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This year…

has not really inspired deep abiding thankfulness in most of us. But it benefits us in no way to forget gratitude is a real and important part of every person’s heart.

2020 is the year I lost my father. I am his firstborn son. I believe it is safe to say he was grateful for my arrival in this world. I was born in the 1950s in November. This year, my father passed away from this world on my birthday. I know you may be wondering how I can be grateful for this thing that happened to us. But I am. He passed away to bring an end to five months of suffering at the figurative hands of Parkinson’s Disease. It caused his multiple strokes over the duration of his final hospitalization, and it took away his ability to remember my name, or anything about me, or even the fact of my existence. But I suspect that the day I was born was probably one of the most life-changing and important moments in his life, just as the birth of my firstborn in the middle 1990s was for me. It began a connection that defines our whole extended family and lasted for over sixty years. I am grateful that he is now at peace. And I am grateful for every part of the connection between his life and mine.

So, I find myself alone on this Thanksgiving day.

My wife and daughter went to Florida with my sisters-in-law and their daughters while my son is working the night shift for the Sheriff’s Department of Dallas County, and so is sound asleep at this moment. I am by myself and left to my own devices, having been too ill to travel and not being willing to risk death by Covid anyway. I did not really like the idea of the mid-pandemic welcome-to-America trip to Disney World, but I certainly understand that my wife’s younger sister was able to immigrate to this country right before the pandemic hit, and I know only too well you can’t argue with a stubborn little Filipino woman who daily teaches middle-school children who are taller than she is. And besides, she knows how to breathe fire like a dragon when necessary. She’s too sterilizingly hot-tempered to ever get the virus. I am grateful that she has found happiness in one small part of this pandemic. It has been far more wearing on her than it has on me. She has diabetes, but already took care of one son sick with the virus without ever testing positive herself.

And we had a dog adventure this week.

On Monday, the day the Filipino sisters in Texas all went to the airport, tragedy struck one little dog left behind. My sister-in-law who also lives in Dallas, not one of the three who now live in San Antonio, left their little fuzzy lover-puppy in my care because I had successfully taken care of the San Antonio dog, Marley, when last a trip like this one was made before the pandemic. Monte is a much tinier dog than either my dog Jade or Marley. He is a miniature poodle-mix of some kind, covered in downy-gray curls and shaky-nervous like a Chihuahua. And I tried hard to get to know him and get him to trust me, but it came time for going for a walk, and he was still super wary of me.

My dog, Jade, was no help in the matter. Any time I petted Monte, I had to scratch her ears or rub her tummy too. She was quite jealous of the little guy. So, I walked them separately. I walked Jade first. She happily toured the green-belt park and sniffed bird poo and pooped twice herself for me to bag and dispose of . Then, when it was Monte’s turn, I was bending over him and trying to get the leash attached to his collar. But Jade kept sticking her selfish head in the way. So, I swatted at her. And Monte took that opportunity to zip out the door without either the leash or me.

We had a face-down in the yard.

“Now, Monte, I need to put the leash on. Will you come here?” I said as non-threateningly as I could.

His little black, button eyes looked at the leash, and he looked at me. He was having none of it.

I took a step towards him. He took three small steps away.

“Please, boy. You don’t want to run away, do you?”

But, he did want to. In fact, he turned around at that very moment, leaped down from the retaining wall, scooted over the sidewalk and out into the road in front of the oncoming car.

I know what you’re probably thinking. But it wasn’t what happened. I shouted loudly enough that the guy in the car slowed down and looked at me. The dog saw the car and changed direction, running East down the sidewalk. I ran after him, but the last I saw of him was his fuzzy little butt working like a trap-spring to turn him down an alley thirty yards ahead of me.

He didn’t have any idea where he was headed. But he knew he didn’t want to be with me. I searched in vain for another glimpse of him. Then I went home to get help and woke up number two son. We scoured the neighborhood. We asked everyone we met if they had seen him.

One lady in the alley where I last saw him promised to keep an eye out for him, and I gave her our address in case she did see him or heard anything from the neighbors.

Eventually we went home after a couple of fruitless hours in the cold drizzle. I kept remembering the hungry coyote that came up and eyed Jade while I was walking her in the early morning. That’s what I envisioned as Monte’s fate. I went to bed Monday night heartsick, thinking we would never see that little dog again, and how it was all my fault.

I searched again the next morning. But, of course, I found nothing. The only positive thing was… I didn’t find his carcass in the street,’

Later that Tuesday I got a call from my wife in Florida.

“Somebody found Monte.”

She texted me the address. And, sure enough, when we went there, the girl was happy to see us. She put Monte back in my hands. She told us he was a sweet and quiet little dog that her aunt found hiding in her garage.

I thanked the girl profusely. Later her aunt called. It was the same lady I had given the address to in the alleyway. She had used the address to look up my wife’s telephone number. I thanked her profusely too. I’d have given them a huge cash reward, if I wasn’t broke and bankrupt since 2017.

So, in 2020, I am thankful.

I am thankful for good neighbors. I am thankful for the gift of good dogs who love you even when you don’t deserve it. I am thankful for Joe Biden… God, am I ever thankful for Joe Biden.

And I am thankful that the end of my father’s story has given him peace.

Today was the funeral. We attended by Facebook Live. You couldn’t understand what the minister was saying over static and feedback. And you couldn’t see or talk to anybody who was there. My two sisters were there. My sister Mary’s husband and two kids were there. My mother was there. And twenty people attended by Facebook. My father deserved more. But Covid 19 doesn’t make bargains… or play fair. So, we make compromises with time and circumstance. We are patient and we endure. That is what my father taught us to do. And so, we honor him in the only way we can.

My mind is numb. I just awoke from a diabetes-enforced nap that I hadn’t planned to take, so I lost about half an hour. I had to edit my own father’s obituary this morning. It goes to the Belmond Independent local newspaper later today. The service will happen over Facebook Live direct from the funeral home. And I don’t feel like writing. But I will anyway. Writing is the only life I have left in me after this gawd-awful pandemic and even worse, plague of a presidon’t… namely Presidon’t Tronald Dump. He was never my president. Still not. I check my watch… still not. But I don’t have a watch. Can’t afford it after the Big Dump.

Looking at my invisible watch again…

Nope, still not.

My latest novel will be free in a Weekend Promotion of the e-book format starting tomorrow, Friday, November 20th.

Did you realize that you can’t have a Friday the 20th without having first survived a previous Friday the 13th.

Didn’t know that? You were obviously never a member of the Knights Templar.

The children in the above pen and ink are both ghosts. You can’t see through them, but they are both completely white in a scene that is all about bright-light sources on a dark and shadow-filled night. Neither child has any shadows on them even though the full moon and the lighthouse are both behind them, meaning they should both be backlit with the shadow-side towards the viewer.

Why did I draw a picture of ghosts while my father was in the hospice care that kept him comfortable as he was dying? It can’t be because the boy has reached the peak, and he is closer to the heavens than the girl. And the girl is certainly not my mother.

I can’t answer the questions because I still don’t know what I am writing about. I am just rambling and writing down whatever pops into my head, and choosing illustrations by scrolling through the gallery and choosing images at random.

It seems like the author of Look Homeward, Angel is correct. You can never go home again. The people you knew will no longer be there. The farmhouse will be sold, and probably plowed under to make more arable farm land. And the places of my youth themselves have been transformed and almost erased by time. Nothing lasts forever. Nor do we want those things to be changeless forever. Change is what the universe and time within the universe is for.

Sometimes free-writing and free associations can bring peace and quiet to the stressed-out mind. But not today. And I check my watch one more time. Nope, still not… and never will be. Every single thing changes. Yesterday I found out my father had died. And yesterday will never happen again.

My father passed away last night, three minutes before midnight, in other words, three minutes before my 64th birthday was over. I am devastated at the moment, but it is not like it was unexpected. He was in hospice care since early August. He had Parkinson’s disease which was destroying his nervous system. He had multiple strokes during the time he was hospitalized. His memory was gone. If I had been able to go up to Iowa to be with him, I would not have been able to see him, and he wouldn’t remember me anyway. So, it is almost a relief that he is finally at peace. But I am grieving now. And the only reason I am telling you about it here is because I need to write it down to make it real to me. Dad, I love you. And you will be missed.

I woke up alive this morning. We also have a new, more human president. Today there is reason to be cautiously optimistic… Wow! That’s a new feeling for me!

Being from small-town, rural America, I have to celebrate how much the new president will be good for farmers, the rural economy, public education, and the environment. It will take time to repair the damage, but at least no more intentional damage will be done.

We…

if we can allow ourselves to be united in the work going forward, can focus on the simple joys of being human and alive. We have given too much to greed and avarice recently, and now, we must take a fair share of it back.

We need to decide if we are going to live with the drawbridge down and the city gate open, or will we be the kind of people who want the drawbridge up and boiling oil heating in vats atop the city walls?

We desperately need to heal from the pandemic in ways that make sense and that provably save more lives.

We need to sing more songs.

And we need to laugh more, and joke more, and smile at cats more… well, take ourselves less seriously, at least.

My stupid old head is acting up in very strange ways. I am not depressed or anything. But I think I may have Parkinson’s Disease just like my father before me.

I have been reading up on Parkinson’s since my father was diagnosed with it four years ago. I have learned enough about it to think I may have it without absolutely proving I have Munchausen Syndrome or am simply a very bad hypochondriac. When I thought I had certain conditions before and went to the doctor about symptoms, most of the the time I was right.

Last night I had massive problems with motor control. My legs kept kicking and randomly jerking all night long, especially the calf muscles below both knees. I have had similar random-movement jerking of my shoulder muscles in my upper back and sudden, painful uncontrolled stretching of the muscles in my lower arms. I don’t know why they call it a Charlie horse, but Chuck has been living in my arms for a while. I have banged against brick walls with my hands and elbows at particularly inopportune times, and came away with bruises for my trouble. Walking has increasingly become the same stumbling shuffle I observed in my father a couple or years ago. It is bad enough that my dog has been complaining that I don’t keep pace when she’s walking me on her leash.

My talking dog has even been involved in the strange hallucinations and partial visions that I have been having. It is a common thing for Parkinson’s sufferers to see people they know who aren’t really there. And my sightings of the ghost dog, or the ghost dog’s disembodied walking back end are that same kind of visions that Parkinson’s patients often report.

Today, while watching voting-tally updates, I kept blacking out, leading to brief, vivid dreams of people I don’t know and have never seen before saying a weird, random sentence to me or to each other. Like the portly Chinese woman with lots of powdered make-up and bright red lips saying, “You shouldn’t even be thinking about tigers!” Followed by me being startled awake.

The awakeness-startling is itself a problem. I keep hearing hammer blows knocking on the outside walls of the house near my bedroom window. And that is on the second story, high enough to realistically be declared hammer safe. The noise has to actually be coming into my stupid head from the stupid inside.

I know I should be going to the doctor to find out for sure. But Covid is out there in a very big way, especially in Texas doctors’ waiting rooms. Since the disease is incurable if I have it, it can certainly wait until after the pandemic is over. In the meantime, writing this post is becoming difficult, and life has become an even more complex adventure.

Now we face a moment of decision. I keep hearing messages from the media that the Pumpkinhead President will steal the election with various strategies. I saw video of the Trumpkins in white pickups going after a blue Biden Campaign bus. A Trumpkin spokes-monkey said on television yesterday that the Trumpists would “Steal back” the election after it was over because of the Supreme Court, recently packed by Republican hypocrisy. I cast my vote already. I did it without catching Covid.

But, cynicism aside, I have always believed in the American people doing what is right in the end. I don’t understand why we let an obvious criminal take over our government for four years. Or why we are allowing him to compete in the current election. But it seems there is more than one criminal who didn’t really win the popular vote in power in our government. The foxes control the henhouse, and the keys to the henhouse door. I guess we must get on with things without making any more omelets.

I know this post is rambling and incoherent. But I am ill and upset with the state of the world in 2020. So, just go vote. And vote against the criminals… all of them. Maybe I will feel better in a couple of days. But probably not.

I recently finished and published a novel, The Wizard in His Keep. I have been working hard to get my books reviewed on Pubby. You have to review the books of others to get reviews. So, I have read a lot of very bad books, and a few really good ones. Yesterday I wrote the hardest essay on my blog that I have ever written. I had to explain to Facebook friends from high school how it was that I was sexually assaulted when I was ten in 1966, and yet they never heard about it until last Saturday.

My energy levels are at “cooling charcoal” right about now. Just in time to watch Trump steal the election next week and force me to give up all hope But with fireman Mickey’s help, I should be back on fire again soon..