I came out of 2013 a bit shaken, what with having received news of three friends' passing all within a week near the end of the year, specifically around Thanksgiving. As with all New Years, I hoped 2014 would be better. And so it goes....
January
The year took off to a white, wintry start. We all were assaulted not only with snow and bitter cold, but a new term: "Polar Vortex." No longer is it an "Arctic blast," or just plain "winter," but a "Polar Vortex" to make the weather forecasters sound cool, and the rest of us to sound like idiots.
February
Aside from the unusual temperatures, winter was business as usual for me in the taxi; the worse the weather (especially falling snow), the better the money, though the money was never actually good. Better than crap is better, not necessarily good. The month's take on the Polar Vortex did bring me at least one spectacular sight...
Parhelion, a.k.a. Sun Dog, February 9, 2014
March
Just more treading water. Nothing of note occurred that I can recall.
April
Early in the month I finally gave up on someone I had considered a friend for about a year prior. I realized that while I endeavored to be a friend to her, she put in no such effort and merely used me. Call it a hero complex, but I had convinced myself that I could coach her through the steps she needed to take to reverse the death spiral that her alcohol problem had set into motion. But, alas, the most important person who needed to believe in her chose instead to stay nestled in the dubious comfort of a bottle, and in the company of those who were happy to keep her drunk. I will confess a physical attraction in addition to the instinct to save, but that only served to make more difficult the decision to break away.
The end of the month was also a time of anxiety, as my sister, Marie, was diagnosed on the 29th with adenocarcinoma of the lung, stage 4. She was admitted to the hospital almost immediately and began her battery of chemotherapy. Her prognosis was not good, but there was a chance she could beat it. She wanted to to try.
May
In the following two or three weeks, Marie suffered a mild stroke. Doctors said it was due to a disorder that caused her blood to thicken.
Marie was in the supposedly capable hands of her doctors, and was being nurtured nearly 24/7 by her sons, so, at mid-month, I decided to go ahead with a long-desired road trip to North Carolina.
Seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway, somewhere in North Carolina, May 19, 2014.
Down through Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and the Appalachians into North Carolina, and then back up through Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, and Kentucky, I took what felt like a thousand photos and spent way too few hours with friends whose hospitality seemed boundless. During the trip I received word that Marie had suffered a second stroke. Despite her doctors' words to the contrary, her strokes seemed to be direct results of her chemotherapy, as each had occurred shortly after a chemo treatment. Where the first seemed to have momentarily knocked her silly, the second one took a clearer toll, affecting her speech and her vision. An attending neurologist saw months of rehab in her future.
June
Not long home after the road trip, I received news on June 9 that an Air Force friend, Scott Aubuchon, had died suddenly in his home in Rogers, Arkansas. He had only four months prior celebrated his 50th birthday, and had only three months prior married his love, Jennifer. Plans were made hastily and, at the end of the week, I embarked on my second road trip in as many months, this time for the solemn occasion of Scott's funeral.
During the drive home I received a text from Ed, Marie's elder son, that Marie had opted out of any further treatments, out of any further attempt to save her life. She was going to be moved within a day or two to a hospice facility. She was going to die. I drove on through a blur of tears and decided that I was done planning for some day in the distant future when I would have all of my bills paid and enough money saved and my retirement planned. I accepted in those moments that I will never have all of those things. The last five years of my life have destroyed any serious hope I may have had about retirement. I will work pretty much until the day I die or — much like my father did — until the day my body finally gives out. Until that day, I am going to seize every opportunity I can to do the things I want to do and go see the places I want to see, because we are not promised tomorrow, and waiting to do or to go until the time is just right only postpones them indefinitely because the time is never right. Marie had a pleasant retirement planned, just a few years ahead of her. She was waiting until the time was right to sell her house and move into a quiet retirement community, and to make a trip to Italy, a place she had wanted to visit all of her life.
Marie died on June 18th. She was 59.
July
Her passing was, in retrospect, like a switch was flipped on my life. Of the many things I want to do, writing and acting are two of them, and the taxi job was sucking the time away from those and just about every other activity I was interested in. A change had to be made, but quitting the taxi — rather, firing myself from the taxi — and collecting unemployment for six months seemed foolish on the boundary of madness. But then I received an e-mail in response to a résumé I had sent — apparently — a month or so earlier. Long story short, I received and accepted a job offer at HR Imaging Partners to be a school portraits photographer.
But the job was only part-time, and they assured me that the fall semester rush would slow down by mid-October, and I would be hurting for work. I shut down the taxi on July 11 and started at HRI on the 14th.
On the 26th, after a surprise Facebook message — an invitation to a Meetup.com event — from a woman I had found interesting and with whom I had traded comments only a few times, I went to the Northwest Suburban Atheists meetup in Cary, Illinois. By night's end she and I had a date set for dinner later in the week! The Wednesday evening dinner at her apartment went well and before I knew it I had a girlfriend!
August
Just two days later I left for my third road trip of the year, to the Third Annual Wüschheim Air Station reunion, in Las Vegas. It was a trip I had all but decided I couldn't do, but, thanks to the epiphany I had on the road home from Arkansas, I did.
September
On the weekend of my birthday, September 5, Donna treated me to a very nice birthday weekend, with dinner at Bistrot Margot and a late night comedy show followed by drinks, all in Old Town. Niece Ashley and her hubby Steve joined us. Then we spent the night at the W hotel downtown, riding on niece Katie's employee discount, after which we spent Saturday afternoon sightseeing, and the evening at my monthly karaoke do! It was a fantastic weekend!
Later in the month I was cast in Northeastern Illinois University's production of Christopher Durang's Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, without auditioning. It's good to be on a director's short list!
October
was a blur mainly of intensifying play rehearsals and weekends with Donna, with season 5 episodes of The Walking Dead sprinkled in there for variety.
November
As October tilted toward November, I saw the HRI gigs drying up. My option with HRI was to jump into sports and event candids, but that entailed weekends and evenings almost exclusively, and that was absolutely out of the question. One long evening of frantic Craigslist ad browsing and responding yielded an interview with HealthPark Hospitality for a job as a valet. The job paid shit, but they offered an agreeable schedule — day shift, 40 hours. It was the easiest interview I ever had in my life, almost as though they were looking just to see if I would show up! I turned in my notice at HRI to end on November 7, started training with HealthPark on November 10, and started full-time at Northwest Community Hospital, Entrance 2, on November 17. It is surprisingly a fun job, not difficult at all and, best of all, allows me the time once again to do the things I want to do! ...like acting. Why Torture Is Wrong... opened its seven-performance run on the Thursday before Thanksgiving.
December
The last month of 2014 was another blur of work and play. THE play, to be specific; it closed on the first weekend of the month. Weekends were with Donna, in what has become the usual. She is a smart, sensitive, sensual, beautiful woman with a soft voice and a passion for wine and a love of cooking! We settled in to each other very quickly, and our time together is usually spent cuddling, laughing, and watching movies. I have never found easier talking to a woman, and her laugh is unrestrained and delicious.
So 2014 was indeed a doozy of a year! Despite the losses of people I loved, I think I got my brain turned around the right way, and my world turned upside down in the best way. I can only hope the trend continues into 2015.
But I ain't holding my breath.
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1 comment:
An excellent recap. We enjoyed seeing you in NC this summer.
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