People I know personally been dying lately

A friend of mine passed away after a fifteen year battle with cancer. This within a few months of another even older friend who fought cancer for nearly as long. They say if nothing else gets you, cancer will. And there’s so many kinds of cancer waiting to get you.

It’s like, if you dodge cancer, you’ve won the lottery.

I dug this up:

Risk of developing		Risk of dying from
	%	1 in	%	1 in
Any cancer	40.9	2	20.2	5

This is a statistic from the American Cancer Society. Some big shot pack of know-it-alls. I’ll give them credit for knowing a hell of a lot more than I do. They say we Men have a forty to fifty percent chance of getting cancer in our lifetimes with a twenty percent chance of the evil shit killing us.

These are like coin flipping odds we’re gonna get cancer.

So what do you do about it. I mean, what do I do?

Nothing.

I’m a long way over the hill.

Some Wonder Kids out there are gonna find a cure for cancer. Sooner or later. And sooner or later a new pack of Wonder Kids are gonna figure out how to keep people alive indefinitely.

By then the air will be poison.

The ground littered with Zombie bones.

The rest of us will be immortal. Living underground, like prairie dogs.

Nowhere near as attractive, however….

Where was I?

I started this talking about a friend just died. How’d I get off and onto the subject of immortality? My mind’s been wandering lately. My pace has slowed. I’m old. I used to be a young whipper-snapper. Dancing on a ledge. There you go! I was immortal back then. This is the true meaning of immortality. That feeling of youth. Of Dancing on a ledge. Nothing’s gonna get you. Because you’re young. You can do anything. And so you take risks every damn day. I didn’t care for shit back then. I did exactly what I pleased. When I pleased. I always landed on my feet. I did my share of dancing…ignoring the odds.

Sober minded people knew better.

They looked at life as if it was a book they needed to write. The story of themselves. They needed to make a life with a happy-ending. Maybe they started out wild. At some point, while still young, they came to their senses. They settled down. No more dancing on a ledge. Time to get serious and build their lives. And so they did. They married. Raised children. Bought Real Estate. Established careers. Welcomed Grandchildren. Built the narrative of their life book.

Then they get cancer…

Wait a minute. What Bozo puts that in his book of life?

I no longer tempt fate

I’m still on the ledge. But I’m no longer dancing. I’ve slowed down. I’m old. Nowadays I’m resting on the ledge.

I’m hugging my ledge. Because Lady Luck is no longer hugging the Gloomer. I know this because I took a bad fall lately and tore up my face. It happened out of the blue. It just happened. I wasn’t thinking.

Or as my elders used to command: watch where you’re going!

On the day of my fall I was thinking like a kid. Like a kid dancing on a ledge. I slipped and fell and should’ve busted my hip. I got away with merely tearing up my face.

Naturally I managed to land on my feet. Which I’m still kinda good at.

Old Gloomer put himself back together again.

Got a little Goatee wrapping my old chin makes me feel as if I’m good as new. Better even. And yet…I’m not really better. I’m less than I was prior to that fall…

I try to think now before I act. I watch my moves. I no long flit around like a god damned lively moth. I’ve grown cautious.

Caution wont save my ass

It’s a coin toss, right? One in two men will develop cancer in his lifetime.

Whether you live on a ledge or not.

Cancer don’t give a damn.

It doesn’t seem to me like it oughta be that way. There should be some compensation for those who worked harder than me. Worked to make their lives secure. Took less risks.

Did less ledge time.

What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any repercussions for my gold-bricking ways. I mean, when I do get Cancer, it’s not like I’m gonna die on the curb. A nice comfortable hospice bed is waiting for me at the V.A. hospital. Add to this a caring nurse. Free pain meds. I’ll be croaking, so the less shit I own the better. I’ll give Scruffy to my daughter. Let her deal with the leaks.

What matters that you planned your life carefully? Wrote you’re book of life with a proofreader at your shoulder? The book isn’t yours alone. You don’t control the plot. Not entirely. Old God up there, he holds the dues ex machina. He’ll gleefully toss you a cancer to gum up your happy ending.

Deus ex machina in Euripides’ Medea, performed in 2009 in Syracuse, Italy; the sun god sends a golden chariot to rescue Medea.

Wikipedea

God aint gonna restore you a happy ending like he did with old Job. That’s a bait and switch to lure you in. You snooze you lose…

God’s laughing!

God’s little buddies!

It’s the little critters that matter in life

There’s no book of life. No plot. No theme. Life is just life. And life is all about the small dudes. My seagulls have explained this to me on numerous occasions but I don’t listen. I still believe (a nagging ego in me believes) in the profundity of human beings.

You gotta wind this shit down, says old Huron dude.

“But I’m not done yet!”

“I’m hungry.”

“Grab a dock muscel, for christ’s sake.”

The Best-Laid Schemes of Mice and Men

Leave it to a Poet to skirt the perambulations and get to the core of a subject.

Which always comes down to the human condition.

Because we’re always all about us, right?

This time it aint Shakespeare that hits the nail on the head. It’s good old Robert Burns. A Dude who didn’t make it to forty. Back then all sorts of little devils were poised to fuck up your perfectly plotted LIfe Book.

Burns drank himself to death.

But he had time to make his point.

Then Steinbeck came along and built a book around a single line.

Which is a kind of genius.

We all know the plot to this novel. George Milton and Lennie Small are people I recognize. Little people with dreams. Nobodies trying to get by in a bad old world. Getting by somehow. Living on a ledge, you might say. I know them because I’m one of them. I’ve lost more than I’ve won. Survived with a modicum of wits. Usually on the alert. I make myself a half-assed human being. I would’ve made a terrific Prairie Dog.

A Mexican Prairie Dog

Hey Hombre! Como Esta?

Thanks to Cancer and other forms of terminal disease including all manner of grisly dissolves many self-imposed many others brought about by the aforementioned benevolent God, maybe we’re all of us living on a ledge.

Which brings me around finally to the point I was trying to make at the start of this rather meandering blog.

A friend of mine died recently

His name was Jim. I like to think he’s still around looking in on us. I know, I know, this is more of my silly belief in the profundity of Human Beings. A false belief of course. But I can’t help myself. I never got to be a Prairie Dog, which was my first choice…

Jim ran a cleaning business down in Capitola. My Sis worked for him initially and then became his partner in the business. I don’t know the details of their business relationship. All I know is, they were close. Jim may well have been my sister’s best friend. My sis will be reading this so I need to watch what I say.

Jim was a person I knew mainly through my sister. But there was an interval of a few weeks thirty years ago when I hanged around a bit with Jim. I had just turned forty and decided to give up my apartment in The City and go off and live in a RV (typical ledge dancing behavior). I ended up hanging out for a few weeks in Capitola before driving down to La.Jolla and hanging out there for the summer. I spent a lot of time during this interval laying on my sisters sofa, browsing though copies of her Encyclopedia Britannica.

Naturally it rained while I was hanging out on the sofa.

It rained and my R/V leaked.

Jim was a handy guy. He helped me paint the roof of the R/V with waterproof paint. He also showed me where to buy real good sausages down in Watsonville. I drove around with him a couple times, looking at shit. I forget pretty much what we looked at. I forget what we talked about. I remember the old white toyota truck we drove around in. Jim knew how to fix up cars. How to keep old cars running. He kept my sisters old car running.

Jim was a Jehovah’s Witness. He became a Jehovah’s Witness after my other Sister and her friend Larinda knocked on his door one day bearing copies of Watchtower Magazine.

Jim, a heretofore Guitar playing hippie type, dancing his own ledge, as it were, became a Jehovah’s Witness, and married Larinda. They had two kids and stuck together. I kind of watched his kids grow up. First they were little kids and the next time I saw them…they were grown up.

Like I say, I didn’t spend a lot of time with Jim.

Jim wasn’t a rich dude. He owned a mobile home around the corner from my sis’s apartment. My mother owned a mobile home in the park next door to his. They all lived in the same neighborhood in good old Capitola. They spent their lives in the same neighborhood. My sis still lives in the same apartment she lived in when I visited with my R/V thirty years ago. It’s a nice apartment. She got rid of the Encyclopedias. She tried to give them to me. Fat chance when you got Google.

They all lived together in the same neighborhood. Raised their kids. Enjoyed the good weather. Looked out for each other. Kind of like Prairie Dogs do. I don’t use this reference to disparage them. It’s more of a complement. I prefer Prairie Dogs to human beings.

They’re all good people and Jim was a good dude.

He was a leader of this clan of people I’m attempting to describe. An elder in the church. He never made a big deal of it, though. Jim had a breezy air about him…almost as if he was dancing on a ledge like me rather than planning and crafting his book of life.

There was a moment during that interval thirty years ago when I might have formed a more enduring friendship with Jim. It wasn’t to be. I like people about as much as I like working for a living. I’m not a giving person. I hate feeling obligated. It takes effort to build a relationship and I eschew effort whenever possible–unless the effort benefits me exclusively. This is my loss, of course. I’m not so bad nowadays. Back then? Back then I covered my own ass and to hell with you. I think they call that a foxhole mentality. Anyway, enough about myself…for the moment.

I asked my sis to send me some photos of Jim for this post, which she did. Then I looked for his obituary in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. I found nothing. I found his facebook page, the last posting made in 2018. He has 23 friends on Facebook. 20 more than I have on my Facebook Page. I hate Facebook.

Jim was not a big shot. Jim was a little person. I am a little person. I hate big shots.

I don’t consider myself totally abnormal.

I’m not up on Jesus. But one quote of his sticks with me.

The Meek shall inherit the earth.

Mathew 5:5

I’m thinking of the Prairie Dogs

Meek little critters living their lives.

On course to inherit the earth.

Pictures of Jim

Here’s Jim, on the left, learning the guitar from his dad.

Here he is mugging for the camera

Here’s Jim with an elderly lady he looked in on frequently. He liked to help her out though she was no relation. She was part of his clan.

Here he is with a sweet little thing could be his daughter.

Here he is with my nephew Joe and Joe’s lovely wife.

Here’s Jim playing guitar to a large white dog. Jim got really good at the guitar. He loved the Grateful Dead. Lots of musicians love the Grateful Dead. Including Miles Davis, who loved nobody.

Here’s Jim undergoing cancer treatments down in Mexico.

Fourteen years Jim struggled with cancer.

It got him finally.

He fought it all the way. He didn’t want to go to hospice. But he knew when it was time to die. He even said it. He said, I’m gonna die this weekend. And he did. Jim was a real smart guy. He was always up on his cues. I could’ve been a better friend to Jim. This is my loss, not his. Jim had plenty of friends.

Friends come and go.

We all walk alone.

Until we reach our destination.

My sea gull is nodding.

Maybe it’s a cracker he’s thinking about.

R.I.P. Jim Bechtel…here’s one for you: