Life in First Class

We have already established how I feel about weddings on holiday weekends so you can imagine my chagrin when I was invited to one such event held this past Memorial Day weekend. When the invitation arrived I felt confidently “off the hook” as the wedding was in Nashville. Case closed, right?

Wrong.  The bride’s doting uncles wanted me along for the ride – and the fun – and proposed an all expense paid trip to “Nash-Vegas” for the wedding.  First-class airfare, hotel and EVERYTHING.  How can you say no to THAT?  I sure as hell could not  so I decadently packed a whole suitcase (not having to share space with Joe!) and learned the ways of First Class air travel.  It was like a dream.

The first stop was priority check in where I checked my big honkin’ suitcase…. with no fee.  Walked down to the boarding area carrying my only my ticket and a big purse. Boarded first.  Sat in the first row (all 4 segments).  Was treated with courtesy and offered my choice of beverages and nibbles. (Sidebar – I don’t drink on airplanes. Bummer.) (Sidebar II – I can’t pee on airplanes. Seriously. TMI, I know. )

As a  25 year veteran of flying steerage I found the entire experience A-MAY-ZING. The worst, most hated part of taking a trip became positively pleasant. It made me think back to the long ago days when EVERYONE could check a bag – nay, 2 – without a charge.  When seats and spacing between rows was reasonable. When you could climb in and out of your coach seat without the use of WD-40, a crowbar and a colon compactor.

First Class Hat – Purchased in Nashville!

I am sure  my next trip will be absolutely miserable by comparison. I resent that. I don’t expect the First Class experience with what I can afford but there were  aspects of this trip that were once commonplace to those of us who routinely do the walk-of-shame past the First Class passengers on our way back to the goat pens.

I don’t fly much anymore because flying has become such an ORDEAL.  I never fly to New York anymore, I take the train. I’ll take a train anywhere, even if it costs more and takes longer.  It’s worth it. It is worth it in civility, personal space and fees.  It is especially worth it since you don’t have to deal with nimrod TSA agents with a power complex.

The wedding?  The service was lovely and the bride stunningly beautiful. (She spent 2 summers here and I was the pseudo-Aunt).  The soloist sang Schubert’s “Ave Maria” which usually reduces me to tears but since she totally American Idol’d it I was left more annoyed than moved. ( Luckily I managed to restrain myself and not stand up and beat a tempo on my leg and yell, “knock off the Mariah Carey shit, girl.”)  When Laura came up the aisle on the arm of her Dad I flashed back to my own dear Dad taking that walk with me……and I burst into tears.  Bark-like-a-seal tears. Whatever.   Oh yes, do let me report that  Nashville had RECORD HIGH TEMPS the entire weekend and the reception was not air-conditioned.  Jeebus.  We survived, it was wonderful fun and we all had a fabulous time.  Nashville is a blast – I highly recommend a visit but do it in October or November…..

Seriously?

The last two weeks have been a hazy blur, and not in the good way.

Dad suffered a  series of markedly down-turning events that necessitated a very quick trip home.  As a consistent target for TSA bitches  I’m not a fan of flying to begin with – much less when the day has to begin at 3AM to catch a 6AM flight. The TSA’s were manageable on the outbound flights from Boston, no hammer complexes there.

After a few days of hospital roulette (never knowing who the next assigned doctor would be, ever getting an update on some test results, or wondering if the wastebaskets would EVER be emptied) we ended up moving him to a local rehabilitation center.  For reasons known only to fans of the movie Birdcage,  I have nicknamed the place Bob Fosse.  I spent the next few days there with my sisters and brothers trying  vainly  to honor my Dad’s wishes about his health care proxy.

“Fosse” is a Catholic institution that currently has 3 local priests  with a parent/patient currently in-house; consequently the place is crawling with RC priests.  I’m ok with that, my little brother is one of them.  Here is what I am not OK with:  one of them (pretty much a stranger to me no less)  took the opportunity to get all pastoral on my ass at a time when I was trying to pull myself together and say goodbye to my Dad for what well could have been the last time I will see him alive.  I told him three times I was not going to have that conversation with him right now, and that I really had to concentrate on my father.   I understood his deal,   I knew he thought he was being helpful, put he pushed back with a lengthy  fairy tale  about how ” your  Dad’s suffering is  not in vain, his suffering will save other souls and that when he is in heaven there will be people lined up to thank him for his suffering because he saved their souls…..”    and I threw a big, red bullshit flag.

Seriously?  A line of people thanking Dad?  It sounded like a coffee shop in a bad Disney movie.  I am  RC by faith and by grace but what heaven will or will not be is not definitively known to any of us. We can hope, conjecture  and read Catherine of Siena until we are blue in the face but I believe our puny human minds cannot begin to comprehend what lies ahead.  I think it is much bigger and better than anything we could ever come up with and I am content with that knowledge.

Father Get-All-Up-In-My-Grill was shocked when  I threw that BS flag and tripled his horrifically patronizing efforts to educate me on the error of my thinking. It set off an avalanche of reprimand and judgment.  ( I was also told to go to confession.)  He started peppering me with questions, all of which I answered pretty calmly.  Here is a sample:

Father Grill:   Are you married?

ME:  Yes.

Father Grill:  Children?

ME:  No.

Father Grill:  (One eyebrow critically raised)

ME: I had ovarian cancer.

Father Grill:  Oh.  (Evidently that was pardonable)  What is your married name?

ME:  Ciolino.

Father Grill:  Ciolina?

ME: No.  Ciolino – with an O at the end.

Father Grill:  Oh, is he Italian?

ME:  No, Sicilian.

Father Grill:  (Scared look)  Ohhh, Sicilian.  Did you learn to make the pasta?   (SERIOUSLY, HE SAID THAT.    I SWEAR I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP. )

ME:  No.  I don’t have to.  My husband makes it when he wants it.

It went on longer than I ever should have permitted and he left the room wearing more skin on his body than I ever should ever have left on it.  I was angry and shaken and grieving – and all at the same time.   I refuse to dwell on it or give it any more time or thought than I already have.  Instead, I will take that experience and offer the following suggestions for visiting the sick that all of us can use:

1. Speak softly.  Noise in the sickroom is anathema.  Ditto for perfumes and well-intentioned  aromatherapy.
2. Be brief.  The family and the patient are both exhausted.
3. Be useful.  Ask  them if you can bring them water, coffee, dinner – anything. Walk the hall with them.  Anybody need to be picked up at the airport?  Anybody need a ride to the hospital?
4. Be present.  You don’t need to regale them with stories of your own family illnesses and/or deaths, it isn’t a throw-down.  Just be present.
5. Be honest.  Spare them the “oh wait and see, he’ll be good as new in no time, ” especially when that is NOT going to happen.
6. Be cognizant. It is about what they need, not what you want to give them.

I remember years ago when we lost mom and people started showing up at my folk’s house with all kinds of food.  It was all home cooked and all wonderful.  Since there were about 24 of us there at the time (children & grandkids, spouses, etc.) it made meal times much  less difficult. Then, and I’ll never forget this,  someone showed up with a huge box of stuff and just left it very quietly.  It was filled with big packages of paper plates, cups, napkins, rolls of paper towels…. and toilet paper.  It was the most incredible, thoughtful,  useful thing ever.  Who knew?  Someone did, and I’m happy to pass it along.  We should all be so useful.  Seriously.

‘Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky

It is Sunday night and it is  happening.  Again.  You wouldn’t think so after this long, but it is definitely happening again.

This Labor Day marks the 26th anniversary of my moving to Massachusetts. I was 26 when I moved here, so my time-life  pendulum will officially swing to this part of the country in a few short weeks.  You would think after 26 years I would not still get the August blues but I do.  I have them now.  Neck deep.

August is always the time of year I am most homesick. I’m not sure why – the change of seasons, the memories of school starting  and that fresh new start feeling you’d get purchasing textbooks and notebooks and wondering what (and who) the new year would bring.  It always seemed to me the new year began in the fall  when the last bloom of summer dies and the whole process begins again. Football season starts – college ball, what’s not to love? It is also thee best time to be outdoors and see acres and acres….of sky.   I miss the sky terribly. I am surrounded by dense populations, buildings, wide stretches of  concrete highway.  There is very little sky – it is either blocked by buildings or by trees. I need sky – serious sky – 360 degrees of sky.  It is nowhere to be found out here.   I need to get out where I  can breathe and walk or drive for miles and just see open space and sky.  I need to go home. I am homesick.

When I fly in to the Lincoln, Nebraska airport (my favorite airport in the world) I begin a ritual.  It starts with crossing the street from the 4-gate terminal to the parking lot (yes, across the street) and getting my rental car.  There is a ticket stub you feed into the machine so the arm at the gate will swing up and let you pass.  But get this – written in beautiful scroll across the gate/arm is the phrase “WELCOME HOME.”  I burst into tears every time I see it. I am weepy just writing about it – I am so homesick.

Then I’m out on the road, flying along (speed limits are much higher!) and the whole sky opens up.  My head unzips and my shoulders relax and I can’t begin to express the  feeling of weight lifting  off my spirit.  I am most at home under the sky.  When I was little I used to stretch out in the grass for hours and watch clouds to see if,  from heaven, my Grandma McGill would peek over the edge. (Okay, I was very little.) Then I’d find shapes of things and wonder where the clouds blew off to and whether I’d see distant lands myself someday.  My mom was a huge fan of a good sunset – I think I have loved the sky since I was a fetus.

I feel saner and calmer under a wide swath of sky than just about anywhere else.  I miss the Nebraska sky, the slower pace and the kinder people.  I don’t know that I could move back there, but I definitely need to go home and recharge the batteries of my psyche, inhale my family, sit with my Dad  and maybe eat some  proper hash browns.

The picture above is of the Platte River (a mile wide and an inch deep) which will be my final resting place someday.  I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered somewhere  along that river.  I hope to be near a cottonwood tree (it exemplifies my “if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be” spirit) and bonus -  I’ll have an eternal view of wide open sky.  Heavenly.