You.
Got your attention, didn’t I?
“You” is such a powerful word. We live in an “I” world these days — if you don’t believe me, read about 95% of the posts on Twitter and Facebook. And when CEOs and Government leaders are thinking of themselves, it’s pretty easy to feel that you have to look out for #1.
But I go back to a quote by Yazoo City’s own Zig Ziglar: You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
Works for me. And for you.
Since I took the morning off, I had the pleasure of taking my son to school today. As I pulled out of my neighborhood, I encountered a thick patch of fog. The road started to disappear until visibility was nearly zero. If I hadn’t had experience driving in the fog before, if I didn’t know the road and if I didn’t know where I was going, I would have panicked. I didn’t panic. I just kept slowly pressing on — knowing I’d get where I was planning to go.
My life is like a thick patch of fog right now. I’m moving forward. Thank God I’m moving forward. But the road up ahead has nearly disappeared. It’s imperative that I have a plan, fall back on my experience and proceed carefully. Just like my drive this morning. I’m just hoping the sun comes out and burns the fog off soon.
Good morning! Hope you have a great day! PM, still thinking about you guys.
On the fourth floor of St. Argemir’s Memorial Hospital, a man with his head in his hands sat in a chair. Surrounding him were floral displays of every shape and size with cards, balloons and teddy bears accompanying them. He didn’t notice them. He sat there and just watched the man lying in the bed in a coma.
“I know you can hear me,” the man said to the patient. “I wish you could give me a sign.”
The man in the bed didn’t move. The only sound was the slight purr of the respirator.
“Remember that time we played down by the creek? When we shot bottle rockets at the other kids and built dams? That was fun. Being a kid was so much fun.”
No response.
“And the time at the beach back in the 1980’s? The girls were so cute back then. The sunburn was so painful!”
Silence.
“And remember the first time we saw Sandy? She was gorgeous. I’ve never seen anyone any prettier in a wedding dress. What a knockout.”
Still nothing but the sound of the respirator.
A nurse came in and checked the patient. She adjusted the amount the morphine drip and reset the beeping machine. She paid no attention to the man in the chair, punched her iPad and walked back out into the hallway without saying a word.
“Seeing the kids being born. Well, that was worth living for. Seeing them grow up, well that was an even better.”
His words faded into silence.
“Cancer sucks. It’s a thief. It’s a killer. And it’s a bully.”
No disagreement from the bed. In fact, there was nothing from the bed.
“Well Buddy, I got to go. It’s been an honor. But I have to go and meet friends.”
No sound or movement from the bed.
The man in the chair stood up and walked over to man in the bed. He ran his hands across his rubbery forehead and said, “We had a good life.”
The man in the chair leaned over and kissed the body in the bed. And when he did, alarms went off in the room. The patient’s spirit looked back at his body one last time and then was gone.
Another sons’ birthday, another moment of thankfulness that I survived cancer to see it. It’s a feeling that rattles around in my brain — a feeling of fear/thankfulness/relief/guilt that comes with the miracle of having a very deadly form of cancer caught early.
So many people don’t understand it and that’s OK. I’m not sure I understand it most days.
I’m just glad to see my son turn nine. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Good morning! Prayers continue to go out for PM and PD.
Photo by Karl R. Josker
Click here to see more photos of Buffalo, New York by Karl R. Josker.
The abandoned concrete grain silos along the Buffalo River cast a cold shadow on the surrounding waterfront of Buffalo, New York. The sky, the water and the concrete were all gray, sucking any color out of the area. But the world trapped in the silos’ shadows was much darker — and much much colder. In that shadow, a lone diner fought back. Its warm light burned through the gloom. Inside the diner was a man with a bright red jacket and a pink face. The surrounding area smelled like delicious food. It was an oasis in a sensory desert.
The man in the red jacket was older than the grain silos (although no one knew how much older.) He sat alone with his cold cup of coffee, twirled his ratty white beard and scanned through a list of names on his iPad. He paused as the waitress warmed his cup with fresh coffee . He noticed as she gazed at the tattoo on his forearm — If you don’t believe, you don’t receive. He smiled and said, “Thank you,” as the waitress walked back toward the kitchen. He took a raspy breath and thought about Christmas 2011. Smoking his pipe for all those years had given him COPD.
He looked at his tattoo again — If you don’t believe, you don’t receive.
Santa sighed and rubbed his arm. The world didn’t believe any more. It was a harder place. It was less naive. Less trusting. Colder. He flipped through the naughty & nice list one more time. It was shorter than it had ever been. People were too busy (and cynical) to believe in Santa Claus anymore. He looked out the windows at the grain silos — His new workshop.
He didn’t particularly care about the politics of Global Warming, Climate Change or whatever you wanted to call it. But he did know that the polar ice cap was melting. His workshop complex had lost Building A when it abruptly sank to the bottom of the North Pole. One hundred elves had drowned that horrid afternoon when the building just broke through the thinning ice and disappeared into the Arctic Sea. (Who knew elves couldn’t swim? ) So that summer he moved his global operations to Buffalo, New York. The grain silos had been the crown jewel of Buffalo’s booming role in the World economy. But that was 1900. This was 2011 and they had been abandoned for years. So the area was about as desolent as the North Pole was. Because the world had by-passed Buffalo, Santa bought the real estate for pennies on the dollar. And he got a nice tax break to boot. He had the surrounding area pretty much to himself.
Except for the diner. It was Santa’s unofficial office. Yes, he loved milk and cookies, but he also loved Italian and Polish food. And this diner was one of the best in the Mid Atlantic States. He coughed again and huffed on his oxygen. Thankfully Medicare paid for it.
Santa checked his business plan. He had less believers but he also had less workers. The drowned elves and following years of layoffs had left his workshop bare. In 2009 he had busted the Elf Union and today now had his smallest workforce ever. So this would be one of the toughest years yet for him.
It’s hell when people stop believing in you. It’s even more hellish when you stop believing in yourself.
He looked at all the requests from the kids. It seemed like nearly every boy wanted violent video games. He scoffed and wondered why he was even still in business. The Chinese could deliver toys more efficiently than he could anyway. Children were growing up too darn fast. Innocence was so out of fashion. He then found an e-mail from a young boy in Summit, Mississippi. He didn’t want any toys — and he didn’t expect any. All he wanted was for his dad to have a job and his mom to stop crying. How can you be a child and live like that?
Santa paused to wipe his eyes. The next e-mail was from a boy who wanted his mother to be free of ovarian cancer. A Transformer action figure would have been much easier to come by.
Santa looked at the giant gray silos and the gray water beyond them. The world seemed so hopeless these days. He took another sip of coffee to warm his chilled heart.
Like the light of the diner melting the Buffalo waterfront’s gloom, the world needed hope. The hope that only giving can bring. The world has gotten so focused on receiving that giving had fallen to the wayside. He looked at his tattoo again.
If you don’t believe, you don’t receive.
He looked at his other forearm. He wrote down the words of his next tattoo:
If you don’t give, you don’t live.
His mission was to change the world by giving. The precious infant born on Christmas Day had done that so well. Santa smiled, took another sip of his coffee and planned out the best Christmas ever.
An on that cold fall evening in Buffalo, New York, Santa once again believed himself. And when he did, a white snowfall began to cover the gloomy gray city around him.
It was the battle of the seasons and leaves lay on the ground like fallen soldiers.
He sat on the rock overlooking the valley. Fall’s cool breath had turned the trees into a sea of reds, oranges and yellows. He could almost hear Bob Ross saying, “Happy little trees.” A wisp of smoke rose from a burning leaf pile in the town of Plymouth. It was his favorite time of the year. The thuggish brutality of summer’s heat had left. Pleasant was a word that he’d use to describe the day.
He opened up his backpack and got out a sandwich. A squirrel emerged from the brush behind him and sat, staring at him with a look of want. The man on the rock pulled out a hand full of peanuts out of a Ziploc and tossed them to the squirrel. The squirrel ran and then returned, grabbing his newfound treasure and disappearing into a near by bush.
It was Thanksgiving Day and he was just glad to share it with someone.
His wife had decided she was tired of him and left earlier in the year. She and his children were now 600 miles away and it wasn’t his weekend. The divorce wasn’t final. And he didn’t want it to be. He took another bite of sandwich and chewed it slowly. He had already swallowed his pride.
The squirrel reappeared. “You’re getting greedy, you little fuzzy-tailed rat,” the man said as he threw him some more peanuts. “But I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving.”
The lonely man sat there looking down at the peaceful valley below with very little to be thankful for. A weaker man would have jumped. But he had already hit rock bottom. There was no sense of hitting it again.
The past year had been a year of self-reflection. Having your pride carved like a turkey will do that to you. He closed his eyes and imagined last year’s Thanksgiving meal. He could see the faces and he hear their voices. A distant crow’s caw woke him out of his daydream.
He did two things the day she left: Threw all the alcohol out and made a list of all of his faults she had listed. He rewrote them over and over, ranking them from the easiest to the hardest to fix. Like Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball, he created a fault snowball. And got to work changing his life.
On that Thanksgiving morning he was a different man. A different man who was truly thankful. The town’s people had noticed it. So had the family. The squirrel came back for thirds. “Why not, it’s Thanksgiving,” the man threw yet another handful of nuts to the greedy rodent.
“There you are.”
The man swung around.
“I knew you’d be up here. Boys, here he is!”
It was his wife. And his kids. Under her arm was a blanket. His oldest son carried a basket full of food. “Happy Thanksgiving!” the boys sang.
The man looked up and said, “Am I dreaming?”
“No, I’m waking up,” his wife said. “I’m sorry. I see how hard you’ve worked to win me back. But I also realized I was at fault, too. The boys need you. I need you.”
And on Plymouth rock, looking over the town, one family and one squirrel had the best Thanksgiving ever.
