, if I lived long enough, that my friends, my contemporaries would start to die away, and last week this started in my life in a glaring manner.

Two of my long time buddies died within days of each other.  One was Jack Hogan and the other was Bruce Overton.  It is not necessary to eulogize these two marvelous human beings in this writing, for everything that could be said about their stellar human qualities have already been put to ink and page and also spoken in public.  I have nothing to add save for the fact that the three of us, over time made our own history.

History is for me a way of life.  It is part of what makes me tick and I constantly process, filter and evaluate most every aspect of my life and the meaning of my life and my experiences through the eyes of history.  It has saved me many heartaches and headaches, but it is not 100% foolproof.

History is a tough and impersonal teacher most times.  History is what it is (of course depending on who is writing the history), for good or for bad.  Most interesting is that one’s own personal history is absolutely free.  Every human being on the face of the earth has a history and also possesses the freedom to close or open their own personal door to their own personal history anytime they wish.  That is a rare thing in life.  Most life issues are not this black and white when it comes to absolute total freedom.

Closing the door on one’s history has with it a great risk great danger, for as the great Harvard philosopher George Santayana said “A person who forgets their history is condemned to repeat it.”  

Because of Jack and Bruce’s deaths I have been opening the door of my history, reflecting, reviewing, exploring and coming to renewed conclusions of why I did this or that or why I did not do this or that. 

The passing of these two men caused me to stop and look hard and long at my history, and honestly there are a couple of things, well actually a ton of things I would have done differently.  

I have never been an optimist, far from it.  However this week when I examined my life, stimulated by the deaths of Jack and Bruce, I concluded that here and there, now and then, just once in a while I have done good things and contributed something to life and to my profession.  That gives me comfort, and yes, there are people that I would like to track down and simply say “I am sorry” so my history as all histories also possesses regrets and utter failures.

Over the veil of history our lives evolve and continue till the last breath is taken, eyes are closed and thinking ends as it did last week for my two buddies, and as it will in time for me.  History and death are companions on the inner way.  They go hand in hand. 

Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”  How true those words ring in my ears given the recent loss events in my life.  So I examined my life again this week in depth and was required for psychological health and balance to assimilate the dual realities that I have done good, and that I have done harm, they also seem to do hand in hand.

I suspect that if I live long enough more of my buddies will die and that once again I will honestly be compelled to explore, reflect, discern and make renewed conclusions about the experience of the meaning in my one solitary life, and I am prepared to do that, and to take once again that inward journey.

One interesting conclusion that I have arrived at in thinking about my history with Jack and Bruce and all the other people in my life is that my awareness that my history will also end one day is a great motivator for me to press ahead, to try to do good, and if I make mistakes make them on the side of kindness and generosity, and in the end to feel a God given-energy to live life, not perfectly, but to live life, for to be sure my Calvary will arrive soon enough.   TVB

The Van Becks have lived in Iowa since arriving from the Netherlands in 1870.  I knew even as a small child that our family had been original pioneers in Southwestern Iowa, and it made me feel good to know that our roots were so deeply planted in the rich soil of the Hawkeye State.  Nothing lasts forever and if anyone visits the Oak Hill Cemetery in Hancock, Iowa you will see that over the last 139 years many Van Becks have died and been buried in that little cemetery located right in the rich black soil of rural Iowa.

By Christmas of 1975 our family was facing yet another death; my grandmother who had been a physical wreck for sometime was dying.  Nothing was working concerning the medical profession, and she just seemed to slip further and further from us and from reality.  In the months prior the family had held one meeting after another concerning my grandmother’s condition, and it was unanimously decided that she would NOT end up in a nursing home, under no conditions would she end up with someone else taking care of her.  She had taken care of us, now it was our turn to take care of her.

Of course I guess our family is normal because by Christmas of 1975 my grandmother was in a nursing home where she would subsequently die six months later.  So much for family conferences and/or convictions and promises.

During the same year of 1975 I bought my first two funeral homes in Eastern Iowa and was busy trying, without much success, to become the premier funeral director in our little town.  Looking back I am ashamed that I thought I could be the premier at anything let alone being a great funeral director, but hell folks I was only 23 years old, and did not know didly squat about life or what surprises my life held in store for me.

The phone rang about five days before Christmas and the announcement was made that my grandmother was slipping fast and that the medical people had sounded the alarm which summoned everybody to make the trip home.  Now freeze this frame for a moment.

Let’s take a moment and travel back to 1960.  In 1960 my grandmother was a literal dynamo.  Energy plus and she was 69 years old.  She never sat down even when she was eating because she was too busy making sure everybody else had enough food to eat.  She was an outstanding cook, outstanding seamstress, and outstanding gardener, and to top all this off she was a Registered Nurse (graduated in 1909) but first and  foremost she was my grandmother, and I always knew I was her favorite – she told me so on countless occasions – in fact she told me this fact way too many times to count.

In 1960 a television station out of Omaha had a program on Saturday nights called “MONSTER, CHILLER, HORROR THEATER.”  It was without a doubt, besides the old “Superman” and “The Three Stooges” my favorite TV program to watch – it just scared the hell out of me and I loved it.  Nothing was better in my kid world than to watch Lon Chaney, Jr. turn into the “Wolfman”, or Boris Karloff chasing some half naked women through a forest and swamp, or Bela Lugosi flying around drinking the blood from again some half naked woman who was in a dungeon in a spooky castle in Transylvania.  It was great stuff!  My father forbade me to watch the show.  I was always sent to bed – when I was at home, anyway.

One Saturday afternoon however, the clouds in my life concerning watching this scary program broke and the sun radiated through my father’s stubbornness and his evident total disinterest in getting scared to death.  What happened was simple; my grandmother asked me to spend the weekend at her house.  She lived seven miles away; it was a safe distance.  Halleluiah!  Reprieved at last! I am free, free! So off my grandmother’s house I went and a mighty happy camper I was indeed.  It was Saturday afternoon, six more hours before “Monster, Chiller, Horror Theater”.

That evening we ate dinner, I had two pieces of apple pie, she fussed on me, doted on me, and basically made me feel like the king of the castle. 

After I had helped her wash the dishes while we both sang old time songs we went into the living room to watch Saturday evening television.  “Lawrence Welk” started off the evening. Then I asked if we could watch “Gunsmoke.”  Sure was Grandma’s response.  I saw my opening.  If she would say yes to “Gunsmoke” there might just be a chance she would say yes to………….

The ten o’clock news came on.   Usually at home this was my father’s cue to start pushing me off to bed, but my grandmother just looked at me and asked if I would be interested in some popcorn?  Popcorn in the middle of the night?  Why sure I’d love some.   So off we went to the kitchen and started popping.  While I was keeping watch over the popcorn project my grandmother went over to the refrigerator (she called it the ice-box) and pulled out a beer.

She went over to the cupboard and got out two, yes two glasses.  By now the popcorn was finished and it was just about 10:30 p.m. time for my scary movie to begin.

Very nonchalantly and with great diplomacy I asked my grandmother if we could watch “Monster Chiller Horror Theater” and she said yes without batting an eye.  I determined right then and there that my life plan was to change considerably and that from now on my purpose and mission in life would be to finagle as many weekend invitations to bunk out at my Grandmother’s as possible.  My life had new meaning.

She poured herself a glass of beer and poured the rest of the bottle, very little was left,  into a small shot glass for me and with popcorn in hand she and I went into the living room to get the bejesus scared out of us – or me anyway, I hoped. 

There we sat, an old lady and a kid, watching a scary movie, eating popcorn and drinking beer and having the time of our lives in the middle the night – middle of the night for a kid, that is.

My beer tasted horrible, just horrible, but I felt so grown up that I knew I couldn’t let on.  Obviously my grandmother did not think her beer tasted horrible, for in no time her glass was empty.  I don’t think I ever finished my beer – if may well have been the only beer I never finished; my, my how things have changed over the years concerning by behavior with that particular recreational activity.

In the middle of our naughty clandestine activity my grandmother leaned over to me and whispered (there were only her and I in the room) “Now don’t tell your Dad about this, will you?”  TELL DAD!!!!!!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING?????????  TELL MY DAD!!!!!!!!!!!!  I promised on all that a kid could hold holy that never a word would be said to my father about the movie, the beer or even the popcorn – it was our secret.  To this day he does not know, I never told on her.

Let’s pick the frame up.  Now it is Christmastime 1975, fifteen years later, and I had arrived home.  At the nursing home my grandmother was flat on her back, eyes closed, saying nothing, not moving at all, just lying flat on her back.  She had lost a great amount of weight but she was small to begin with, could not speak, her hair was a mess, however the nurses had made absolutely sure that she was clean and that there were no bed sores.  Looking back they might well have had a vested interest in my grandmother because as one RN told me in the hallway “If it had not been for your Grandma’s influence in my life I would never have mustered the courage to go to nursing school – she taught me how to be a practical nurse, way beyond the textbooks.”  I was so proud.

In mid-evening I found myself sitting all alone with Grandma.  Some Christmas cards were taped up, there was a little Christmas tree which was nice, but my beloved friend, confidante, and Grandmother was dying right before my eyes and there seemed to be nothing I could do to help her.  I just sat there thinking.

Eventually this same nurse who had been an apprentice of Grandma’s in the nursing profession came in and started talking to her like nothing was wrong, like in the good old days.  This nurse was telling my Grandmother about other patients and the trouble she was having with some of them, and she one time even asked Grandma what she ought to do with one particularly grumpy patient down the hall.  Grandma said nothing.

Finally the nurse looked at me and said she had to leave for a few minutes and why don’t I continue talking to Grandma she asked.  I was totally uncomfortable.  You want me to talk to my Grandma, are you kidding?  I had known this woman for years, and as she left the room she shot me a stern look and said, “You heard me Todd, talk to her, she loves you so much.”

So I started talking to her stumbling around not knowing what to say exactly.  I started to talk about “Monster, Chiller, Horror Theater,” and what a blast it was to make the popcorn and drink the beer with her and go to bed really late and that Dad never ever found out about it.  She did not move once while I was talking to her.

Finally I ran out of steam and was sitting there quietly buried in my own thoughts, when out of nowhere, out of the blue, without any hesitation or stumbling my grandmother, eyes still closed, said as clear as a bell – “I DON’T REMEMBER THE BEER.”

I just sat in my chair stunned.  My nurse buddy came in and I told her, and she took my hand and said again “She heard everything you said, she loves you very much, she just can’t talk, that’s normal.”  Those were the last words my grandmother ever said to me, “I don’t remember the beer.”

It was cold as hell outside, snow was everywhere.  I gathered my coat and walked out to the car.  Another Christmas in Iowa, but not another one for my Grandmother – this one would be her last.  However, today every time the Yuletide season comes around, this one profound memory is what I recall with the greatest frequency.  The memory has nothing to do with toys, presents, parties, singing, laughing and being merry, it has everything to do with the real meaning of Christmas – love.

My sainted grandmother has been dead for 33 years. I have survived 33 Christmases in her physical absence, but I know that she is not spiritually absent, and each time I feel that warm holiday glow I remember two human beings from years ago, one old, one terribly young, sitting together in a very little house in a very little place called Hancock, Iowa (population 250), making popcorn, laughing, telling stories, drinking a little beer while watching some crazed lunatic monster chasing people all over the place, and on top of all that, Dad never was the wiser – great fun – God I would give a year's salary to have that moment just one more time.

Interesting, is it not, what happens to people in the past. When it is happening, it seems routine, somewhat mundane, but what a difference history and time make on those seemingly routine and mundane life events of years gone by.  Youth is truly wasted on the young, and what ticks me off with young people is that they are the very people who don’t get it.

Two last thoughts, the first one is special, almost unbelievable in fact, and the second one is just dripping with sincerity and love.  Here is the odd, special, eerie, strange, unbelievable one: On June 27, 2009, I married a Registered Nurse. Can you believe this, a real live honest to goodness licensed certified graduated formalized canonized Registered Nurse, and trust me, my friends, she is in every way just as much of a dynamo as my sainted grandmother was. I can’t keep up with her and she has indeed changed my life, all for the better.  Lastly, to all my good buddies in this great profession, this old undertaker sincerely and truly wishes everyone a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Years.

TVB

Ten days ago or so, my cousin died.  The story, which is somewhat fuzzy, went like this.  He was driving on I-10 in Palm Springs, in the fast lane, and was evidently talking on his cell phone to my Aunt about pains in his chest the intensity of which he had never experienced before in his life.  He had been dealing with “indigestion” for the last several days.

Eye witnesses said they saw the car move over several lanes of traffic, attempt to exit, hit the guard rail, careened off the exit ramp, hit several objects and came to a stop.  My cousin was pronounced dead at the scene.

When my mother called to inform me of his death I have to admit that I felt nothing remotely akin to the pain and anguish of human grief.  However, I did feel a sense of lost history, a haunting feeling that I probably had not done the right thing by my cousin for I have not seen or talked or had any type of interaction with my cousin, my Aunt, or his surviving sister for forty years.  Is that not sad – forty bloody years?  However this confession is true.

This was not always the case.  From the beginning of my life until around eighteen years of age, my cousin and I were buddies, although there were times I could have strangled him.  He was a bully, I was not.  He was a tease, I was not.  I was more reserved and quiet, he was the opposite.  Yet despite our differences we did spend a great amount of time together.  

For one thing my cousin’s father died when he was ten, and for quite a while my family became a type of surrogate family for him.  My cousin spent many summer weeks, many week-ends, many holidays with my family.  My cousin was a city boy, I was a hick farmer.  The farm however offered him more peace and substance in his crisis over his father’s death than the city could – it just seemed that everybody knew that fact of life.

Together he and I were creative.  What one didn’t think of the other one did.  For instance we had a great big barn on our property and I made one section of it a fire department, the other section, I know no one will believe this, I made into a pet funeral home (fifty years before pet funeral homes were even in vogue – I could be a consultant today).  My cousin predictably turned the hay loft into a gambling casino (an idea he got from watching the movie “Some Like It Hot” where the speakeasy was in the back of the funeral parlor).  I said we were creative.

That barn was the most popular kid spot in kiddom.  Kids from miles around walked just to see the place.  On any one given day we might have a dozen fires, two dozen funerals (I was always the funeral director), and between battling imaginary blazes and holding state funerals for real and true dead rabbits, we managed to get in games of 21, dice, craps, slots, in fact any game of chance you might think of, my cousin and I had one.  One problem existed with our gambling casino however – the house never won.  My cousin and I lost every time when somebody else would play one of our games of chance, but we were undeterred even when my own mother beat the pants off the house.

There were a thousand memories and experiences packed into eighteen short years, and looking back eighteen years is indeed nothing.  Eighteen year olds don’t believe this, but I can assure you 58 year olds do.

Shortly after our graduation from high school my cousin married.  I was one of the groomsmen.  After the wedding someone dropped me off at the front door of the Heafey & Heafey Mortuary, and I never talked or laid eyes on my cousin again.  That was it. Over, finished, done, and gone.  Eighteen years just vanished with the slam of a car door.

Over the last forty years I have thought about him off and on.  I have made some half-hearted inquiries concerning him, his mother and sister.  In all honesty however I really was not too serious about any attempts to find out what his life had become.  For some reason, which honestly is still a mystery, all connections with my cousin and his immediate family just broke apart, never to be again, and now it is way too late to bring things together or at least try to with my former chum and good buddy – way too late.  My cousin is a corpse.

I feel shame in writing this because in all honesty the block to connecting, at least on my part anyway, was simple willpower and stubbornness.  I come from a long line of stubborn and willful people (you ought to have attended one of my family's holiday dinners – shootout at the OK Corral), and I know in my own heart there were times I thought about simply offering him the olive branch and just making the call.  I never did.

I never knew his children, I know nothing of his mother or sister's status, I learned that he had been divorced, and had a significant other, and also that he had done well in the profession of golf instruction and country club management.  I found this information five days after his death.  If you had asked me anything about him over the last 40 years I would have just shrugged my shoulders.  Everything I gleaned about my good buddy cousin I learned five days after his death.

I realize that nothing lasts forever.  Everything dies, even our relationships.  Right now however that type of sterile intellectualization about the ultimate truths and realities about life offer me little comfort.  I don’t feel the deep pangs of grief or even of wrenching guilt, no not those emotions.  I just simply regret not calling him.  I ought to have called him.

I know full well what my life has been like without my cousin involved with it, and it has been overall really pretty good.  Today however I am wondering what my life would have been like, what experiences both good and bad I would have had, if I had kept up with him, tried to keep up with him, just called him here and there, now and then, even if I got rejected.  I know that had I taken the initiative, and abandoned my own willfulness and stubbornness, what I am writing right now would be much different, but I do not know and will never know what that difference would have been.

I feel the unsettling pangs of consciousness today in having to honestly face up to deal with the haunting phrase “Too late.”  I did not do the right thing.

I went to see the Disney version of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” a week or two before my cousin died.  The story always touches me, but as I write these words in view of what has happened since, I am thinking that I am a modern version of Ebenezer Scrooge, and I really need a visitation from three spirits to give me the wake up call.  I should have called my cousin.

I think I will write to my Aunt and see how things are going for her.

ELUO VICIS IS EST EFFERCIO VITA EST NO OF.  Don’t squander time; it is the stuff life is made of.

Anyway that is one old undertaker’s opinion.

TVB

Seems like only yesterday I was posting from my snowbound condo about the absurd winter weather we were suffering through. Well, here we go again, on the opposite end of the thermometer. Yesterday when I arrived home at 3:30 the temperature was 107. Yes, 107 in Everett, Washington. Well over all previous records.

In these parts nobody has a/c built into their homes unless they are Bill Gates or one of his minions. So naturally there has been a major run on portable a/c units, fans of all sorts and, no doubt, extension cords. Last night I slept with three fans blowing at me from different angles, and it almost helped. The other thing we don't do around here is leave ground-floor windows or doors open. There are far too many burglaries and assaults resulting, and especially we single ladies are strongly cautioned. So my three-fan system really was just pushing the warm air around all night. It doesn't help that my dog Beaujolais prefers to snuggle up against me whenever she can catch me off-guard.

At the same time we're setting heat records here, a friend in Minnesota tells me they are experiencing much lower temperatures than normal... have not yet hit 90 this summer.

These sorts of things kind of give some substance to the theory of climate change, no?

Pantingly yours,

Judy

A few years back, my husband and I decided to buy replacement windows for our townhouse. The darned thing was practically made of windows -- 26 of them -- so we were no small account.

We got bids from two local companies and one large chain operation. All good companies, all good reputations, all eager for our business.

Two of the companies sent sales reps to our home. The large chain one in particular had quite the dog-and-pony show, with sample windows and demos to steer us away from their "good" and "better" options toward the "best." I'll never forget the look on Joe's face when their rep got down on his hands and knees on our floor to show us, using a little heater and fan, how airtight that sucker was.

The other company that sent their rep over almost got the sale. In fact, we signed on the dotted line and sent the happy rep on his way. But buyer's remorse set in. Something about the way we were pressured to "buy now" to get his special deal didn’t sit well with us, and so we took advantage of our three-day FTC Cooling Off Rule prerogative and called the next day to cancel.

We went with the third company, and I'll tell you why. They weren't the cheapest (they fell somewhere in the middle) and they weren't the most eager (they didn't send a rep over), but we felt they were the most straightforward. The guy faxed us a sheet explaining all of our options, including all the pricing information. He didn't try to discourage us from buying Models B or C instead of the more expensive Model A, and he didn't try to pressure us into buying now. In other words, he didn't treat us like prospects. He treated us like people ... intelligent people who had a decision to make and simply wanted the info necessary to make that decision.

The windows worked out great, by the way. If you live in Northern Virginia and are in the market, let me know and I'll be happy to pass on the referral.

Hello from the Great White North. In a scene reminiscent of the December snow storm I blogged about, there's a very heavy snow falling and already about 4 inches on the ground. I live in what our local meteorogists call "The Convergence Zone" which means whatever's going on outside, at least weather-wise, is compounded in this little slice of heaven.

What's so fun about living in one of these meteorological anomalies is you can call in to work because you're stuck in the snow while only a couple of miles away the roads are bare and wet. This means all your non-convergent co-workers still have to go to work.

What will make it even MORE fun is our temperature, both inside and outside The Zone, is supposed to drop to the 'teens tonight. That will result in large frozen ruts on the roads. The kind where you just get your car's wheels into them, put it into gear, hit the gas, and let the road do the driving. That seems to be the modus operandi of a lot of the drivers around here. A lot of those road-ruts lead directly into ditches.

I'm supposed to go to a condo-association board meeting tonight where we're finalizing a very large special assessment to the owners but it may be postponed. We went through a multi-year lawsuit, settlement and re-construction project here in our 130 unit neighborhood, but fell short by about $1.2 million. This results in considerable anger or fear (or both) on the part of a many of the owners. With real estate values plummeting like a lead balloon, the option to re-finance is not in the cards for a lot of us. We, the board, get to present all this happy news to the homeowners' association as soon as we finalize a loan so that those of us who don't have large cash reserves on hand can make payments over time. Unfortunately it'll be at a high interest rate which won't be deductible by the individuals because it's the Assocation taking out the loan. Thus, we will probably be issued flak jackets to wear to the big meeting. For the last couple of years we were a three-member board, two of whom did several lions' shares of the work (present company excluded). We recently picked up four new board members as a result of our having to canvass for signatures to approve the loan. We also picked up a lot of verbal abuse, but it was worth it to get the new board members. After this I'm going off the board. Enough, already.

In the time it's taken me to type this the snowfall has almost ended. It's only 32 degrees at about 2 p.m. so it's downhill from here. I realize that to a lot of you that sounds balmy, but we're a different breed here. Google Seattle snowstorm December 2008 to see what I mean.

In other news, I took my sub-standard Poodle Beaujolais in for her periodic shearing on Saturday. I don't go in for the fancy balls of fur (in the case of Poodles, it actually IS hair, becaue they have no under-coat, and the hair they have keeps on growing just like ours, or sheeps')  on the ankles and posterior etc. Just a fluffy cheerleader's pompom tail and enough of a head-pouf so you know she's a poodle, and extra-long ears so she looks marginally like a girl. The rest of her looks like a spider - she's all long, skinny dancer's legs. When she does her three-foot vertical leaps of excitement you expect her to extrude a web.

More news as it breaks! I hope to see more of you blogging soon!

I'm always happy to help the ICCFA, but those of you who know me are probably not surprised that when they asked me to write a blog I told them I don't know what a blog is. Is it anything like a "Blob," I wondered?

I know what a "Blob" is because I saw the horror movie when I was 8 years old and it scared the bajeesus out of me. I remember walking home by myself at night after the movie. A car passed me and I ran as fast as I could to stay in front of the car's headlights because I thought, "If the Blob jumps out from behind a bush or tree, the guy driving the car will see it and jump out and save me."

When I finally got home, the car stopped and a man got out and said, "Todd, what on heaven's earth are you doing?" The man was my family's minister.  I had to think quickly on my feet not to confess to our clergyman that I had been depending on him to kill the Blob!

Now that I know the difference between the Blob and a blog, my next "post" will be about our profession.

Looking for a good place for a walk? Try your local cemetery.

With Virginia enjoying balmy weather the past few days, more people have been getting their exercise with a brisk walk around town or country. One of the safest and prettiest places to walk is through a cemetery. Though the paved roads aren't lined with sidewalks, the few cars you encounter are traveling very slowly.

The small cemetery just a few blocks from my house is called Riverview, but really should be called Mountainview. If you know what to look for, you can see the plain the Shenandoah River snakes across, but not the actual river—unless there's some serious flooding going on. But from its location atop a small hill, the cemetery does provide an unobstructed view of lovely Massanutten Mountain, as well as part of the town and surrounding countryside.

A pretty place to rest in peace, or to walk in peace.

Back in the mid-80s we (Dave Daly and I, mostly) undertook, so to speak, to scan into DOS (or something that we could import into WordPerfect - memory fails me after all this time) all Washington laws pertaining to death, funeral, cemetery, estate, etc. THEN my task was to lay it out to look just like the official laws and codes, index and cross-reference the whole thing, get it printed and bound and sold to the members of WCFA and the WSFDA. At that time I wasn't working for the WCFA (it was the Washington Interment Association then), I was doing this at home evenings and weekends on a contract with the two associations whilst working full-time at Greenacres Memorial Park in Ferndale.

Anyway: first, we had to hire out the scanning to a very expensive company that was on, at that time, the leading edge of OCR. We got copies of the laws and then I had to go through them all with a pink Flair pen (it HAD to be a Flair and it HAD to be pink) and highlight everything we wanted scanned. If I drew a crooked line, fuggedaboutit. Once I had the document (in a non-windows version of WordPerfect) assembled I went through and indexed every conceivable cross reference I could think of. We ended up with over 2800 entries, as I recall.

The best part: When I was about 90% finished with the indexing we bought a new computer. My husband (at that time) was going to use this new utility called "hotwire" or something and migrate all my files from the old to the new computer. "Did you make a backup?" I asked him. He said this new utility was SO hot, he didn't even need to. You guessed the rest. Back to square one. Needless to say, we're now divorced...

I think I like a  whole lot better the method Joe's using to import all those cool old articles into the reading room.
 

Well, now I know I'm officially getting old. Woke up Tuesday with a very sore big toe. Felt like a broken bone, or at the very least a major sprain, but I had absolutely zero memory of any accidents or pratfalls (took a real bone-cracking pratfall during Christmas, though!). Thought maybe my foot got tangled in the heavy bedclothes on my sister's guestroom bed, where I sleep every Monday night so I can get the kids off to school Tuesday while she and her husband attend an early morning meeting. Anyway. As the week has gone on, it's gotten more and more painful and swollen. Finally saw a doctor today, figuring on x-rays and casts and so on. Turns out it is GOUT! Ack. You get gout from too much shellfish (which I haven't had in months), too much beer (I prefer vodka), a few other things I don't ingest. So now they are giving me massive doses of steroids and, thank god, Vicodin. Meanwhile I'm hobbling around like House, only without the cane to prop me up. I feel like some crippled old lady. Oh well, I may be getting older but I refuse to grow up.

A lot of characters have been killed off in seasons 1-4, and no doubt more will die in seasons 5 and 6. As always when I watch a TV show or a movie, I notice cemetery/funeral scenes. Of course there aren't any funeral homes or official cemeteries on the island, at least none that we've seen. But there have been plenty of scenes showing people dealing with the aftermath of death.

STOP if you haven't watched all four seasons: MANY SPOILERS AHEAD! I'm going by memory here, so this may not be a complete list--feel free to add to it:

* After they've been on the beach a couple of days and wild boars have entered the fusilage foraging for food, Jack decides the decomposing bodies must be burned. Sayid, who is Iraqi and later confirmed as being Muslim, objects to imposing cremation on people who might not have wished to be cremated. (The writers assume viewers will know why he objects--or will look it up.) Dr. Jack says they can't bury all those people deep enough to keep the boars from digging up the bodies, so cremation it is. Claire gathers their belongings and uses the information she gleans to lead a service, where the remaining passengers do their best to say something to eulogize each of the deceased.

* Boone is buried with a service, at which Sayid speaks. Boone's stepsister, Shannon, has a hard time dealing with her grief. When they take refuge in the caves, she insists on dragging Boone's luggage with her and breaks down crying. Sayid understands and helps her with the luggage rather than telling her to leave it behind. Later Sun tries to comfort Shannon, telling her that Boone died bravely.

* When Shannon is killed, Sayid digs the grave himself, placing her by her brother. Another service is held; Sayid again speaks.

* Paralyzed by spider venom into a state mimicking death, Nikki & Paulo are buried alive. The less said about the infamous Nikki & Paulo story arc, the better!

* Libby and Ana Lucia are buried, with a service, after being murdered. Hurley, who was sweet on Libby, is later seen by her grave, talking to her.

* Jack was on Oceanic 815 because his mother asked him to go to Australia to bring his father's body back to the US. There's a scene where an Aussie at the ticket counter is telling him he doesn't have the necessary paperwork from a funeral home to have the casket put on the plane, and he manages to talk her into accepting him and the casket. Hmmm, that seems unlikely in these post-9/11 days! Wonder what went through that ticket agent's mind when the plane was lost?!

* One of the red herrings the writers throw in to keep Jeremy Bentham's identity a mystery until the last possible minute is the funeral home where his body is being held. The fact that the funeral director is black and the funeral home seems to be in a black section of the city are obviously designed to feed the fan theory that Bentham is Michael.

* After the Oceanic 6 return home, the service for Jack's father is finally held, though the casketed body he talked onto the plane is of course not on hand. Jack eulogies his father, with whom he had a difficult relationship, in a touching way, and says he loved him.

* Hurley visits Sun in Korea to see her baby. They then go to the cemetery together and visit Jin's grave, where Sun talks to Jin and "shows" him his daughter.

* We see Sayid with others carrying a coffin as part of a funeral procession in the Middle East. It turns out Nadia has been killed and he has returned to Tikrit to bury her.

* There's a lot of debate about whether Ben/The Others are in fact "the good guys," as Ben claims. The fact that Ben killed his father and then left his body in the van, not even bothering to bury him (his body falls apart when the survivors find the van and try to get it running), makes him seem pretty bad to me.

Will there be any time for scenes showing reverent treatment of the dead and/or dealing with grief in Seasons 5 & 6? The previews make the action in Season 5 look more frantic than ever, and we learned at the end of Season 4 that "everyone" died because Jack and the others left the island. During Season 4, there was no service for much-loved Claire, who appears to have died while everyone was on the move somewhere. Ditto Charlie, at the end of Season 3. (Of course there were no bodies in those cases.) Stay tuned ...

Well, disaster upon disaster strikes the Pacific Northwest. Remember the last few weeks and my hilarious tales of snow?

Those flat-earthers who still deny global warming, aka climate change, take note: parts of Washington are in the midst of their second or even third "hundred-year-flood" in just the past few years.

Spokane had, as of yesterday, according to news reports, six feet of snow on the ground (that's in Eastern Washington).

Western Washington is isolated. I-5, south of Olympia, is closed for twenty miles, either completely under water or soon to be. I-5 is the sole artery that runs north and south the full length of the western side of the state. To complete the isolation, both of our main mountain passes that connect us to the eastern side of the Cascades, I-90 and Highway 2, are closed due to avalanches and landslides, to re-open who knows when. These three closures bring all traffic, including commercial traffic, to a halt. Bad for businesses, bad for consumers.

An old highschool friend just emailed me some pictures of my hometown.

This is a shot of the street where I lived in 1966. Ferndale, Washington (about 15 miles south of the Canadian border). Our home was about two houses above the house at the top of the photo. My Ferndale correspondent tells me the water here is waist-deep on his six-feet-tall son. Said son's car and house are in the same zone.

This is a park, that's about 100 feet behind my old home, that during better times is a serene riverside idyll. Not so much right now!

Some parts of Western Washington received as much as eight inches of rain in a twenty-four-hour period yesterday.

At least the rain took care of the snow that would not leave. Spokane, however...still has snow.

More dispatches as something relevant occurs!

Went out on a Christmas-gift-delivery-run yesterday with my sister in her two-ton Mercedes (dropping off custom-labeled bottles of wine to friends and prospective real-estate clients, like some R-rated Santa's elves). We've had very cold (for our area) weather and snow, ice, etc. for the last few days. Very slippery especially the side streets where the plows and sanding trucks don't bother going. Nonetheless she was convinced her car could manage any situation. So we started up a steep very icy street with me clutching the door-handle and her determined to make it. Fatal error: she stopped 3/4 of the way instead of soldiering on. We were on a narrow, one-lane street surrounded by parked cars, old garden sheds, and fairly steep drop-offs into people's yards. The car started sliding backwards, with the back end veering off to the left. She'd put it into forward and it would straighten out but not gain any upward mobility. Reverse, and off to the left it would go again. We came within a hair's breadth of smacking into a junk car but she managed to straighten it out again. Finally she managed to back it down to the bottom of the hill. She was insistent on delivering the wine though, after making it this far, so in slippery-soled boots, and only falling once, badly jarring her shoulder and chucking the wine into a snowbank to save it from a fate worse than death, she crept up the hill and back down. Of course, the lucky recipients weren't even home so she left it on the parch. By now, the wine's probably frozen, bottle broken, and their porch smelling like an old wino. We continued on our rounds for the rest of day with less drama, fortunately. Merry Christmas!