St. Louis is a big city made up of little towns. Today we would call them communities. The little *towns* were bigger than neighborhoods, in that several neighborhoods would share a shopping district, consisting of a couple of blocks of stores. St. Louisans of my generation will know what "shopping on Meramec, Shopping on Cherokee," or even "Shopping at Hampton Village," and "Shopping in the West End" means. Those were places that were once their own towns, before being swallowed up by the city limits Something I miss from my youth--something I truly miss, is window shopping. Window shopping is now a lost art. We did it so often that we even invented a special *family* term for it. The special term was "Eye-Buying." We were fearless and ruthless window shoppers/Eye-Buyers! If that would happen today, we'd be run right out of the store--possibly even detained as suspected shoplifters.
Eye-Buying was something to do with an agenda that involved nothing more than looking into the windows of shops to see what they had. Sometimes if the window looked really REALLY good, we'd go inside and try things on with the full knowledge we'd never be able to pay for those things. It was more akin to playing dress-up in someone else's closet, only with brand new clothing. We were never afraid to try on something beautiful just for the sake of trying it on! We were allowed to do this, I'm sure, because if we liked something we'd be back with a parent to buy it. That would never happen in any upscale store today. It wouldn't happen because store owners are afraid of inventory loss. Ohhh noooo, we musn't tamper with the bottom line!!
Some days we might only have a dollar or two in our pockets. We may have gotten a soda at a soda fountain, or some days we would go so far as to have lunch at "Wag's" or "Katz Drugstore's" lunch counter. If it was an actual shopping trip, we may have even splurged and had luncheon at Styx, Baer & Fuller or at Famous-Barr Southtown (damn, I really miss that store). Styx and Famous both had actual restaurants with linen on the tables--far better than a paper placemat. Today's stores forget the customer's comfort: Just get them in and out so more people can come in and out and buy more things! Large department stores with every available amenity are a thing of the past because corporations fear loss of any kind to their bottom line.
If it was an all out event, we'd go downtown, where all the biggest and best and usually most expensive stores and items were. That normally required taking the bus and a lot of heavy-duty outerwear, since it was usually at Christmas Time. The window dressings were marvelous, especially the ones that featured toys, because we all knew that everything there was something a rich kid might see under the tree at Christmas. If we were lucky, we might get ONE of those things from that particular window. As I got older, I noticed what the manikins were wearing and how they were posed and decorated. I believe window dressing is a lost art as well. Store windows are usually covered or painted to average human head-height. They are painted to discourage any planned shoplifters or would-be robbers. Paint provides a screen against communication with the outside. Corporations fear theft, and that now matters more than "in sight it must be right."
As a really young girl...before I ever went to school, I remember going downtown with my grandma. She would *call a car,* her term for calling a cab, and we would go downtown with a mission. It always, always involved having a nice lunch somewhere. Interestingly enough, she didn't know how to drive a car, even though we had one -- and a nice one, at that. She told me it wasn't ladylike to drive in her time. Being ladylike was how women survived in a misogynistic world. Men were afraid of losing power.
.
Eye-Buying with my grandmother was an entirely different experience than when I went with other kids. While my grandpa was still alive, we would peer into the windows. If she saw something she liked, we'd go in and look around. At every store, people there would know her. "Hello, Mrs. *******, how nice to have you back in our store again! What may I help you with today?" Those were still the days when my family name meant something to damned near everyone in the city. Those were also the days when being a sales clerk meant you had to have manners and respect for your customers. Sales clerks respected their lady clientele because if they didn't, a lady's husband would be right down there to push their faces in for them, at best. At worst, the husbands would have a word with their boss. The clerk was afraid of losing his job even more than being worried about having his own face pushed in.
It was great fun to go on adventures with my grandma, she was powerful in her own right, and I was never afraid when I was with her. She was a five-foot-two, brick house dynamo! Men fell over themselves trying to serve her. She was fully AWARE of the power she wielded, and yet it was subtle. She never barked orders like a drill sergeant, all she had to do was lift an eyebrow. She was a powerful woman who never left the house without stockings and heels, or a hat and gloves! She was beautiful. A man at her funeral told me she was *movie star beautiful.* Men and women alike both coveted her beauty and feared it.
After my grandpa died, my grandmother just sort of shriveled up into herself. She outlived my grandfather by thirty years. The only time she left the house was if someone took her, or if I had to go to the doctor, we'd take a cab during the day. Eye-Buying for her was then only done from catalogs or newspaper ads. She might have walked all of 50 yards total to the dairy, or the neighborhood delicatessen, and only then if it was absolutely necessary. She became reclusive. Nearly everything she did was done over the phone. Unless, as I said, someone came to pry her out of the house. Her beautiful, naturally platinum hair began to gradually dull and was ash-blonde at the time of her death. Sadness and loss took away her beauty. Fear took away her power.
Perhaps if she had only learned how to drive, that wouldn't have happened to her. Long after "being ladylike" didn't matter as much, and by the time that most women were driving, there was too much traffic and it scared her. The thought of driving a car scared her. Driving an 18 or 19 hands high carriage horse didn't scare her though, and it took more moxie and finesse to drive them. Riding one of them with a sidesaddle (A SIDESADDLE!) didn't scare her either--I'm not talking about Hackneys here -- any four-legged equine was putty in her hands. Odd isn't it, the things we fear?
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Friday, March 25, 2016
MY OTHER *FRIEND* IS A SADIST!
I have had a male friend for a few months shy of thirty years. When I first met him, he was heading a major, nationally traded company. I was pirated from my firm by a headhunter to come in for an interview. I told him on that interview day that he would hire me and all the reasons why. I went to the interview with my boot on his neck and I knew I already had the upper hand. I had liked my then-current job. The pay was good, I worked, I had benefits, the hours were flexible, I had my own office and a staff of 22. I decided I would toy with him and have a little fun while I was doing it. It totally worked!! I told him how much he would pay me, how much my commission would be, how many vacation days I would get, etc. We both stood up, shook hands like "men," and then I told him he wouldn't be seeing me until the first of next month because I intended to take a vacation before I started since I hadn't had one in over five years. I also told him I wanted time to buy some new suits with the hiring bonus check he was going to write for me before I left that day. I was a hot commodity and I knew it. He needed ME even more than he needed the staff and clients I would bring with me. I got everything I asked for and more.
Two years into my employment there, I began to get sick. Really sick. I went to specialist after specialist. I was out sick more days than I was in the office and at my desk. I tried tele-commuting for several months, which ended with a lengthy stay at a hospital where I was put on a respirator. I had lost the ability to breathe on my own.
A few more months went by and I finally got the diagnosis of "Myasthenia Gravis." I was put on a massive dose of steroids and other drugs, weaned off the respirator, and sent home in a deep depression where I cocooned myself and applied for long-term disability. It had been my good fortune to opt for the maximum insurance policy when given the choice at the point of hiring. Incidentally, the long-term steroid dosing contributed to ruining my heart. Steroids for me were a wretched catch-22, since I needed them to live through the MG crises, but they were killing my heart in the process.
I could no longer sit up in an office chair for 8 or more hours a day. Some days I wasn't even strong enough to lift my head. Other days I found I could not speak...the vocal chords are muscles, of course, and MG is a neuro-muscular disease. It got to the point that I never knew which part of me wouldn't work each morning I woke.
During that time I found out just what a good friend he was. He would often pick me up and take me places where I wouldn't have been able to go by myself. He would bring me groceries. He would buy, and deliver prescriptions if I didn't have cash available. He brought me books and movies and even a new TV when mine rolled belly up, so my mind would stay active.
He took me to a number of book signings that, even though I was no longer technically working, he made sure I got paid for my time in cash. He bought me a wheelchair and personally pushed me 2 blocks uphill to get to a bookstore because that was the closest he could park since the author was a best seller, was there for a signing, so she drew a big crowd. He *NEEDED* me to be there--this author and I had history. Back then I could have recited by memory every single one of her books I had had, and he himself only knew one trilogy by this author under a different nom de plume she used when writing in a particular style.
If he had me with him, he got to go to the head of the class, right up front, directly to the table...no standing in line, no madding crowd, no toddlers alternating between eating boogers and screaming as their mothers dragged them along in strollers, or on child-sized harnesses and leashes .At some point, early into my disability, my former boss became my best friend and we have stayed friends all these years.
We had worked together as colleagues, and we have also been business partners, this man and I over the years, have started two companies together after I retired with my disability, and he quit the initial company that had brought us together. And, of course, we were for the longest time, best friends. He told me I was, in fact, his ONLY friend, not just his best friend, and the only completely trust worthy person he knew.
For almost thirty years we have talked several times a week on the phone, sometimes several times daily, and at any and all hours of the day and night. Just before last Christmas when I was having anxiety attacks, he told me, "You can call me any time, ANY TIME, day or night. I sleep with my phone right next to my head. I will always be there for you. He told me a few years back that he had often wished I was his wife and confessed that he had married the wrong person.
After 15 years, my myasthenia was finally under control with medication, and only became potentially "gravis," or deadly, if I had a concurrent active illness. I left the state due to another job, only to be brought down by a new illness.
When he found out I was going to have heart surgery he told me to make sure he was notified immediately if something happened to me, and if my health suddenly took a turn for the worse. We discussed wills and living wills. There was not one subject that was ever off limits. We could talk about anything.
The last time I talked to him he had told me his own health was getting worse. He said he had the alarming symptom of enormously swollen legs..that morning he had awakened and his legs were so swollen he couldn't even put his pants on and had to have his wife go out and buy some giant sweat pants just so he could get to the doctor later that day. I begged him to go to the Emergency Room at the local hospital, because the first thing that came to my mind when he told me of his alarming symptom, was the health of his heart. That was the day before New Year's Eve, 2015. At the end of the first week of January, I realized I hadn't heard from him. I had assumed I would hear from him later that day, or the next day at the latest, that he was probably dealing with whatever illness he had and wanted to be left alone.
Several days went by and still he had not phoned me. I tried to call him the next day, and the next, and on the third day...no answer to any of my calls. I became alarmed. I called every day that week. Each time, no answer. I sent emails to all the accounts I knew he had from all the accounts that I have myself...no answer. After that first week and the flurry of unanswered phone calls I began to think the worst. I called at least once, maybe twice a week thereafter.
When my Uncle/Brother Mikey died, on January 23rd, I thought at the time I would be in his city for the funeral. I again called him, leaving a message about the death and saying I would be in town for the funeral and I wanted to meet. No response. The following week I called a few more times until the last call I made went straight to his voice mail.
I sent another volley of emails, short and to the point, subject line: WHERE ARE YOU? The body of the emails said, "I can only assume that something bad has happened to you. The last time we spoke you were worried about your grossly swollen legs and I was actually worried about your heart. PLEASE contact me to let me know what has happened!" He had admitted to me late last year during one of our regular phone calls that he had gained over 150 pounds since we had last seen each other, so I was definitely worried about his heart.
Yesterday morning, March 13, 2016, I finally got a response from his main email account stating the following: "I just got back from Hong Kong. Stop trying to contact me." The most brief response I had ever gotten from him in the entire 30 years.
WHAT. THE. HELL? What friend sends an email like that? Does this make any kind of sense? Have I suddenly lost my mind and awakened in an alternate universe? It makes me want to get in my car and drive to his house just to punch him in the teeth. It might take me 3 days to drive 400 miles, but I'd do it for the sole reason of making myself feel better.
I recall having a conversation with him on the very day England pulled out of Hong Kong and how neither of us would want to go there ever now that the Chinese were back in control, so this response makes absolute zero sense to me.
After 30 years you do shit like this to me? No explanation at all? No "I'm sorry I was the cause of your worry?" No "I wanted to scare the shit out of you on purpose?" No "We've been friends for 30 years, but I decided you weren't worth notifying about my departure from the country?" I take it back. He doesn't deserve to be punched in the teeth. This calls for a throat punch. Jesus Wept.
Two years into my employment there, I began to get sick. Really sick. I went to specialist after specialist. I was out sick more days than I was in the office and at my desk. I tried tele-commuting for several months, which ended with a lengthy stay at a hospital where I was put on a respirator. I had lost the ability to breathe on my own.
A few more months went by and I finally got the diagnosis of "Myasthenia Gravis." I was put on a massive dose of steroids and other drugs, weaned off the respirator, and sent home in a deep depression where I cocooned myself and applied for long-term disability. It had been my good fortune to opt for the maximum insurance policy when given the choice at the point of hiring. Incidentally, the long-term steroid dosing contributed to ruining my heart. Steroids for me were a wretched catch-22, since I needed them to live through the MG crises, but they were killing my heart in the process.
I could no longer sit up in an office chair for 8 or more hours a day. Some days I wasn't even strong enough to lift my head. Other days I found I could not speak...the vocal chords are muscles, of course, and MG is a neuro-muscular disease. It got to the point that I never knew which part of me wouldn't work each morning I woke.
During that time I found out just what a good friend he was. He would often pick me up and take me places where I wouldn't have been able to go by myself. He would bring me groceries. He would buy, and deliver prescriptions if I didn't have cash available. He brought me books and movies and even a new TV when mine rolled belly up, so my mind would stay active.
He took me to a number of book signings that, even though I was no longer technically working, he made sure I got paid for my time in cash. He bought me a wheelchair and personally pushed me 2 blocks uphill to get to a bookstore because that was the closest he could park since the author was a best seller, was there for a signing, so she drew a big crowd. He *NEEDED* me to be there--this author and I had history. Back then I could have recited by memory every single one of her books I had had, and he himself only knew one trilogy by this author under a different nom de plume she used when writing in a particular style.
If he had me with him, he got to go to the head of the class, right up front, directly to the table...no standing in line, no madding crowd, no toddlers alternating between eating boogers and screaming as their mothers dragged them along in strollers, or on child-sized harnesses and leashes .At some point, early into my disability, my former boss became my best friend and we have stayed friends all these years.
We had worked together as colleagues, and we have also been business partners, this man and I over the years, have started two companies together after I retired with my disability, and he quit the initial company that had brought us together. And, of course, we were for the longest time, best friends. He told me I was, in fact, his ONLY friend, not just his best friend, and the only completely trust worthy person he knew.
For almost thirty years we have talked several times a week on the phone, sometimes several times daily, and at any and all hours of the day and night. Just before last Christmas when I was having anxiety attacks, he told me, "You can call me any time, ANY TIME, day or night. I sleep with my phone right next to my head. I will always be there for you. He told me a few years back that he had often wished I was his wife and confessed that he had married the wrong person.
After 15 years, my myasthenia was finally under control with medication, and only became potentially "gravis," or deadly, if I had a concurrent active illness. I left the state due to another job, only to be brought down by a new illness.
When he found out I was going to have heart surgery he told me to make sure he was notified immediately if something happened to me, and if my health suddenly took a turn for the worse. We discussed wills and living wills. There was not one subject that was ever off limits. We could talk about anything.
The last time I talked to him he had told me his own health was getting worse. He said he had the alarming symptom of enormously swollen legs..that morning he had awakened and his legs were so swollen he couldn't even put his pants on and had to have his wife go out and buy some giant sweat pants just so he could get to the doctor later that day. I begged him to go to the Emergency Room at the local hospital, because the first thing that came to my mind when he told me of his alarming symptom, was the health of his heart. That was the day before New Year's Eve, 2015. At the end of the first week of January, I realized I hadn't heard from him. I had assumed I would hear from him later that day, or the next day at the latest, that he was probably dealing with whatever illness he had and wanted to be left alone.
Several days went by and still he had not phoned me. I tried to call him the next day, and the next, and on the third day...no answer to any of my calls. I became alarmed. I called every day that week. Each time, no answer. I sent emails to all the accounts I knew he had from all the accounts that I have myself...no answer. After that first week and the flurry of unanswered phone calls I began to think the worst. I called at least once, maybe twice a week thereafter.
When my Uncle/Brother Mikey died, on January 23rd, I thought at the time I would be in his city for the funeral. I again called him, leaving a message about the death and saying I would be in town for the funeral and I wanted to meet. No response. The following week I called a few more times until the last call I made went straight to his voice mail.
I sent another volley of emails, short and to the point, subject line: WHERE ARE YOU? The body of the emails said, "I can only assume that something bad has happened to you. The last time we spoke you were worried about your grossly swollen legs and I was actually worried about your heart. PLEASE contact me to let me know what has happened!" He had admitted to me late last year during one of our regular phone calls that he had gained over 150 pounds since we had last seen each other, so I was definitely worried about his heart.
Yesterday morning, March 13, 2016, I finally got a response from his main email account stating the following: "I just got back from Hong Kong. Stop trying to contact me." The most brief response I had ever gotten from him in the entire 30 years.
WHAT. THE. HELL? What friend sends an email like that? Does this make any kind of sense? Have I suddenly lost my mind and awakened in an alternate universe? It makes me want to get in my car and drive to his house just to punch him in the teeth. It might take me 3 days to drive 400 miles, but I'd do it for the sole reason of making myself feel better.
I recall having a conversation with him on the very day England pulled out of Hong Kong and how neither of us would want to go there ever now that the Chinese were back in control, so this response makes absolute zero sense to me.
After 30 years you do shit like this to me? No explanation at all? No "I'm sorry I was the cause of your worry?" No "I wanted to scare the shit out of you on purpose?" No "We've been friends for 30 years, but I decided you weren't worth notifying about my departure from the country?" I take it back. He doesn't deserve to be punched in the teeth. This calls for a throat punch. Jesus Wept.
Friday, January 29, 2016
BAD HAIKU OF JANUARY, 2016, DEATH STALKS US
Winter tolls death knell
No weeping at a grave site
Bansidhe screams silent
*********************************************************************************
I mourn the passing of my dearest uncle Michael. My grandparents and 3 teenagers raised me. When I came home from the hospital as a new baby, Mike was 14, Bob was 13, and Annie was 10. I was raised by my grandparents and by a tribe of teenagers. They were all very good to me, but I was especially close to Mike. His loss has left a huge, gaping wound in my damaged, grinch heart.
Oddly enough, we both had our first heart attacks at the same, young age, and had subsequent heart surgeries and grafts in the exact same places on the exact same vessels. Along with the bad heart, he and I also shared other strange medical conditions and ailments. There is a definite genetic link in our bad hearts, and doubtless the other health issues, too. I am beginning to think these are not all different diseases or conditions, but are actually symptoms of one disease.
There is something really odd and strange about his heart attack, and please bear with me while I relate it. Mike and his brother, Bob, were on a winter fishing trip at Kentucky Lake. It was cold, and they were out on the lake in a boat. Somehow, they managed to tip the boat over and both of them went into the water. Naturally, neither of them were wearing life vests. Bob was able to cling onto the side of the boat, but Mike surfaced underneath it...he told me he had tried to float and to stay calm, but I suppose the cold and the shock got to him; he slipped underwater and didn't re-surface. Fortunately, someone had witnessed this happen and was able to call 911 and get a rescue team there as soon as possible.
By the time rescue arrived he had been underwater for 20 minutes. In his case, the near freezing water actually helped him. They were able to revive him. He went directly to intensive care via helicopter. The next day, a doctor came to see him to tell him he had fluid in his lungs and needed a heart operation. His reply was, "No shit, asshole, I just drowned. Of course my lungs are gonna be full of fluid!" That's my Mike--never pulled any punches.
The doctor countered, "Nooooo...your lungs are not full of lake water, they are full because your heart is not pumping correctly. You have extensive blockages in all your major coronary vessels. Mike was able to get out one word, which was "Bullshit," and then the first heart attack struck. He was whisked away into heart surgery where they did a quadruple bypass that very day. Afterward they would not release him to go home alone to his own home--he had to be discharged where someone would be there to care for him, so he went to my mother's house to stay. At that time she was probably more sick than he was, as she was in the process of dying of COPD and emphysema. At the time I was living in Clayton and would check on them both nearly every day.
He had to stop working as an electrician, which is often quite physically demanding, and put in a claim for disability. He was also able to draw a disability check from the union, so he was not that bad off. He was still making good money, as far as disability goes. Of course it was nowhere near what he made as an electrician, but now he had no travel or other work-related expenses. He had worked like a dog his whole life and had amassed quite a tidy sum in annuities for his retirement, which had yet to be touched at the time of his death. His wife, whom he had not seen in 40 years will reap that benefit. She is a greedy bitch. (I never pull any punches either.) She never HAD to work a day in her life, but unbeknownst to him had had a full time job for the last 20 years and had been hiding that knowledge from him. He continued to send her half of his check the entire time he was alive. I believe the IRS will be informed, and I will stand by and wait as the axe falls across the correct neck.
Now here's what really gets me. There will be no funeral. He wanted to cremated and have his ashes poured into Kentucky Lake, where he "died" the first time. He believed, as I do, that you die when you're supposed to die. If you're brought back, you are essentially in a living hell on Earth for the remaining time spent alive. My uncle Martin felt the same way. We all arrived at this conclusion at different times, but realized we were on the same page when I happened to mention one day that my life has been nothing but turmoil and a roiling morass of pain and anguish of one sort or another since the day I was brought back from death. As was Michael's life, As was Martin's life. So, by Mike's thinking, he is going back to his watery grave, where he should have stayed when he was *dead* the first time.
Another twist to the knife in my ribs: There will be no memorial service for him for our remaining family which consists of me (technically his niece, but I have the pride of place as sister because we grew up together in the same household, in the same generation), his brother Bob, and a skillion first cousins and then the children of the cousins. There are hundreds upon hundreds of union people who knew him and respected him, and many who just respect the family name. We are considered "big wigs" as far as the union is considered.
In summation, I think it is total horseshit that no one cares enough to organize some kind of a memorial service. We NEED a memorial because it helps the grieving process. I can't do it because I am extremely ill. I could make it there, more than likely, but would need at least a day to recover from the drive there, then again for the drive back.
The year 2015 was not a good one for me, health-wise. I'm dying and I know it. Every day I get just a little bit weaker, a little more dependent. I am quite literally wasting away. I have lost enough weight to make up another entire person. My muscles are totally gone -- I have little to no musculature at all on my body. I am merely a skeleton covered by a lot of loose skin. I have reached "dying weight." So, I'm too damned sick to drive up to St. Louis and throw together a memorial, and it's something I just can't do over the phone. Even if it is just a get together, or a potluck meal at someone's house (and there are plenty of big houses among the cousins), it would be better than nothing.
I am disappointed in the rest of my asshole family. Ashamed, even. I see their true colors. I see how they are. How dare they care so little for something so important? Do they have so little regard for their elders, so little pride in their own family? These same people would not have hesitated to call on me, Mike & Bob if they needed something, or if we had something they wanted, or think nothing of just taking that something without even asking. That shit ends today. New will in progress.
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