It’s about much more than baseball or a baseball player.
Buck died at 96 almost twenty years ago. He was a Negro League player, manager, and the first African-American coach on an American Major League Baseball team.
He was a Black baseball player beyond his prime before Jackie Robinson opened the door.
Buck had too many reasons to be bitter to count.
It rained every day on him.
When Posnanski asked how he kept bitterness at bay, Buck said
Where does bitterness take you?
To a broken heart?
To an early grave?
When I die
I want to die from natural causes.
Not from hate
Eating me up from the inside.
One last Buck O’Neil story.
Toward the end of his life, Buck was one of 39 Negro League players, managers, and owners considered by a special committee for induction into American baseball’s Hall of Fame.
17 of the 39 were selected for an honor Buck yearned for and deserved.
But didn’t get.
In July 2006, 16 Black men and one Black woman were inducted into the Hall of Fame.
My tummy will burn, but that’s our bean soup for lunch.
These stories are about my 19-year-old self in 1968.
I’ll bet you remember 19.
So you know they won’t be pretty.
But they will explain why my Gin and Tonic is small, ice-full, and the only one.
Screwdriver in a seedy apartment
It was an early summer Friday night. Jerry picked me up. We had just finished our first year of college. He worked at a gas station, and I managed the snack bar at the country club.
Jerry was an experienced drinker. I was still a virgin.
The party was in a second-floor apartment in a rundown house a few blocks north of Sacred Heart Cathedral and School, where I had been an altar boy and attended grade school.
We walked up rickety outdoor steps, through a half-opened door, and into a dimly lit living room with a couch and a few chairs. Jerry went into the kitchen to put his illegal six-pack into the refrigerator. Three people were standing around: two men and a woman. I didn’t know them, and they seemed older.
Sitting on the kitchen counter was a glass pitcher full of what looked like orange juice, surrounded by paper picnic cups.
“Try a screwdriver,” said Jerry, “vodka and orange juice.”
I don’t remember how many I had, but my head spun. And my tongue loosened for slurred words.
Jerry helped me down the steps and dropped me off at home.
Where I walked up the 21 front yard steps I shoveled in the winter and through the front door.
I never used the front door. No one in our family of five ever did except for guests.
Who now filled the living, dining, and family room, sitting around card tables my mom had borrowed for my parents’ Friday night Bridge Duplicate.
I offered three hellos, and Crab walked the 13 steps to my bedroom, which I shared with my brother Peter.
As soon as my head hit the pillow, the nausea hit.
The following day, I felt like I wanted to die. My head throbbed. But the snack bar couldn’t run itself. Before I opened, I went to see Ronnie, the bartender. He looked at me and said, “You need a bloody Mary.”
One Beer and a broken table
Later that summer, on August 28, 1968, Screwdriver Jerry picked me up again for a party at my other friend Jerry’s house. Why do I remember the date?
It’s the Thursday night of the Democratic Party’s Presidential Convention in Chicago — the night of the clash between the Chicago police and those demonstrating against, well, almost everything going wrong in America.
The two Jerry’s, me and, I think, host Jerry’s sister, were in the basement watching all of this on TV. Jerry’s dad would occasionally come down the basement steps to rail against the kids on the street. But he didn’t mind the beers we were drinking.
The one I had was too many.
My two Jerry friends were rooting for the Chicago police. So, I stood up too fast to make a counter-point. And fell over and broke Jerry’s mom’s new end table.
On the way home, Screwdriver Jerry, always with my best interest in mind, dropped me off in front of Sharon’s house. Sharon was my first girlfriend, with whom I had broken up the summer before.
A couple of days later, Jerry would tell me I peed on her front lawn.
Three beers and Gina at Danceland
Thankfully, for you and me, this 3rd story is short.
In the fall of 1968, my college sponsored dances every Friday night at Danceland. Usually, I would go with a few friends.
On this Friday, Mike went along.
Danceland served cheap beer in plastic cups. Before too long, I downed three.
Chug-a-lugs.
Gina was pretty and sitting by herself.
My defenses down and courage up, I went over and asked if I could join her.
We talked for a while; I leaned over and kissed her lightly out of nowhere.
And she kissed me back.
That’s all.
*
Three days later, during a pool game, while we were cutting class, Mike said to me:
You know Gina is the girlfriend of the star forward on the basketball team.
And then he said something only a true friend would say.
Paul, you’re an idiot when you drink.
A message this self-respecting 19-year-old needed only to hear once.
Who, at 74, is one year older than Walter Matthau when he made Grumpy Old Men.
With co-star Ann-Marget, who never stopped smiling.
Two years later, they do it again with Grumpier Old Men, with Sophia Loren, who never stopped smiling.
Would one Grumpy Old Woman be asking too much?
And Grammarly, what’s your problem with fella? You don’t slap a purple line under, dude.
I know; I click dismiss, and the purple line disappears.
But I like to play by the rules if the rules make sense.
That’s what nice fellas do.
But Ann Margret’s & Sophia Loren’s are changing the world.
Because someone thinks newer is better.
Our town’s mayor is a woman. The first woman to run the city. She smiles a lot. I’m a progressive fella, so I voted for her.
She couldn’t leave well enough alone.
One of her new ideas was a new leaf pick-up program. The rule used to be to rake the leaves into the street. The workers would not scoop them up if they were on the boulevard.
Two years ago, pushed by the mayor, the street department bought a new-fangled leaf vacuum truck. Now, the leaves must be out of the street, ON the boulevard, but no more than five feet from the curb.
Photo by the author
Yesterday, I raked some leaves from the street onto my lawn.
Really?
I came into the house to write a blog about this ridiculous new program and tried to log into WordPress. I received this message: you must create a two-step verification to continue.
Ugh.
It’s bad enough that I must keep changing my password every six months. Now, I need to keep my phone handy when I check my dwindling bank account. Someone had to pay for that new street cleaner. Or when I want to rant on my blog. And remember whether it was Tommy or Jimmy who was my best friend when I was 10.
Speaking of two steps, I used to be able to unscrew any lid with one movement. I could hit a baseball and golf ball a long way for my size — strong wrists from scooping ice cream at sixteen. I couldn’t cook, but I could unscrew.
Wouldn’t you want this fella around?
Now, I’m reduced to this.
Photo by the author
*
My friend Will, 92, in Assisted Living, said to me the other day, “There can’t be room-controlled thermostats in his complex because no one understands how they work.”
And then he told me a hilarious story about how he and Harland, also a resident and 98, were sitting around his apartment last week, and suddenly, from a corner, Alexa started speaking up. The digital assist box that housed Alexa had arrived a few weeks earlier as a gift from Will’s nephew. Neither could figure out how to silence her, so they threw a blanket over the table.
Photo by the author
That’s Will and Harland at a recent Life Long Learning Seminar on Death and Dying. You can read my stories on this course here.
They are the anti-curmudgeons. Each does his best to keep up with the changes the world throws at them ever-increasingly. But they also have begun to hold many things lightly. And each has a sense of humor, whether about death or Alexa.
Years ago, as they neared Curmudgeonville, they must have turned around before it was too late.
And now serve as role models.
As do Ann Margret (82) and Sophia Loren (89), still smiling.
Postscript
Our community’s Mayor, Lorraine, is widely acclaimed as the best mayor in decades and handily won re-election.
The new leaf vacuum program, bugs worked out the first year, works like a charm.
Part III of a Life Long Learning Seminar on Death & Dying
Photo by author
*
It was another sunny Wednesday morning for our forty souls. This was the third of four Death, Dying, and Living classes. You can read about the seminar here and review our first and second sessions.
Two played hooky.
Photo by the author
Harland (98 and with the microphone) and Will (92 and to Harland’s right) had a prior engagement. They joined out-of-town friends for an annual luncheon.
By the way, fifty years ago, Larry, to Harland’s left, was a student of Will and Harland’s. Will was a Professor of Religion and Classics, and Harland, English.
The assignment for the third session was to watch the film Jack Has a Plan. My colleague Alan showed the movie at 7 a.m. in our seminar room before class for those who couldn’t attend the Sunday screening. My other colleague, Ruth, baked a blueberry coffee cake. If this sounds slightly sexist, you don’t know Ruth.
Jack Tuller, a resident of California, was diagnosed with brain cancer 25 years ago. The documentary, by a friend of his, chronicles the last three years of his life, including his plan to die on a Friday at 4 p.m. Because California is one of ten states that allow physician-assisted death, Jack was able to choose a time to die. You can see the states on the map below.
States: Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine, New Mexico, & Washington D.C. on Wikimedia Commons
I’ve linked you to the film’s website, which includes a summary of Jack’s story, photos, awards, and a review of the right-to-die issue.
It’s a powerful and uncomfortable film. We asked our participants to join several others to discuss how this film spoke to them.
Photo by the author
*
Alan, Ruth, and I each joined a small group. In my group, people told stories of loved ones who might have selected Jack’s option if they had lived in a state that protected medical aid in dying.
You get a sense of the main case for this position by looking at the names of the laws in each state. (source)
Oregon: Oregon Death with Dignity Act
Washington: Washington Death with Dignity Act
Vermont: Vermont Patient Choice and Control at the End of Life Act
California: California End-of-Life Option
Colorado: Colorado End-of-Life Option
Washington D.D.: D.C. Death with Dignity Act
Hawaii: Hawaii’s Our Care, Our Choice Act
New Jersey: New Jersey Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act
Maine: Maine Death with Dignity Act
New Mexico: New Mexico Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act
Montana: Baxter v. Montana (The State Supreme Court case that ruled in favor of Medical Aid in Dying)
In the film, Jack throws a party for friends and family on the day he chooses to die. At 3:30, with tears and hugs, the guests depart, leaving Jack and his wife alone. She will help administer the three prescribed drugs. The camera also goes with Jack telling us he “will die a happy man.”
A neighbor of Jack’s said, “Jack did not kill himself. He chose to die before the cancer killed him.” The California law sanctions choice for those who have a six-month terminally ill diagnosis.
So, the main argument in favor of medically assisted dying (notice that no state uses the term suicide) for those in the prescribed condition requires that the government protect their right to choose. Sanctioning their choice is rooted in their dignity as human beings.
In my group, most of us accepted the choice perspective under the condition of a terminal illness. We were glad Jack lived in California and could follow his personal vision.
*
But not all of Jack’s friends and family accepted his decision. The same was true in our small group and, as it became clear when we convened the large group, in other groups.
The most compelling counter-argument was that Jack was a part of a community. He was not only an individual. And the community would miss his person, his voice. One member of our group worried that medically sanctioned death was an example of individualism that had gone too far.
Our class read an article by New York Times columnist David Brooks that developed this perspective and used Canada’s law to illustrate how a policy that limits beneficiaries to the terminally ill has been expanded to include those who are suffering psychologically.
One of Jack’s friends, a cartoonist, said to Jack, “It’s almost like you are a character in this movie. But you’re not. You are a real person who is still a part of our lives.”
We invited a retired physician to join our class for the Jack conversation. He told us he disagreed with the Oregon law when it was passed a decade ago. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he could prescribe for Jack.
*
I’ve seen the Jack film twice, one year apart. The second time, a week ago, I wished Jack would change his mind. Part of me understood his fear that he would soon be unable to get out of bed. And that he found it increasingly difficult to do the simplest things. But another part saw that his friends and family would help him up to the end.
A gift for him.
And for them.
What do you think?
____________________________________
For the last session, we invited a funeral home director and a minister. The theme is Closure.
This Pike’s Peak is in Iowa. Zebulon Pike looked out over the Mississippi River in 1805 and saw a perfect site for a fort. One year later, he explored the southeast territory of Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase and bumped into the Rockies.
Photo by Rebecca Wiese from the highest point of Iowa’s Pike’s Peak, 1250 feet.
Iowa’s Pike’s Peak State Park is known as Little Switzerland.
This is Rebecca and me in big Switzerland in 2018.
Photo in the Alps in 2018 by Kaspar Bigler
OK, you get the point.
We walk a lot. My phone tells me that over the last 26 weeks, I’ve walked an average of 2.6 miles daily; that’s 6,761 steps per day.
On Sunday’s two-and-a-half-hour hike through Iowa’s Pike’s Peak, my Health app registered just under 12,000 steps. My body, at 74, told me 12,000 had become the step-ceiling. Rebecca is two years younger, but we were equally slumped in our chairs later that day.
My mother walked about two miles a day until a hip replacement at 89 cut that in half. Sadly, it’s no coincidence that five years later, when she was in the early stages of dementia, we moved her into a memory care unit because we couldn’t keep her inside the house she had lived in for 60 years.
What had kept her going was now a danger.
That walk in the Alps five years ago? We hiked for five hours, 10 miles, at 10,000 feet.
Could we do that hike today? Rebecca says yes, of course, we could. And more importantly, “we should think we can.”
I’m not so sure. I’ve started to become comfortable with slowing down physically. Thus, my 12,000 step limit.
Rebecca believes this kind of thinking is a slippery slope. Once you go down that path, it will be too easy to stop.
Two days ago, we hiked in Palisade Park. To get to the park, we walked outside our front door and took a right. I snapped this photo from the summit. The red arrow points to our home. Our round-trip hike to the 112-foot high point was about 7000 steps.
Photo by author
As we sat, huffing and puffing a bit, on a bench looking out over our town, I honed in on a cemetery close to our home. Too close. I’ve planted, Pike-like, a red flag on the sloped place for the dead.
Here’s a close-up.
Photo by the author
The cemetery’s downward contour reminded me of Rebecca’s slippery slope worry.
It’s easy to slalom down to the inevitable when you’re on an upslope.
Alps: 10,000 feet & 52,000 steps.
Pike Jr.: 1250 feet & 12,000 steps.
Palisade Park: 112 feet & 7,000 steps.
Cremation urns
Yet, it’s possible to hold these two thoughts in tension.
Stay active for as long as possible. By doing so, it becomes a part of who you are. My mother kept walking out her dog-scratched back door even after she had forgotten who she was.
But accept the inevitability of the downward slope. The Alps to Pike Jr. to Palisade becomes a natural regression. You remain in control. You can flatten the imaginary hill so it’s not slippery.
You remember your dad bringing home pizza every Friday night. And your mom was more relaxed than usual. And you could serve yourself. And eat with your hands in front of the TV. And instead of milk, Pepsi.
Nice.
Why is ice cream my favorite food?
See that Chocolate Pecan Tornado in the photo.
I took the photo two weeks ago because it would be my last Tornado until spring. I also took this one later in the day. I’m not the only one who would be sad after the last spoonful.
Photo by the author
Do you have pizza every Friday night?
Like clockwork, for sixty years. I’m not surprised.
Ice cream has been my favorite food for about that long, too. After mass on Sunday, my father would have pancakes ready for us. He didn’t go to church. When my mom and he were married in 1948, the priest insulted him because my dad was a Protestant. That was it for him.
During the summer, we would eat breakfast on the patio he built and rebuilt. A few hours later, the five of us (Paul, Peter, Pat, and Mom and Dad) would pile in our station wagon and head down to Iowana Dairy on the Mississippi Riverfront. We would sit at the counter and order an ice cream malt or sundae for lunch. I always ordered a chocolate malt that could only be eaten with a spoon. The straw was for show.
Everyone was relaxed and happy.
That’s why, six decades later, I still feel like a part of me has died with every last spoonful.
Do you feel that way every Friday with that final bite of crust? Like a small part of you has died.
I understand. There’s always next Friday. You are lucky. There are 52 Fridays in a year.
What’s that?
Sometimes 53, in a leap year. And 2024 is a leap year, but only 52 Fridays.
Interesting. Wait a minute. You said next year, there is a February 29.
Why does that matter to me?
That means an extra day before Whippy Dip reopens. It usually starts up again sometime in April, often Easter weekend.
Photo by author in 2023
Easter is early in 2024, on March 31, you say.
Fantastic, but why do you know this?
I see. You fast during Lent and give up pizza. And Good Friday is the last supper without pizza. And during Lent, you replace pizza with fish tacos. But no Pepsi.
Part II of a Life Long Learning Seminar on Death and Dying
Photo by author
It was another beautiful fall day.
For talking about dying and death.
And everyone came back!
If you just added the class today, you can catch up by reading the two previous stories below.
The only prerequisite is that you expect, someday, to die.
The final exam is a take-home.
This seminar, particularly today’s topic, the quality of dying and death, is personal. Everyone had a story. That was clear from today’s discussion. I’ll describe two in a minute, but first, mine.
The best teaching comes from the heart.
My mother died in 2017 at 96. She had been in a memory care unit facility for two years. You can read a fuller account here.
On her final day, she endured two ambulance rides, three rooms, three beds, three gurneys, and three institutions before she drew her last breadth. All of this, despite a Do Not Resuscitate order form.
Dying at home was not an option for my mom. My brother Pat, who lived in her city, kept her in the house she had lived in for 60 years for as long as possible. He reluctantly admitted her to a nursing home when she started wandering outside her home, where she lived for two years. Miserable every moment. That’s where she should have died.
Or
Maybe we should have done what Danny, in Wendell Berry’s short story Fidelity, today’s reading assignment, does for his 82-year-old father, Burley.
Burley Coulter “had begun to lose use of himself, his body only falteringly answering to his will.” His immediate family, son Danny, nephew Nathan, and their wives, Hannah and Lyda, reluctantly took him to the hospital in Louisville. They didn’t know what else to do — “he’s going to die.”
Once in the hospital, surrounded by strangers and machines, Burley “slipped away toward death. But the people of the hospital did not call it dying; they called it a coma. They spoke of curing him. They spoke of his recovery.”
Danny and the others felt “like they had abandoned Burley.” So late one night, Danny slipped into the hospital and secreted Burley to an old barn. He looked at Burley’s face when he laid the dying man down:
It was, as it had not been in the hospital, unmistakenly the face of the man who for eighty-two years had been Burley Coulter.
Danny asked Burley whether he knew where he was. Burley smiled and said, “Right here.”
We selected Berry’s terrific story to serve as a jumping-off point for our group of forty to tell their own stories of the final journies of their loved ones. Most of the stories included judgments about medical care.
You’ve read about my mom. Here are two others.
Rebecca’s grandmother went voluntarily into the nursing home when she was 85. At 99, she had surgery for a bleeding ulcer. A year later, she slipped into a coma, and her family — Rebecca’s mom and a sister — OK’d a feeding tube. Her grandmother never came out of the coma, dying at 106. Rebecca said her mother often said she would like to go to the nursing home, kidnap her mom, and remove the feeding tube because her mom’s physician refused to. Of course, she never did.
Mike’s father was on kidney dialysis. After one session, he was so depleted that his physician said he had begun to die. But after a week, he recovered enough for another dialysis a month later. This weakened him enormously, so Mike put his dad in hospice care, where he died a week later. Mike still feels guilt because this meant no extraordinary measures to keep his dad alive, such as a feeding tube.
On my mother’s last day, when she was having trouble breathing — the death certificate listed COPD as the cause — the nursing home should have turned her room into hospice care. That’s what we were told would happen, given our DNR order.
My brothers and I know our mom would have preferred to die in her home, her “old barn” of sixty years. That’s the power of Wendell Berry’s story.
But her mental and physical deterioration made that impossible. Institutional care, in our judgment, was the best loving choice. Yet, Berry’s Fidelity hurdles another possibility at us. Couldn’t you have cared for her in one of your homes? Or took turns — all three brothers were retired when our mother needed nursing home care — in her home?
Most of our seminar group sympathized with Danny’s lawbreaking effort to steal Burley away from strangers and take him to a “good place.”
And a few others joined Rebecca and my stories about things going wrong in hospitals or nursing homes.
But most described skillful and attentive medical care for loved ones dying in institutions.
I’ll end with my teaching colleague Ruth’s story about her friend Martin’s death in a nursing home.
I am grateful I was in the room at a ceremony when my friend Martin died. There were 12 of us, including Martin’s wife Mary Lou, gathered around his bed, with many touching a part of Martin, commenting on how this part had been used in his life. Martin died during this ceremony.
