Move Along

“Hey Mark, how’s it going?” “Hola Marcos, ¿cómo estás?”

It seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? It’s a greeting that we utilize so many times during each day that it’s almost automatic with everyone we meet, even people we don’t know. We say it without even thinking, and that’s usually how we respond.

“I’m okay. How are you?”

For about a month after Francisco took his life, I had no idea how to respond to that question. I wasn’t okay, and I didn’t have the energy to even try to fake it. But no one really wants to hear your problems if you’re not okay, so I responded thusly, “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know how I’m doing right now.” And I left it at that. So did most of the people I talked to because they had no idea what to say in response.

I’ve gotten to the point where I can fake being okay again, though it very much depends on the day. As an example: I’ll be fine on Monday, but on Tuesday I’m a basketcase. I honestly don’t know how my wife has been able to deal with my volatile moods of late, and when I say volatile, that is an understatement.

I gave up driving for a couple of weeks because I found myself screaming at everyone whenever I got behind the wheel of our SUV.

* * * *

“What the fuck are you doing, you goddamn morons!“

“Honey, you need to settle down. Those people were sitting at the bus stop.”

* * * *

I’ve expounded on my General Theory of Guys in previous posts. Guys are simple creatures. Amoebas are more complex than most guys. Guys essentially have two emotions: they are either okay, or they aren’t. And that’s about it. Guys are not built to process complex emotions.

For me, it’s as if everything inside my heart and head were pureed in a blender then poured back inside me, creating a mélange of melancholia suffused with sorrow and regret, with hints of pain and loss. And yet, somehow, there seems to be some vital ingredient missing…

I would like to take a moment to thank the Cooking Channel for making that complex emotional description even remotely possible for me.

* * * *

Perhaps Little Known Facts About the Grieving Process: There are five stages in the Grief and Loss Process — Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. In situations like Francisco’s suicide, I think there’s a sixth step that precedes all of the others: Shock. And you have to recover from the initial shock before you can start fumbling your way through the other stages.

Progression through the five stages of grief isn’t linear — you bounce around in and out of all of them like unto a superball thrown in a hallway. It’s probably even possible that you can be in all five stages at once. More than once…

In addition, progression through the stages isn’t like playing a video game where you complete one level and move on neatly to the next. You can revisit each stage of grief as many times as you like — even if it’s a stage you’d rather not visit anymore. There’s no timeline on grief and loss. You can complete all five stages in five minutes and be done with them. Forever. Conversely, fifty years may not be enough time for you to get through one stage.

There are no rules. There’s no right way. There’s no wrong way. Every person goes through this process, and every person does it differently. When you look at it in that light, it’s amazing that any of us finds our way through the maze and comes out safely on the other side.

* * * *

Move Along is a song by the American rock band the All-American Rejects, released in early 2006. It was the band’s biggest hit, and it got a whole lots of radio air time. I bought the CD and have the songs on probably more than one of my playlists. The song, somewhat ironically, is more or less an anthem for suicide prevention. The lyrics encourage believing in oneself and persevering in the face of problems.

* * * *

It’s times like unto this that I wish life would take a time-out and give you the opportunity to get back on your feet before it kicks you in the balls again, but life doesn’t work like that. Life simply goes on whether you’re ready or not.

So I found myself in an incredibly vulnerable position when I lost another friend just a couple of weeks after Francisco’s death.

Her name was Hope. We were friends on Facebook. Hope was also a writer. In current lingo, I think Hope was what you would call an Influencer to most of her followers. She read at least one of my blogs, and had messaged me a couple of times about my blog. She thought I was a very good writer, so I thought she was a very cool person.

Hope was battling cancer, and I fell in love with her attitude. She was going to fight this disease, and she was going to kick its ass. In that regard, Hope was my polar opposite. I expect that I’ll be diagnosed with cancer sometime in the next twenty years or so. Unlike Hope, I have no intention of going into battle against that dragon. I don’t want surgery. Or radiation and chemotherapy. I plan on going on the M&M diet, and that is all.

M&M stands for Motrin and Morphine. Lea and I want to be as free of pain as possible. Beyond that, we don’t want any extraordinary measures taken to prolong our lives. We just had our Living Wills filled out this week and notarized here in Mexico because you never know when you’re going to need those kinds of things, and it’s better to be prepared than it is to wish you hadn’t procrastinated on getting that paperwork completed.

I followed Hope’s Facebook page daily. She had had at least one tumor removed before we became FB friends, and was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy when our virtual relationship began. No matter how lousy she may have felt physically, mentally and emotionally she remained positive and upbeat.

I enjoyed her numerous posts and her sense of humor — she swore a lot — and cheered on her progress against her disease, despite my opposing view on the level of treatment I was willing to endure. She was young and vibrant, and she felt she had a lot to live for. I am about twenty years older than Hope was, and I simply hope I have another ten to fifteen years left on this planet before God enrolls me in His energy recycling program.

Hope felt her treatments were going very well. Her scans were promising. All signs of her cancer had disappeared, and she believed she had won. Her jubilation was palpable, even on social media. All of her friends rejoiced with her. Including me.

Then her cancer returned in three places. Her liver, kidneys, and I cannot remember the third site no matter how hard I try. And within a matter of weeks, she was gone. I think she fought for as long and as hard as she could, and when her cancer returned, she had nothing left to fight with.

* * * *

In retrospect, I doubt Hope’s death would have hit me as hard as it did if it hadn’t come so closely after Francisco’s. Lately, I’ve had TV commercials reduce me to tears. Except the Charmin® commercials. They make want to kill those fuckin’ toilet paper hoarding ursine assholes.

Thankfully, Japan decided go ahead with the Summer Olympics despite the pandemic, despite the reservations of their people and some of the athletes, and despite the restrictions they imposed on anyone who wanted to attend the games.

The Olympic games — with all of their pageantry, ceremony, and competition — were just the distraction I needed. The backstories of the athletes were inspiring. Some of the competitions were riveting. Lea and I were on the edge of our seats more than once. And my lovely supermodel wife doesn’t really like the Olympics all that much.

She thinks the games last too long, and some of the events are, well, boring.

Because we’re US citizens living in Mexico who watch Canadian satellite TV, we found ourselves rooting for athletes from the three countries that comprise North America. And I always root for the athletes of the host nation. I think it’s the least I can do for all of the expense and effort that goes into producing and orchestrating these events.

The most significant moment of the Olympics didn’t have anything to do with performance or competition. It happened when Simone Biles dropped out of the women’s gymnastic events. It was the most courageous performance of any Olympics, ever. It highlighted the enormous stressors and pressures elite athletes are under, not just to perform, but to win at any cost. And when she said, No. My mental health is more important. It made a whole lots of people sit up and pay attention to an aspect of life that has been mostly swept under the rug.

* * * *

In a completely different but parallel universe, 25% of the front line nurses in America’s hospitals are seriously considering leaving their chosen profession because they just can’t take the workloads, the lack of support from their administrations, and the profound trauma that the COVID-19 pandemic has subjected them to.

I was a nurse for 30 years, and I can attest to the fact that nursing is a job you have to love in order to perform it — simply because it sucks far more often than it doesn’t. The worst part about nursing is it has a ton of responsibilities, but virtually no power. It is an incredibly toxic combination, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

If you think being a patient in a hospital is bad, it’s nothing compared to working in one every day, year in, year out. Hospital administrators are about as empathetic as Genghis Khan, and studies have shown that T-Rex was capable of more compassion than most hospital administrators are today.

Nursing burnout has been discussed quietly, mostly in whispers in the dark, for a very long time. But now it is being shouted in the streets in the light of day. It is the singular most important issue the healthcare industry is going to have to address, and quickly, unless they want to deal with the fallout of a crisis of their own creation.

I’ve occasionally wondered how I would’ve responded to the COVID pandemic if I hadn’t retired when I did. One of my work daughters answered that question for me the last time Lea and I travelled to Arizona, which, ironically, happened to be one year ago this week. “Oh, you would’ve been the first person they fired.” she said. “Oh, no doubt,” my other work daughter agreed. “There’s no way you would have been able to go along with all the bullshit they put us through. You would’ve demanded better treatment, and they would’ve fired you. Absolutely.”

* * * *

The Olympics enabled me to do one thing I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do again, and that is hope. Yeah, another little bit of irony there. But maybe, just maybe, something good can come out of the deaths that have recently impacted my life. And maybe, just maybe, we will defeat this pandemic and life can assume a semblance of the normalcy we all once knew and took for granted.

That last part is very large maybe, given the resistance some people have about getting vaccinated against a disease that has killed almost 4.5 million people worldwide. And that’s with several lockdowns and quarantines. Face masks and social distancing. And all of the other safeguards that have been put in place. 4.5 million. How many more people have to die before everyone agrees that no one else should be sacrificed to the Coronavirus?

The sheer unmitigated stupidity of these people is just…indescribable. This isn’t an issue of freedom of choice. This is matter of life and death. Period. End of story.

* * * *

There’s nothing I can do to help Francisco, but his death doesn’t negate the promise I made to him. I’ve been working with a friend of mine, Dave Naisby, to put together a group of donors to financially provide for Francisco’s widow, Oyuki, and his three children for the next several years. We call it Francisco’s Angels. Every peso, every penny we collect goes directly to the family.

Oyuki needs roughly $10,000 pesos a month to put food on the table and pay her bills. That’s approximately $500 US dollars a month. I don’t think I’ve ever lived on that amount — even when I wasn’t making $500/month.

Several members of my country club have stepped up to donate on a monthly basis, but not as many people as I thought there would be. These are people who knew Francisco, and claimed to be his friend. That has been very disappointing for me. Several friends of mine from the States have stepped up and donated to this cause, which absolutely stunned me and left me crying tears of gratitude. These are people that didn’t know Francisco, and never will, and yet they opened their hearts, and wallets, to help provide for a family that is in desperate need of support.

Providing for the financial stability of Francisco’s family has become a huge honker of a deal to me. In psychological terms, I’ve sublimated my grief into this cause.

I never envisioned myself being in this position, probably because I suck at being a prophet, but I have no pride in this matter and will take help from anyone that is willing to assist me. If you would like to donate to this cause, you can contact me by leaving a comment. We’ll talk.

It’ll take about a month for your donation to get to us here. If you write a check, make a notation to Francisco’s Angels in the memo thing in the lower left-hand corner. Lea and I will provide a free one week vacation at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa, including meals, for anyone who contributes to this cause. That is a no-bullshit offer, but you have to provide your own airfare to Guadalajara…

My deepest gratitude and thanks to anyone that decides to donate to Francisco’s Angels.