Marcie's Modesty

I have been asked before and have recently had the question raised anew: "Would Marcie really want you to do all of this?"

The answer is that I do not know. But a deeper look at her sweet and demurring soul might just be revelatory.

Sometimes Marcie was modest, it is true. She did not like too much attention focused on her and shied away from recognition. At work, she considered little awards to be nuisances, and recognition to be a little overwhelming.

"I just want to go to work, do my job, keep my head down, be left alone and come home so I can enjoy my life," she said once. "I don't want to go out after work, I don't want to go to lunch with the herd, and I don't need to be pointed out for my work."

For the most part, that's how she lived. But being the beautiful and talented woman she was, word got around. She was an expert baker, a solid and smart worker, a brainiac, a delightfully friendly ear... she was recognized for the jewel she was.

She won little awards, but never brought them home to share or hang up. She never took me to her work's annual dinners, which she avoided by and large. She shied away from the acclaim.

I think it is because, no matter how much people told her they loved her, respected her and admired her for her talents and her every little thing, she was unable to accept it as genuine.

She barely believed me for a long time, and when she did take my compliments as honest, she just melted. She told me why once.

"No matter what, I was too fat," she said. "I loved to eat, and i was overweight, but it was the only thing my dad focused on. I was too fat."

She had dreamed of broadcasting and had even started doign the news at San Diego High. Her father had an ally in the teacher.

"I was always told that I might be a big hit off-camera," she told me once. "I quit the program the next year."

She was, of course, a curvy but absolutely toned girl when I met her, but those scars persisted. She could never get over the way that every accomplishment was overshadowed, unheralded or dismissed over some flaw that consumed her father's entire view of her.

I am sure that all her swimming medals, awards, accomplishments and character traits were sources of pride, as was her beautiful body and pristine beauty. I know she loved my long lists of praise on the couch or in the bed.

I think that she decided to enjoy so much of what she earned on her own, or just with me, privately, because she could never trust the wider perception of her to not become fixed on one flaw, long gone. She kept her head down.

She did let me perform grand public gestures, though. Sneak attacks with flowers at work, candy sent up from the employee entrance and other things only caused the most cursory of curses to be heaped on me, smiles and blushing the balance to that.

Would Marcie forbid me to pursue a long trek in her honor? Probably at first. Would she hate that I extolled her greatness on this site? Perhaps. But would she get over it all? I think so.

I know one thing about my baby very very well. Marcie could be convinced that she was all she was touted to be, but she very much discounted anyone she had not let in, and those people were few and far between.

I was chief among them. She would know I am sincere. I only wish that, as I prepare to change my life around and launch my trip and try to secure someone to publish the tale, I would be doing so in honor of the great courage she showed as she healed, instead of as she was taken from me.

Then she could yell at me and be embarrassed and furious, but then then kiss me and make it all okay again.

Little things she might have liked (Part 1)

Marcie and I did not do a lot of the things we had planned to. Some of those things were fairly straightforward, such as heading over to the most authentic Irish bar in San Diego and having a pint over Irish music.

I didit for her. I went to The Ould Sod and had a couple of pints, enjoyed some music and snapped some shots. I also tried to take a movie, but the lighting was such crap that it proved pointless.

However, to help you understand how interesting and nice the music was, I did save a snippet, mostly for sound:



There was at least a tad more success with the flash on my camera and some shots of the musicians. Take a look at the instruments and how I used the mirror in the shots:



It was looking to be a decent night when I left. But I really wasn't in the mood for a good night. I just wanted to go see the Tuesday night players for Marcie, and that I did.

I left very much wondering what she would have said about it all, as she had been to Eire before. When we did pop in, she didn't say much, really. I also wondered what it would have felt like to show up at such a pub in Ireland with my hot Irish-American redhead in tow. I imagine I would have been very proud.

I'll never know either, I guess.

No progress, really...

I had so many plans. I would start clearing out all the things that didn't matter, that had no meaning. Valuable? It would be sold. Valueless? It would be given or trashed.

But it's so hard. Everything is a memory and every breath of her is such a treasure to me. Marcie's every little thing is still in my home, and my heart is just sick over what I will do with it all.

I can't keep it. There is too much and I don't need it all. Too much furniture, too many knickknacks, too many clothes. Every single bit was brought here, into our little life, by her. Some of it is quite beautiful.

Even the not-so-beautiful things are emotionally loaded for me.

I tried to cheat on the whole thing a bit, to get our friends to take little bits of things as mementos, but to not much avail. I guess I am still way too raw.

I think this whole thing is complicated by the one thing that Marcie said to me that left a bad mark. She was mad that I could not move her into the front room and that she couldn't go for a walk. I was scared she would fall, and her legs were too weak to even raise, much less walk.

"You are just going to shake me off and move on when I die," she said, glaring and accusative. "You're just going to shed me like a skin forget I ever happened after this, aren't you?"

She was not in her right mind, and she quickly soothed me when she saw how much it hurt. But it stuck in my head and cut deeply, because regardless all of that, people do not say such things unless they believe them on some level.

So I look at all her old medication, her clothes, her unopened, unworn gifts from her birthday, and all the stuff I have left in place in our room. Then I look away ashamed for wanting it to be gone.

I know I want to send much of it off. I know I want to sell the stuff that could help pay for her trip, and I know I want to give much of it away. I want to empty this big house and just keep the most essential things, but I cannot.

I want to keep every scrap with her writing and every picture, every book she touched and was touched by and every CD and song her heart sang to. I want to have only those things most "her." But I keep the junk and the clutter, too.

I guess what is in the way is that I am afraid that if I do pare it all down, the dreams will stop, the emptiness will grow and her presence will fade in my heart.

Worse, I wonder if sometimes, when I am lonely or when I chat with someone I realize is quite attractive, I am not living up to her lowest expectations of me.

Either way, it all hurts.

No update tonight

I had some pictures to share but that will have to wait, as my camera is apparently still on my desk at work! Bah. I have been trying to get to little engagements around the neighborhood, some of which are quite fun.

One of them Marcie said she might not mind going to, but she only found out about while she read up on the neighborhood...

I'll share it tomorrow.

Night, F.

Marcie and redemption

I will return to the places of Marcie's and my early love in time. First, I need to take a trip up to Humboldt (for pictures of our place). I think I should snap photos of it. It was a very special chapter in our lives, if also a tough one for her.

I am having so many dreams about Marcie. I am, in fact, having so many that I somewhat wanted to stay home and sleep all day today. I did not.

I found myself reflecting on some of the more esoteric reasons Marcie and I were so in love with each other today. I overheard a coworker kvetching about her brother.

"Oh, he is not going to change," she said. "People don't change and they can only fake it for so long when they try."

Marcie had a different idea, which I came to share. Marcie thought that everyone could change, but some people simply would never choose to.

"Some people change or they just fix their problems" she said. "Some people are perfectly happy being whatever they are, no matter how mean or dirty or how ignorant they are."

My discussion with Chrissy reminded me of another aspect of Marcie's outlook on people. Some people change, some people don't, and some people medicate.

"I am telling you, it is a total Prozac nation," she would say. "People think they can get away from their problems by just popping a pill and forgetting they have them."

Marcie understood the need for some help in a crisis, but she was disturbed by the number of people around her on permanent regimens of antidepressants. I had a theory.

"Maybe it's the environment that makes people sick," I said. "The drugs might fix a chemical issue caused by the polluted world around us."

I would never have dared offer it if I was on antidepressants. Thankfully, I never was and never will be, short of being forced.

"That's a total excuse," she said, her pretty blue eyes rolling as one hand went to a hips and her other circled dismissively.

"Oh, I was exposed to whatever, so I am depressed," she said. "Oh, I am sooo sad that my mom didn't love me enough. BLah Blah Blah! People need to get OVER it already."

But she was afraid of sounding silly, and she was wise to boot (as well as pretty and clever and well-read, and any number of other good things).

"You could be right," she said as she disengaged from the conversation. "You could be totally right and people might be completely toxic from the world or whatever. But that's just like throwing up your hands and saying nobody is responsible for anything."

But her belief that people could change and be redeemed was most comforting. Marcie had an immense capacity to forgive and to love, even if she was hurt. It was a measure of her tender toughness.

I will not say who she forgave for what. I will only say that, though we fought from time to time, I never did anything that tested her capacity to forgive me. But I still weep at the thought of her pain with people at times.

There were many times she was ashamed or just beyond the veneer of her pride, and it was a privilege to hold her and comfort her in them.

I was so relieved when, as I told her I apologized for anything she was too good to tell me hurt her feelings or that I had done to hurt her, she simply smiled and squeezed my hand.

"You don't have to redeem yourself for anything, honey," she croaked. "I always knew you wouldn't ever even conceive of doing anything to hurt me."

I realized at that moment that some of the things I had heard her talk about and held her in my lap or arms over still, on her death bed, cast a hurtful shadow over her. Like so many times before, I simply enveloped her in my arms and kissed her.

Sometimes, she did not share what her crying was about. In retrospect, I would get frustrated, though I held her anyway. I now know that consoling touch was more important to her than any silly lover's quarrel.

What she was telling me that very sad day was that the reasons didn't matter. That I just made sure to love her did, though.

The all of you

"Smell makes the strongest memory," you said.
You inhaled me and I felt the cool of the air there.
"No, taste leaves the strongest association," I said.
I savored you like a wine and drank kisses.
"You are so striking to me," you said.
You demanded I not shy from your lens.
"Your voice soothes and bewitches me," I said.
I called every day to hear it, be calmed.
"I love how you hold me," you said.
You wiggled against me and I stroked you.
"I love how it feels to touch your skin," I said.
my hands still remember velvet on curves.
The warmth of you squirms on me and pushes
back against me, snug and soft all at once.

Your voice still rings true in my dreams,
It echoes in my heart as I wake.
It never tells me you are gone,
but insists that you love me.
You always look so perfect to me there,
but I can envision no less of you.

I still taste you, your hair and your skin,
your kiss, my palate your pallet still.
You are right. Smell is the strongest.
I remember you in every ward I visit.
But I recall your musk and your perfume even more.
Your visits leave it lingering so briefly, sharply.
Like the taste of you on my lips,
the sight of you in my dreams,
your faintly echoing voice,
and the giving firmness of your hips.

I wish they would linger,
but I am grateful for the ghostly warmth of your touch,
the phantom savor of your kiss,
the echoing hint of your voice,
the beauty of you in my dreams,
And the scent of you that flees when I wake.

Meet Cavinia

Here is a little short film I made of Cavinia on a recent visit to her neighborhood. The film is a bit grainy, but should look okay. I have added sound, a little song into I looped, but I need to get a better sampling program that is vista compatible...

At one point I lost my footing and scared Cavinia, but she's a trusting and sweet kitty and soon was letting me make up for it.





Enjoy!

Cavinia-Marcie's Friend

Marcie's little friend Cavinia was a companion for her during the worst of times. She was discovered immediately following Marcie's assignment to recovery, and with it disability leave. Marcie enjoyed exploring Niormal Heights on foot while she convalesced.

I remember the day she told me about Cavinia. It was following one of Marcie's walks, and Marcie prcatically bounced into the house and took off her sunhat.

"Well, I have some exciting news," she said.

I looked at her and thought of many things regarding breasts and chemo and cancer and reconstruction and a number of things far off her mind.

I made a new friend!" she said. "Her name is Cavinia, and she lives on Mountain View."

This was flabbergasting in its own right, as Marcie was certainly not quick to meet someone, get on with them and declare them simpatico.

"Really?" I asked.

"Oh, honey," she said. "I did. She's just the sweetest little thing, and she's got long hair and green eyes, and I met her while I was walking. She just wandered out and stopped me on the sidewalk!"

I was completely baffled but I nodded and smiled as I worked on cleaning the fireplace. "That's cool, honey," I said.

"Her name's Cavinia, and she's a long-haired gray calico kitty," she said. "And we will have to go see her together soon."

"That sounds wonderful," I said.

Marcie was not doen, though. "But there is one pain in the ass. This dog with no vocal cords makes these horrible hoarse honks while you pet her and spins just inside the fence by her, which I just know gets her poor little kitty heart upset."

"Well, she's probably used to it, honey," I said.

"Oh, I know that, honey," she said. "But we can't commune in peace without it yapping and wheezing like he's going to die and it ruins it for me."

Marcie soon turned the yapping dervish, known as Charlie, into a feature, and turned its vehemence to her own advantage, admittedly with spite, though.

"I just pet her and pet her while I look right at him through the fence," she said. "He gets so mad and he spins so fast that sometimes he falls down. I think he must get dizzy." She laughed a little at her speculation.

I loved it. She was simply letting the dog know she was more stubborn than he was.

I eventually made it down to meet the sweet little kitty. She had to be a decade and a half old, so frail but so very friendly and relaxed. The dervish huffed and he chuffed, and he spun himself down while we pet her.

It was quite dramatic, and Cavinia was quite the love bug, as Marcie called her.

"Are you a little love bug?" she cooed. "Are you a love sponge?"

Marcie saw her every chance she took to walk for three years. When I shared my cat adventures with her and she was unable to, she was disappointed to see no Cavinia images. But I made it up to her.

"Honey, would you like to go see Cavinia," I asked on a day when she seemed happy and active, her chemo beginning to wear off and her glow returning.

"Oh, that would be lovely, honey," she said.

So off we went, with me holding Marcie's hand. We strolled to Cavinia's house and she was there, ready for us, sitting in her favorite place. It never changes:

Cavinia's usual spot: The middle of the driveway!

Marcie spent a full five minutes trying to coax Cavinia out of range of the barkign dervish dog, but to no avail, so she went and pet her.

She spent a lot of time with her, and she had a hard time getting up until I hlped her, taking the moment to steal a kiss and making Marcie "happy annoyed."

"What are you doing? Frank, stop," she said, then grabbed my jacket and pulled me in for a better kiss. "Take me home."

I did, carrying her for a little bit as we got close. She was very tired, and I swear she slept for a minute or two. I just remember thinking how light she was.

"Don't ever tell anyone about this," she said. "I don't want to be humiliated."

I don't think there was anything embarrassing for her in it, but she had such pride. I hope she understands me sharing it all now.

Marcie never went cat-visiting again. But I do. I still see Cavinia and all the rest, and they seem to like that pretty well. I really do it to replace her in their lives, though.

I feel we all know what it is to lose her, and that means we have a lot in common.

A visit! And some plans

Marcie's friend Chrissy Patterson will be visiting sometime this week, so I guess I'll have to clean the house. Bleah. But the visit will be good. Chrissy and I actually got to hang out (along with her hubby Tom) a few times, unlike some of Marcie's pals.

I hope to get pictures of Marcie's cat pal Cavinia so I can finish off the story of their little love affair. We'll see if she feels like entertaining photographers, and I will try to film, as well.

I'll catch up later tonight. Have a good Sunday, folks

F.

Little moments of tease

So, Marcie has been making her appearances again in my dreams. But there is a different feel to them now. For one, I am not aware that I am dreaming.

I have had several of these new dreams. There are no surreal or grand visions, no strange transformations of reality or unnerving sensations. There are just relatively simple little chats and cuddles.

The best one was one that happened last week after the crazy spring in our mattress drove me off the bed and onto the couch. I dreamed I was laying with my head in her lap as she sat "Indian style," a rare treat.

Oh, geez, I miss that simple little thing. So you know how it works:

I usually would slide into her lap as I laid on my belly on the couch, wrapping one arm around her hips and the other under her thighs, then lay my head down. She loved to keep a pillow on her lap when she sat, conveniently enough. She only let me when she planned to stay put.

I had a tendency to fall asleep there, actually. I did almost every time.

In my dream, Marcie was stroking my back and leaning down, holding me and kissing my head as she basically petted me. I rolled over on my back and admired her as she watched something on the television.

Her soft little cotton pajama bottoms and the warmth of her body under them always made me want to stroke her, if not always out of my enamored state then for the tactile pleasure of it. She smiled and blushed as I got a bit fresh, but did not protest.

"If you can't behave, you can go," she said, smiling and leaning down, kissing me and stroking my hair off of my brow.

"I don't want to behanve, but if you try to make me leave, I will tickle you mercilessly," I said.

She gave me her look of defiant warning, one of my favorites, and the play ensued. By the time I had her on her back with her arms pinned, we were kissing. I let her hands go and she stroked my back gently and looke dup with such loving eyes.

Eyes I knew. Eyes I very much wish I could stare into again.

"I love you, honey," she said, and smiled. Then a tear rolled down her cheek.

Then I "remembered" she had cancer, and she was under treatment. I kissed her tears and her nose and her face, gently holding her head and stroking her face with my fingertips.

"You'll be okay, baby," I said, holding back tears and gulping at the lump in my throat.

She smiled and nodded, then looked up at me with a strangely calm and happy face. "I am okay," she said. "You'll be okay, too, honey. You'll be just fine, I promise."

I kissed her lips and slid down, hugging her waist and settling my head just under her breasts, kissing her tummy. She stroked my hair for what seemed a long time. Though I did not drift off, she said "Honey, you have to get up."

I pushed up and she sat up and kissed my forehead. "You have to go to work," she whispered. "I love you."

She smiled and stroked my cheek. I woke in our front room, laying on my belly, her kiss of the phantom of it still warm on my forehead and the stroke of her hand's tingle not yet quite faded.

For once, I felt not just loved but undisturbed and not as bereft as I awoke, and I went to work happy and well-rested for the first time in months.

I hope these are the moments I can expect when I take our trip.

Dreams upon dreams.

So, as I have been wrestling with dilemmas and working on the trip, the dreams have become very strong again. They are quite comforting at the moment, too. I intended to write about them tonight, but I have been busy on other fronts and needed to catch up with some friends.

I had an interview tonight for what appears to be a great project.Imagine a startup journalism site on nonprofit issues, growing slowly from a simple but professional, top-notch blog into a much more complex and powerful source of information on nonprofit work than currently can be found in one place.

I'm hoping I did as well as I might have. Make money, do good,all at once in one place? Sign me up! I'll let you all know how it goes. We'll see.

I need sleep. Good night, folks

F.

What riches for the moral?

Lately, I have been considering, or rather reconsidering, what eyes I look out at the world with. I have always been committed to playing fair, being good to people as much as I can manage and placing principle first.

I am beginning to think that perhaps such an approach may have contributed to losing Marcie.

During my time with Marcie, I did not do some things I now know would have paid off handsomely. Some of these would have brought serious detriment to other people, something I have tried to avoid ("First do no harm..." etcetera).

Others would have been unethical but not harmful to anyone in any direct way. But some I simply had to forgo because Marcie was not going anywhere. Marcie was in San Diego to stay.

I had offers of jobs in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, Portland and even British Columbia, but Marcie had her foot down. She did not want to leave her parents, specifically her mother, again.

I could have forced her to choose to follow or watch me leave, but I was honestly too smitten. Never mind that some of the jobs and opportunities were simply outstanding, replacing our two salaries at once. Never mind I have always hated the sunshine tax that San Diego levies with aplomb on all not related to the scum who own it.

I loved her and, even if I could win an argument, I could not stand to see her cry. So, I was trapped trying to negotiate a path that kept me happy with her and not so overwhelmed with frustration at the constant struggle to get a decent career going.

One consolation I had was that she always knew that I wanted to move on some of these opportunities. She was always supportive when I did not bury someone at a job after a big backstabbing took the rug out from under me.

"You're a pure soul, and you are better than that," she would say. "I am so proud of you and I am so happy you are not like that."

It is not much consolation right now.

I should have just gone and let her know I wanted her to come along but I would not wait. When I wanted to start a Ph.D., I should have refused to drop it as she wailed about the expense of school and her wish to stay rooted.

I sometimes feel that the jobs at several internet companies I was offered, including those very early on at CNET and a few with more business-oriented startups, would have greatly enriched us. Two of them had spectacular IPOs.

Why is this relevant now? Well, I have been thinking that perhaps not being in a better place with more money and a better life may have killed my baby. That process of thought has been stuck in my brain lately, those regrets and deep guilt teaming up on me as I consider my next moves in life.

I waver between keeping the faith and trying to find such opportunities again and simply going for the jugular on every opportunity I get, hurt to others be damned, ethics be forgotten.

Adding to this is a huge arbitration battle in the future over her death itself. I am a battler, and the only time she would become upset with me was when I would take up a crusade. There is no Mr. Nice Guy when I fight. I do not so much want to win as to thoroughly defeat, destroy and permanently debilitate my opponent.

I have never really lost when I have been in that coarse and mean mode, but I have had regrets. Cajoling and bashing at Kaiser for the best and most treatment worked, but was I even able to know about the best study medications at such a place?

Probably not. I wonder what I could have stomped around and, if not outright bought, strangled out of UCSD or John Hopkins. What could a few million have bought, and how fast would the problem have been detected? Would she be here making me some breakfast for dinner?

But then I come to the realization that my romantic proclivities got me into that regretful nostalgia. Do I really think that if I were involved with someone who loves me, the romantic side of me won't soften me too much to put my foot down?

Have no doubt that I will always have that romantic side to me. I write things about Marcie that will never see the pages of this blog. I have a chapbook full of innocent romantic notions that would make the most peurile and pedestrian poetasters sneer in contempt.

But I wonder if, barring the need for a soft heart (for a book tour and the writing of a book matched in tone with my love for her) and all those ethics and that whole purity business, I should not just seek every crappy dollar and crush anyone who stands in my way.

I have told a friend that the sun will likely set on romance as a guiding force in my life's decisions over the Atlantic as I watch from the Moroccan coast and the last of her ashes slips from my hands. Even my intended end to it sounds romantic.

More honestly, I am afraid that, should I ever fall so deeply in love again, I may not keep my eyes open and my will strong to tend to the opportunities that come my way. I don't want that to happen.

However, I acknowledge that I could find something enriching, or have one of my two provisional patents turn out to be valuable enough to secure whatever future I wish to have. Who knows? Maybe the book will be something with value in the market, not just my heart. I do intend to pursue higher degrees, regardless.

But if none of those pies in the sky are within reach, I want to start building up a pile of cash through more direct means. If I have to work in a field of relatively little appeal, or do it while stepping on people ruthlessly, then perhaps better late than never.

Perhaps I can join the scads of scum who redeem themselves with reviving that romance when they have had their fill, and somehow reconcile the moral body count and ethical boneyard in retrospect with some charitable grunts.

Then again, maybe Marcie would have left me long ago as my foot was down and I said I was going with or without her, or when I started leaving people in the lurch for a buck, or when I started applying my crusading ways to my business behavior.

For now, the only thing that has been strong check on me has been the memory of her stroking my face on her little hospital bed.

"You get so mad, honey, but you always do the right thing," she said. "You are such a pure soul. It just breaks my heart to think you'd change that."

And even if I have my thoughts, her voice is still so strong in my heart that I can't unleash my long-dormant predatory instincts. Honestly, though, I think a few more solid beat-downs, a few more paltry paychecks and a little more pain will "help."

New friend

Another new blogger and visitor has popped in. Teej, who commented here, then I ran into on Lana Banana's site, may be connected to this site and could be the author? Welcome, Teej. Let me know if it's your blog and I will put up a link.

A disservice

I have posted stridently about romance and love, and I have been very supportive of an idealistic look at such sentiments. I want to acknowledge the people this outlook potentially does disservice to.

To the people who have been badly hurt after being taken in by pretty words, I apologize. Not everyone is sincere, and there are many scoundrels cajoling and carousing in the pilfered cloth of troubadours.

Just listen to your heart, and if it hears something wrongly, run away.

To the people who have honestly lost faith and settled, or have found some lusterless lifelong relationship in the mundane and unloving safety of someone familiar, I apologize. It is your choice to comfort yourself how you choose in this ugly world.

Refuge can be more important than comfort, and much more accessible. But settle well.

To those who have had their fill of romance and decided that more of it is far too much, no matter how little more there might be for you, I apologize. I understand you completely and I have been there with you. Romance is a burden.

It can be easier to appreciate what we have had and pursue something less taxing.

To the people who have spent so much of their lives in love and dedicated to it that they have forgone great things and feel the burden of lost opportunity, I apologize. You do not need my notions and insistence in them to coax you into further sacrifice.

Remember opportunity has its place, and true love should make room for it either way.

To those who have suffered as that great devotion was severed or stripped from them-their careful, loving ministrations spent on a phantom-I apologize. How can I, knowing what you have been through, call you jaded or cynical when you evade it?

We who truly love have a secret knowledge of its cost in this vapid, nasty world.

It is all I can do to advocate some try to adhere to romance and some basic code of the heart. But before I let everyone know where, after my duty to Marcie is discharged, I will focus my efforts, I wanted to cut some slack.

I'll likely need some, too. On all counts.

Running on empty

As everyone who has read my archives knows, I took care of Marcie constantly from the day she needed help, months before she was bedridden, to the horrible moment itself. It was not just tough on the heart, it was tough on the body.

Before Marcie fell ill, I had rediscovered and reawakened to surfing. Nothing was more relaxing than a long ride on a wave, and I did not care if it was on a fish, a longboard, or a bodyboard. That is, until I saw how much fish and longboards cost.

I may never return to it, or I may flee back into it as the water warms and the gently rocking waves urge me to relax in the cool womb of the Pacific. I just don't know. I do know that when things were very tough, a precious few hours in the water recharged me.

Marcie was not a beach person. But as for my surfing, she loved it and told me how much she enjoyed how very "attentive" to her I was after long session in the waves and a shower.

In time, as her needs grew, such hours were scarce. I managed to squeak a few in here and there, quickly stolen moments of forgetting, all taken before worry and panic drove me back to her.

When she was bedridden, I was relieved to the beach only when a friend or family member showed. Usually, I did not want to leave anyways. I needed to find a new way to exercise. It was critical.

I gained weight after a near-death experience of my own. Due to a careless antibiotic prescription, I swelled and broke out in hives (I am deathly allergic to pnicillin and cephalosporins). I was placed on steroids.

I bloated like a balloon and hit 260 pounds. I began running.

I did not notice at first, but I slowly began to pare the weight off. I would run until I could not, then walk back. It was not far at first, perhaps a mile. Soon it was two, around Morley Field. Then three, around my neighborhood, on flatter ground.

As much as I hated it at first, I forced myself to run. To keep me running, I would thing of the last swallowed tear or the last indignity she suffered. It would drive me on a bit.

I came to run whenever I needed to cry but she needed me to be strong. The salty tears mingled with my sweat and gave me a camouflage of sorts.

Sometimes I ran very far, especially when there was much I had been trying to help her with or that had gone awry with her or our lives in general. Sometimes I ran home spooked, needing to check on her, touch her, kiss her.

I ran to stay alive and to feel as if I was taking care of myself as I cared for her. I ran to try to control my rage as nurses and doctors gave us little more than pitying nods and platitudes. These, too, urged my feet to move.

I ran because it was time for fight or flight, and all the fight I had was not saving her. Flight would not, either. But through it, I could leave the pain of my everyday existence and punish my body until its pain replaced the heaviness, the ache, in my heart.

I still do. It still does. It takes longer to replace the ache, though.

I may never return to surfing, even though I can get a board tomorrow, and a wetsuit, and just get on it. I tried to recently, but it brings back memories of her in our better times, and there is no loving redhead who is happy to see me when I go home.

And in a very acute way, that she was not there became very painful when I stepped out of the shower in that post-session stoke. There was no kiss and warm hug or cuddle on the couch for me, just my head and a beautiful picture of her, and her ashes and candles to light.

I know I will keep running until I run out of pain, until I run out of reason and I run out of time. I still have plenty of all of those, and memories of that time make me want to run away.

For now, I am content to run five or so miles, local and well-traveled. Someday, as is my wont, I will run and not stop until I have a reason to and a place to give that reason context.

Maybe that place will be someplace to surf. Maybe it will be a better place to run.

But maybe I will simply run out of time before I run out of pain and reason.

Keeping the faith

I am by no means a slow person. I tend to be actually rather quick on the uptake, according to most people I know. But something I was apparently well behind the curve on was Marcie's imminent demise.

Marcie's illness had been on a progressive-regressive loop. She would improve greatly over a long period of time, then she would lose a little ground or suffer a setback.

At the time she became bedridden for good, Marcie was prepared to have a little extra help around the house in the form of hospice nurses, as palliative care with our provider meant "waiting for about six weeks."

So, when her last setback came, I focused on her recovery. I stood alone on that ground until the end.

She had had her medication adjusted the night before and she was feeling good. She had some energy. Jane was on the way to see her the next morning, which we were both greatly looking forward to. Jane visiting was always an immense bolster to Marcie.

When she woke on her birthday, and I did as well, she asked for help. She could not raise herself from the bed. Her speech was slurred. I will not further detail that day's pain for now.

By the end of it, she was in a nursing home, I was being assured that the home would help her convalesce, including recuperation of her to an ambulatory state, and her medication had been changed again.

Just one of many changed, though. It drew my eye that it was the same one which had been changed the night before. That change was never explained to me.

I was foolish enough to believe the nurses and staff at the hospital would help her walk again. I was very wrong.

The first visit to her in the nursing home, after a drive up in an ambulance the day before, was horrible. It was only the next day, and she already was being neglected.

She had not been changed, an ignominious offense to her that I immediately remedied. It was only just more horrible that she had not been tended to in such an important and basic way than the fact that now she needed to be changed at all.

I read her chart. No Range of motion exercises had been done. None had been ordered by the doctor, the nurses explained.

I performed them for her, stretching her legs and toes, moving them back and forth, massaging them gently as she watched, occasionally smiling, tired. It took a lot of energy, but she tried. She did not want to, but did it for me.

The following day, I received a call from her oncologist, who expressed shock that she was in the nursing home at all.

"My god," he said. "I don't understand. Her radiology came back and all of her brain metastases have reduced in size 'markedly,' according to the report on the MRI."

This was hope. I expressed his thoughts to Marcie, who smiled a little, weakly, and demanded that I haul away all of her birthday belongings. She allowed to give her range of motion exercises and I swore to get her home.

Jane had to go back to San Francisco, but she had provided me with some comforting food and immeasurable moral and physical support. She had also given Marcie compassionate and beloved company in frightening times. She would return.

When Marcie was finally able to come home, Kaiser said that she would not be on her feet again. I was incensed. I checked her chart, and she had not received a single day's range of motion exercise from the nursing home. But she was headed home.

After I fought Kaiser to first provide everything she would need, from a hospital bed to a transfer chair for her shower and a commode, she was brought to the house by an ambulance. She was so tired.

At least she was in my care again. I did range of motion every day. Her nurse and other support staff came by when they were scheduled or after I repeatedly demanded it. But they were not enthusiastic about it.

They weren't alone.

I noticed the rituals beginning around me. When her mother visited, there were sympathetic smiles and silent strokes of Marcie's hand, no discussion or speaking. When others visited, they either whispered or did nothing but look down at her grimly.

I never surrendered her. Every day was encouraging words, range of motion exercises and constant skin care and love. Every two hours saw me rise from bed to shift her weight a bit and prevent bed sores.

She never developed a sore after the red, nasty, open welt of one she came home with from the monstrously negligent warehouse-as-nursing-home in Poway was eradicated. Her skin was constantly massaged and tended to.

I noticed that the nurses were not performing range of motion for her and asked why. One nurse said that I should probably continue it, but it was really not in her orders. Another said she was only for skin care and vitals, or changes.

The nurse started giving me the, "you know that she is pretty close now..." speech. I knew the speech well. I ignored it and kept working, feeding, cleaning, loving and tending to, hoping and straining for my woman.

The social worker started prodding me to read the "blue book," of how to care for one's loved one and understand dying from their perspective. I already understood and refused to further fall back on my hope for her.

I do not know who it was or how it came to be discussed with Marcie, but one night, upon my return from work and after her family had left, she took my hand and squeezed with all her might.

"I don't want to suffer, honey, okay?" she asked, slurring her words as tears slid down from the corners of her eyes. "Please, don't make them revive me if I die."

I knew Marcie's wished to not be revived very well, and I felt tears on my own face as I quietly asked "Why would you suffer?"

"Because you want to make me live and she thinks you'll keep me alive if I start to die," she said, biting her lip. "Please don't?"

"Ohhhh, honey, I won't make you suffer," I said. "I promised you that. Don't believe them."

"Okay, honey," she said, trying to enunciate. "I trust you, okay. But I'm afraid."

I enveloped her on the bed, carefully hugging her as she laid there until I heard her breathing slow and go regular, felt her little heart slow and the pounding of some horrible fear grow softer. She slept and I tucked her in.

I was afraid, too. She never saw a nurse unless I was there with her after that.

I did not have time to find out who had said such horrible things to her. Her condition changed and she started falling ill of pneumonia shortly after that day.

The county burned around us and I was ordered home by the school district because of the fires. Schools were shuttered.

I focused on connecting to Marcie whenever I could. The slightest stir in her bed brought me out to her and had me holding her hand.

Every word and every recognition of me as I spilled my love over her was a little moment of peace or comfort.

I hid my trepidation, but my heart was already in ashes, and the wildfires outside rained little echoes of my agony across the map as she faded.

I accepted the possibility but not the inevitability of her death in time. But when it came, I was still unprepared.

I knew when she did depart that I had been there to the end in the faith of her potential renewal, and I stood alone only because she, the last to leave, had no choice to make that would let her stay.

To that last breath on the 29th of October, I had held hope only for her to be my wife, whole and walking, loved and loving, smiling and vibrant, again.

It was better to feel the full brunt of the pain and loss at once. I saw the people around me surrender her. Some, family and friends, did so with little choice.

Others let her go with little honest effort otherwise. To this day, I cannot help but remember how fast those paid to aid us seemed focused on her remaining time and how much more she had, as opposed to how much more she could have.

But what evicts their dark shadow from my memory of that small part of our journey together is the support of our loved ones, her loving touch and the occasional moments of clarity, which we spent sharing our love and healing our last wounds.

We had a chance, and we did everything we could to make it matter. We succeeded in some ways more than others, especially where honoring her, us and our love was concerned.

I hope that some of that honor will be reflected in this, and my future, work.

F.

The cat visits: Making the rounds for Marcie

Marcie enjoyed walking all over our neighborhood and even in Kensington from time to time. She loved the shady passages, old Craftsman homes and the winding, calm roads.

But truth be told, she was in it for the cats.

Our neighborhood is overflowing with cats of all shapes and sizes, colors and patterns. Marcie loved nothing more than to find a new feline friend to play with for a few minutes. The kitties definitely were beguiled, to the very last one.

A particular week of chemotherapy had been very rough on Marcie, and she was pretty exhausted. She looked at me as I prepared for a quick run.

"I wish I could see my kitty friends, but I am just too tired to for a walk today," she said.

I decided a quick run was not the best exercise and, before I left, grabbed my cheap little Emprex camera. I walked the neighborhood far and wide, and I snapped some pictures of her friends.

Cheap or not, the camera had a nice camera-to-rca cable to let me show her the shots on the television.

I caught two of her favorites one day, both "Tuxedo kitties" as she called them. I also snapped a few shots from "creaky kitty" I would learn as she named them all.

Then while preparing for a run at Morley Field, I spied a familiar gray form. The cat looked like the Stoddard's kitty Samantha, who had passed. I took one of her and her friend, which Marcie dubbed "the creamsicle kitty."


What I showed Marcie, (Also featuring Seamus)


She enjoyed her show and was fascinated by the Sam clone and the "creamsicle" cat. But all was not perfect by any means.

I did not capture one very important kitty with my lens, and soon Marcie was asking me to go see her. Cavinia, the last neighborhood kitty Marcie went for a visit to.

The places of our early love (pt 2) Cortez Hill

At our little apartment, 1573 Ninth Ave, Marcie and I began our life together. The old building was put up in the 1920s as a boarding house behind the main apartments. Behind that were old vacation bungalows converted into cottages.

They were the old San Diego's "No-Tell Motels." Stars, politicians, executives and their extramarital partners and the occasional honeymooner stayed in them back then.

The whole neighborhood stank of decay in 1993. There was a former Denny's, sometimes open as the "Spice house," usually not under stable management or ownership for more than a year at a time.

Nonetheless, our little home was architecturally interesting. Did you say you'd like a tour? Enjoy:



With her receipt of $6,000 from the Casa Arleda relocation settlement, plus the rent she had saved by not having to pay for some 8 months before that, Marcie had gathered quite a nest egg.

She needed it. CVS, her employer at the time, had decided to close its mall stores. Sav-on was buying others and hiring away some of the employees, but Marcie and I had no car and she could not reach the new location in La Jolla.

The store finally closed.

"I think I am going to take some time off," she said. "But I am going to look for a job that I want, and it's not going to be retail."

I smiled and kissed her cheek as X Files played on the television, back then a mutual obsession. She smiled and I remember now thinking that my silent support was just what she wanted to hear.

Marcie took some time off, but she found a job at the Union-Tribune as a customer service representative for subscribers. She still had quite a nest egg. She decided, one year after she had been laid off, six months into her new job, how to use it.

"Honey, I am going back to Paris next winter," she said. "Thats going to be my first vacation.

She said it as she rocked on her feet a little, happy and waiting for questions as she smiled.

I could only smile. I had hoped she would want to indulge in travel before she went back to work, but she had been prudent and had wanted to have a job first.

It was a very happy day in our little home.

The promise of honor

Compliments complement. Nothing we do in love becomes worse with a compliment, everything is just made better. But sometimes, I know the tendency is to let them slow or stop, or to be used as bandages when we wound each other.

Marcie and I served each other compliments constantly. Some were too much. My head would swell when she called me a genius, her handsome man or, most preciously to me of all, her hero.

She was better at it sooner than I was, but I am very glad she taught me to be free and direct with them.

The issue really came up in Humboldt. I was under constant stress, working after a full load at school every day, full time, and trying to find little gestures for Marcie to enjoy her life more in Arcata.

I was also a reporter who took his work on the community page of the school paper very seriously. I was neglecting her. One night, she just broke down.

"Frank, I don't even know why I am here," she said. "I hate this place, I hate the hippies and the rain and the cold. I hate my job, I hate how far it is to the city, and I feel like you don't even acknowledge me anymore."

She burst into tears and I remember holding her as she cried on our old green couch, whispering my love to her.

"You don't tell me anything anymore," she said. "We have sex and you don't talk to me, you don't say nice things to me, you just take me for granted and I'm too scared to complain because you're so happy here."

"I don't know why you are just soo distant from me now," she said, wracked by hitches and moans.

I was crestfallen. I had no idea how it had come to this. I remembered how I had spent the morning admiring her as she prepared for work, watching her from the bathroom doorway that morning.

I loved watching her put on her makeup. But I most enjoyed watching her put on her clothes in the soft twilight, her nude form silhouetted by the light in the bathroom, the smell of her lotion my own little alarm clock.

Then it struck me. I had become caught up in my own head. I thought about how hot Marcie was, and I thought about how good she was to me, but I was just not saying it.

Marcie always told me how sweet I was, how good I looked dressed up and how proud she was of me. I was ashamed.

I promised to improve, and I did. At first, she thought that it would pass. But I added little bunches of hand-picked flowers from the roadside and my long hikes in the woods and fields, just because.

I would always try to pick a flower or two with a special connection in my head to her.

"This bunch is for your red hair and your white skin," I said once, holding a bunch of what I did not know was a rare lily in Humboldt County. "It captures my eyes and makes me want to lean over and inhale you."

They were corny but honest, and with them and a conscious effort, I slowly moved my thoughts into words. Now it is habit.

From time to time, when I grew slack in my attentions, I would revive them with an occasion, not noting them but simply reinstating my conscious will to honor her.

She noticed last year the difference and as we cleared our hearts of all our pains and all our unsaid things, she told me about it.

"You have never stopped telling em how you love me, how beautiful I am to you and how happy I have made you and bearable I make the world for you," she said. "I always thought you would just need to be reminded from time to time."

I nodded and kissed her tears as they welled up and slid down her pale cheeks. I was dying inside.

"You have never stopped telling me, not since we had our talk in Humboldt," she said. "Do you remember our talk?"

I nodded and held her close. I whispered to her that I would never stop telling her all of the things she deserved to hear. She wound my fingers with hers, squeezing and massaging them between her own.

My last compliment to Marcie was how good she smelled with her lotions and creams after I had sponge-bathed her on her little hospital bed. I kissed her and she smiled and nodded, mouthed a thank you and rested. She never awoke.

That I kept my promise was the first soothing realization I came to when some of my pain passed, but that it was no longer possible to keep holding up was the most painful one I had to acknowledge with it, despite the honor I pay her here.

I never took her for granted, and I know I never will.

The places of our early love (pt 1) Casa Arleda

When we met, Marcie lived in one of the coolest old buildings in the Banker's Hill area. Cool in the sense that its architecture was distinct, its design discernibly grander than other old apartments and its decay utter and to the bone. Casa Arleda.


Casa Arleda, previously a drab off-white decaying hulk. Now in more color and higher rent brackets, and offering less entertaining drama, I am sure

Marcie had moved within the building once before I met her. While renting that unit, a pipe burst in her closet, soaking and ruining much of her clothing with rust-loaded, yellow water. She was able to recoup the loss from the building's insurance, and she moved to another studio.

Within months of that move, the building came under assault by the Health Department for innumerable complaints. Rent was suspended because of the landlords' inability to resolve its legally unlivable state. Crack heads literally roamed the halls. It looked it. Badly.

One of the aforementioned rock cocaine and/or amphetamine aficionados took it upon himself to steal cable from the elevator. He failed. He failed rather spectacularly, too.

Apparently not thinking before hacksawing, he was still working when the elevator cables snapped and he hurtled atop the old thing two full floors into the basement. He smashed his face on the edge of the roof hatch with the impact before falling through, limp, into the elevator's graffiti-splashed interior.

He lived to tell the story to me one day as I tried the elevator button. He had a long, face-spanning scab and two bad split lips. I believed him, and he was more explanatory than apologetic.

The landlord hired a security guard who apparently took over the drug trade. It was funny in its own grim, sordid way.

Marcie thrived, though. She was loved by everyone there, from the man she called "My tweaker next-door neighbor gay friend," to "The little boy with a crush on me whose mother is a freelance clown in Balboa Park." Seriously.

Whenever I visited, we had breakfast and walked out to her little third-floor hallway bay windows, which always triggered some paranoid looks through peepholes and occasionally sudden door openings.


Here was the place I would look up at when I came to her in the night, and the balcony we smoked overlooking the city on. Until someone stole the intercom system, Marcie would buzz me in. Usually, though, the gate was propped open.

But it mattered little. We looked out over the bay and the city south of us and simply lived in our little love spell. When eventually the place was shuttered, each tenant received $6,000. Marcie began looking for her new place weeks before.

Marcie and I moved in together when she left Casa Arleda. I will admit that it was not a long time between the day we met and the day we took up residence together, but it was also true that our motivation to do so was purely lust and love. But we dressed it up well.

But Marcie did have an excuse to dispel my romantic notions, indeed. Far be it from her to admit sentiment over practicality.

When she asked if I wanted to move in with her, I pretended it was not on my mind at all, pride besting both my growing need for her and our relationship's honesty for the moment.

"Oh, Jesus, Frank," I remember her saying. "Do you really need to live in a little hotel room downtown when we are sleeping together every night anyways? It's so stupid. It's a total waste of money."

I held out for four hours and whispered in her bed, panting and stroking her back and butt. "You know, you're right," I said. "It does seem like a waste of money."

I was rewarded with her happy snort, a drawn-out, delighted "hee hee hee," a happy kiss on the mouth and her quick dismount to the shower.

I suddenly realized we had both been playing it cool. But I was happy, because it was a great thing to know that she was as smitten as me. I joined her in the shower.

I moved in my meager possessions, books, textbooks, clothes, a computer and some utensils, the next day. It was my best move ever.