This sofa-sized oil Paffooney is called the Road Home because it was painted from a photograph looking west on US Highway 3 towards Rowan, Iowa, the little town I grew up in. I painted it when I lived by myself in South Texas, believing that one day I would go back to Iowa to live out the rest of my life. Here’s where today’s post gets mortifyingly morbid. Yes, I know that last expression is repetitively repetitive, but that little bit of alliteration was necessary to lighten the load of this non-laughing part of my post. I am not going to make it. I am stuck in a North Dallas metroplex that I sincerely do not love. My kids are not done growing up there. I have family and roots there. I have them in Iowa, too, but like a Sioux warrior, I belong to my wife’s tribe once I married into it. I am old. I have six incurable diseases and I am a cancer survivor since 1983. Every day of life is a new miracle. but the miracles are running out. My COPD makes my chest hurt, and I have trouble breathing, especially at night. The house is rotting away around us, courtesy of the housing bubble we bought it in back in 2005. Doing what maintenance and repair that I can makes my arthritic body ache intolerably, more than Aleve can cure. I will not go back to drugs like Vioxx or Celebrex and let them kill me to enrich the pharmaceutical industry. My diabetes has made it almost impossible to eat without enduring a round of high blood sugar and nausea. I do not look forward to either insulin or the possibility of losing an arm or leg. So, if I get out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, it will probably be by curling up my toes and going bye-bye, followed by a cremation. I would like to have my ashes scattered in Iowa, but the family will probably find flush toilets much cheaper. Ah well… dark part done. Now for the part about going home.
The reason I feel uplifted, and crazily feel justified in calling this post “humor” is because I have already won my battle. I was a teacher for 31 years. I touched more than 2,500 lives, some of them profoundly. I have almost raised three wonderful, talented children. I have written and published three books, and if I can scratch out enough time, I have at least two more ready to be published. I have shared what little wisdom I have acquired along with a lot of really goofy artwork I have done in this blog, and, although I used to be the best author no one had ever read, people are actually reading and liking my books. In my stories, I have told about growing up in Iowa, about being a teacher, about being a friend, about being in love, about facing fear, and ultimately about being able to laugh about all of it. In my fiction, I have already gone home, repeatedly. When I get my cheapo flushing-funeral, that will not be me. I will be in the cornfields under the blue Iowa sky with a threat of thunderstorms in the distance. And while I may cry a little bit, because what is life worth without some of that? I will be mostly laughing and laughing and laughing. Because life may end in death, but nothing about it is sad if you don’t let it be. I like to delude myself into thinking the world is a little bit better now than when I got here, and I pretend that I have had something to do with that. The game is won. Everything else is just gravy! (Sorry about that. I do realize that gravy goes on mashed potatoes, not a game, but mangled metaphors are one of my specialties.)
Catch a Falling Star 