Rushing's Ramblings

It had been snowing fiercely all day long in Bangor in the mid-'80s when I got in line for a trip on the little commuter plane heading for Boston. Standing in front of me was Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite author. I met him at a book signing in Boston a few years back. Not surprisingly, satire is my favorite literary genre. I re-read all of Twain's works as an adult and loved every word. If you haven't read Twain as an adult, I invite you to go down that road again. You will discover satirical nuances lost to you as a child in his works. After revisiting Twain, I devoured the works of Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. When I asked Vonnegut which of his books gave him the greatest pleasure to write, I expected to hear  Slaughterhouse-Five ;  instead, it was  The Sirens of Titan . He autographed a few of his books for me, and I merrily went on my way. As I stood behind Vonnegut waiting for a boarding pass, it was announced that this would be the last flight out of Bangor for the day due

Jack was the love of my life.  Sure, I've loved others, including two other 'Jacks,' but the depth of love I felt for him was unparalleled. We met for lunch.  He wasn't a handsome man by any stretch of the imaginatshoneintelligence and wit came shining through.  I still wasn't convinced I wanted to see him for a 'real' first date.  He was very persistent and called me a few hours after our meeting.  He had arranged deep-sea fishing for us the following Saturday.  It was impressive that he arranged such an unusual first date.  I agreed to see him again. He told me he was a recent widower, as his wife had died just a few months earlier.  When I expressed surprise that he was ready to date so quickly, he explained she had been battling cancer for ten years.  He felt he had been grieving for a long time. Yet, even a few months seemed like too short of a time to start dating again, and a red flag arose.  It was much later I learned she had died only thre

My father had been declining a little every year since he was around age 85. Heck, truth be told, we all decline a little every year, beginning at birth. He was almost deaf and refused to buy costly hearing aids, settling for ones he could not hear out of and only magnified what he didn't want to hear. For the last few years of his life, he would sit at the end of the couch and watch the action around him when the family gathered at my parent's house. He was unable to participate in any meaningful conversation. Oh, he would always pray before the food was served. Before he gave the prayer, he would usually praise my mother for taking care of him. He wanted everyone to know that he acknowledged her hard work and appreciated her. When I visited, about 3 times a year due to living and working in South Florida, he would tell me how his head felt 'fuzzy' and how annoying it was. He'd ask me what I thought caused this. I'd usually tell him it could be small strokes or

She's a little girl, around age 10, sitting alone on the porch of the people's house next door. I saw her playing yesterday with one or two of the numerous feral cats around here. She looked lonely this morning. It suddenly occurred to me how lonely my daughter must have felt growing up, the only child of a single mother. It is a painful realization. She's here visiting with her parents. Her father has stayed inside most of the time, but her mother has come out of the house twice to watch her daughter in the swimming pool while she reads. I remembered the many times I would accompany my daughter to the playground and let her play on the equipment. At the same time, I watched from a distance and rested. I'm sure most parents relive how they raised their children and are filled with varying degrees of regret. At least I'm guilty of that kind of unproductive thinking. I wished I hadn't worked so hard by often coming home too stressed out to give my daughter the att

"Ours is a pure love," he explained after I asked him if they were planning to get married,  "One day, we will be allowed to marry.  But until then, we will still be together.  I will take care of her forever." My husband, a lawyer, had represented the partner of the man mentioned above to ensure that she received a fair hearing in Mental Illness Court.  People were brought to a particular holding area in the Dallas Courthouse until the hearing was conducted.  They had been deemed by their families or by police to be potentially harmful to themselves or others due to a mental illness.  I was a caseworker for the court, recently having received a master's degree in psychology.  My job was to find community resources to prevent a 90-day commitment to a state institution for the mentally ill.  Sometimes, I could not find adequate help for those suffering from severe hallucinations and/or delusions.  Often, those with severe mental illness were unable to care f

Gary's been gone from this world for almost 17 years now, yet the memory of him sometimes blows by like a puff of wind. Little things sometimes remind you of the people who once meant something to you. I met him shortly after I had started living with Marcy's Dad, Jack, and long before we started a family. He and another friend of Jack's, Tommy, had been in Saudi Arabia for a year with a construction company. It was a 12-month assignment that paid them big bucks. Both had been in Vietnam, had no formal education, and had yet to get married. Gary had been a sniper in Vietnam and still carried that same courage and confidence with him everywhere. I suppose once you've been in a tree, precision shooting at Viet Cong coming at you from everywhere, nothing scares you anymore. Jack's friends were hard-driving, fast-talking young men. Their shared passion was motocross. Jack wasn't very good at it, but they were terrific. Gary and Tommy were invincible. My soft-spoken

I don't know about you, but I think it might be cancer when I've had stomach problems for a few days or a severe headache for several hours. The tummy soon feels better, the headache goes away, and you realize you've been a bit of a hypochondriac.  Over 500,000 people in the U.S. die of cancer each year. Approximately 40% of us will have a cancer diagnosis at some point. People living beyond their cancer diagnosis are increasing substantially every year. The latest statistics indicate that 14.5 million people live beyond a cancer diagnosis. It is expected to rise to 19 million by 2024. 171 individuals out of 100,000 die of cancer each year.  It took me a few years to decide I wanted to have a baby. It was a relief to finally be through working nights and going to college during the day to finally get a master's degree. And...I was soon launched into a professional job, making a decent wage and working only during the week. I had only been married a couple of years to my

When I tell you that it's incredible that I'm still alive, you can believe it. We lived in a remote part of the Texas Panhandle. I started drinking when I was around age 17...mostly to put me in a fog during the weeknights because of my troubled home life but also because I enjoyed partying with friends on the weekend. Reading, church, and school activities weren't enough for me.  I loved everything about drinking, from the wooziness you felt just as the effects of alcohol were starting to wash over you to the time before too much drinking would make you nauseous.  When you got to the part where you were throwing up, it wasn't fun anymore.  It took a lot of practice to know how to pace yourself to not end up with your head hanging over the toilet. As a child, I lived in a very strict household where Christianity was used as an excuse to control every move we tried to make.  We weren't allowed to swim with the opposite sex, nor were we allowed to go to dances. On

  At one time, he was a cardiothoracic surgeon at the hospital where I worked until my retirement almost two years ago.  We met at a Seattle coffee shop a month after my retirement.  He practiced at my hospital before I started working there, so I never knew him.  However, we know the same people, and there's a level of comfort when you meet someone who with friends in common.   We went out a few times, but he was a bit conflicted about a woman he was dating off and on.  I figured one can't have enough friends.  Besides, I was new to the area and needed to make new friends.  It was a tough adjustment to leave close friends whom I had known for many years, travel across the country, and live in a completely different environment (think months of no sun and constant drizzle).  My Dad died shortly after we met, and the circumstances surrounding his death were difficult for me to come to grips with.  Additionally, driving in Seattle was almost impossible due to horrible traffic jam

Martin Luther's break from the Catholic Church in the early 1500s is viewed by many as the catalyst for the Reformation Movement and the growth of Protestant religions.  As a monk, priest, and scholar, he became incensed that the Catholic Church would sell indulgences (freedom from God's punishment for sin) to raise money to support the Church. Luther also felt that the Bible needed to be translated into German so that ordinary people could read and understand the Bible themselves.  He accomplished this feat along with others doing the same in English.  He was excommunicated for his beliefs, but that didn't stop him from forming his own vast group of believers while writing volumes related to his interpretation of the Bible. Of course, as with anyone, his beliefs went through his own filters of biases and personal experiences. Luther's teachings resulted in a violent peasant uprising.  They wanted wealth redistributed, as many of them were starving. Luther spoke out