I was living in the city at the time and harvesting dinner in the backyard with the old family shotgun didn’t seem like a good idea, so I picked up a Red Ryder BB gun at GI Joes. Before long I managed to get dinner in the oven without shooting my eye out.

The starling presented well, little drumsticks and all. It looked like a roast turkey scaled down for Barbie and Ken. It tasted pretty good too. I keep offering to fix it for friends and family …but so far no takers.

He always seemed to have a better car than the rest of the crowd, dressed `like a magazine model. The girls all loved him and if he wanted to talk to some girl or ask them out, he just went for it. Glenn’s college summer jobs weren’t usually of the typical cashier, camp counselor, or fast-food restaurant variety. You’d be more apt to find Glenn in high end shops catering to wealthy yacht owners.

Glenn wasn’t afraid to reach out and grab the golden ring. Back in the day all the guys envied James Bond. Glenn loved James Bond movies. He told me he talked with the CIA once about joining “the company”. He was unofficially offered a cryptography job in the Mediterranean ocean. Most of us just sat around and envied 007. Glenn applied for the job … then turned it down.

I was a bit older than Glenn but there were many areas where I went to him for counsel. Job search was one of those areas, especially as my fashion advisor. He for instance introduced me to the pressed Levi jeans and Harris Tweed sports coat look.

Glenn came to me for advice too. I’d get a frantic phone call and he’d want to talk over some crisis. So he’d show up for the big talk. His crisis would be something like, there’s these 3 amazing women and I’ve got tickets to the big concert and any one of them will go with me if I ask them … what do I do? So Glenn … explain to me how this is a problem? Another time he was in the market for a different car and he’d found three fantastic deals on three classic automobiles … what do I do? Same thing for career choices, job offers, how do I spend my summer vacation? Maybe I should take a year off and accept that guys offer to sail around the world.

Back then I often wondered how it would go if Glenn suddenly had a major setback of some kind. I grew up going to the Shriners Hospital for Children over in Portland. The kids I was in there with had some real problems. How would Glenn have dealt with problems like ours? Then along comes ALS. I need not have worried.
We were in the Horse Brass Pub shortly after his doctors came to the Lou Gehrig’s disease conclusion. We were meeting someone he knew from work. Good looking woman as I remember but she was much too busy being gagga over Glenn to notice my freshly ironed Levi jeans and Harris Tweed sport coat. Glenn ordered tomato juice. For those of you who have never been to the Horse Brass … just so you know … most people at the Horse Brass order something other than tomato juice. So this babe mentions the unusual order and Glenn says “Oh that … I need to avoid alcohol now that I’ve been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis”. You’d have thought he was explaining he’d switched mouthwash because Listerine doubles as a treatment for dandruff.

Gonna let you in on a little secret. Those of us who have visible disabilities that can result in cartoon double takes and mouth hanging stares from people … we have things we do to pull the focus away from all that. We use misdirection the same way a magician gets you looking and thinking about what one hand is doing while he does something tricky with the other hand. I know a couple guys who have no arms. They sit at the dinner table using silverware with their feet. Two minutes into a meal they have cast some magic spell over the situation and everyone has forgotten all about it.

Glenn was no exception. In spite of being new to all this, he was a master at it. I’ll never forget being out at our churches Lewis River Campgrounds a few weeks before Glenn started using a cane. He came out of the restrooms and headed down the sidewalk towards the dining hall like he was walking onto a yacht. All he needed was the apricot ascot like in the Carly Simon song. I remember thinking he had his dads walk … something I’d never noticed before. In fact it never occurred to me till I wrote this, but maybe he was aping his dads walk so people wouldn’t notice his own gait had changed. So the sidewalk used to have what sidewalk inspectors call a toe-kick where it met the road in front of the canteen. He paused just before stepping onto the road. He reminded me of Ben Cartwright checking out the Ponderosa while the Bonanza theme song played in the background. He looked around, then stepped out and moved on. What you could easily have missed in all his Ponderosa perusing was him taking in something he’d never needed to pay much attention to before. Not too fast and not to slow because either of those would draw attention … he took in … the toe-kick. He was good. Damn good.

Things progressed. Glenn took me for one of his last joy rides in the Porsche. He never had any trouble finding the accelerator and that day was no exception. We flew up the gorge turned around at the Bridge of the Gods and flew back. Now I have been known to drive roads where angels fear to tread … but I never felt any closer to God than on that day. Not sure why … we’d only slid off the pavement that one time. The next time I saw Glenn he’d turned in his keys.

Sometime around then … we had one of those mouthwash conversations about whether or not to go on the ventilator. He hadn’t made a decision yet … just saying he would need to at some point … like it was no big deal. Then his daughter Rebecca became part of the equation. I was living in Seattle by then and got busy with family and career. Don’t you hate being a grownup? The next time I saw Glenn, Rebecca was talking … Glenn was not … and he was on the ventilator. His mom, Bev, and I had a conversation about the making of the decision. I was only half listening and taking what I did hear with a grain of salt. It seems like she might have been saying she talked him into going onto the ventilator. But Glenn didn’t do things just because mommy told him to. What I kept hearing in my mind was Glenn’s advice to me about going for it. “Sometimes Harry you just gotta go for it”. He’d gone for the ventilator.
 
During the last several weeks, Glenn was often a topic of conversation among folks knew him. As a matter of fact, many of my friends who didn’t know Glenn are probably really tired of hearing about him. But among those of us who knew him, Glenn stories can be very comforting. One topic that comes up more often than it probably should in comparison to the rest of Glenn’s amazing life … is the ventilator decision. A subtopic to “The Big Decision” is often, “quality of life”.
Glenn understood quality of life. Glenn lived to be 53 years old and the ventilator stage of his life accounted for roughly 35 percent of that. But make no mistake, Glenn found quality of life. What Glenn understood was that quality of life isn’t in your arms and legs, hands and feet, fingers and toes. It’s not in your health at all. If it was … my life would have been blow out of the water on the day I was born. Part of the answer is to fill your days with things you enjoy doing. After the big decision … Glenn’s life couldn’t be filled with all the things he’d done before, but he could still fill it with stuff he enjoyed.
He filled his days with football games and sports of all kinds, westerns, old movies, and even soap operas … all on a big screen TV. I gotta admit, at first I didn’t get the soap opera thing … till I figured out he watched the soap operas … with his nurses. Glenn was good to the women in his life. Yes there were still plenty of good looking women in his life. Glenn had a whole harem of nurses, and of course his lovely wife Corrinne, all waiting on him hand and foot.

But the thing that really determines the quality of your life, in so many ways, and on so many levels, is your attitude and Glenn always had a good positive attitude.

The way I see it …. life experience does not determine attitude, your attitude determines your life.

Kind of the Ward is a collection of short stories taking place when the author (that would be me) was a patient in the Shriners Hospital For Children in the 1950’s and 60’s, an experience which few can claim firsthand knowledge. A while back I shared the title chapter with a fellow writer who was expecting a chronological account of a childhood battle with medical conditions and procedures. His first comment was. “You were just kids being kids”! Exactly right. We didn’t all come in to the world with the standard ten fingers and toes, and some of us had orthopedic conditions from polio, spina bifida, burn cases too. But we were kids, not victims. During that time patients would have an average three or four month stay for each surgery so we had plenty of time to be kids. As it turns out, kids will be kids.

Hey Chuck,

Got the call from Cousin Dave telling me you weren’t coming back from your fishing trip. First thing I did was go to your Facebook page … wanted to see your picture. I’m getting a lot of comfort out of your last post …. “Gone Fishin’”. One of your Facebook profile pictures is of you and your dad … back in the 1980’s from the look of your dad’s hair perm. Looks like Alaska and you two had obviously Gone Fishin’.

There’s another recent picture post I’m liking … it’s your Dad baptizing you in the Lewis River. Your dad was of course a fisherman and also a “fisher of men” in the biblical sense. I can relate … so was mine. You and I and our dads were never hung up on a lot of that scripture thumping judgment and salvation stuff, but there’s something there inside as well as outside of us and this life, it’s big, it’s good … and we’re all somehow part of it.

You and I did some running around back in the day and I’ve got a lot of good memories. That road trip to Idaho … that studio apartment you had with the shared bathroom down the hall. I remember dropping in on you once when you were babysitting over on Halsey St. The babies had been bouncing off the walls for a while and tensions were rising till I asked you … “know where I can get a good deal on a vasectomy”? We had a good laugh, there was a shift in the experience, and all was right with the world again … as the babies continued to bounce. You always were a “life is good” kinda guy.

Ever notice the “life is good” folks seem to do better than the “life sucks” people? The “life sucks” people will tell you life experience determines the attitude, but it seems the other way around to me. It’s hard to be a “life is good” person right now.

It’s easier … when I remember things like Chuck the musician and poet. Who can forget when you and one of your bands took on a misguided church campground policy about underwear with your song “ I got the boxer blues”? You introduced me to The Blues Brothers, Muddy Waters, Albert King, John Lee Hooker, and of course Doctor Demento and the song “Boobs a lot”.

It’s easier when I remember a recent band of yours had three members, Chuck, Tim, and Chris. Reorder the names to Chris Tim Chuck, change the punctuation spacing capitals … and you guys came up with the name “Christ I’m Chuck”. You always had a way with words.

It’s easier when I think about you and a couple of the guys roasting a whole pig for 4th on the farm. The Blue Oyster Cult concert we went to. Cruizin’ Friday nights and telling the cops on Sandy Boulevard looking for car prowlers “they just rode off on a white horse”!

It’s easier when I see Facebook pictures with you and family enjoying each other. You and Deb back in college. You with your arm around Deb, Charlie, Sam, Christian, or the “foreign chicks”. Family pictures of music, sports, Halloween, Christmas, camping and fishing. This life was good to you in so many ways.

It’s easier because I know your birth family. It musta been a great family to grow up in. I’ve spent lots of time over the years with your siblings … a road trip with Karl, another with your sister Deb, and hanging out with the gang at Janice’s apartment. Later Jan married Keith and they bought a house not far from the apartment. Deb lived there for a while, you too I think. There seemed to be an open door policy … and I enjoyed it. Your family is like you, genuinely good decent people who enjoy life. My parents and yours became good friends in Alaska. Even did occasional sleepovers. Who’da thunk. I’ll say it again … This life was good to you in so many ways.

And you gave back. I remember back in the day you were always up for verbal debate. It was no surprise when I heard you were in law school. It was also no surprise to hear that as an attorney your clients tended to be the underdog. They were clients without much money who needed help and along comes Chuck. The crusade evolved and you became a judge. You helped a lot of people. A Facebook post called you an activist and advocate. I wasn’t sure exactly what was being referred to, but it sure fit. Chuck saving the world … Chuck pulling folks to safety … issue by issue … person by person. Chuck in many ways … a fisher of men.

Now you’re taking on whatever comes next. We grew up listening to people speaking with great authority, who called what comes next … heaven. I can’t explain why I believe something comes next but I do. Mostly I use elements of the heaven story to picture what comes next … minus the harps, wings, white robes, and clouds. I’m thinking right now for you it is like the first day or two of summer camp, college, or a new job … introductions and orientation. Ok you’re there … been there a day or two, I’m imagining you having scoped things out a bit. You look around and spot Jesus for the first time. You walk right up to him, stick out your hand and say “Christ … … … I’m Chuck”.

Keep in touch … Chuck … Keep in touch.

The Laying on of Hands will be happening in the near future. The following is an email I sent to the lumberjack friend of mine who is gonna lay hands on me.

Hey Harold

I feel “moved” to tell you from my perspective, what us two getting together with the olive oil is all about. Usually this kind of thing is to ask for a healing, blessing, guidance, or a bestowal of some kind.

I have never felt more whole in my life, I do not need a healing.

I have never felt more blessed in my life, I see more than ever, the blessings that have been coming my way all along. I am thankful, grateful, and the blessings just keep coming.

I have never felt more directed in my life. My guiding force has been there all along, I have chosen time and time again to look inside and listen to that guidance when the world we live in was giving me all kinds of misguided advice. I have direction and am aware of the path ahead.

Bestowal … I was going to say I am in no need of a bestowal … and I am not in need of one. That being said … the bestowal issue is more complex. Gate keepers come to mind again. Only this time it’s not the gates to the abundant kingdom of retirement. Maybe the bestowal issue needs the blessing of wholeness and guidance from within.

But mostly, I was looking at the next phase of this life. My patriarchal blessing comes to mind, not the content so much, but the fact that it was at another time when my life situation was changing. I was out on my own for the first time and dealing with decisions and issues I’d never had to deal with before. Career, finances, relationships, and they were all tangled up together in ways I didn’t foresee for some reason.

Looking back over this I am sending mixed messages. I guess that’s because while I do feel really pumped about where I am and where I’m headed, not everything is totally clear and I want to go to, acknowledge, praise, and thank, my guiding force in a specific, significant, and powerful way.

Hope this email clears up……. hmm … maybe that’s what I need … clarity.

No hurry … it’ll happen … time and space are just an illusion. Don’t forget the constipated olive oil … extra virgin would be a nice touch.

Harry

In addition to being some guy named Harry … I am now a 2nd degree Reiki practitioner. I do “distance” Reiki and plan to set up a website this summer. Let me know if you need some good vibrations. I’ll do another post about Reiki but thought I’d give you all a chance to comment and ask questions first. It’s better if a writer knows his audience. We’ll talk later.

I’m sitting here in a wheel chair wondering why it’s so damn hard to document that I’m disabled. I have come to the realization that I can’t work anymore. But over the decades I’ve done such a good job convincing myself and others I can do anything, the gate keepers of the abundant kingdom of retirement, are skeptical. Many others have gotten by the gate keepers and through the gate, but with me there are questions, reservations, suspicions. Maybe Harry is trying the pull a fast one. Why doesn’t Harry just snap out of it?

I didn’t set out to prove or convince … I just set out to do. Everything I ever did was in spite of opinions that I couldn’t do it. I remember when I was three or four years old this other little boy told me he had a tricycle but I couldn’t ride it. I asked him why and he explained that his mommy said I wouldn’t be able to because I was crippled. I told him that I got a tricycle last Christmas, I rode it every day, and his mommy was an idiot. You would have thought he’d learned his lesson about misjudging the limitations of others but he decided he would simply beat me up for commenting on his mommy’s mental capacity. It wasn’t as simple to beat up the crippled kid as he thought … I didn’t end up crying … He did.

Looking past the gate I hear stories about those who got through. There’s good (and not so good) folks over there because they have ADHD and can’t sit still, drug addicts, asthmatics, diabetics, people with heart conditions, bad backs, carpal tunnel, repetitive stress syndrome, missing arms legs fingers and toes. But Harry might be up to something. Maybe Harry thinks the world owes him a living. Just what makes it so hard for Harry to work?

I grew up going to the Shriner’s Hospital for Crippled Children in Portland Oregon. I’m crippled for God sakes. I have no feet, one knee, and three and a half fingers and crookity posture. Years of walking crooked and doing stuff anyway, has resulted in a bad lower back and a few years back I began using crutches whenever I am wearing my prosthetic legs. The rest of the time I use the wheelchair, if the wheelchair won’t go there, I sometimes use a 3-wheeler or Quad. A 3-wheeler broke down in the woods once … I crawled home. But the gatekeepers need documentation, policies and procedures must be followed. Harry might be up to something.

Carpal tunnel? My hands have hurt for years. I get cramps in them like you wouldn’t believe. I dislocated the only full finger on my left hand the other day. To look at that hand you wouldn’t think I could use it to do much of anything. But everyday throughout the day I now get painful reminders of all the things I need that hand for to get-r-dun! I have this repetitive stress syndrome I’ve read about called “mouse shoulder.” Using the mouse for hours a day on a daily basis has created what feels like pinched neck and shoulder nerves.

As I look through the gate I see people with other medical problems or combination of medical problems that gained them admission. Heart conditions, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney failure, asthma, Crohn’s disease, carpal tunnel, arthritis, glaucoma, fibromyalgia. I don’t have all of these but I do have, high blood pressure, diabetes, a heart condition, and kidneys operating under stress. I probably have arthritis but haven’t bothered to be tested for it. It seems like every time I take some kind of medical test I find out sometime else wrong with me.

The other day I was at work dealing with a stressful situation and my body started in telling me to get out of there. My face felt hot and tight. I was distressed and depressed and my thoughts were running wild. My friend Heartburn began telling me to get into my stash of Gavescon. I was lightheaded and “woozy.” Mouse shoulder kicked in with the neck and shoulder pain. Much as I wanted to obey my body and get out of there I didn’t because it was unclear whether I should go to the “wellness” room, go home, or go to ER.

Often when I get distressed about work I begin violently gagging and dry heaving. It used to upset the dog but he now treats it like the rest of the noise I make getting ready for work. He sleeps through it. The stress also gives me diarrhea. I used to tell a former supervisor I had “lower intestinal issues” until I’d said it on several different occasions and he got angry. My absences are now explained the same way every time. “I’m not feeling well. I won’t be in today.”

When I get depressed I can’t focus. It’s not that I choose not to focus … I can’t. My wife got out of bed one morning and asked me “So, what are you going to do today?” I replied, “be depressed and stare at the walls.” I pretty much did. It happens at work too. I get behind on assignments, then I get more depressed because I’m behind, which makes it harder to focus, getting me further behind, more depression … MAKE IT STOP!

For almost 60 years I’ve been trying to keep up physically with the rest of the world and have pretty much done it, by exerting 200% of the effort. I’ve lived in at least three houses where the wheelchair couldn’t get through the bathroom door. One place I had to crawl up the stairs to get to the toilet. I couldn’t afford to move and couldn’t quit going to the bathroom. I crawled … I crawled to the toilet every time I needed to do things you do with a toilet. There has been a whole host of things I’ve done because they needed to be done and I couldn’t afford to pay someone else to do them. So I’ve made it, done it, got there … but my body is worn out ahead of its time.

I’m also worn out emotionally. I remember looking for work with experience and education … and not getting anything. After a while people began to blame me. “You must be screwing up the interview. I know they have to hire the handicapped. Just the other day I saw this receptionist in a wheelchair … so you must be doing something wrong. Call their affirmative action people.” So even though it went against my grain to ask for special treatment, I would call the affirmative action people with the state, for federal jobs, private industry. I was told affirmative action would get involved if I got an interview or was hired. That didn’t seem very helpful … lessee … I’m hired … I have the job … why do I need affirmative action again? So I finally got a job and got to deal with an affirmative action representative. Actually it was mandatory. They wanted to know exactly what category of minority I was so they could compare their headcounts for the various categories with society’s actual demographics. That didn’t seem helpful to me. Then he wanted to know … if I could go to the bathroom by myself. I needed the job so I maintained my composure … but in my mind’s eye … the wings of the angel of death … swept firmly over the man.

So with all this extra effort  … I’ve made it, done it, got there … but I’m worn out. Physically, mentally, and emotionally … I ain’t gonna make it to 65 like the rest of society.

Universe … I don’t know that I begrudge anyone making it through the gate to the other side of the fence, even though they may be a whole lot more mobile than me, healthier than I am, and feeling a lot less anxiety than I am. Yes I do hope to enjoy myself in the abundant kingdom of retirement. But what got me looking though the fence in the first place was the stress, anxiety, pain, and difficulty I have to go through on a daily basis just to continue on this side of the fence.  I do not want to leave my career on a stretcher.

I guess I don’t even know that I have hard feelings toward the gate keepers. What I do know is … I’m on the wrong side of the fence.

Harry

Suddenly I was awake. I looked up. My sister slept in the upper bunk. There was no upper bunk. The bed underneath me was harder than mine. Dad had built our bunk bed in the shop. You could see the shop when you looked out the window at the foot of our bed. It was late summer and I should be hearing crickets and frogs from that open window. There were no crickets, no frogs, no window, no shop, no bunk bed, and no sister. Then slowly, painfully, reluctantly, it came to me, and explained the empty feeling I had. I was in the hospital again.

“I need a bottle.” Someone was crying out in the same drawn out sing-song chanty I had used myself, and had heard others use since I was two years old.  “I need a bottle.” It came again.

The bottle was needed in the small ward. I did an involuntary body check but I didn’t need to pee. I was old enough to be in the middle ward now. I’d been here as a small ward resident at least twice maybe more. The small ward was between the middle ward and the nurse’s station. An arch separated the two wards. The door between the nurse’s station and the small ward was closed at bedtime. Now it opened. The nurse carried a lantern that cast scary shadows as she walked. I pulled the covers tight around me. The rubber soles on her white shoes squeaked on the floor and I could hear her white nylons as they moved inside her white uniform.

My body was having a raging battle of feelings. Some feelings were disturbing, some were comforting, some were both. A murmured exchange I couldn’t follow took place between the lantern carrying, nylon wearing nurse, and the little kid who needed to pee. The horrible empty feelings were winning the battle.

Our mailbox back home was a hundred yards or so from our front door. We could see the mailman when he came and put mail in the box. I was the oldest and before I turned six, all three of my siblings had arrived. Mom would bundle us up and we’d head up the driveway, some walking, some in the stroller, and some riding on the stroller in ways not foreseen, or recommended by stroller engineers. Mail can upset the most un-upsetable adult. Mom would see a piece of mail and become distraught at the mailbox before even opening the offensive envelope. We’d work our way back down the driveway, skillfully dealing with mud puddles, potholes, and spontaneous disengagement between extra riders and stroller. There were many distractions including snakes, frogs, grasshoppers, blackberries, neighbor dogs, and killdeers, but eventually we’d be home again. Life was good. Mom would open the stressful piece of mail and become verbally distraught. “Whats wrong!” I’d say. “Oh nothing! Nothing at all! Who wants cake after dinner tonight?” A day or two later they’d figure out how to tell me I was going back to the hospital again.

As an adult I have prayed many a mighty prayer about adult issues such as love, career, finances, household emergencies, and health. But they cannot begin to equal the prayers I prayed as a child when all I wanted was not to be scared. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so.  I know I’m safe here and need to be here, but I’m scared. Help me not be scared.” My mind began to wander. I felt threatened from underneath, and on all sides. So I imagined myself in a very comfortable somewhat shallow hole in the ground, protected somehow from the elements. In retrospect, my safe place was way too much like an open grave but fortunately the symbolism didn’t occur to me at the time. In any event, I no longer felt threatened from underneath or the sides, only from above.  So above I now imagined friends, lions, wolves, and bears. My animal friends would look over the rim of my nest, smile and wish me a good nights sleep. Problem solved. A warm feeling washed over me. The emptiness was still there but under control. I felt safe. I wasn’t scared.

I woke with a start. It was still night. The metal side rail on a crib in the small ward had gone up with the usual unavoidable crash. Was this the same little kid or someone else who needed to pee? The nurse’s lantern cast waves of friendly lights on the walls and ceiling. White shoes and nylons played their enchanting rhythmic melody. The door at the far end of the small ward swung open and shut.

Lions, bears, and wolves peered over the edge of my nest, grinned, circled in place four times, and settled down for a warm peaceful sleep. I smiled too in spite of the empty feeling. Jesus smiled at me from somewhere I couldn’t identify. As I drifted pleasantly back to sleep, I smiled back and meant it. Jesus had, after all, arranged the deal with the lions, wolves, and bears.



I got a Facebook message from my Pastor asking if I would give a brief testimony on “God’s Steadfast Love?” How in a time in your life when you experienced stress or doubt and were blessed by God’s love. I figured I could do that. It probably won’t be what you expect but it’s my story so I’ll me telling it my way. I might even have something already written up. So I mentally went through my inventory and came up with something that would work. I replied that I had something I could read in church. While rereading it, it occurred to me that this short story would be a great blog post.

The Barnes and Noble thing hasn’t happened yet, but tomorrow, after having read my story at church, I’ll have a new blog post.

I asked, I received.