Green Clogs and Work Boots
For about six months now, I’ve been working on producing various events that bring author Pam Houston to town. I’ve been a huge fan of hers since I first laid hands on the iconic Cowboys Are My Weakness, and most recently I devoured her memoir Deep Creek. Pam comes...
Beach Walk
May 12, 2019 My father taught me about walking on beaches. I was four when he had a coronary that promoted him to stay-at-home dad. We lived near the beach then, in Ventura, and we would walk it hours each day. It was his physical and emotional therapy, although I...
Final Five
Once Jack settled down and waited for his passport to come, he quickly lost consciousness. By the time the hospice nurse arrived, his death rattle song had begun. Brief periods of apnea laced in with the rattle. “He’s already deep in the death cycle,” she said softly....
River Marriage Poem
Where the river water marries the river bank in mutual discovery is where a few days ago I saw you pondering the merging point I’ve come to know the way you think. How thoughts manifest in your body with less than a gesture more than an impulse. You...
Diagnosis
2016 It was a typical Friday in July in many ways. Jack had gone to walk the dogs along Bloody Run Creek, as he did almost every day. I was holed up at home, a month from my first hip replacement, getting around with a walker or in a wheelchair. We were waiting to...
The Imaginary Burrito
Jack and I had a few good weeks once he went on Hospice. He got his strength back. In fact, he grew stronger and stronger until the day he died. And for most of that time, thanks to a steady dose of steroids, he was lucid. But, as Dr. Fratkin had forewarned, the day...
This Morning’s Dream
I am in a little solarium that is like the front room of my cabin but more open. Same floor, dusty with outdoor dirt. There is a round patio table with a wicker bottom and glass top, and a wicker chair that I am sitting in. Nothing is around the rest of the table,...
His Last Snowmobile Ride
It was almost a year ago as I write this. We didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of the last chapter of Jack’s cancer story. Early winter we got the good news that there was no detectable sarcoma in his last whole-body PET. “But,” the PA said,...
Indignity
We rolled up to the ER on September 7, Jack pumped with steroids and I holding it all in, getting through it. An orderly appeared with a wheelchair and wheeled us into the triage nurse, who looked exactly like Jeff Daniels. The ER was a zoo—I was immediately reminded...
Treated Like a Dog
A Model for Compassionate and Affordable Healthcare As we in the United States struggle to find ways to fix our broken health care system, we have within our midst a good model of what health care could be in this country. As it stands now, health insurance is still...
Stricken
Jack and I were determined to have a beautiful summer. He’d recovered well from his brain surgery in early March when kind Dr. Girgis had removed an orange-sized tumor from his frontal lobe. Dr. Fragoso, his radiation oncologist, had confirmed that the tumor was a...
Give and Take
Every month for decades now I have named the moon. I am definitely a low-profile witch, but this is one thing I’ve stuck with. It is a sort of prayer, I guess, the naming, but it is also a way to focus attention, to bring the imaginal realm into my reality. It helps...
Passport
“Do not go gentle into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” –Dylan Thomas In mid-October, the steroids stopped helping Jack’s clarity, so it was time to wean him off them. I knew this was the beginning of the end, and I had to fight the urge to...
The Last Bill/Straw
November 24, 2018 Dear Swope Medical Group, Incorporated: Last Tuesday I received your bill for $1,215 for services rendered by the admitting physician at my local emergency room. My husband Jack was the recipient of Dr. Golding’s* services on 9/4/18. Jack died on...
In Death’s Circle
Since the #campfire broke out, I've felt a bizarre sense of deja vu about grief. Mourning Jack and watching the anguish of my neighbors just west of here brought something back. Then I remembered writing this poem and performing it with my friend Maggie McKaig at a...
Obituary: Jack Alan Pope
Jack Alan Pope of North San Juan, California, died at home on October 27, 2018, after a valiant two year battle with cancer. He was 60 years old. Jack was born in Montgomery, Alabama to Calvin and Ruby Pope. He grew up in Fremont, California, and spent as much time as...
The Amazing Dr. Fratkin
In the two and half years my husband Jack fought his cancers, we worked with over ten different doctors. Our journey began at the local hospital, circled to Stanford and up to UC Med in Sacramento, and then took an unlikely turn to Eureka, California. We spent many...
Witness
How does a tree heal? I see sap pouring from her bark. Are those tears? We heard the screams one Sunday morning. The girlfriend asking in a violent shake, “Why?!” I see the leaves on the figure of stretching bark change, drop, and die. Is that her transformation? Did...