Aspects of mortality

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

All this mortality stuff tends to pile up like drifts after a blizzard.
Jimmy's dying comes in the middle of my own medical issues this fear of death that we all sort of get at this time of life when some medical condition rears its ugly head.
I have had prostate issues for several years and at the beginning largely ignored the condition or went to the doctor and he ignored it missing the initial symptoms.
When finally, I decided maybe I should see a specialist the one my doctor sent me two seemed so unreliable that I never kept the appointment.
Finally I was feeling so badly I went to the doctor over other issues and found that I had a huge spike in blood pressure and this put me on the road to salvation, making me determined to check myself out before somebody else -- such as God decided that I should check out.
I just had to do the whole ritual not Just prostate and went through all of those tests doctors suggest we do at this age: chest x-rays, stress test, even the colonoscopy. I made an appointment and kept it with urologist in Bayonne and I was well on my way to the first of a series of tests when I got a call saying that the doctor was shutting down his office.  He apparently had come down with a terminal illness of his own.
At this point I lost my job and my insurance and so had to delay again -- the next move finally finding a urologist in Kearny to continue the test.
And what a horrible test they were. The first of these was a camera up my penis which naturally I mentioned to Jimmy during our long phone conversation a few weeks afterwards. But at the time we were talking about the small inconveniences that our age had provided and the shadow of mortality that hung over us not as individuals but as a generation.
That part of our conversation was largely an evaluation of where we were at the moment and how we had managed to survive so far.
Although Jimmy admitted to some relatively minor issues, he seemed fairly good health. We were both concerned about Garrick who has not taken care of himself since we were kids and appeared to be in the worst shape of all of us.
Death did not enter into our thinking perhaps because we still lived in the twenty-five-year-old shadow of Frank's death back in 1995 and did not want to admit our own mortality.
Since the results of the test indicated a possibility of cancer I had to go through the next phase which is a biopsy -- something I told Jimmy I really did not want to do but I knew that if I did not I would regret not knowing.
Since this was due to be done in January, we agreed we would put off a meeting until after we all knew where we were and then we would reconnect not in his trailer - which he said was a mess - but someplace else like a restaurant.
I got the news of his death late last Thursday and so when I drove to the doctor for this test yesterday that shadow also hung over me as morbid and terrible as the one Frank had for years after his death.
I couldn't get it out of my head that we had finally reached that time in life when we are mortal,  each of us doing what the generations before of us had done watching our numbers diminish one at a time and the worst suffering wasn't to the ones who had perished but the ones who survived.
The biopsy turned out as bad an experience as the camera up my penis and I kept thinking the whole time of the Spanish Inquisition, a metaphor Jimmy would have appreciated and would have thought funny if the end result did not seem potentially grim.
 I thought for a while about driving out to the old neighborhood to Little Falls in the hill and the laundry, but the hour was late, and I did not want to get caught up in the rush and so I drove home instead.

Is that Jimmy calling?

Sunday, January 26, 2020

I keep waiting for some sign from beyond from Jimmy the way we all got signs from beyond when Frank Quackenbush died and the way I got that year old email from John Richie the day I got back from his wake or even all those signs I got from my mother that day of the great power outage, the cross of light on the wall, finding a pair of rosaries just like hers on the ground and then seeing her favorite picture of Christ on my way to the office only to return home later to find our house one of the few in the region that still had power.

Jimmy firmly believed that Frank had come back to say goodbye through a series of aberrations we all experienced me, Jimmy and even Garrick.

Frank always threaten to come back, so I was not surprised that a day after his burial there's a pigeon with no legs plopped into my lap while I was eating breakfast in a park and insisted on sharing my bagel with me.  A moment later it completely vanished it didn't fly off it didn't fall to the ground it just vanished.

That same morning Jimmy heard a ruckus outside his door in an old haunted house he lived in at the time up from where he worked at the Mount Arlington Library.

When he opened the door, he found a bat hovering in the air at eye level.  Then Jimmy did what he always did when he thought Frank was intruding on his privacy, he slammed the door.

Garrick experience was perhaps the strangest and most revealing. A freak bolt of lightning hit his house traveled down into his apartment and fried his answering machine leaving only one message on it and that was from Frank from when he was still alive. If that wasn't enough this was an almost exact duplicate of what happened to Frank a year earlier when a lightning bolt struck his parents’ house in Haledon and fried his answering machine.

So, I keep expecting Jimmy to make the same kind of effort to reach us and it is possible he already has.

 It is very strange to me that I went back to my journal from 1980 on Tuesday and typed out an entry that involved Jimmy and his perception of getting old. He had just turned 31 and yet seemed to think that he had already transitions into old age and maybe even death. Since most of my journal entries lately have been about mortality this seemed to fit in with the mood I was in, but the eerie part is that I posted on my blog just about the time Jimmy was dying.

 I am hoping that if it was a message from beyond that it is only the first part of an extended conversation.  Jimmy firmly believed in the afterlife and the ability to reach from beyond and so if anyone can keep himself alive in us through these ghostly occurrences he can.

 I do not know whether I believe or not I want to and I that I need to because surviving is not always the great thing, we all make it out to be because we have to mourn those who pass.

Jimmy hated wakes and funerals and it took every bit of convincing to drag him into Frank Quackenbush's back in 1995.  Perhaps Jimmy is pleased that he was cremated as quickly as he was with no wake no morning no parade of parishioners like us who want to glimpse him one last time.

There's a reason why he isolated himself in that trailer out in that remote neck of the woods, reaching out to us via phone or email or internet rather than in the flesh.  In some ways he was already become a spirit haunting us from beyond.

I hope he continues these remote messages because I miss him intensely.

Great expectations

January 25, 2020

Jimmy's death is hitting me hard as I should have expected.

you don't create mythical Heroes like Odysseus and not react when they die.

 I still have not gotten over that last weary moment on the park bench in Little Falls in the Summer of 69 when he and I just sat there after one of the most amazing weekends of our lives.

It was as if he and I knew that moment was the beginning of a journey and not the end a journey that finally came to a grinding halt this week and now I feel it all.

Although Frank brought us together, I understood in that moment that my relationship with Jimmy was something special and beyond just being a friend of a friend.

Jimmy will never go down in history as a president of some great corporation or this Icon of music or even perhaps a great artist, his story is the story of a life and an influence that goes beyond anything I can fully comprehend although I feel it deeply.

I spoke with Garrick yesterday and got more details about the sequence of events that led up to Jimmy's death.

Jimmy spoke with his sister Patty on Saturday, telling her he wasn't feeling too well.  but this wasn't anything dramatic and so apparently nobody thought much about it.  he also told a local storekeeper where he does business that weekend that he wasn't will but did not elaborate.

Frank Melchoni spoke with Jimmy on Monday; they talk frequently.  Jimmy did not mention anything about not feeling well.

Frank called Tuesday and got no answer then called Wednesday and got no answer again, then called around suggesting someone should go over to the trailer to see if Jimmy was all right.

Apparently, a neighbor had found Jimmy's body on Tuesday but did not know who to call.

Patty and John apparently found out about it Wednesday evening and called Garrick to tell him that Jimmy had passed.

Late Thursday night sending it to Garrick's work email. John said he, Patty and Jimmy's other sister Maureen were going down to the trailer Friday to two secure it.  they had already made arrangements with a Netcong Funeral Home to have Jimmy cremated.

So, Jimmy passes from this mortal coil like a Viking and there's no way to know if that is the way he actually wished to leave.

Garrick said that Maureen Patty and John now face the task of sorting through the music and the art that Jimmy left behind the last legacy that we do not know what it will become over time

His real legacy is in the rest of us, he turning some magical key that turned us from one thing we presumed we would become into something else and whether that new thing is better than we would have had it hard to tell.

Jimmy once said that the Beatles ruined us turning us away from the mundane lives of our fathers and mothers to something else, dangling this fruit of expectation in front of us which we have chased for the rest of our lives never quite able to grasp it.

The same maybe said for having known Jimmy because he raised the expectations of our lives and it is uncertain whether we have actually lived up to those.

Jimmy Garland is dead

Friday, January 24, 2020

James Garland is dead. And I can't get it out of my head.

I saw us as the Four Musketeers: me, Jimmy, Frank and Garrick. Now only me and Garrick are left.

Garrick called late yesterday when I was at a ribbon cutting and I was surprised to see his name pop up on the phone.

“I have some sad news,” he said when I responded.  “Jimmy is dead.”

I later learned that Dawn had talked to Jimmy last on Monday but when she tried to reach him Tuesday and then Wednesday, he did not respond.  I'm still not sure just who went over to his trailer in Netcong but when they did, they found Jimmy on the floor.

Garrick said it was most likely a heart attack, but we still have to find out the details because no one really knows.

Dawn said she was supposed to have gotten together with Jimmy within a week or so.

Garrick asked me when the last time I talked to Jimmy.

I told him early December and that we were supposed to get together at some point this month.  My medical stuff was getting in the way, I said although that my medical stuff was getting in the way I said although that was not completely true, we have been piss poor about meeting up.  we mostly talked on the phone and even that was rare.

Garrick had a similar spotty record although he said he had had a long talk with Jimmy on his birthday on December 28th.

I kept thinking about my last conversation with him which lasted for several hours and covered the usual widespread of topics that we usually got to talk about and catch up on.

Jimmy said he was still trying to put together a book of his art that included the museum stuff from more than two decades ago the raccoon from Mars stuff and other artwork he hoped to self-publish through Apple.

He also talked about his music and the controversy had going with Garrick over the reuse of the name Eric Lemmon milk band.  This was the name of the original Eric Lemon band from 1968 and where I saw Jimmy for the first time at St John's community room in Paterson.

Jimmy proposed to use the name again for the new music he was putting together only in some ways it really wasn't new music but rehashed stuff he'd been working on for the last two decades. Garrick claimed to have invented the name, but Jimmy disputed this.

Jimmy said he also intended to use segments of music I had sent him especially the audio of a lead-in that we had recorded at Melody Lake in the summer of 1975.

Jimmy updated me on his Family. Sue and her husband had moved to one of the Carolinas. Mary had some medical issues. Patty of course was with John up in Connecticut. Only Maureen was still relatively local in Jersey. Jimmy also talked about kids who are now adults his nephews and nieces who he had begum that strange single uncle who they had to acknowledge as being just a bit odd.

I mentioned that I had seen my cousin living in Montville right near where Jimmy's old girlfriend's mother used to live in Towaco. I told him that he had driven by the old site but I thought they had torn the house down but he told me he had checked it on Google Maps and the house was still there but they had torn down the trees.

“I don't know why they had to tear down trees,” he said waxing nostalgic for a time when he lived there in 1982 when he has set up an artist studio in one of the rooms, finally getting to live the life he had ached for as long as I had known him.

He was in love with the Merlin character from the Mary Steward books and while at Ginger’s mother's house, he got to act out that role.

He planted gardens in raised herbs and cooked very basic meals, making salads out of what he grew. Never before or since has he been as happy as he was in that moment although from what he hinted at in his trailer he was coming closer to that again.

Eventually jealousy by his girlfriend's new partner made him move out of that house and out of that life returning for several years in Passaic where he lived with me.

Luck and taking advantage of opportunity eventually allowed him to retire early from a job as director of the library. He was able to buy a trailer and move in it and pick up on the life he has wanted from the start what kind of hermit and creative on his own terms.

That isolation scared me because he lived alone, and he was getting older and we were all a bit concerned about what would happen if something happened to him. How would anybody know? And this proved to be accurate since nobody found him for two days.

Garrick apparently talked pretty extensively with Jimmy at the end of December so we both got to have our last conversation with Jimmy even though we did not know it would be the last at the time.

Unfortunately, this is how all stories end and it's sad that this man who I admired from the start never did live up to our expectations or even maybe his own although in the end I think he was probably satisfied with his life.

Jimmy wants a ride -- again

   02-16-79

  

                Jimmy rarely wants to walk to the store. He is perpetually manipulating himself a ride from one of us living in the nearby apartments in Passaic: Garrick, me or Lewis. At times, he has dragged Frank all the way from Haledon to drive three blocks to the local Quik Chek.

                Tonight, a cold wind ripped through Passaic. Weather forecasters predicted continued extremely low temperatures – below freezing temperatures that has left the river top frozen into blocks of ice.

                Jimmy called me to ask for a ride to the store.

                I was the last on his list since I have been giving him a hard time lately about rides. But Garrick wasn’t home – likely off visiting relations elsewhere in the state. Lewis was on vacation. And Frank, snug under his electric blanket and in front of his newly acquired electric heater, refused to come.

                “I need a ride to Quik Chek,” Jimmy said. “You want anything?”

                This was an old gambit, always associated with his request for a ride.

                “I can’t give you a ride,” I told him. “My car is in the shop.”

                “I know,” he said. “I didn’t ask you for a ride. I just wanted to know if you wanted anything, since I’m headed across the river anyway. All alone.”

                I felt appropriately shamed for presuming the worst. After all, with the temperature so low, his offer actually seemed significantly generous, until I realized how much he had emphasized the last word: alone.

                I stayed quiet for a long time, glancing only briefly at my coat, hanging on a hook near the door.  I did not want to go out into the cold. But he sniffled slightly into the phone, suggesting he might be coming down with something.

                “You really can’t expect me to go to the store for you?” I said.

                “That wasn’t my intention,” he retorted. “But if you want to keep me company, I wouldn’t mind.”

                There it was: his actual intention. I glanced at my coat again, and at the gloves hanging out from each pocket – gloves so worn several figures had holes in them, a poor defense against the freezing temperatures we were to encounter.

                “All right,” I told him, letting out a long sigh of resignation. “I’ll walk with you.”

                “You will!”  he said. “You’re a real pal. I’ll meet you at the downstairs door in five minutes.”

                I hung up the telephone, cursing myself for my weakness.

                “Why the hell did I just agree to that?” I thought. “Even Frank had balls enough to tell Jimmy no.”

                But Frank had distance on his side, and I knew if I refused, I could expect a knock on the door within minutes, only to find the pathetic Jimmy standing at my stoop pleading with his stare.

                I stood up, stretched, then removed my coat from the back of the door. I already felt cold. But I was helpless to Jimmy, waiting ten minutes inside before making my way out to the alley. Even then I had to wait ten more minutes in the cold for him to arrive, a harried rabbit without a watch, taking the plunge into the frigid air.

                “I do appreciate this,” he told me. “But I sure wish you had picked a better time to get your car fixed.”

The midnight hour

December 28, 1980

Each day begins the same with the rising of the sun, a rush of wind through the alley, the call of birds from trees I cannot immediately see looking out from my window.

Outside, the white sky promises to wash away the stains of the world with its promise of snow.

Cars still struggle from the remnants of previous storms, wheels whirling over patches of ice the plow could not scrap off the asphalt, sliding back a foot for every two foot forward.

Today is Pauly’s birthday, and he said last night he feels a lot like how the day today feels: old and gray.

He sat at the bar holding a glass of orange juice and an expression of anguish over losing the love of his life. Jane left for a new life in Philadelphia, leaving Pauly to repeat the old routines here, making none of the progress he expected to make back when we all still saw our future as bright.

“I’ve been in this place all of my life,” he said, glancing over at the women seated at the other end of the bar, women who smile at him because they know he’s with the band, but he turns away.

None of them are for him, nor is the rock and roll life that they are attracted to. He’s a veteran of that scene already.

“I feel like a rag that has been used over and over,” he said. “There’s nothing left of me but thread. I’ve got to do something. I got to get out of this world.”

Garrick, sitting on the stool on the other side of Paul, nodded his head. He was celebrating his birthday, one day ahead of Pauly. He grins, but it’s not a grin that has any mirth, filled with the grim humor of resignation we all feel.

We’ve been coming here or to places like this for nearly a decade, band after band coming to the edge of success but never over it.

Garrick’s eyes said it all, a nice guy afraid of commitment in a scene where every moment is s commitment, if only for one night at a time.

Pauly’s fears other things, the loneliness of old age, and the dread of watching Jane move inch by inch away until she has moved too far away for him tor reach, she still loving him, but not enough to stay.

Love isn’t enough to bridge the separate worlds in which they live, or perhaps universes, her’s expanding, his contracting, she needing to know everything about everything, while he concentrated on a narrow thread of self-interest, needing to know a lot about very little.

Jane’s newfound faith also tears them apart, the chants of her new religion as haunting at the Hari Krishna stuff we used to here constantly in the village so many years ago. She fully believes she can change the world through chant; Pauly says she can’t.

Not that he dispelled the practice entirely. He saw it as some kind of magic with which he can change the physical world, where Jane floated in some spiritual limbo, he has no way to understand.

His was a mind over matter contemplation, she understood even less.

But the conflict started long before the chanting, one or the other finding some reason to burn their bridges, trying desperately later to rebuild them only to burn them down again. But this time, neither seems willing to try, and the miles between here and Philadelphia creates a gap that might not let them try in the future.

Garrick waits for midnight to come for that one second when he and Pauly share the same birthday, his ending, Pauly’s starting as the clock eats away at time one click at a time.

“I’m 32, Al,” Pauly told me as if there was nothing else to say, both of us growing older and grayer, watching our dreams shred like old rags, Pauly finally ordering a real drink in the hopes of catching up with Garrick who by that time was already drunk – two birthday boys too old for birthdays yet too young to die.

The coming of winter

Friday, January 17, 2020

We anticipate snow for tomorrow – not much, at least here, since the temperatures will rise and bring this part of the state mostly rain.

This has been a long week, starting with doctors, jury duty, and a council meeting, and ending with me filing tax documents with my two employers.

Not to feed into the paranoia of the climate change nuts, the weather has been mostly mild – considering we are already month into winter and we’ve seen only a dusting of snow, and a few brief freezes, one which we are to suffer this morning. Last Saturday it was 65 degrees.

This is 2020, an unbelievable moment I never thought I would live to see – the roaring 20s – and a century after my grandfather’s graduation from high school, and the altered world our family took from the high hopes he and our family expected.

I have time now to explore family history, and so get a glimpse into the hopes and dreams of people who I know by name and whose stories I have collected through my mother, grandmother and uncles over the years.

All these people become real when you see their names in print, and their stories told by objective sources, and each has a unique personality that even family lore neglected to supply.

My family reflects the history of this part of the world from the end of the Civil War, but particular, the 20th century, their dreams and aspirations reflecting those of the typical Italian immigrant family, filled with the awe and the flaws we see in many families who survived that time.

This is my way of keeping them all alive since I am the last of the family with a memory of their deeds, or even their connections, and having news clips appears to verify the tales I was told and shape them into real people in my life.

As we plunge into the twenties, I wonder just how my grandfather felt when he did the same a century ago – the big difference being that I am old now and he was young then, and I see the accumulated years and the result of his dreams he could not, and perhaps feel a bit less optimistic about the future.

He could not have foreseen the sudden death of his father, and how that death robbed him of college and his dream of becoming an architect. He could not have predicted the sudden collapse of the stock market just as he and his brother started their business, and how they would have to scrimp and save for more than a decade, coming out of their personal depression only at the death of their mother in the midst of world war.

He became president of a construction company in the late 1940s only to suffer his first of a series of heart attacks, forcing him to change professions – his siblings dying off in a series of similar events until his own death in 1966. His closest brother, Henry died in the early 1970s and his last sister, in 1980.

This cluster of deaths is typical of my family with my grandfather’s children mostly dying within the same decade, leaving me the last with any memory of any of them – and this everlasting sense about the unfairness of life.

I want often to go back in time to see them all again, to appreciate them, to meet those who I never met or met when I was so young, I have no memory of them. I can only resurrect them through news clippings and the stories my family told me and write them down when I can so that when I pass on, they don’t vanish completely.