This is simply one of the best rock concerts I’ve ever heard. How The West Was Won is Led Zeppelin at their very best. The concert is flawless, and the band shows off an incredible range of music from driving vocals and guitar, to an amazing drum solo.
Rating: If you love rock-n-roll you owe it to yourself to get this CD.
Rating: Good, but not great
For some weeks now I have been worried about one of my cats. Having one of the two beings I feel closest too potentially be ill was more than I could handle. I tried to ignore the symptoms hoping against hope that they would go away on their own. The primary symptom was retching and occasionally throwing up undigested food. Sometimes this would happen two or three times in a single day. A friend at work suggested I try one of the sensitive stomach cat foods available at the pet store.
Switching their food doesn’t seem to have helped. I’m still coming home to little surprises. Now that I have set down a large part of the emotional burden I’ve been carrying for the past few months I am ready to tackle this problem. And, as luck would have it, I was presented with a major clue today when I got home.
A hair ball.
This is the first hair ball that any of my cats has ever produced. I’ve had cats for nearly ten years now and never had to deal with this particular issue. Nekko, the older cat and the one who has been retching all spring, has a very thick, almost pelt like fur. When Michele was alive she would comb Nekko regularly to remove the matted hair that collected. Even through Nekko is a short-hair cat, it wasn’t unusual to collect a handful of fur from a combing. Nekko used to jump up on the desk in front of Michele to get ear rubs and she would tolerate combing at that time. Since Michele’s death, however, Nekko has not gotten on to the desk at all. Once or twice I have lifted her up to her former perch to show her it was okay, but she gets down immediately and shows no interest in returning.
Consequently she has not been brushed since last October. With the onset of spring I’m sure that she has been shedding her winter coat and all of that spare hair has been collecting in her pelt. Her bathing has resulted in a large amount of hair in her digestive tract and hence the retching. Obviously I need to find a way to comb her without traumatizing her. She hates to be picked up and held and will reward me with a day or more of hiding when I do hold her. The one place she lays that I can reach her is on the back of the easy chair.
This afternoon, after cleaning up the deposit, I sat in the chair, comb in hand, waiting for her to join me. After a few minutes she did, and to my amazement allowed herself to be combed. Some of her fur was so matted the comb got stuck and I could tell it was hard for her to sit still. In the end, after ten minutes work, I had collected a huge pile of hair. Even compressed it was golf ball sized. Hopefully this will see a reduction in her retching. I plan on doing this at least weekly from here on out.
Now if I could just figure out how to get her to bury the smellier deposits in the litter box…
Yesterday as I drove away from my parent’s house (I guess my Dad’s house now) I was struck with a powerful feeling of home-sickness. For the first half of the six-hour drive I debated with myself about whether I should stay in Kansas or try to return to Illinois. The house was filled with people Saturday; cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. It was good to be a part of the gathering. Living away from everyone else is hard at times and rewarding at other times.
Having said goodbye to my Mom on Saturday made the distance seem even greater and I was hard pressed to not turn around and run home again. With Michele gone I really have no one in my life here now. I get social contact with my workmates, and I talk on the phone and computer to good friends around the country, but I am really alone most of the time. I know that even if I lived in central Illinois or up in Chicago that I would only have brief weekend visits with my family; my day-to-day life would be the same as it is here. Still it is harder today than ever to remain this far away from my family.
I like where I live in terms of the city and it’s atmosphere. As I let myself participate in more activities here (like kendo) I will continue to feel more at home in this new place. For the most part my work is rewarding, although not without stress. (Hey, it wouldn’t be work if they didn’t have to pay you to do it, right?) I feel as if I am at the tipping point of living here. I’ve been here only a short time (less than two years) so it would be easy to let go of Kansas City and move. However, I’ve established new patterns and new friendships that I would lose in a move and so staying builds on a good investment.
The emotions, expressed and unexpressed, from this past weekend and indeed the past year or two, need to be sorted out and understood before I can make a choice about what to do with the next part of my life. It would be easy to retreat inside of myself and just exist for a while, abdicating control over the larger aspects of my life to others. I’m not going to go that route, strong as the sirens song is, I realize I need to come out of my shell and move forward with living.
So, yes, I am homesick this week. I want things to be as they were when Michele and I had our house in Illinois, with the pool and peaceful surroundings. I want my Mom to be alive and healthy. These are things I can’t have, things I have to accept as being gone forever. I will continue to morn my loses, but I also need to start searching for new things to celebrate.
Saturday we held a memorial service for my mother. Informal by the traditional standard but all the more meaningful for us as a result. Friends and family both got up and talked about my Mom, including myself. Mom was organized and prepared to the very end; she picked out the music to be played and wrote her own obituary.
Prior to the memorial there was a private family ceremony at the cemetery where her remains will be buried. I felt the minister did a wonderful job of speaking there and I think everyone was pleased.
After the memorial the family members (fourteen in all!) gathered and my parent’s house and we had home made spaghetti sauce with pasta and salad for dinner. There were stories, laughter, and tears. It was the kind of gathering that my mother would have loved.
The day did bring some release for me as I expected, but I am still not through letting go of my mom. I don’t know if you are ever through letting go of a parent. It seems so strange to call my father on the phone and not be able to say, “I’d like to talk to Mom.” I know that he is working through his own process now. This afternoon when I talked to him after arriving back in Kansas he said he was a bit antsy. From my own experience I know all too well what he is talking about. My brother and sister-in-law are going down to Decatur Monday and Tuesday to help him with some of the initial decisions and housecleaning. And he is talking about a couple of short trips to see friends, which I think is good.
I am pleased that he is planning activities and looking forward to taking pictures. Without something living to offset the gapping hole in his life I fear he would rapidly decline. Grief needs to happen, and it will; but in its own time and intermixed with living.
For myself I will continue to move forward with my life. I have no idea where it will take me next, but I am looking forward to find out what else is in store for me.
Eulogy for Helen Riley Nichols
Hello. My name is Mark Nichols and I want to thank you all for coming here today to remember my mother, Helen Riley Nichols.
Helen Nichols was a wife, a mother, a nurse, a friend, and most of all a very courageous and special person. I am honored that she is my mother and it is my privilege to talk about her here today.
Born the third of four children in March of 1928, Mom grew up in Buffalo New York. Her father, James Walker Riley, and her mother, Helen Cameron Holden, had four children: James, Mary, Helen, and Gene. My maternal grandmother’s parents were born in Canada and their ancestors immigrated from England and Scotland. My mother’s father is descended from English and Irish stock.
My mother often talked about the houses she and her family lived in, referring to them by the street where they were located. She talked of riding the trolley cars, and walking to school. Her favorite childhood book was the story of Robin Hood and she sought out every version of the story she could find; for in the original story the hero dies at the end, and she wanted a happy ending.
I remember her telling me a story about how she imagined the sidewalks worked when she was a little girl. She imagined that they moved and all you had to do was stand on them to get where you were going. Of course you had to jump up and turn when you got to a cross street and needed to change direction. Mom excelled in school, and challenged the status quo in her own way. She was the only girl in her high school trigonometry course, and she aced the statewide test at the end of the semester. Her quietly competitive nature would exert its influence in her life time and again.
After high school Mom was ready to become a nurse. Her studies were interrupted when during the physical a spot was discovered on her lung and she was sent home to recover from possible tuberculosis. In the end she did not have TB and she returned to school, becoming a Registered Nurse before moving to New York City and earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Education, with honors, while working full-time. My mom was nothing if not determined.
Living in the greatest city on earth allowed her to indulge one of her great passions, classic music and the opera. Working in Brooklyn as a surgical nurse, and teaching new nurses allowed her to be successful and independent. Upon moving to a new apartment she discovered a bank of phone jacks in the closet; it seemed the previous tenant might have been running a book. When she called the phone company to get a phone installed they told her that address couldn’t have one by police order. Getting no satisfaction from the police she turned to the library. Her research led her to a regulation that stated neither the phone company or the police could prevent her from having a phone simply on the grounds that the previous tenant had abused them. When she called the telephone company and quoted chapter and verse to them, they not only scheduled an appointment to install her phone, they did so over a holiday weekend. Quiet determination once again.
She joined the Unitarian Universalist Church in Manhattan where she met my father, George K. Nichols. They were married in the fall of 1960, and I was born in May 1961. Within a year my father had taken a position at the AE Staley Manufacturing Company and we all moved to Decatur. Two more children followed, Amy Susan in 1962, and Christopher James in 1965.
For a time Mom gave up her career as a registered nurse and focused on raising her three children. I remember going to the old Decatur library, with its creaky floors and musty smells with my mom, just as I remember her reading Uncle Wiggley stories to me on the couch in our living room. I also remember my parents playfully tossing a pillow back and forth at each other across the room. As my parents have an Edison wax cylinder player, my mom dutifully toted it down to the elementary school each year so I could trump the other kids in show-and-tell.
My mother instilled in me many values, not the least of which was self-reliance. The first rainy day of grade school I put on my goulashes and slicker and proceeded to jump in every puddle between our house and the schoolyard. They next time it rained I asked her for a ride, since I had seen the other children getting rides, and she said no. Not to be cruel, but because walking in the rain wasn’t a bad thing. Not that I really minded, jumping in all the puddles was fun.
As a lark, because it was getting so much press the year it was released, my father bought for her a copy of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. My mom enjoyed it so much she went and bought all the Beatles albums. Consequently I grew up in a house filled with music: arias from famous operas and ditties from John, George, Paul, and Ringo. To this day one of my favorite songs is Let It Be. And hearing any operatic music takes me back to playing in the splash of sunshine on the living room floor on Saturdays in winter, with the Metropolitan Opera (brought to you by Texaco) on the hi-fi.
With her children all in school my mother returned to work as a nurse. Not having practiced for more than ten years, she basically had to start over again at the bottom and work her way up. The quiet, yet fiercely competitive side of my mom shown through once again as she rapidly advanced from a humble second start as night shift substitute nurse. Before her second career as a nurse was over she would have advanced to night shift supervisor and finally head nurse. When the hospital restructured and closed her unit my mom continued to report for work every day. Her persistence was rewarded again when she was promoted to be the head of the sterile processing and distribution department at the hospital. Throughout it all however, I know that my mother’s greatest joy was working with patients, providing them with care. When she was a head nurse she worked every other weekend for years, and holidays alternating years. I think she liked those days best because she could set aside the administration part of her job and focus on her patients. To the end of her life whenever she would meet one of her former nurses they would always say that she had been the best boss they’d ever had.
My mom’s life wasn’t without tragedy. Her daughter, my sister, Amy died of leukemia at Christmas 1973. The loss of a child is devastating to any parent, and my mom was no different. Some of the most poignant memories I have are of sharing a tearful discussion about Amy with my mom. She didn’t hide any of the details from me, and her courage in sharing the truth helped me to overcome my grief. Perhaps I inherited some small measure of her determination and moxie.
My parents were fortunate to enjoy a long and healthy retirement together. After considerable lobbying by my father, Mom agreed to try vacationing with a trailer. The first trip was taken while Mom was still working, and I know she went into it with some apprehension. Mid way through the trip they called me and she said, “There is only one problem with this trip.” And I thought, uh oh, here it comes. “Three weeks isn’t nearly long enough.” With the travel trailer in tow they set off to see what they could see. For ten years they explored from Maine to Texas, from Florida to western Canada. I am so very glad that three weeks became ten years.
In the end I think my mom was happiest around her grandchildren: AJ, Kiel, Mellisa, Riley, and Alyx. She truly came to life when they entered her life. I was constantly reminded of the Bill Cosby line regarding the change parents go thru when presented with grandchildren. He said the reason they stopped being the person you remembered, and suddenly became nice and loving and giving, is that “they are old now, and want to get into heaven.”
I will always remember coming home past midnight from my job at Arby’s, pulling into the driveway only to see her light go out; she could sleep now that I was home safe. I will always remember her tucking me into bed at night. She imparted in me a love of real New York style cheesecake, bread stuffing made with Bell’s Poultry seasoning and finely prepared veal. I attribute my love of reading to her, and my father. I know that I am a sweet and gentle man in part due to the influence of my mom. And I hope that some of the quiet determination, strength, unselfishness, and courage she carried through out her life lives on in me.
They say a good mom lets you lick the beaters, but that a great mom first turns off the mixer. My mother was a great mom.
As I gather up my things for my trip to Illinois this weekend the reason is all to real. Every time I have made this journey this spring I’ve felt a sense of unease, dread almost, the night before leaving. Every trip carried with it the potential of being the last one where I’d see Mom alive. Tonight is no different; I feel a sense of unease that won’t go away.
My Mom is dead and I won’t see her this weekend. For the first time ever in my life I will go home and she won’t be there to greet me. And then on Saturday I’ll attend her memorial, hear words spoken by others, and speak some words myself, to say goodbye publicly.
My eyes are filling with the first real tears I’ve cried this week. The realization of what has happened and what is about to happen is really sinking in for the first time. I’ll never again be able to call her on the phone. She’ll never again recommend a new author or book to me. I’ll miss the times I was annoyed with her or upset by the difference we shared.
There are many events in a life that help you to grow. Some are easier to accept than others. I don’t know how I’ll ever accept that my mother is dead and I can never see her again.
Goodbye Mom.
When I was a kid my father and I tried line-controlled planes for a time. On one occasion I was able to complete a single lap before losing control and turning the plane into a small cloud of spare parts. Seeing the precision and skill in this video, then, is simply amazing to me.
I have managed to coast through this week on auto-pilot. Emotionally I have been flat with one or two angry outbursts for flavor. Physically I am exhausted and worn out. Mentally I’m just not focused at all. I’ve had to resort to making a list of things I need to accomplish this week so that I show up in Decatur with my suit and tie, dress socks and shoes. That it is a holiday shortened week isn’t helping matters at all as I feel like it is Wednesday and I have yet another day to prepare.
Tomorrow will be a long day as I am making the drive back to Illinois. Originally I was going to try and work the few remaining hours of my 32-hour week before going but I’ve decided that I need to take better care of me than that, and so I’ll be take some vacation time instead. I am looking forward to seeing my cousin, aunt and uncle over the weekend. I’ve not seen some of them for a long time. Funerals are such an odd mixture of reunion and sorrow.
My father forwarded to me a copy of the program Mom put together for the funeral. In addition to writing her obituary, she selected the music she wanted played:
Today it seems as if everyone is too busy to sit down and really connect. We are all racing around from one job or activity to another. Just getting together requires planning and work with all of our schedules. So it is very nice to discover that people really do care, and really do worry about each other.
The condolences left with my mother’s online obituary are heartfelt and beautiful. The calls and emails I’ve received from friends near and far have made me feel good inside. My coworkers have given me the space to just be, but have also let me know that they are supportive and caring of what I am going through.
The past year has been filled with great loss and tremendous obstacles, but it has also shown me just how caring and wonderful people truly are. The hospice and home health care nurses all took a genuine interest in my mom, and went out of their way to treat her and my father with the gentle love they needed. My faith in humanity has been greatly restored as a result of the interactions I had following Michele’s death last fall, and my Mom’s just a week ago.
If the deaths of two people so very important to me so close together have taken me to a dark and foreboding place deep in the woods, then the light of friendship and true caring has shown me a path leading out of the darkness. I am forever grateful to everyone who has reached out to me during the past few months. I do not have words to express how much your unconditional acceptance and love has meant to me.
Thank you all.